Abstract
Chapter 5 serves two purposes: It specifies which understanding of ‘ontic’ underlies characterizing my account of explanatory reduction as ontic and it clarifies how questions about explanation are related to questions about explanatory reduction. I show that discussions about accounts of reduction are independent from questions about explanation but that debates about explanatory reductionism, in fact, boil down to specific questions about explanation, namely, to questions about the adequacy of higher- and lower-level explanations. How one answers these questions depends on one’s stance on the pragmatics of explanation. I develop a refined version of van Fraassen’s pragmatic account of explanation that clarifies in which sense the adequacy of explanation is far from subjective or exclusively determined by pragmatic factors.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
