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Dispositional Explanation and the Covering-Law Model: Response to Laird Addis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Carl G. Hempel
Carl G. Hempel*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

The following considerations are offered in response to the critical observations and constructive proposals set forth by Laird Addis, in his paper ‘On Defending the Covering-Law “Model”’, concerning my explications of “rational” and dispositional explanation and concerning the claims associated with the covering-law model of explanation.

1. My main objection to Dray's construal of rational explanation, as characterized by the first schema in Addis's paper, was not that it is at odds with the covering-law model, but that the second explanans sentence, ‘In a situation of type C, the appropriate thing to do is x’, expresses a norm and therefore cannot possibly explain why A did in fact do x: to do that, we need, not a normative sentence, but a descriptive one, roughly to the effect that A was disposed to act in accordance with the normative principle.

Type
Contributed Papers: Session III
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1974 , 1974 , pp. 369 - 376
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland

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References

Notes

1 For fuller details, see Hempel, C. G., Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science (Free Press, New York, 1965), pp. 469-472.Google Scholar

2 See Ryle, G., The Concept of Mind (Hutchinson's University Library, London, 1949), pp. 88-90;Google Scholar note Ryle's remark “The imputation of a motive for a particular action is… the subsumption of an episode proposition under a law-like proposition.” (p. 90) The character of dispositional explanations and of law-like sentences is discussed in some detail in Hempel, op. cit., pp. 457-463.

3 These considerations are closely akin to ideas developed by Quine - for example, in “Carnap and Logical Truth”, in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (Open Court, La Salle, Illinois, 1963), pp. 385-406.Google Scholar

4 This characterization is used by Ryle, who then goes on to stress that there are “many dispositions the actualisations of which can take a wide and perhaps unlimited variety of shapes” (op. cit., pp. 43-44).

5 The issue is examined more fully in Hempel, op. cit., pp. 472-477.

6 See Pap, A., Analytische Erkenntnistheorie (Wien, Springer, 1955), pp. 140-142CrossRefGoogle Scholar (reference to Kaila on p. 141), and the amplified discussion in Pap, A., An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Free Press, New York, 1962), pp. 278-284.Google Scholar

7 R. Carnap, “Testability and Meaning”, Philosophy of Science 3 (1936), pp. 419-471 and 4 (1937), pp. 1-40; see pp. 439-441.

8 Goodman, Cf. N., Fact, Fiction, and Forecast (2nd edition, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis, 1965), p. 41.Google Scholar

9 Pap, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, pp. 281-282. Pap's analysis also differs from Kaila's and Addis's by invoking causal implication where the other two authors rely on the material conditional.

10 A series of illuminating and suggestive observations on the issues touched upon in this section will be found on pp. 4-15 of Quine, W. V., The Roots of Reference (Open Court, La Salle, Illinois, 1974).Google Scholar

11 The point is not affected by the fact that limitations of measurement do not permit the assignment of an event to an instant, but only to a finite time interval, and that the decay law yields some finite probability for the latter case. The point at issue hinges on the logical form of the explanatory laws: limitations of measurement notwithstanding, strictly universal laws do permit the deduction of consequences concerning what happens at some, particular instant.

Moreover, even the disintegration of a given atom during a specified time interval may have an extremely small probability according to the decay law - depending on the length and location of the interval; accordingly, the law tells us that the decay was almost certain not to occur during that interval: and this hardly qualifies as an explanation of why it did occur all the same. My earlier analyses of statistical explanation do not qualify the statistical arguments associated with such cases as explanatory; but important alternatives to my way of viewing this issue have since been proposed by R. C. Jeffrey in ‘Statistical Explanation us. Statistical Inference’ and by W. C. Salmon in ‘Statistical Explanation'; both of these studies are included in W. C. Salmon (ed.) Statistical Explanation and Statistical Relevance (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1971). I doubt, however, that Addis would take comfort from these views in regard to his thesis about explainability.