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Scientific Explanation: Putting Communication First

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Angela Potochnik
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Abstract

Scientific explanations must bear the proper relationship to the world: they must depict what, out in the world, is responsible for the explanandum. But explanations must also bear the proper relationship to their audience: they must be able to create human understanding. With few exceptions, philosophical accounts of explanation either ignore entirely the relationship between explanations and their audience or else demote this consideration to an ancillary role. In contrast, I argue that considering an explanation’s communicative role is crucial to any satisfactory account of explanation.

Type
Communication, Representation, and Objectivity
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 83 , Issue 5 , December 2016 , pp. 721 - 732
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Thanks to my cosymposiasts Laura Franklin-Hall, Arnon Levy, and Michael Strevens for an interesting exchange and to Levy and Strevens for comments on this article. This research was supported by the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center at the University of Cincinnati.

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