Pragmatics

Abstract

The story so far has paid little attention to the questions that give rise to explanations. In this sense we have hewed close to the line drawn by the DN model. For in the standard treatment, any question that is a why-question (or can be transformed into a why-question) will get the explanatory ball rolling. So the project of characterizing explanation can be pursued pretty much in isolation from questions. From Hempel on, philosophers have resisted the idea of making explanation dependent on the attitude of the questioner. For it has seemed hard to filter out the idiosyncrasies of the questioner that might make him or her resistant to seeing an answer when it is given.