Abstract
We discuss explanation of an earlier event by a later event, and argue that prima facie cases of backwards event explanation are ubiquitous. Some examples: (1) I am tidying my flat because my brother is coming to visit tomorrow. (2) The scarlet pimpernels are closing because it is about to rain. (3) The volcano is smoking because it is going to erupt soon. We then look at various ways people might attempt to explain away these prima facie cases by arguing that in each case the ‘real’ explanation is something else. We argue that none of the explaining-away strategies are successful, and so any plausible account of explanation should either make room for backwards explanation, or have a good story to tell about why it doesn’t have to.
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Notes
We are not presupposing here that events are the only, or fundamental, explanatory relata, only that events can be explanatory relata (or at least, can play whatever role it is that they play in explanation-giving sentences like 1–7). Analogues of our arguments phrased in terms of processes, facts or states may work equally well.
On inspection of the literature, there are not as many of these as one might think. Salmon (1984), Lipton (1991) and Woodward (2003), as we will see below, do not claim that explanations in general are causes. One of the few to defend a more general causal-historical theory of explanation, intended to cover at least all explanation of events, is Lewis (1986). However, as we shall see below (p. 17), Lewis’s sophisticated account seems to be able to meet the challenge of accounting for backwards explanation. Salmon, Lipton and Woodward are, however, among those who must allow that there is a class of explanations their accounts do not handle, if indeed there are backwards explanations.
Hempel (1965, pp. 353–354) himself remarks on this point. He seems content with this consequence of his account of explanation, but offers no arguments in response to those who disagree, merely pointing out that ‘it is not clear … what reason there would be for denying’ that there are backwards explanations, except perhaps for reliance on some ‘notion of factors “bringing about” a given event’, and he thinks ‘it is not clear what precise construal could be given to [that notion]’.
Not all though. It could be, for instance, that my partner, knowing of the impending visit which I’ve forgotten about, has asked me to tidy the flat. The existence of such possibilities casts doubt on the idea that some forwards explanation is the ‘real explanation’ in such cases. For one might proffer the backwards explanation without knowing which of the forwards explanations—the belief-involving one, the partner-involving one, and so on—are true. This being so, it would be odd to claim that one of these forwards explanations is what they really proffered.
This seems unlikely to help with example 1, since it is more plausible that the future fact explains my belief in it than vice versa.
But note that this tendency will make it seem, rather implausibly, that ‘the real’ explanation of e is some maximal explanation containing as much explanatory information as there is about e.
Note that biological-functional, or otherwise teleological, explanations need not be backwards explanations. Explanations which cite present goals to explain present behaviours, for instance, are teleological but not backwards. This point is not always made fully clear; Salmon (1989), for example, says that ‘the issue of final causation’ is ‘the problem of explaining present facts in terms of future goals’ (p. 28, emphasis added), and also that ‘the basic philosophical problem’ of teleological explanation (in cases where there is no conscious intent) ‘involves the question of whether a future state can legitimately be said to explain a present fact’ (p. 26).
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank members of the ANU Explanation Reading Group, as well as audiences at the Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference 2007, the Arché Core Seminar and the Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference 2007. We also particularly thank Trenton Merricks and Alyssa Ney for their commentaries at the BSPC. Daniel Nolan’s work on this paper was supported a Philip Leverhulme Prize awarded by the Leverhulme Trust.
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Jenkins, C.S., Nolan, D. Backwards explanation. Philos Stud 140, 103–115 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9228-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-008-9228-y