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r from his head will not turn the person from a non-bald to a bald person.
So you cannot become bald if you lose one hair at a time! (What’s gone wrong?)

Reading for Week 6:
Rosenberg, A., Philosophy of Science: a contemporary introduction. New York: Routledge, 2000. Chapters 2 and 3.

Week 6: Epistemology and Theory of Knowledge
HUMR71-110 EPISTEMOLOGY AND THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

Week 6.

Reading:
Rosenberg, A., Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction. (Second edition). New York: Routledge, 2000. Chapters 2 and 3.

1. Does everything have an explanation?

In every field of advanced study or research, part of our concern will be with explanations. Sometimes we will want to assess the merits of an explanation put forward by another. Perhaps we can come up with a different and superior explanation. (What makes it superior?) On other occasions we will be concerned with creating an explanation for something that has not been explained. (What makes our explanation a good one?)

Is everything explicable? It is generally contended that, in both the natural and the social sciences, everything is explicable. And ‘everything’ means everything that does happen, has happened, or will happen. It also means everything that does not happen, has not happened, or will not happen – indeed sometimes it is more important to explain why certain things don’t occur than why other things do.

While, by general consensus, all sciences (natural and social) proceed on the assumption that everything is explicable, it is also argued that this is an article of faith – that we cannot prove everything is explicable, but rather proceed on this assumption. Some epistemologists, following the 18th century Scottish Empiricist and Enlightenment philosopher David Hume (1711 – 1776), argue that, in the end we must come to brute facts, facts which are facts, but not because of any further facts. They note that even those who believe that the quest for explanations must ultimately lead to God deny that God needs an explanation, God just is. Hume’s view (he was an agnostic) was that if it is acceptable to say God just is, then why is it not acceptable to stop short of the step to God, and say that certain facts just are?

If we acknowledge that the chain of explanations cannot go on forever (and why can’t it?), there is a big step involved in passing from the proposition that there must in the end be certain facts that just are, to the conclusion that we have stumbled upon such facts. The scientific mind always, and usefully, proceeds on the basis that we are not yet at the end point where explanation just stops, and we can never allow ourselves to believe we are. (Ask yourself, how would I decide whether my inability, after a lot of hard work, to explain something was due to its not having an explanation, as opposed to me not working hard enough, or being clever enough, to find the explanation.)

Indeed the principle of explicability is best seen as a heuristic principle – one that is useful for guiding our inquiry – rather than a constitutive and demonstrable principle – one that can be shown to be universally true.

2. What is an Explanation?

Consider the death of Princess Diana in a car crash in a Parisian road tunnel. A coronial inquiry is currently trying to find an explanation, or the best explanation, for this event. There are a number of explanatory hypot本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。