What are the Pragmatics of Explanation?

John Carroll
North Carolina State University

Due in large part to "The Pragmatics of Explanation", the fifth chapter of Bas van Fraassen's The Scientific Image, there is an enticing view consisting of two doctrines, each of which identifies a source of the context-dependence of (declarative) explanation sentences. First, there is the Relevance Thesis, the thesis that the truth of these sentences depends on a contextually selected relevance relation.  Second, there is the Contrastivity Thesis, the thesis that the truth of explanation sentences depends on a contextually determined contrastive focus. This metalinguistic view has been quite influential, but it is importantly flawed.  It is time that we had a clearly stated alternative. On my view, though explanation sentences are importantly context-dependent, both the Contrastivity Thesis and the Relevance Thesis are mistaken.