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Abstract
[...]explanation is a question of logic not of facts.The most important reason why the covering law model fails is that it relies on a very narrow definition of explanation. What counts as an explanation is nevertheless not a question of facts but a question of pragmatic communicative strategies.Explanation is a response to a question posed within a community by somebody asking himself or somebody else about certain information which would, if it comes available, fulfil certain cognitive goals of the questioner. [...]explanation has its root in the rhetorical practice of raising questions and giving answers where questions are raised by an interlocutor with the intention of their being correctly answered in one way or the other by himself or the respondent. [...]explanation should be seen as part of a more general communicative practice.Thus, for a fuller picture of what a reasonable account of explanation looks like, we should address the rhetorical features of this explanatory practice. A correct explanation is true, whereas an incorrect explanation is false.Fourth, the explanans must be relevant for the explanandum: we must have good reasons to believe that the story being told is somehow connected to the fact being explained. [...]a reference to the increased scarcity of storks in Denmark after the Second World War is not an appropriate response to the question why there is a strong decline in the birth rate of babies in the same period these facts are simply not relevant for each other.Fifth, explanations seems to be asymmetrical in the sense that the information explaining a fact is not also explained by this very fact. [...]they do so by filling in theEXPLANATION EXPLAINED 71lacunae in our knowledge. [...]the answer to a when-, where, what-, howor why-question becomes equivalent with the ability to give an appropriate explanation of when, where, what, how or why.Here we should, indeed, hesitate a little because it is not every kind of information which counts as an explanation.