• A revised version of a paper read to the Western Canadian Philosophical Association at the University of Calgary in October, 1981, under the title ‘Bas van Fraassen and the Pragmatics of Explanation.’ I would like to thank the commentator, Mr. Philip Gasper of the University of Calgary, and Professor David Lewis of Princeton University, for the helpful comments they made during the discussion.

1 Preface, vii. The theory of explanation is found in Chapter 5, ‘The Pragmatics of Explanation.’ The scope of my remarks will be confined to that one chapter.

2 I have taken the phrase from the title of a paper by Si-Wai Man, of the University of Western Ontario, which was read to the Canadian Philosophical Association at the University of Ottawa, June, 1982.

3 Hempel, Carl Aspects of Scientific Explanation, 247.Google Scholar (See following note.)

4 Hempel, Carl G. and Oppenheim, Paul ‘Studies in the Logic of Explanation,’ Philosophy of Science 15 (1948), 135–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Reprinted in Feigl, Herbert and Brodbeck, May eds., Readings in the Philosophy of Science (New York: AppletonCentury-Crofts 1953), 319–52,Google Scholar and in Hempel's, Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science (New York: The Free Press 1956), 245–90,Google Scholar with a 1964 postscript by Hempel, 291-5.

5 Salmon, Wesley ‘Statistical Explanation,’ in Colodny, Robert G. ed., The Nature and Function of Scientific Theories (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press 1970). 173–231.Google Scholar Reprinted in Salmon, Wesley et al., Statistical Explanation and Statistical Relevance (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press 1971), 29–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Railton, Peter ‘A Deductive-Nomological Model of Probabilistic Explanation,’ Philosophy of Science 45 (1978), 206–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Dray, William Laws and Explanation in History (London: Oxford University Press 1957);Google Scholar also ‘The Historical Explanation of Actions Reconsidered,’ in Hook, Sidney ed., Philosophy and History (New York: New York University Press 1963), 105–35Google Scholar

8 Lucas, J.R. The Freedom of the Will (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1970), sec. 9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Churchland, Paul M. ‘The Logical Character of Action-Explanations,’ Philosophical Review 79 (1970). 214–36,CrossRefGoogle Scholar esp. 221

10 See esp. Goodman, Nelson Fact, Fiction, and Forecast, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill 1965), 20–1.Google Scholar

11 Dretske, Fred I. ‘Laws of Nature,’ Philosophy of Science 44 (1977), 251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See Dretske, loc. cit., n. 6, for references to other statements of the functionalist position regarding laws of nature.

12 Railton, Peter ‘Probability, Explanation, and Information’, Synthese 48 (1981), 247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A typographical error has been corrected.

13 van Fraassen, 127

14 van Fraassen, 126. The example is from N.R. Hanson, Patterns of Discovery (Cambridge University Press 1958), 54.

15 van Fraassen, 130

16 van Fraassen, 129

17 Fodor, Jerry A. The Language of Thought (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co. 1975), 25Google Scholar

18 van Fraassen, 130-1

19 Zwart, P.J. Causaliteit (Assen: van Gorcum 1967), 136.Google Scholar Quoted by van Fraassen, 126. The translation is van Fraassen's.

20 See van Fraassen, 112-8 and 123-30.