The Limits of Possible Explanation

[Sam]

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Well we don't need Factor X then, do we? According to you we could "explain the governing dynamics which regulate" the physical universe and hence "explain [its] presence and origin." But how could any conceivable "governing dynamics" that "regulate" things also explain their origin? Explain their origin in terms of what? Explain their origin from what? The italicized prepositions could have no possible reference, could they, since whatever they signified would lie outside the set of existing things?

Maybe you would be good enough to supply a counterexample to my proposition that an explanation of an existing thing (which would include not only a red house but say, magnetic fields in general) can only relate it to one or more other such things? I maintain that all explanation, common or officially and formally scientific, is a form of this. If you think there is a special class of explanation that fails to supply an account of a relation between things, it should be simple enough to cite it.

"Wild speculation" would be speculation about facts. If I say, "Perhaps there is a green lizard living at the center of the moon," that is wild speculation. It is not speculation to make statements about what "explanation" is. It is to analyze what constitutes acceptable explanation. Notice that I do not say what constitutes the set of all existing things; I mere say that whatever constitutes that set, the set itself is not the sort of thing to which "explanation" applies, just as an orange is not the sort of thing to which "happy" applies.

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Mark, I apologise if I have given you the impression that i believe there is a "special class of explanation which fails to supply an account of the relationship between things"

I don't think I've ever said or infered that. My argument comes from the fact that your definition precludes an explanation from covering the origin of something/everything.

Obviously, as I believe you pointed out this discussion is based around an infinite regress of cause and effect, back to the intial cause. So as has been the case (In plate tectonic theory for example) the advancement of scientific technique and knowledge creates more explanations, based on the relationships between observed phonomena which explain their origin ... surley you can see that if the relationships between all matter (i.e. the universe) where defined ... then it's origind would be described in those relationships?

Sam