Beyond the “Explanatory Fundamentality” of Dispositional Explanations

Authors:

Pages: 77-84
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/RBER9814

Abstract:

In this rejoinder to D. Elchinov’s paper “For” the explanatory fundamentality of dispositional explanations I point to some deficiencies of the suggested concept of explanatory fundamentality. I argue, in particular, that this concept does not allow for treating the dispositional explanations of explanations as more fundamental than e.g. the causal explanations of explanations although the dispositional explanations do make a distinctive contribution to the inferential content of our knowledge. Therefore, I propose to abandon the suggested concept of explanatory fundamentality as practically useless and focus instead on the conceptual differentiation between the understanding yielded by the explanations of other explanations and the understanding provided by the explained explanations on their own.

Keywords:

dispositional explanations, explanations of explanations, explanatory fundamentality, inferential criterion of understanding.

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