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.
