The question of what makes a good explanation might have a simple answer if all people had similar values and all branches of knowledge were united and operated at similar levels of intelligence, understanding and experience. Good is also qualitative and subjective and therefore a value judgement in terms of one’s own standard and priorities. A ‘true’ explanation may be ‘good for some people, but not for others. I will endeavor to discuss that good explanations do not always have to be true and looks at examples in different areas of knowledge to prove this point further.
Before I continue, it is important to define an explanation. The Oxford Dictionary defines an explanation as “a statement or account that makes something clear”. An explanation involves the notion of causation and also inference. Causation is a physical process that happens in the world, whereas inference is a mental process that occurs in the mind of a rational person.
A ‘good’ explanation may help us in believing an assertion is true. Truth can also be placed into two categories of objective and subjective behaviour. Individuals who view truth as being objective which is something being directly observed so no personal opinion can change it will tend to view truth as something that has to be provable or quantitative like for example in the Natural Sciences. Individuals who view truth as being subjective which is given to us through our individual experiences in relation to those around us will believe that truth is something that will be more useful to us or more rational for example in Economics.
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An example where truth could be viewed objectively by everyone is in the Natural Sciences. In subjects such as Chemistry good explanations are ones
that have enhanced our understanding and are rooted through evidence and supported by data to clarify what is considered as the objective truth. Results and conclusions should be falsifiable because there is either a right or wrong, or so we are told. So what is it about theories in the Natural Sciences that makes them so convincing? Is it because scientists use a very thorough method of investigation or is it because theories are convincing based on the nature of science itself.
What I mean by this is that scientists need evidence and without this they wouldn’t be able to prove anything. It is often the result of logic and testing the validity of arguments. As we know most people in the general population would believe that science will always be true as there is evidence and data to support claims. Part of the reason that these theories are accepted is because other people understand them through certain ways of knowing such as sense perception, reason and language.
For example a person may be convinced by a theory because of its appeal to reason based on evidence provided which covers most aspects of Science. Another person may be convinced because they understand the theory through the language used to describe it and lastly if a person has experienced an event or seen it happen themselves they are more likely to accept the explanation as the truth, for example Gravity (which was part of Einstein’s theory of relativity) which most people have obviously experienced before so they have accepted this theory and therefore other theories as the truth.
This is why I argue that the Natural science may provide us with good explanations but may not always be the truth. A personal example of this was when I was studying Chemistry GCSE and we were taught about the Bohr model and learnt about the 18 elements. After learning about it and feeling very accomplished about how my scientific knowledge had advanced, I later went on to find that in fact there were not only 18 elements of this model but the “first” and very basic introductory elements.
In all honesty I felt very upset at my teacher even though I knew it wasn’t her fault but a requirement of the syllabus, but it has had some use as it has lead me to form my second knowledge question “How do we know that we are always being provided with the whole truth”. The word “whole” simply refers to entirety and “always” is a frequency word that means at all times. Like in my real life situation of knowledge being withheld from me even if a good explanation and evidence was used, the concept she had taught was simply not the truth.
Similarly when we are provided with data and evidence by scientists how do we know the morality of the scientist as some information could easily be kept to themselves to prove a point and a good explanation is put forward and viewed as the truth in the eyes of others who do not have this extent of knowledge. Also it could be argued that as our world is ever evolving so we can never uncover the full truth in our lifetime which could be an incentive for scientists to withhold information as the truth can never be fully recognized no matter the evidence or data behind it. Through the quote said by
Francis Collins who was head of the Human Genome project and made one of the most impactful scientific discoveries yet he talks about how the whole truth is something out of our control “We have to recognize that our understanding of nature is something that grows decade by decade, century by century. But we’re still a long way from understanding the details of much of the universe around us. “
At its core, economics is the study of how people allocate scarce resources for production, distribution and consumption both individually and collectively. It is the study of human action and behaviour as we are not programmed robots. Being individuals themselves, economists will differ in their value and ethical judgements and will use rational evidence to sway an argument towards what they want us to believe as the truth. One who is a socialist will differ on a policy matter with one who is a capitalist. They may even agree on the outcome of the policy while disagreeing on whether that outcome is “good” or “bad”. People who are well intentioned and truth seeking yet operating from divergent ethical beliefs frequently arrive at different conclusions.
Economic models are based on an assumption that humans behave in a rational manner. This is however not the case as human behaviour can be unpredictable or inconsistent making economic models flawed.
I am going to look at the supply and demand diagram to further explore why good explanations don’t have to be true. There are two assumptions you can make based on the supply chart. The first is still more or less true today: as demand for a product goes up, supply increases and prices go down. If the price gets too high, demand falls. The sweet spot where the two lines intersect is called equilibrium. Equilibrium is the point that maximizes value to society. Goods are affordable, plentiful and profitable.
The second assumption this chart makes is that the total cost of production increases as supply increases where there are variable costs. Let’s take the analogy of a new model of mobile phone. The first mobile phone costs more to create because you have to spend money designing and testing it. But each model after that requires a certain amount of materials and labour. The twentieth mobile phone manufactured costs the same as the thousandth one. The same is true for other goods that dominated the world’s economy for most of the 20th century.
This demonstrates how a model that is taught to people like myself is used by economists to justify their conclusions that are based off of a good generalized explanation but this is not the whole truth. Referring to my second knowledge question, many consumers may believe that this model would refer to the supply and demand of all goods as the idea of elasticity isn’t introduced at this level. This is again how economists and firms are able to exploit the use of their own knowledge that they have provided enough rational evidence yet it is not true.
To conclude, I think it would be suitable to talk about the parable of the blind men and the elephant. A group of blind men come across an elephant in which none of them had encountered before. To make sense of the animal each blind man feels one different part of the elephant’s body such as the trunk. They then attempt to describe the elephant’s physical appearance based off their limited knowledge of only discovering one part and obviously their description of the elephant differed from one another.
The meaning of this story is that humans have a tendency to claim truth based on limited and subjective knowledge and provide a piece of evidence, such as one body part in this example, to make their explanation seem true. This parable reflects the main idea of my essay well as the truth can be viewed differently by everyone and the idea of how do we know we are provided with the whole truth and in what way do we categorize the truth needs to always be taken into consideration.
References
- Oxford Dictionary
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- National Center for Biotechnology Information
- National Geographic
- Encyclopedia Britannica
- Scientific American
- National Science Foundation
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – Scientific Explanation
- PhilPapers – Explanation
- OpenStax – What is Intelligence?
