Need Essay done by 11PM

Welcome to RedShelf eReader! Just getting started? Head over to our partner support page for a guide on the basics.

Kurt Baier

Our distinction between model- and unvexing-explanations will help here. It is obvious that only those things which are perplexing call for and can be given unvexing-explanations. We have already seen that in dispos- ing of one perplexity, we do not necessarily raise another. On the contrary, unvexing-explanations truly and completely explain what they set out to ex- plain, namely, how something is possible which, on our explanatory model, seemed to be impossible. There can therefore be no infinite regress here. Unvexing-explanations are real and complete explanations.

Can there be an infinite regress, then, in the case of model-explanations? Take the following example. European children are puzzled by the fact that their antipodean counterparts do not drop into empty space. This perplex- ity can be removed by substituting for their explanatory model another one. The European children imagine that throughout space there is an all- pervasive force operating in the same direction as the force that pulls them to the ground. We must, in our revised model, substitute for this force another acting everywhere in the direction of the centre of the earth. Having thus re- moved their perplexity by giving them an adequate model, we can, however, go on to ask why there should be such a force as the force of gravity, why bodies should “naturally,” in the absence of forces acting on them, behave in the way stated in Newton’s laws. And we might be able to give such an explanation. We might for instance construct a model of space which would exhibit as derivable from it what in Newton’s theory are “brute facts.” Here we would have a case of the brute facts of one theory being explained within the framework of another, more general theory. And it is a sound method- ological principle that we should continue to look for more and more general theories.

Note two points, however. The first is that we must distinguish, as we have seen, between the possibility and the necessity of giving an explanation. Particular occurrences can be explained by being exhibited as instances of regularities, and regularities can be explained by being exhibited as instances of more general regularities. Such explanations make things clearer. They organize the material before us. They introduce order where previously there was disorder. But absence of this sort of explanation (model-explanation) does not leave us with a puzzle or perplexity, an intellectual restlessness or cramp. The unexplained things are not unintelligible, incomprehensible, or irrational. Some things, on the other hand, call for, require, demand an ex- planation. As long as we are without such an explanation, we are perplexed, puzzled, intellectually perturbed. We need an unvexing-explanation.

Now, it must be admitted that we may be able to construct a more gen- eral theory, from which, let us say, Newton’s theory can be derived. This would further clarify the phenomena of motion and would be intellectu- ally satisfying. But failure to do so would not leave us with an intellectual cramp. The facts stated in Newton’s theory do not require, or stand in need of, unvexing-explanations. They could do so only if we already had another

p. 86

86

Play From Top Play Volume Rate

CloseBack Stop Forward