Philosophy Students, Mark your calendars!  The Philosophy Department is hosting a mandatory meeting for all majors on Thursday, May 1 from 4-5:30 pm in Clark C144.

 

Join us as Blake Faculty Fellows present their research and lead a conversation about engaged humanities scholarship. Faculty Fellows: Kari Anderson, Jessica Jackson, Emily Moore, [...]

Explanatory particularism is an approach to studying explanation that takes social aspects of scientific practice as primary. Like recent defenses of pluralism about explanation, this account rejects the traditional idea that there is one kind of explanation common to all the sciences and everyday life. Instead, multiple styles of explanation flourish in local contexts, intersecting with one another in diverse ways. More radical than other forms of explanatory pluralism, the particularist approach directs philosophers’ attention to often overlooked aspects of scientific practice: interdisciplinary collaboration and conflict, interlinked aspects of understanding, and a pro-social image of science as diverse yet unified. I’ll introduce the particularist approach and then discuss some of its main implications and results.