How-possibly explanations as genuine explanations and helpful heuristics: A comment on Forber

Abstract

Recently, Forber introduced a distinction between two kinds of how-possibly explanation, global and local how-possibly explanation, and argued that both play genuinely explanatory roles in evolutionary biology. In this paper I examine the nature of these two kinds of how-possibly explanations, focusing on the question whether they indeed constitute genuine explanations. I will conclude that one of Forber’s kinds of how-possibly explanation may be thought of as a kind of genuine explanation but not as a kind of how-possibly explanation, while the other kind plays a heuristic role and should not be conceived of as a kind of explanation at all.