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Full Idea
Explanation is an interest-relative notion …explanation has to be partly a pragmatic concept. To regard the 'pragmatics' of explanation as no part of the concept is to abdicate the job of figuring out what makes an explanation good.
Gist of Idea
You can't decide which explanations are good if you don't attend to the interest-relative aspects
Source
Hilary Putnam (Meaning and the Moral Sciences [1978], p. 41-2), quoted by David-Hillel Ruben - Explaining Explanation Ch 1
Book Ref
Ruben,David-Hillel: 'Explaining Explanation' [Routledge 1990], p.21
A Reaction
I suppose this is just obvious, depending on how far you want to take the 'interest-relative' bit. If a fool is fobbed off with a trivial explanation, there must be some non-relative criterion for assessing that.
| 15492 | Explanations are mind-dependent, theory-laden, and interest-relative [Martin,CB] |
| 17084 | You can't decide which explanations are good if you don't attend to the interest-relative aspects [Putnam] |
| 12768 | We accept many scientific theories without endorsing them as true [Fraassen] |
| 13066 | An explanation is just descriptive information answering a particular question [Fraassen, by Salmon] |
| 17089 | Facts explain facts, but only if they are conceptualised or named appropriately [Ruben] |
| 14324 | Ontology is unrelated to explanation, which concerns modes of presentation and states of knowledge [Mumford] |
| 4404 | Maybe explanation is entirely relative to the interests and presuppositions of the questioner [Psillos] |
| 4803 | An explanation is the removal of the surprise caused by the event [Psillos] |
| 6751 | Maybe explanation is so subjective that it cannot be a part of science [Bird] |