The Causal and Unification Accounts of Explanation Unified – Causally

Citation: Michael Strevens (2004) The Causal and Unification Accounts of Explanation Unified – Causally. Noûs 38, 154–179 (RSS)
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Download: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0068.2004.00466.x/abstract
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Summary

There are two main accounts of explanation to scientific explanation are the causal and the unification. In this article, the author tries to combine those two approaches into one unified model named the kairetic account. But this new account is not a hybrid model of both account but it is more close to causal account following the technical apparatus of the unification approach. The author introduces those two approaches, explains why they should be unified and shows the characteristic of the new approach.

The unification is a theory that unifies diverse phenomena showing the event is part of a general, utterly pervasive, pattern of events in the universe. It has three structures (Generality, Simplicity and Cohesion) and those structures are applied directly into the new approach. The causal explains an event is the event’s causal history but it cannot cover lots of cases such as case of mathematical fact or equilibrium explanation and it has difficulty to idealize in explanation. So the author would like to weaken the limitation of the causal by combining with the approach of the unification.

To unify, the author tries to reduce ‘difference-making’ which can be found only in the causal as much as possible by thinking the causes in opposite way, and process of abstraction (it makes certain description much vague) and cohesion (combine two causal models). So The Kairetic account can diminish the limitation of the causal. It seems the approach of unification but it is different with the unification in three ways. This approach has causality, does not ask simplicity and it covers possible systems which makes the Kairetic account more general way while the unification predicts actual phenomena.