[lit-ideas] Re: Patty Duke & The Apriori [part 2of 2]
- From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2009 09:35:55 +0900
On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 3:40 AM, Walter C. Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx>wrote:
>
> I was raised to believe in the truth of the general idea that an
> explanation of
> P does not provide a justification of P. One must already believe state of
> affairs P has occurred in order to ask for an explanation of P, but the
> concept
> of an argument disallows already believing the conclusion prior to the
> provision
> of premises (unless one is a professional politician or lawyer, of course.)
> Thus
> the explicandum is not a conclusion, and the explicans is not a reason,
> according to the requirements of the space of reasons.
>
I can't say "raised to believe"; didn't really get into logic until I went
to college. But then I was taught a similar view of explanation, i.e., the
specification of conditions both necessary and sufficient.
What intrigues me about Abbot's *heuristic is that, in a properly social
scientific manner, he does not assume that he knows what an explanation is.
Instead, he looks at what is going on when people offer what they call
explanations: Some are identifying bottlenecks in processes where effective
intervention is possible. Some situate whatever is being "explained" in
relation to what some scholarly community takes to be common sense. Some
offer arguments that are elegant, surprising, or both. Whichever approach is
adopted, the "explanation" proceeds until it suffices, i.e., until the
scholar (or the community of scholars to whom the scholar belongs) says,
"OK," and moves on to other projects. *
None of these approaches satisfy the requirement of specifying both
necessary and sufficient conditions. But if the philosophical approach at
this point is nothing more than pointing a finger and scolding, that seems
a bit infantile. In contrast, Abbot's approach offers the student some
guidance in sorting out what it is that scholars are trying to do and what
sufficing conditions must be met to call a project done and move on to
something else. In an imperfect world where knowledge is always partial,
this seems a useful contribution.
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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