Abstract
Events have causes. We often try to explain events, and we often succeed. The causal relation is a relation in the world which either holds or fails to hold independently of how its relata are described: the relation is extensional, and its relata are normally taken to be events. The explanatory relation is, however, intensional. This means that we cannot replace a term with co-referring or coextensional terms within an explanatory context without risking that we change the truth-value of the whole. 41 I shall simply say that “explains” is an intensional relation, and I do that without thinking of this as an ontological commitment, or as something that anything really hangs on.
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GJELSVIK, O. (2007). CAUSAL EXPLANATION PROVIDES KNOWLEDGE WHY. In: PERSSON, J., YLIKOSKI, P. (eds) RETHINKING EXPLANATION. BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, vol 252. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5581-2_5
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