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Wilson's Defense of the D-N Model*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Jonathan Katz
Jonathan Katz
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Extract

The study of philosophy has no leading edge. Scholars may fruitfully explore past eras and superceded theories, revise their views of historic figures, modify inadequate theories, defend successful yet overlooked ideas, salvage the wheat from the chaff. A novel defense of previously discredited arguments could lead to new insights, and this is so even if that defense proved ultimately unsuccessful. But, I believe, one can profitably defend some perhaps too hastily condemned view only if one meanwhile keeps a watchful eye on contemporary problems and theorizing. Fred Wilson's monograph, Explanation, Causation and Deduction, attempts just such a defense, while steadfastly ignoring much of contemporary theory. The lack of a sympathetic ear to recent critics of empiricism is the largest single failing of this attempt, and it is this failing which has prevented Prof. Wilson from seeing the poverty of his position.

Type
Critical Notices/Etudes Critiques
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , Summer 1988 , pp. 351 - 356
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1988

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References

1 There is some confusion here. In the Preface, Wilson claims to be defending certaintraditional “identities”, that among these is that between scientific explanation and causal explanation. As we shall see, this is too strong. Many of the sets of sentences Wilson will countenance as explanatory do not depict a causal relationship (except under the most liberal construal of “causal”). The more modest view, that all causal explanations conform to the D-N model, is at least consistent with current usage, if not arguable.

2 Hempel, C. G., “Deductive-Nomological vs. Statistical Explanation”, in H. Feigl and G. Maxwell, eds., Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 3 (1962).Google Scholar

3 See, for example, Scriven, M., “Truisms as the Grounds for Historical Explanations”, in Gardiner, P., ed., Theories of History (New York: Free Press, 1966).Google Scholar

4 See, for example, Salmon, W., “Statistical Explanation”, Statistical Explanation and Statistical Relevance (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Wilson himself seems to collapse the distinction between explanations and explainings. He argues that although it is truth, and not evidence, which constitute conditions of adequacy for explanations, evidence plays some role “in defining the conditions for the acceptability of an argument as explanatory, or, at least, for its being put to an explanatory use” (190, my emphasis).

6 E.g., Brodbeck, M., “Explanation, Prediction and ‘Imperfect Knowledge’”, in H. Feigl and G. Maxwell, eds., Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 3 (1962).Google Scholar