Explanation Revisited

Jan Faye

Chapter Afterword 2 in Modes of Explanation, 2014, pp 233-239 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Explanations spring up everywhere where people are. And for good reasons. Explanation is one of the main sources of human understanding. We may even say that the purpose or function of an explanation is to communicate understanding. The explainer is involved in an intentional act in which he or she expresses his or her understanding of a particular issue to others, perhaps to address an explicit question raised by an interlocutor. How this understanding is received by the other person is governed by the communicative situation in which the explainer and explainee take part, their background knowledge, the subject being entertained, and their cognitive and personal interests.

Keywords: Downward Causa; Emergent Feature; Constructive Empiricism; Anthropic Principle; Cognitive Success (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-40386-5_19

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DOI: 10.1057/9781137403865_19

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