Abstract

The paper investigates the question as to which features of hypotheses make them explanatory. Given the intuitive appeal of causal explanations, one might suspect that explanatoriness is deeply connected with causation. I argue in detail that this is wrong by showing that none of the dominant analyses of causation are suited for general accounts of explanatoriness. In the second part, I provide the outlines of an account of explanatoriness that connects it with scientific understanding, which in turn is argued to be analyzable as the cognitive realization of scientific models