Relevance, Not Invariance, Explanatoriness, Not Manipulability: Discussion of Woodward’s Views on Explanatory Relevance | Zendy

Cyrille Imbert | Zendy

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Relevance, Not Invariance, Explanatoriness, Not Manipulability: Discussion of Woodward’s Views on Explanatory Relevance

Author(s) -

Cyrille Imbert

Publication year - 2013

Publication title -

philosophy of science

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 1.04

H-Index - 70

eISSN - 1539-767X

pISSN - 0031-8248

DOI - 10.1086/674002

Subject(s) - relevance (law) , generalization , epistemology , causal model , invariant (physics) , domain (mathematical analysis) , mathematics , philosophy , political science , statistics , law , mathematical analysis , mathematical physics

International audienceAccording to Woodward's causal model of explanation, explanatory information is relevant for manipulation purposes and indicates by means of invariant causal relations how to change the value of certain target explanandum variables by intervening on others. Therefore, the depth of an explanation is evaluated through the size of the domain of invariance of the generalization involved. In this paper, I argue that Woodward's account of explanatory relevance is still unsatisfactory and claim that the depth of an explanation should be explicated in terms of the size of the domain of circumstances which it designates as leaving the explanandum unchanged

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