Abstract
I have many ideas about explanations, and I have difficulties in bringing them all together under a sufficiently catching key-word. I have tried a nuanced, manyfaceted and in-depth argued approach elsewhere,1 and I will now try the opposite. By varying a trivial example along a single dimension I will put forward my main thesis: that an explanation is not a logical structure, that it cannot be characterised in syntactic terms, but it is rather an epistemological structure, and, more specifically, a structure organising conceptual content.
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References
Hansson, B. (2006). Why explanations? Fundamental, and less fundamental ways of understanding the world. Theoria LXXII (1): 23–59.
Schweder, R. (2004). A Unificationist Theory of Scientific Explanation. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
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HANSSON, B. (2007). EXPLANATIONS ARE ABOUT CONCEPTS AND CONCEPT FORMATION. 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_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5581-2_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-5580-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-5581-2
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