Monday, March 21, 2016

Ontic, Epistemic, and Pragmatic Models of Explanation

Not so long ago, there were thought to be three main “schools” of explanation in the philosophy of science literature: the ontic, the epistemic, and the pragmatic, e.g. in Wesley Salmon’s masterful “Four Decades of Scientific Explanation.” This tripartite distinction was not employed consistently, and might never have been articulated very precisely. I offer the following as a useful distinction.

A theory T of explanation is ontic iffdf according to T, there exists no statement of the form x explains why y” that is true relative to a person S1 and not true relative to another person S2.

A theory T of explanation is epistemic iffdf according to T, there exists a statement of the form x explains why y” that is true relative to a knowledge corpus K1 and not true relative to another knowledge corpus K2.

A theory T of explanation is pragmatic iffdf according to T, there exists a statement of the form x explains why y” that is true relative to a person S1 and not true relative to another person S2.

Stipulation: If a statement is relative to a knowledge corpus, then it is relative to a person.


According to our stipulation and definitions, all epistemic theories of explanation are pragmatic theories of explanation. Hence, the fundamental divide is between ontic and pragmatic theories. Indeed, it might be more fruitful to describe the distinction as one between "impersonal" and "personal" theories.

More will need to be said about: (a) the viability of our stipulation, (b) the “relativity-clauses” in epistemic and pragmatic models, and (c) what “persons” are in the latter.