Essentially narrative explanations.

This essay argues that narrative explanations prove uniquely suited to answering certain explanatory questions, and offers reasons why recognizing a type of statement that requires narrative explanations crucially informs on their assessment. My explication of narrative explanation begins by identifying two interrelated sources of philosophical unhappiness with them. The first I term the problem of logical formlessness and the second the problem of evaluative intractability. With regard to the first, narratives simply do not appear to instantiate any logical form recognized as inference licensing. But absent a means of identifying inferential links, what justifies connecting explanans and explanandum? Evaluative intractability, the second problem, thus seems a direct consequence. This essay shows exactly why these complaints prove unfounded by explicating narrative explanations in the process of answering three interrelated questions. First, what determines that an explanation has in some critical or essential respect a narrative form? Second, how does a narrative in such cases come to constitute a plausible explanation? Third, how do the first two considerations yield a basis for evaluating an explanation offered as a narrative? Answers to each of these questions include illustrations of actual narrative explanations and also function to underline attendant dimensions of evaluation

Using cosmic neutrinos to search for non-perturbative physics at the Pierre Auger Observatory

The Pierre Auger (cosmic ray) Observatory provides a laboratory for studying fundamental physics at energies far beyond those available at colliders. The Observatory is sensitive not only to hadrons and photons, but can in principle detect ultrahigh energy neutrinos in the cosmic radiation. Interestingly, it may be possible to uncover new physics by analyzing characteristics of the neutrino flux at the Earth. By comparing the rate for quasi-horizontal, deeply penetrating air showers triggered by all types of neutrinos, with the rate for slightly upgoing showers generated by Earth-skimming tau neutrinos, we determine the ratio of events which would need to be detected in order to signal the existence of new non-perturbative interactions beyond the TeV-scale in which the final state energy is dominated by the hadronic component. We use detailed Monte Carlo simulations to calculate the effects of interactions in the Earth and in the atmosphere. We find that observation of 1 Earth-skimming and 10 quasi-horizontal events would exclude the standard model at the 99% confidence level. If new non-perturbative physics exists, a decade or so would be required to find it in the most optimistic case of a neutrino flux at the Waxman-Bahcall level and a neutrino-nucleon cross-section an order of magnitude above the standard model prediction.Comment: 8 pages revtex, 4 eps figure

Globalizing Hayden White

This conversation originated in a plenary session organized by Ewa Domańska and María Inés La Greca under the same title of ‘Globalizing Hayden White’ at the III International Network for Theory of History Conference ‘Place and Displacement: The Spacing of History’ held at Södertörn University, Stockholm, in August 2018. In order to pay homage to Hayden White’s life work 5 months after his passing we knew that what was needed–and what he himself would have wanted–was a vibrant intellectual exchange. Our ‘celebration by discussion’ contains elaborated and revised versions of the presentations by scholars from China (Xin Chen), Latin America (María Inés La Greca, Veronica Tozzi Thompson), United States (Paul Roth), Western (Kalle Pihlainen) and East-Central Europe (Ewa Domańska). We took this opportunity of gathering scholars who represent different parts of the world, different cultures and approaches to reflect on White’s ideas in a global context. Our interest was in discussing how his work has been read and used (or even misread and misused) and how it has influenced theoretical discussions in different parts of the globe. Rather than just offering an account as experts, we mainly wanted to reflect on the current state of our field and the ways that White’s inheritance might and should be carried forward in the future.Fil: Domanska, Ewa. Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań; PoloniaFil: la Greca, María Inés. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero. Departamento de Metodología, Estadística y Matemáticas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Departamento de Filosofía; ArgentinaFil: Roth, Paul A.. University of California at Santa Cruz; Estados UnidosFil: Chen, Xin. Zhejiang University; ChinaFil: Tozzi, María Verónica. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero. Departamento de Metodología, Estadística y Matemáticas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Departamento de Filosofía; ArgentinaFil: Pihlainen, Kalle. Tallinn University; Estoni

Mistakes

A suggestion famously made by Peter Winch and carried through to present discussions holds that what constitutes the social as a kind consists of something shared -- rules or practices commonly learned, internalized, or otherwise acquired by all members belonging to a society. This essays argues against the explanatory efficacy of appeals to this shared something as constitutive of a social kind by examining a violation of social norms or rules, viz., mistakes. I argue that an asymmetric relation exists between the notion of mistakes and that of the social. In particular, mistakes do not presuppose a concept of the social, but the concept of the social requires prior specification of a category of mistakes. But no such prior specification proves possible. The very notion of a mistake is so inchoate that it makes it impossible to provide the kind of regimentation required for a rule-governed domain. Thus, there may be recognized mistakes even in the absence of a unified system or common knowledge of norms. Later writers attempt to avoid Winch's over-strong assumption that something shared and internal constitutes the social but cannot. Extending recent work by Stephen Turner, I argue that "the social" is not a domain that is susceptible to lawlike treatment, but rather a heterogeneous, motley collection. For absent the assumption of a shared something, no social object exists to be explained. So, I conclude, we have at present no clear way of marking out the social as a coherent or unified domain of inquiry

The silence of the norms: The missing historiography of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

History has been disparaged since the late 19th century for not conforming to norms of scientific explanation. Nonetheless, as a matter of fact a work of history upends the regnant philosophical conception of science in the second part of the 20th century. Yet despite its impact, Kuhn’s Structure has failed to motivate philosophers to ponder why works of history should be capable of exerting rational influence on an understanding of philosophy of science. But all this constitutes a great irony and a mystery. The mystery consists of the persistence of a complete lack of interest in efforts to theorize historical explanation. Fundamental questions regarding why an historical account could have any rational influence remain not merely unanswered, but unasked. The irony arises from the fact that analytic philosophy of history went into an eclipse where it remains until this day just around the time that the influence of Kuhn’s great work began to make itself felt. This paper highlights puzzles long ignored regarding the challenges a work of history managed to pose to the epistemic authority of science, and what this might imply generally for the place of philosophy of history vis-à-vis the problems of philosophy