Volume 1, Issue 1: A Brief Guide to Explanations

A Brief Guide to Explanations

Chrysostomos Mantzavinos: A Dialogue on Explanation. Cham: Springer. pp. ix-56. Softcover, 2018. ISBN 978-3-030-05833-3. 69.99 USD.

Questions of explanations took a central place among analytically oriented philosophers for decades in the second half of the twentieth century. After Carl G. Hempel’s works of in the 1940s, many scholars addressed explanation as one of the major concepts of philosophy of science; this trend existed until the 1990s, and found its peak in the works of Wesley Salmon and others. Though attention has recently turned towards different concepts, such as laws of nature, induction and probability, explanation was put back on the table. Besides questioning some old stories about how the question of explanation found its way in to the discussions of scientific philosophers in the 1940s (see the works of Fons Dewulf 2018a, 2018b), and besides the reinvention of philosophy of history as a respectful field for analytic philosophers (see the works of Paul Roth 2020), the concept itself gain some new insights.

            In his fresh book on explanation, A Dialogue on Explanation, C. Mantzavinos aims at defending a new conception about how to think about explanations and what to expect from them. The short book consists of four chapters; it starts with some old ideas and heroes, and moves forward to new conceptions and actors.

            Chapter One discusses the classic “Covering Law Model of Explanation” put forward mainly by Hempel; according to this approach, to explain a certain event E, one has to find the relevant general law, and if you could derive the statement that describes E from the law and some initial conditions, then you were able to explain it. Explanation thus consists in a certain form of deductive logical reasoning. (Though Hempel later worked out some inductive and statistical forms as well, they do not have to concern us here.) This is a well-known and motivated approach. If you think about it, it seems to be a quite usual and everyday practice to say that ‘well, the prices of old flats are getting higher here, because it happens always everywhere, you know, when the industrial business became prosperous, prices of flats and services follow the trend.’ That is, we formulate generalities (often in the form of laws), and say that something happens because it fits the general pattern.

            Nonetheless, as fancy and overwhelming this account was in the second half of the twentieth century, it had its own problems that were pointed out repeatedly. Mantzavinos summarizes these issues precisely. His method is to move somewhat dialectically (in the old sense), that is, after pointing out some difficulties and their alleged solutions, he formulates the new approaches on the basis of old problems. That is how we got to know the “explanation as unification” method where explanation is a sort of systematization of our beliefs about the world.

            The unificationist approach of Philipp Kitcher gets an entire chapter (though Wesley Salmon’s causalist theory is also presented in some details) seemingly as one of the liveliest alternative to Hempel’s deductive model. But as it used to be with every theory, Kitcher did not have the last word in the debate about explanation. Mantzavinos argues that whatever conception we discuss from the last few decades and whatever their individual strengths and drawbacks might be, the fundamental problem with them is more general: these approaches stands in the light of critical discussion as the one and final approach. The usual philosophical question of “What is explanation?” is entirely misleading as it supposes that there is only one form of explanation and philosophy shall discover it somehow. Mantzavinos thus suggest a pluralist account of explanations (pp. 19-20).

            The author argues that there are many explanations among scientists and the laymen and these practices differ in many respects, though they are all offered as explanations of certain events. While it is nowhere claimed in the book, Mantzavinos’s approach seems to be a late-Wittgenstein-inspired account of explanation. The point is that the recently available theories of explanation accounts only for certain parts of the phenomena and leave important issues in the dark. Thus we have to find such a conception that could account for a broader range of phenomena and that could turn the counterexamples into examples. So, relating the different criticisms, Mantzavinos says (p. 22), “[t]he goal of a philosophical account of explanation should not be to capture the explanatory relation, but rather to capture the many ways in which explanations are provided in the different domains of science – and of everyday life” (orignal emphasis).

            Capturing the many ways that are often diametrically opposed to each other is not an easy task. As one-dimensional, final definitions with strict distinctions are replaced by multidimensional and conditionally framed descriptions that are intertwined with critically based heuristic tools, the new view of explanation is threatened by the teething-trouble of all pluralist and softening programs; namely by ambiguous and obscure pictures of everyday practices. This problem is raised in the book as well, namely whether we should just describe the many faces of what counts as explanations by many or shall we critically and normatively draw some lines between explanations and non-explanations. But I shall come back to that later.

            Also the Wittgenstein-inspiration hits at this point. As Wittgenstein speaks often in his Philosophical Investigations about language-games to emphasize the inherent rules of specific regions of language, Mantzavinos argues that to give explanations we have to participate in explanatory-games. Plural is intended as “[a]t every moment of time there are many explanatory games unfolding in parallel: mythical explanatory games, religious explanatory games, scientific explanatory games” (p. 25). These games have different rules, rules that constitute the way how one could play the game. Mantzavinos distinguishes between at least four different types of fundamental rules (pp. 25-27). Constitutive rules determines what counts as an explanatory game at a given time and space. Rules of representation characterize the given explanatory game, by indicating some basic features. Rules of inference fixes the available argumentative strategies and show the basic patterns of reasoning within a game. Finally rules of scope determine the range of phenomena to which the game applies.

            According to Mantzavinos the practice of giving explanations consists in participating in an explanatory game and thus to follow the rules of the given game. Rules are changing, of course, sometimes they constrain each other, and this special give-and-take determines the outcome, that is, the explanations themselves. History plays thus an important role in unrevealing the nature and process of playing the explanatory games. As the author says (p. 34), “in the account I propose, explanations are an organic part, a provisional outcome of ongoing explanatory activities undertaken in diverse social contexts.”

            In this highly diversified and minutely related social context, institutional powers also play an important role, as they determine the rules and constrains the implicit presuppositions of the game. Take cosmogony. In the case of scientific, mystical and religious explanations, the rules of scope are highly similar, as well as the other rules purports to grasp the same explananda, that is, the phenomena to be explained. Nonetheless, there are different values behind the practice of scientific, mystical and religious explainers, and they have different implicit metaphysical presuppositions.

And it is important to stress also that at every moment of time there are many explanatory games taking place concurrently. This is particularly interesting for both descriptive and normative purposes, since we can identify different explanatory games that deal with the same explananda, but which differ from one another on the basis of what they assume as given and of their metaphysical assumptions. (p. 34.)

            As there are different explanations on the market, some guidance to compare them is in order. Mantzavinos provides this in Chapter Four, on “explanatory progress”. His view is backed up by a non-relativistic value-pluralism. He argues that there is no such thing as the explanation; similarly there are no such things as absolute values that should be incorporated into the explanations. The approach share some features with those non-cognitivist or implicationist views (of values etc.) where one sets the basic values and tries to follow the implications of the acceptance of the given view. Our values determine what we accept as an explanation, but even if we accept one, it might lead to certain undesired consequences. Thus “[i]nstead of debating whether a certain explanation fits or does not fit a specific ideal, a comparative evaluation of a multidimensional character can be performed. Explanatory methodology can thus be viewed as a technological discipline” (p. 40).

            The comparison and decision about explanations are thus not based on fundamental data of the world or a fixed set of doctrines about absolute and infallible values, but on hypothetical imperatives. Accepting the basic values is a different question, not address by Mantzavinos, and he is right by doing that. After the starting point, however, pluralism hits in and defines the multidimensional evaluations of explanatory strategies. Whether our explanatory games are successful or not depend on further considerations: “judgments about progress are parasitic on the specification of goals” (p. 45).

            There are much more issues in the book that deserves a longer treatment. Nonetheless, I will just register the richness of the material: institutions, comparisons, rationality, local and global progress, fallibilism, algorithmic rationality vs. self-critical judgments of reason etc.  Mantzavinos succeeds in discussing all these issues (and much more) in a really short book of less than fifty pages. The series SpringerBriefs in Philosophy is indeed useful this time. The book can be assigned to any class on scientific explanation both as an introductory text and as a short account of a novel idea in the explanatory-debates.

            Mantzavinos’s account of explanatory games (seemingly connected, but never explicitly stated, via some sort of family-resemblance) fits the general trend of many philosophical accounts of values and philosophy. Implicationism (or if you prefer, consequentialism, though this term has its history and consequences) was also the preferred view among logical empiricists about values and the general aim of philosophy (a sort of old-school view of logical empiricism is presented in Chapter One of the book): showing the conceptual implications of sets of sentences describing scientific data and our values was a major task for Carnap, Karl Menger, Hans Hahn and others. What is missing from Mantzavinos’s view is a certain genealogical account of our starting points of explanations. Take his example of cosmogony:

If we compare the biblical and the scientific explanatory games, the rules of scope seem to be similar or identical, so that the real important evaluation concerns the rules of representation and the rules of inference. I would say that with respect to nearly all values, i.e. accuracy, consistency, fruitfulness, etc. the scientific explanatory game is superior to the biblical game. Only with respect to simplicity does the biblical game fare better. So, the complexity of the decision regarding the superiority of one or the other game is relatively high and presupposes the weighing of the importance of different values. (p. 47.)

While we often engage in the game of giving and asking for reasons and we often weigh our options, the gap between religious and scientific explanations does not seem to be coverable by the relative strengths and merits of one type of explanation over the other. If one believes (with all his/her hearth) in the biblical story about the origins of our world, then listing the relative and comparative epistemic and cognitive values of the scientific explanatory game is just not convincing. If we can follow the consequences of our value-decisions through the process of explanation and it turns out to contradict perhaps some other values could be possibly restructure our games.

            So we are back at the question of whether the study of explanation shall put constrains on our purported-explanations as a normative philosophical activity, or leave everything as it is. Mantzavinos aims to build in some weak form of normativity into his account by emphasizing the constitutive role of history and institutions. Nevertheless it is not always easy to see who shall be in the chair to judge us. On the other hand, a fifty pages long book is not the place for such discussions. (The book seems to be a rather succinct summary of Mantzavinos’s previous book on explanatory pluralism published by Cambridge University Press in 2016; so the interested reader shall follow the discussions there.)

            One more, somewhat unfortunate feature of the book shall be emphasized here. Mantzavinos states that “[w]e are all philosophers, and we develop our own philosophy by exchanging views and arguments. […] [I]deas, like butterflies, do not merely exist – they develop” (p. vii). One can easily agree with this view.  Nevertheless, Mantzavinos draws the conclusion that “the dialogue form is and should remain [thus] the principal form of philosophizing” (ibid.). Though this is a rather unorthodox claim among contemporary philosophers, the utility of this way of doing philosophy is proved by the book where the two disputants are Philipp (admittedly the character of Philipp Kitcher) and a local student (obviously the author). The interested general reader who wants to engage in lively discussions with philosophers about a specific question shall find A Dialogue on Explanation a very useful enterprise. The book is a lively discussion that presents the weaknesses and strengths of the relevant viewpoints by giving and asking reasons in a personal matter. The reader feels enrolled in the debate as his/her opinion and own questions are asked and answered at the same time.

            Still, this form of practicing philosophy would be indeed expedient if the author could use the external conditions of a dialogue. Personal discussions have a certain time and place factor, and by debating philosophical issues outdoors, one would expect to involve some examples and issues that the participants of the dialogue experience. While there is one or two such references to the external circumstances (like seeing the ship of Theseus and rising its famous problem at the end of the book), the book does not make any use of the dialogue form in a living world.

            All in all, Mantzavinos’s book on explanation is a useful summary of the philosophical conceptions of explanations, which put forward a new account as well. His examples are short and illuminating, usually taken from economy and medicine and thus not just from physics. Students and researchers could read and discuss this book in classrooms. While some general knowledge of the history of twentieth century philosophy could make things easier (as some names and ideas are just dropped in with some quick references), Mantzavinos did a great job in delivering his ideas in a clear and distinct way.

           

Adam Tamas Tuboly

Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of Philosophy, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Supported by the MTA BTK Lendület Morals and Science Research Group. 

References

Dewulf, Fons (2018a). “Revisiting Hempel’s 1942 Contribution to Philosophy of Histpry.” Journal of the History of Ideas 79 (3): 385-406.

Dewulf, Fons (2018b). A Genealogy of Scientific Explanation: the Emergence of the deductive-Nomological Model at the Intersection of German Historical and Scientific Philosophy. PhD Dissertation, Ghent University.

Mantzavinos, Chrysostomos (2016). Explanatory Pluralism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Roth, Paul A. (2020). The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation. Northwestern University Press. Forthcoming.