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Explanatory Unification and the Problem of Asymmetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Eric Barnes
Eric Barnes*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Denison University
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Abstract

Philip Kitcher has proposed a theory of explanation based on the notion of unification. Despite the genuine interest and power of the theory, I argue here that the theory suffers from a fatal deficiency: It is intrinsically unable to account for the asymmetric structure of explanation, and thus ultimately falls prey to a problem similar to the one which beset Hempel's D-N model. I conclude that Kitcher is wrong to claim that one can settle the issue of an argument's explanatory force merely on the basis of considerations about the unifying power of the argument pattern the argument instantiates.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 59 , Issue 4 , December 1992 , pp. 558 - 571
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I am grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities for research support. For comments and criticisms on an early draft of this paper I am grateful to Paul Humphreys, Noretta Koertge, Douglas Ehring, Jonathan Kvanvig, Jesse Hobbs, and an anonymous Philosophy of Science referee. For extensive and insightful analyses of the Newtonian example I am particularly grateful to Todd Jones and Adolf Grünbaum.

‡

Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, Denison University, Granville, OH 43023, USA.

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