A Third Dogma of Empiricism

Abstract

In 1951, W. V. Quine published his provocative and justly famous article, ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’. At about the time Quine was mounting this attack, a number of ‘empiricists’ were busily establishing what has subsequently become, in my opinion, a third dogma. The thesis can be stated quite succinctly: scientific explanations are arguments. This view was elaborated at considerable length by a variety of prominent philosophers, including R. B. Braithwaite (1953), Ernest Nagel (1961), Karl Popper (1959) and most especially Carl G. Hempel.1 Until the early 1960s, although passing mention was sometimes made of the need for inductive explanation, attention was confined almost exclusively to deductive explanation. In 1962, however, Hempel (1962a) made the first serious attempt to provide a detailed analysis of inductive (or statistical) explanation. In that same year, in a statement referring explicitly to both deductive and inductive explanations, he characterized the ‘explanatory account’ of a particular event as ‘an argument to the effect that the event to be explained ⋯ was to be expected by reason of certain explanatory facts’ (Hempel, 1962b, my italics). Shortly thereafter he published an improved and more detailed version of his treatment of inductive-statistical (I-S) explanation (Hempel, 1965, pp. 381–412). In this newer discussion, as well as in many other places, Hempel has often reiterated the thesis that explanations, both deductive and inductive, are arguments.2 The purpose of this present paper is to raise doubts about the tenability of that general thesis by posing three questions — ones which will, I hope, prove embarrassing to those who hold it.3