Abstract

Theorizing the World argues that explanations play a central role in our theoretical understanding of the world. Explanations explain in virtue of subsuming what is to be explained under the appropriate projectable regularities. My epistemological account of explanation differs from traditional views in understanding subsumption as a far more complex relation. When a projectable regularity explains, it both confirms its corresponding background theories and draws explanatory strength from them at the same time. The failure of the standard models of explanation, I claim, has to do with their inability to consider explanations as a part of a broader enterprise of theory-formation. In this sense, we account for the essentially epistemic nature of explanation by noting the intimate connection between explanations and theoretical reasoning. ;The dissertation proceeds in four chapters. In the first chapter, I argue that the object of an explanation always contains a reference to the epistemic conditions of the inquirer. The need for an explanation arises out of a detachment between what the inquirer believes and some observation at hand. To explain is to eliminate the detachment in the appropriate manner. The second chapter examines a host of standard models of explanation. I show that the failure of these models is largely due to their inability to explicate the explanation relation in sufficiently strong metaphysical notions. In the third chapter, I propose that in explaining, we connect the epistemic corpus of the inquirer to the observation via an appropriate projectable regularity. Finally, in chapter four, I examine issues of unification, the role of explanation in science and explanations in ethics as further evidence for my view