In this paper, I discuss how there has been a recent trend in the philosophy of scientific explanation towards a pluralistic view that acknowledges the importance of both of the major accounts of explanation of the last thirty years- the unificationist account, as proposed in (Kitcher, 1989), and the causal account, primarily as described in (Cartwright, 1983), but with aspects from (Salmon, 1998)- and admits the possibility of other, as yet undiscovered, accounts. Although I believe that a pluralist position is essentially correct, I argue that no satisfactory description has been given of how one determines which explanatory contexts call for which kind of explanation. Limiting my analysis to the contemporary particle physics techniques associated with Effective Field Theories, which I believe offer a particularly good case study for distinguishing between contexts, I argue that the determination of explanatory type from context is a pragmatic issue. To address this issue, I turn to a third account of explanation,the pragmatic account, as described in (van Fraassen, 1980). Although I argue the pragmatic account fails as a full account of explanation, it succeeds, in modified form, in describing the pragmatics of explanation,specifically of the pluralist account. In the end, I argue that explanatory context in particle physics is determined by the relationship between the experimental context in which the person demanding the explanation is interested, and the characteristic energy scale of the phenomenon to be explained. When the experimental context in question overlaps with the characteristic scale of the phenomenon, a causal explanation is called for; if the experimental context is higher than the characteristic scale, then explanatory unification is called for.
Introduction and Overview
1.1 Introduction
The philosophy of scientific explanation originated with the work of the the logical
positivists, formalized by Carl Hempel and Paul Oppenheim in the 1960s (see their
essays in (Colodny, 1962), for example). In excising metaphysics from philosophy
and replacing it with logic and scientific observation, they found that many aspects
of science needed specification and formalization. Their efforts to define quotidian
concepts of science like theory choice, inductive support, and explanation succeeded
in simultaneously laying a groundwork for future questions on these topics (many of
which had not been previously considered by philosophers) and revealing fundamental
inconsistencies in their own program. Virtually all work on scientific explanation of
the last fifty years has been targeted at responding to and resolving the shortcomings
of the two models of explanation expounded by the logical positivists: the deductonomological
(DN) model, and the inducto-statistical (IS) model, collectively known
as covering law models.
Much has been written about both these models, (See (Salmon, 1989b) and
(Kitcher, 1989) for particularly good expositions), so I will not dwell on them here
any more than required for a brief outline of each. The rough idea of the DN model
is that an explanation consists of a deduction (hence deducto) taking as premises (a)
one or more laws of nature (hence nomological) and (b) the specifics of a situation. A statement S (the explanandum) is said to be explained if it can be deduced by formal
logic from (a) and (b). Another, more intuitive way of thinking about this model is
that S is explained if one can show that S should be expected, given known laws and
the circumstances surrounding the content of S. The IS model, on the other hand,
begins with a statistical law from which one induces the explanandum.
These pictures of explanation face a number of insurmountable problems (for
instance- no one has been able to point to a single law of the sort that Hempel
requires for the DN model). Two major responses have arisen in their stead. The first,
a distant relation of the DN and IS models that avoids many of their problems and
which I will call the “unificationist account”, was first posited by Michael Friedman
in his (1974) and has been expanded on famously by Philip Kitcher (there are several
papers, but (Kitcher, 1989) is the most encompassing). The idea is that to explain
S, one should try to fit it into a framework of other statements, all of which one
believes to be true and which are dependent on and consistent with each other. More
precisely, one tries to find a pattern of argument that can be used to relate many
disparate phenomena back to a relatively small number of first principles. Although
different from Hempel’s account, again the intuition is that to explain something is
to show that it is expected, in this case by showing how it relates (presumably in a
more complex way than either the DN or IS account allows, although each could be
construed as a special case of the unificationist account) to other true statements.
The second response, which I will call the “causal account”, has two major instantiations,
respectively supported by Wesley Salmon (see (Salmon, 1985),(Salmon,
1997), and (Salmon, 1998)) and Nancy Cartwright (see especially (Cartwright, 1983)).
There are some important differences between Cartwright and Salmon. In general,
however, I will tend to focus on Cartwright more than Salmon because her position
is stronger, more radical, and, in the end, more interesting. For now, suffice it to
say that the common ground between the two accounts is that explanations should be thought of as causal stories, focusing on the relevant causal properties of the system
under consideration. So on the causal account, S is explained by a series of
statements the contents of which are causally dependent on each other (this series
would look like “we have situation X, in which S0 causes S1 to occur, which causes
S2 to occur, ..., which causes Sn to occur, which causes S to occur”). These accounts
bring with them the various problems associated with theories of causation, originally
pointed out by Hume (although Salmon has made some progress here). But at the
same time, they have a great deal of intuitive attractiveness: causal stories feel like
ordinary explanations from outside of science.
Recently, there has been a growing consensus among philosophers that both the
unficationist account and the causal account(s) are correct, in appropriate situations
in science (see especially (Salmon, 1989a) and (Godfrey-Smith, 2003)). This is probably
the right step forward. One of the strongest arguments against the DN and IS
models was essentially phenomenalistic- no examples could be produced from actual
science that had the forms Hempel described. Both the unificationist and the causal
accounts, on the other hand, have innumerable examples of explanations in their
support. In fact, one of the largest problems for each account is the great success
of its opponent in describing some (although neither can lay claim to all) explanations.
Short of labeling a large section of science “bad”, there is little option but for
the polemicists to concede to a plurality of accounts: sometimes, a proper explanation
is a specific causal story, at other times, a proper explanation involves fitting
the explanandum into a larger structure. Some philosophers (see (Salmon, 1989a),
(Hartmann, 2001)) have distinguished between the kinds of understanding achieved
in each case, arguing that the unificationist account produces global understanding,
whereas the causal account produces local understanding. Other philosophers (see
(Godfrey-Smith, 2003)) have avoided the complicating step of fragmenting explanation
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