Explaining phenomena is one of the main activities in which scientists engage. This book proposes a new philosophical theory of scientific explanation by developing and defending the position of explanatory pluralism with the help of the notion of 'explanatory games'. Mantzavinos provides a descriptive account of the explanatory activity of scientists in different domains and shows how they differ from commonsensical explanations offered in everyday life by ordinary people and also from explanations offered in religious contexts. He also shows how an evaluation and a critical appraisal of explanations put forward in different social arenas can take place on the basis of different values. Explanatory Pluralism provides solutions to all important descriptive and normative problems of the philosophical theory of explanation as illustrated in sophisticated case studies from economics and medicine, but also from mythology and religion.
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1. Introduction; 2. The wrong question: what is an explanation?; 3. A brief outlook on the social sciences; 4. Towards explanatory pluralism; 5. The explanatory enterprise; 6. The rules of the explanatory game; 7. The plurality of explanatory games; 8. Explanatory activity as problem solving activity; 9. Explanatory rules as shared rules; 10. Normative appraisal: a procedural conception; 11. Explanatory methodology as technology; 12. Epilogue.
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'C. Mantzavinos raises fundamental questions about what a philosophical theory of explanation should do, and he offers a highly original and illuminating approach to the tasks he singles out as important. This book is required reading for anyone interested in the philosophy of science.' Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University, New York
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This book proposes a new philosophical theory of scientific explanation by developing and defending the position of explanatory pluralism.

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781107128514
Publisert
2016-05-26
Utgiver
Vendor
Cambridge University Press
Vekt
480 gr
Høyde
234 mm
Bredde
156 mm
Dybde
12 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
234

Forfatter

Biographical note

C. Mantzavinos is Professor of Philosophy of the Social Sciences at the University of Athens. He has previously taught at Witten/Herdecke University, the University of Freiburg, the University of Bayreuth and Stanford University, and was a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn. He has held visiting appointments at Harvard University and the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris. He is the author of Wettbewerbstheorie (1994), Individuals, Institutions, and Markets (Cambridge, 2001) and Naturalistic Hermeneutics (Cambridge, 2005), and the editor of Philosophy of the Social Sciences (Cambridge, 2009).