Explanatory Pluralism (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781107128514)

Explaining phenomena is one of the main activities in which scientists engage. This book proposes a new philosophical theory of scientific explanation by developing and defending the position of explanatory pluralism with the help of the notion of 'explanatory games'. Mantzavinos provides a descriptive account of the explanatory activity of scientists in different domains and shows how they differ from commonsensical explanations offered in everyday life by ordinary people and also from explanations offered in religious contexts. He also shows how an evaluation and a critical appraisal of explanations put forward in different social arenas can take place on the basis of different values. Explanatory Pluralism provides solutions to all important descriptive and normative problems of the philosophical theory of explanation as illustrated in sophisticated case studies from economics and medicine, but also from mythology and religion.

Author: C. Mantzavinos
ISBN-10: 110712851X
ISBN-13: 9781107128514
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 06/07/2016
Pages: 234
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.14lbs
Size: 9.39h x 6.05w x 0.68d