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Single Idea 17084

[filed under theme 14. Science / D. Explanation / 4. Explanation Doubts / a. Explanation as pragmatic ]

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.

The 22 ideas from 'Meaning and the Moral Sciences'

6267 A culture needs to admit that knowledge is more extensive than just 'science' [Putnam]
6266 We need the correspondence theory of truth to understand language and science [Putnam]
6264 In Tarski's definition, you understand 'true' if you accept the notions of the object language [Putnam]
6265 Tarski has given a correct account of the formal logic of 'true', but there is more to the concept [Putnam]
6268 The claim that scientific terms are incommensurable can be blocked if scientific terms are not descriptions [Putnam]
6269 Only Tarski has found a way to define 'true' [Putnam]
6270 The correct translation is the one that explains the speaker's behaviour [Putnam]
6271 How reference is specified is not what reference is [Putnam]
6273 Knowledge depends on believing others, which must be innate, as inferences are not strong enough [Putnam]
6274 Empathy may not give knowledge, but it can give plausibility or right opinion [Putnam]
6272 'True' and 'refers' cannot be made scientically precise, but are fundamental to science [Putnam]
17084 You can't decide which explanations are good if you don't attend to the interest-relative aspects [Putnam]
6281 Truth conditions can't explain understanding a sentence, because that in turn needs explanation [Putnam]
6284 If a tautology is immune from revision, why would that make it true? [Putnam]
6280 Realism is a theory, which explains the convergence of science and the success of language [Putnam]
6282 Theory of meaning presupposes theory of understanding and reference [Putnam]
6283 Language maps the world in many ways (because it maps onto other languages in many ways) [Putnam]
6275 You can't say 'most speaker's beliefs are true'; in some areas this is not so, and you can't count beliefs [Putnam]
6276 'The rug is green' might be warrantedly assertible even though the rug is not green [Putnam]
6277 Correspondence between concepts and unconceptualised reality is impossible [Putnam]
6279 A private language could work with reference and beliefs, and wouldn't need meaning [Putnam]
6278 We should reject the view that truth is prior to meaning [Putnam]