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Replies to Weatherson, Hall, and Lange
Author(s) -
STREVENS MICHAEL
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
philosophy and phenomenological research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.7
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1933-1592
pISSN - 0031-8205
DOI - 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2011.00576.x
Subject(s) - metaphysics , citation , philosophy , library science , computer science , epistemology
ing until only dierence-makers for the explanandum remain. In a “given that” explanation, the procedure is amended as follows. First, the element of the story that is taken to be “given” must appear in the description andmay not be removed. Second, anything that causally explains that element (and that plays no other causal role in the story) must be removed. In the example above, the rock’s hitting the window is taken to be a xed part of the explanatory model, then, but no explainers of the rock’s trajectory and impact are admitted into themodel. In such explanations, I say that the “given” element is moved to the explanatory framework, where the term “framework” is intended to suggest something that is necessary for the explanation without itself being explanatorily active. When the element that is frameworked is a causal mechanism, its explanation is a description of the workings of the mechanism itself. To remove the explanation of what is given from a causal model, then, is to remove from the model all mention of these workings. What is le behind is a mere black box, a functional specication of the mechanism that maps inputs to outputs while saying nothing of the structure of the internal causal paths. If you are asked, for example, to explain the crash of Air France ight 447, you might well give a detailed description of the causal processes that led to the malfunctioning of the aircra’s Pitot tubes (resulting in faulty airspeed readings). But if you are asked to explain the crash given that the Pitot tubes were malfunctioning, the same description will be explanatorily irrelevant. e tubes will enter into your explanatory model only in the guise of a functional description specifying what (faulty) readings would be yielded in what circumstances, without any hint of the way in which the circumstances cause the readings. You will see that the eect of explanatory frameworking is to focus the explanatory spotlight on some parts of the relevant causal mechanism while excluding others. Frameworking the rock in the window-breaking case shines the spotlight on the structure of the window; frameworking the malfunction-