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Levels of Explanation Reconceived

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Angela Potochnik
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Abstract

A common argument against explanatory reductionism is that higher-level explanations are sometimes or always preferable because they are more general than reductive explanations. Here I challenge two basic assumptions that are needed for that argument to succeed. It cannot be assumed that higher-level explanations are more general than their lower-level alternatives or that higher-level explanations are general in the right way to be explanatory. I suggest a novel form of pluralism regarding levels of explanation, according to which explanations at different levels are preferable in different circumstances because they offer different types of generality, which are appropriate in different circumstances of explanation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 59 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

This article has benefited from comments by Michael Friedman, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Elliott Sober, Michael Strevens, and Michael Weisberg, as well as two anonymous referees for Philosophy of Science.

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