Four Decades of Scientific Explanation 1st Edition by Wesley C. Salmon (PDF)

Description

As Aristotle stated, scientific explanation is based on deductive argument–yet, Wesley C. Salmon points out, not all deductive arguments are qualified explanations. The validity of the explanation must itself be examined. Four Decades of Scientific Explanation provides a comprehensive account of the developments in scientific explanation that transpired in the last four decades of the twentieth century. It continues to stand as the most comprehensive treatment of the writings on the subject during these years.Building on the historic 1948 essay by Carl G. Hempel and Paul Oppenheim, “Studies in the Logic of Explanation,” which introduced the deductive-nomological (D-N) model on which most work on scientific explanation was based for the following four decades, Salmon goes beyond this model’s inherent basis of describing empirical knowledge to tells us “not only what, but also why.” Salmon examines the predominant models in chronological order and describes their development, refinement, and criticism or rejection.Four Decades of Scientific Explanation underscores the need for a consensus of approach and ongoing evaluations of methodology in scientific explanation, with the goal of providing a better understanding of natural phenomena.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐An essential reading for anyone seriously interested in contemporary epistemology. It’s status as a ‘classic’ is very well deserved: crystal-clear presentation and analyses (even though quite technical at times), sharp and illuminating distinctions, and by far the best bibliography available for the decades covered.

⭐An interesting historically oriented survey of the topic of scientific explanation. The author is a noted philosopher of science and the text is a mixture of historical review, analysis, and his own personal perspective. Written well but the level of discussion is often fairly technical with appeals to formal logic and clearly aimed at a relatively specialized audience.Salmon’s starting point is an important essay on scientific explanation published by Hempel and Oppenheim in the late 1940s. These authors’ deductive logic based approach became the standard account. Salmon then goes on to discuss criticisms of the standard account and subsequent attempts to produce a satisfactory account of scientific explanation. Salmon deals at length with a series of fairly difficult issues. How to deal with probablistic as opposed to deterministic processes. Is scientific explanation about logically subsuming phenomena under general laws or about tracing specific mechanisms? What constitutes a scientific law? What is the nature of explanation in general? How do these questions touch on issues of scientific realism? The individual discussions are very good, though somewhat intellectually demanding.

⭐The deductive-nomonological model of explanation says that an explanation is a valid deductive argument that infers the explanandum from an explanans that is true, has empirical content, and contains at least one general law.Problems with DN:How to characterise laws. One needs to exclude accidental empirical generalisations such as “all Apache pottery is made by women”, “all apples in my refrigerator are yellow”, “no gold sphere has mass greater than 100,000 kg”, since “explanations” based on such “laws” are obviously bogus. To do this we may stipulate that laws should be universal, unlimited in scope, avoid reference to particular objects, and contain only purely qualitative predicates. Such criteria are not sufficient, however. If one puts “enriched uranium” in place of “gold” above then the statement really is a law. Such examples make us want to appeal to properties of laws such as the ability to support counterfactuals (e.g. “if I put a red apple in my refrigerator it becomes yellow”), or having modal import (delineating what is physically necessary, possible, or impossible). But this does little to solve our problem since to determine whether a statement satisfies these criteria is no easier than determining whether it is a law. “The unresolved question is this: is there any objective distinction between laws and true empirical generalisations? Or is the distinction wholly psychological, epistemic, or pragmatic?”T->E as auxiliary assumption. Any true explanandum E can be derived from any true theory T with the (then true) auxiliary assumption T->E. To exclude this we may postulate that, given that T is true, there must be some way of verifying that the auxiliary assumptions are true without simultaneously verifying E as well. This, however, is not sufficient: one can still essentially prove any particular Ha from any law (x)Fx, as follows. Replace (x)Fx by its logical consequence T’=(x)Fx v (y)(Gy->Hy). Take as auxiliary assumption C=(Fb v ¬Ga)->Ha. It is possible to verify C, given T’, without verifying Ha, by verifying ¬Fb and Ga. So this explanation is not barred by the above criterion. And yet T’ and C obviously imply Ha, and they are obviously true (since (x)Fx and Ha are true). This can be avoided by demanding that E must not entail any conjunct of the conjunct normal form of the auxiliary assumptions, thus ruling out C=(Fb v ¬Ga)->Ha=¬(Fb v ¬Ga) v Ha.Explanation/prediction symmetry thesis (which is implied and embraced by the DN model). A storm may be predicted but not explained by barometer readings. Pre-Newton, tides could be predicted from observations of the moon, but not explained.Ignoring causation. The height of a flagpole may be DN-explained by the length of its shadow.Ignoring temporality. Since Newtonian mechanics allows both future and past states to be calculated, an eclipse may be DN-explained by the state of the bodies after the event just as well as before it.Artificial restriction of laws. Hexed salt dissolves in water.Explanatory irrelevance. A man failing to get pregnant DN-explained by his eating birth control pills.The inductive-statistical model of explanation is the analogue of DN when the laws and conclusion are not certain but merely highly probable.Problems with IS:Reference class. By virtue of and object belonging to two different classes (and thus falling under two different statistical laws), contradictory conclusions may be derived. Hempel’s solution: requirement of maximal specificity (the correct reference class is the intersection of the two sets). Thus, to decide whether a given IS-explanation is valid, we must survey our entire knowledge to make sure that the reference class must not be restricted. Therefore IS-explanations of knowledge-relative.Knowledge-relativity. This relativity means that there are no non-epistemic features of the world that are responsible for the explanandum. But isn’t the specification of such features precisely what we mean by explanation? Thus we would prefer if there was an objective homogeneity of reference classes, so that whether one has the right reference class or not is not relative to knowledge but a fact about the world. But the notion of objective homogeneity of reference classes is incompatible with determinism and very hard to explicate.High-probability requirement. A few syphilis sufferers develop paresis, the former seemingly “explaining” the latter without making it probable, as the IS model requires.Problems carried over from DN include the explanatory irrelevance, causality and temporality problems. E.g., a man’s recovery from a cold may be IS-explained by his eating oranges when he would have recovered just as well anyway. Or: any event may be IS-explained from its being reported in the newspaper.The statistical-relevance model of explanation responds to this by taking statistical explanation to consist in specifying the conditions that made a difference to the probability of the explanandum. This excludes irrelevance by definition and false causality by implication (at least in principle: the only way to exclude, e.g., the influence of barometers on storms seems to be to destroy all barometers), to the extent that false causes cannot have probabilistic influence (cf. Reichenbach’s common cause principle).

⭐Salmon’s book traces the major debates about scientific explanation in the philosophy of science for the timespan of (roughy) 1948 to 1988. It’s a great little guide for graduate students (or rusty faculty) interested in P of S. It does assume some familiarity with formal logic and philosophic vocabulary, so it may not be for the beginner… but Salmon’s writing is clear and understandble, with a good amount of sign-posting. And, it has a very useful chronological bibliography at the back.

Keywords

Free Download Four Decades of Scientific Explanation 1st Edition in PDF format
Four Decades of Scientific Explanation 1st Edition PDF Free Download
Download Four Decades of Scientific Explanation 1st Edition 2006 PDF Free
Four Decades of Scientific Explanation 1st Edition 2006 PDF Free Download
Download Four Decades of Scientific Explanation 1st Edition PDF
Free Download Ebook Four Decades of Scientific Explanation 1st Edition