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An Intervening Cause Counterexample To Railton’S Dnp Model Of Explanation, Stuart Gluck, Steven Gimbel

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Peter Railton (1978) has introduced the influential deductive-nomological-probabilistic (DNP) model of explanation which is the culmination of a tradition of formal, nonpragmatic accounts of scientific explanation. The other models in this tradition have been shown to be susceptiblet o a class of counterexamplesin volvingi nterveningc auses which speak against their sufficiency. This treatment has never been extended to the DNP model; we contend that the usual form of these counterexamples is ineffective in this case. However, we develop below a new version which overcomes these difficulties. Thus we claim that all of the models in this tradition, DNP included, have …