In Johannes Persson & Petri Ylikoski (eds.),
Rethinking Explanation. Series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science Vol. 252. Dordrecht: Springer Verlag. pp. 43-68 (
2007)
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Abstract
The pragmatic theory of explanation is an attempt to see explanation as a linguistic response to a cognitive problem where the content of the response depends on the context of the scientific inquiry. The present paper draws on the rhetorical situation, as it is defined by Loyld Bitzer, in order to understand how the context may influence the content as well as the acceptability of the response.