explanans

In naturalistic explanations the explanans is an antecedent condition, an event which precedes in time the event whose cause it is said to be; in mentalistic explanation the explanans is the logical ground of an action, the motive or thought that renders it intelligible.

Robin George Collingwood D'Oro, Giuseppina 2006

If 'laws' is just shorthand way to refer to the observed regularities, then one is merely identifying the explanandum, not providing an explanans at all.

Another predictable argument against front-loading 2007

Furthermore, to define imagery in the way that Block, Kosslyn etc. suggest, as first and foremost a form of representation (as explanans rather than explanandum), is to beg more basic and equally controversial questions about the nature of the mind and the causes of quasi-perceptual experiences.

His Name Was Do Re Mi 2009

First, “the explanandum must be a logical consequence of the explanans” and “the sentences constituting the explanans must be true”.

Scientific Explanation Woodward, James 2009

The intuition that, contrary to the IS model, the value that a candidate explanans assigns to an explanandum-outcome should not matter for the goodness of the explanation it provides can be motivated in the following way.

Scientific Explanation Woodward, James 2009

More generally, what matters on the SR model is not whether the value of the probability of the explanandum-outcome is high or low (or even high or low in comparison with its prior probability) but rather whether the putative explanans cites all and only statistically relevant factors and whether the probabilities it invokes are correct.

Scientific Explanation Woodward, James 2009

So the explanans may be correct, but it seems to miss its target, the explanandum: it turns out to be an explanation of why feeling pain is not genuinely perceptual.

Pain Aydede, Murat 2009

For the explanans to successfully explain the explanandum several conditions must be met.

Scientific Explanation Woodward, James 2009

Consider this formulation: a causal mechanism is a sequence of events, conditions, and processes leading from the explanans to the explanandum Varieties Of Social Explanation, p.

Causal mechanisms Daniel Little 2008

This assumption has two components: the idea that a well-defined domain of investigation must somehow embody a set of regularities, perhaps disguised by the noise; and second, that explanations within the domain of individual events or patterns of events must take the form of a derivation of the explanandum from the general laws mentioned in the explanans.

Components of positivism Daniel Little 2008