How should philosophy of social science proceed? Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9592-7 Authors Harold Kincaid, Department of Philosophy, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 900 13th Street South, Birmingham, AL 35294-1260, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

Abstract‘Possibilist Explanation’ is a promising account of scientific explanation which avoids the familiar problems of “how-possibly explanations”. It explains an event by showing how-actually it was epistemically possible, instead of why it was epistemically necessary. Its explanandum is the epistemic possibility of an actual event previously considered epistemically impossible. To define PE, two new concepts are introduced: ‘permissive condition’ and ‘possibilist law’. A permissive condition for an event is something that does not entail the event itself, but a necessary condition (...) for it. A ‘Possibilist Law’ is a kind of scientific law that predicts that in the absence of a necessary condition N, the event E is not possible. Both PE and PL are legitimate and neglected parts of scientific knowledge and are especially suitable for human sciences. (shrink)