... And Away from a Theory of Explanation Itself

Abstract

[Introduction] There is much good sense to be found in Halonen and Hintikka’s paper ‘Toward a Theory of the Process of Explanation’ (hereafter TTPE). In particular, it contains three good ideas that are brought together in an elegant way. Ultimately, however, I think it does little to shed light on the nature of explanation in the sciences and everyday life. Those readers who still favor a broadly Hempelian deductivist approach to explanation will disagree, and ought to find TTPE a valuable contribution to the literature. For those of us raised on a standard diet of counterexamples to the Deductive-Nomological model of explanation, however, the efforts of Halonen and Hintikka fail to transcend the limitations of the deductivist framework within which they operate.