IS THIS CIRCULAR OR TRIVIAL?
Hempel and others might claim that it is, since I am defining “correct explanation” using terms such as “reason,” “cause,” or “explanation”—together with “truth.” My reply is to deny this.
I am defining “correct explanation” in terms of complete-content giving sentences with respect to a question Q, which is a concept not defined using terms such as “reason,” “cause,” or “explanation.”To see this, consider the earlier example:
(1) 'I lie penalty for trespassing is that the person convicted will be drawn and quartered.
(1) is a complete content-giving sentence with respect to the question “What is the penalty for trespassing?” 'lherefore, (1) provides a correct explanation of the penalty—i.e., of what the penalty is, if (1) is true. 'lhere are no explanatory terms in (1).
Explanations are not confined to answering just “why” questions. They can answer questions beginning with “what,” “how,” “who,” “when,” and others. This does not mean that whenever we utter sentences such as
(2) 'I lie reason John got sick is that he ate contaminated fish, and (1), we are “explaining.” We can be doing many different things, including reporting, describing, complaining, and so forth. All these are what J. L. Austin called “illocutionary speech acts,” which involve uttering words with the intention of producing a certain type of effect on an actual or potential audience.[124] So, when I say that the complete contentgiving sentence (2) provides a correct explanation of why John got sick, and that the complete content-giving sentence (1) provides a correct explanation of what the penalty is for trespassing, I mean that these sentences can (in the right circumstances) be used to correctly explain these things. The general definition of a “correct explanation” does not invoke terms such as “reason” or “explanation,” but only the terms “complete content-giving sentence” and “true.”
8.