Abstract
In the literature on scientific explanation two types of pluralism are very common. The first concerns the distinction between explanations of singular facts and explanations of laws: there is a consensus that they have a different structure. The second concerns the distinction between causal explanations and uni.cation explanations: most people agree that both are useful and that their structure is different. In this article we argue for pluralism within the area of causal explanations: we claim that the structure of a causal explanation depends on the causal structure of the relevant fragment of the world and on the interests of the explainer.
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Weber, E., Bouwel, J.V. & Vanderbeeken, R. Forms of Causal Explanation. Found Sci 10, 437–454 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-005-5357-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-005-5357-3