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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 April 2022
The relation that holds between two singular sentences just if one of them can figure in an acceptable deductive nomological (DN) explanation of the other is not symmetric. As Sylvain Bromberger ([1]) pointed out some years ago, a sentence giving the height of a flagpole can figure in a DN explanation of a sentence specifying the length of the flagpole's shadow, but interchanging the explanans and the explanandum does not result in an explanation even though it may result in a valid argument. Recently Evan Jobe ([2]) has offered an ingenious account of such asymmetries, one which if successful would permit their characterization entirely within the framework of the DN model. The purpose of this note is to show that despite its attractiveness Jobe's idea will not work.
