Beyond causality : a contrastive-pluralist and integrated account of scientific explanation

Abstract

Scientific explanation is often assumed to require identifying the causal processes responsible for a phenomenon. However, many scientific explanations succeed by identifying other forms of dependence, e.g., statistical, structural, mathematical or generative that distinguish why a phenomenon occurs rather than relevant alternatives. This thesis proposes a contrastive–pluralist account of explanation according to which explanatory success consists in identifying the dependence relation that distinguishes P from Q in a context-sensitive “why-rather-than” question. Building on Garfinkel's contrastive schema, we argue that causal, constitutive, cascade-based, statistical, structural–mathematical, emergent and simulation-based explanations can all be genuinely explanatory when they correctly locate the dependence responsible for the relevant contrast. On this basis, we develop an integrated pluralist framework that organizes explanatory diversity by a common contrastive logic grounded in ontic dependence. On this view, explanatory success consists in identifying the dependence relation that resolves a well-posed “why P rather than Q?” contrast. We show that this framework clarifies the status of non-causal explanation, preserves explanatory unity without methodological monism and supplies principled guidance for explanatory choice without relativism. We conclude that scientific understanding is deepest not when explanation is reduced to a single privileged form but when integrated pluralism articulates the plurality of real dependence relations through which nature is organized.