- Title Pages
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Introductory Essays
- 1 A New Look at Causality
- 2 Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Science
- 3 Comets, Pollen, and Dreams Some Reflections on Scientific Explanation
- 4 Scientific Explanation
- 5 The Importance of Scientific Understanding
- Part II Scientific Explanation
- 6 A Third Dogma of Empiricism
- 7 Causal and Theoretical Explanation
- 8 Why Ask, “Why?”?
- 9 Deductivism Visited and Revisited
- 10 Explanatory Asymmetry
- 11 Van Fraassen on Explanation
- Part III Causality
- 12 An “At‐At” Theory of Causal Influence
- 13 Causal Propensities
- 14 Probabilistic Causality
- 15 Intuitions—Good and Not‐So‐Good
- 16 Causality Without Counterfactuals
- 17 Indeterminacy, Indeterminism, and Quantum Mechanics
- Part IV Concise Overviews
- 18 Causality
- 19 Scientific Explanation
- 20 Scientific Explanation
- Part V Applications to Other Disciplines
- 21 Alternative Models of Scientific Explanation
- 22 Causality in Archaeological Explanation
- 23 Explanation in Archaeology
- 24 The Formulation of Why‐Questions
- 25 Quasars, Causality, and Geometry
- 26 Dreams of a Famous Physicist
- References
- Index
A Third Dogma of Empiricism
A Third Dogma of Empiricism
- Chapter:
- (p.95) 6 A Third Dogma of Empiricism
- Source:
- Causality and Explanation
- Author(s):
Wesley C. Salmon
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
Challenges the widely held thesis that scientific explanations are arguments (the “third dogma”) by posing three questions that seem to raise difficulties for it: (1) Why are irrelevancies harmless to arguments but fatal to explanations? (2) Can events whose probabilities are low be explained? Or, to reformulate essentially the same question, is genuine scientific explanation possible if indeterminism is true? (3) Why should requirements of temporal asymmetry be imposed upon explanations but not upon arguments?
In addition to showing the untenability of the “third dogma,” this chapter signals the development of a causal theory of explanation that will supplement the simple statistical‐relevance (S‐R) model of explanation advocated in earlier works by the author.
Keywords: asymmetry, empiricism, explanation, indeterminism, relevance, statistical‐relevance model of explanation, third dogma
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- Title Pages
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I Introductory Essays
- 1 A New Look at Causality
- 2 Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Science
- 3 Comets, Pollen, and Dreams Some Reflections on Scientific Explanation
- 4 Scientific Explanation
- 5 The Importance of Scientific Understanding
- Part II Scientific Explanation
- 6 A Third Dogma of Empiricism
- 7 Causal and Theoretical Explanation
- 8 Why Ask, “Why?”?
- 9 Deductivism Visited and Revisited
- 10 Explanatory Asymmetry
- 11 Van Fraassen on Explanation
- Part III Causality
- 12 An “At‐At” Theory of Causal Influence
- 13 Causal Propensities
- 14 Probabilistic Causality
- 15 Intuitions—Good and Not‐So‐Good
- 16 Causality Without Counterfactuals
- 17 Indeterminacy, Indeterminism, and Quantum Mechanics
- Part IV Concise Overviews
- 18 Causality
- 19 Scientific Explanation
- 20 Scientific Explanation
- Part V Applications to Other Disciplines
- 21 Alternative Models of Scientific Explanation
- 22 Causality in Archaeological Explanation
- 23 Explanation in Archaeology
- 24 The Formulation of Why‐Questions
- 25 Quasars, Causality, and Geometry
- 26 Dreams of a Famous Physicist
- References
- Index
