Deduction as Explanation

We are all familiar with the expression used as the title of this chapter. It suggests that logic is the medium of choice for the purpose of explanation. But is this really the case? If we are to believe the majority of contemporary philosophers, whether or not they have acknowledged the point in so many words, the expression is little better than an oxymoron. These philosophers reject, in some sense or other, the idea codified in the proverbial phrase that the proper engine of explanation is logic. For instance, they reject the idea that to explain something is to deduce it logically from something that does not need explanation. A vestige of the “logical explanation” idea was built into Hempel's covering law theory of explanation. (Hempel 1965.) According to Hempel, roughly speaking, to explain a fact is to subsume it under some general law. Alas, many philosophers have criticized the covering-law theory, not to say poured scorn on it, typically by producing more or less clear-cut counterexamples to it. One of the best known rivals to the covering-law model is the view according to which to explain an event is to point out its cause. If so, pure logic has little to do with explanation, and the title of this chapter would therefore embody a misconception.

Now I am on most occasions suspicious of the “metaphysics of the stone age” (to borrow Quine's phrase) that is fossilized in our ordinary language.