But the problem is worse than that because “Sometimes, crows caw” actually does allow you to make predictions in the way “electricity!” does not.
The problem is even worse than that, because “Sometimes, crows caw” predicts both the hearing of a caw and the non-hearing of a caw. So it does not explain either (at least, based on the default model of scientific explanation).
If we go with “Crows always caw and only crows caw” (along with your extra premises regarding lungs, sound and ears etc), then we might end up with a different model of explanation, one which takes explanation to be showing that what happened had to happen.
The overall problem you seem to have is that neither of these kinds of explanation gives a causal story for the event (which is a third model for scientific explanations).
(I wrote an essay on these models of scientific explanation earlier in the year for a philosophy of science course which I could potentially edit and post if there’s interest.)
Some good, early papers on explanation (i.e., ones which set the future debate going) are:
The Value of Laws: Explanation and Prediction (by Rudolf Carnap),
Two Basic Types of Scientific Explanation, The Thesis of Structural Identity and Inductive-Statistical Explanation (all by Carl Hempel).
This issue actually came up while I was reading Hempel’s “Aspects of Scientific Explanation”. It can be seen as a specific objection to the covering law model as well as a general problem for all explanation.
The problem is even worse than that, because “Sometimes, crows caw” predicts both the hearing of a caw and the non-hearing of a caw. So it does not explain either (at least, based on the default model of scientific explanation).
Think of it as a poorly specified inductive-statistical explanation.
The overall problem you seem to have is that neither of these kinds of explanation gives a causal story for the event (which is a third model for scientific explanations).
Not at all. One problem with Hempel is that there are covering-law predictions that aren’t causal stories and therefore don’t look like explanations. For example, if some event X always causes Y and Z then we can have a covering law model predicting Z from Y and Laws. But that model doesn’t result in an explanation for Z.
But even a causal explanation is going to have general laws which aren’t reducible. Thus, the problem would remain. And actually, “crows caw” is a causal explanation so I’m not sure why you would think my problem was the absence of causation. If you did see my last two paragraphs in this reply I think they do a better job explaining the problem than this first post.
And by all means, post anything you think would be insightful.
The problem is even worse than that, because “Sometimes, crows caw” predicts both the hearing of a caw and the non-hearing of a caw. So it does not explain either (at least, based on the default model of scientific explanation).
If we go with “Crows always caw and only crows caw” (along with your extra premises regarding lungs, sound and ears etc), then we might end up with a different model of explanation, one which takes explanation to be showing that what happened had to happen.
The overall problem you seem to have is that neither of these kinds of explanation gives a causal story for the event (which is a third model for scientific explanations).
(I wrote an essay on these models of scientific explanation earlier in the year for a philosophy of science course which I could potentially edit and post if there’s interest.)
Some good, early papers on explanation (i.e., ones which set the future debate going) are:
The Value of Laws: Explanation and Prediction (by Rudolf Carnap), Two Basic Types of Scientific Explanation, The Thesis of Structural Identity and Inductive-Statistical Explanation (all by Carl Hempel).
This issue actually came up while I was reading Hempel’s “Aspects of Scientific Explanation”. It can be seen as a specific objection to the covering law model as well as a general problem for all explanation.
Think of it as a poorly specified inductive-statistical explanation.
Not at all. One problem with Hempel is that there are covering-law predictions that aren’t causal stories and therefore don’t look like explanations. For example, if some event X always causes Y and Z then we can have a covering law model predicting Z from Y and Laws. But that model doesn’t result in an explanation for Z.
But even a causal explanation is going to have general laws which aren’t reducible. Thus, the problem would remain. And actually, “crows caw” is a causal explanation so I’m not sure why you would think my problem was the absence of causation. If you did see my last two paragraphs in this reply I think they do a better job explaining the problem than this first post.
And by all means, post anything you think would be insightful.