Non-Causal Explanations in Physics

Abstract

There are also substantial issues concerning the relationship between causal and non-causal explanations, and whether some phenomena can only be explained in non-causal terms. There are many ways in which many non-causal explanations can be independent of, or abstract away from, causal features. Lange offers a very different account of non-causal explanations that also in a way exemplifies the trend that emphasizes the independence of the explanandum from specific causal features. According to Lange, a broad range of non-causal explanations work "by describing how the explanandum arises from certain facts possessing some variety of necessity stronger than ordinary laws of nature possess". It is undeniably true that a distinctive feature of many non-causal explanations in physics is a kind of independence or abstraction away from causal features of the world. The proponents of counterfactual accounts to explanations have sought to generalize the ideology of causal explanation to non-causal cases quite generally.