I think focusing on the phenomenon of “explanation” is pretty helpful not just in science but also in philosophy—there are lots of places where people say they want an explanation for this or that thing, but what they mean can vary from case to case and person to person. But for this more general sort of explanation, I don’t think the definition of “hard to vary model of the world” works, there needs to be more of a social / psychological perspective.
We are not special; we share more than half our genes with a banana.
This is more apparent for some people I know than others. (As the joke goes)
I tend to agree. It isn’t easy to generalise what entails a successful explanation, especially as one goes higher up the layers of abstraction (as you’ve put it) or further out to the more infeasibly testable realm.
What do you think is an elegant way to define the phenomenon of explanation that is more general than “hard-to-vary assertions about reality”?
I’m not sure there’s a neat form. Consider the explanation of why a mirror flips left and right but not up and down. Maxwell’s equations predict mirrors just fine, but it’s certainly not what people (well, most people) want from this explanation. Even if we try to be elegant we’ll probably have yo say complicated words like “the listener’s understanding”.
I think focusing on the phenomenon of “explanation” is pretty helpful not just in science but also in philosophy—there are lots of places where people say they want an explanation for this or that thing, but what they mean can vary from case to case and person to person. But for this more general sort of explanation, I don’t think the definition of “hard to vary model of the world” works, there needs to be more of a social / psychological perspective.
This is more apparent for some people I know than others. (As the joke goes)
I tend to agree. It isn’t easy to generalise what entails a successful explanation, especially as one goes higher up the layers of abstraction (as you’ve put it) or further out to the more infeasibly testable realm.
What do you think is an elegant way to define the phenomenon of explanation that is more general than “hard-to-vary assertions about reality”?
I’m not sure there’s a neat form. Consider the explanation of why a mirror flips left and right but not up and down. Maxwell’s equations predict mirrors just fine, but it’s certainly not what people (well, most people) want from this explanation. Even if we try to be elegant we’ll probably have yo say complicated words like “the listener’s understanding”.