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Reassessing Woodward’s Account of Explanation: Regularities, Counterfactuals, and Noncausal Explanations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Juha Saatsi  and
Mark Pexton
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Abstract

We reassess Woodward’s counterfactual account of explanation in relation to regularity explananda. Woodward presents an account of causal explanation. We argue, by using an explanation of Kleiber’s law to illustrate, that the account can also cover some noncausal explanations. This leads to a tension between the two key aspects of Woodward’s account: the counterfactual aspect and the causal aspect. We explore this tension and make a case for jettisoning the causal aspect as constitutive of explanatory power in connection with regularity explananda.

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Type
General Philosophy of Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 80 , Issue 5 , December 2013 , pp. 613 - 624
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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