Scientific Explanation

Explanations are the bread and butter of the sciences. But what, if anything, distinguishes scientific explanation from mere description, (statements about) mere causation or from everyday explanation? Do explanations track what is really going in the world or do they merely organise our experience thereof? How does explanation relate to causation? Are there non-causal explanations? Is there are a structure that is common to all explanation across the sciences or are explanations in certain special sciences structured differently? These and other, related, questions have occasionally been the subject of philosophical discussion since antiquity. However, since the 1940s, they have been at the heart of an ongoing debate among philosophers of science, starting with Carl Hempel's deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation. Hempel's model has given rise to several objections, which have, in turn, spurned several alternative accounts of scientific explanation. These include accounts of explanation in terms of statistical relevance, causal mechanisms, unification, or in terms of the interests, beliefs, etc. of those giving or receiving the explanation in question. In this seminar, we will discuss each of these accounts of scientific explanation as well as the objections raised against them, with a particular focus on explanation in the social sciences.