Theism and Explanation - Appeared-to-Blogly

62 Theism and Explanation
argue that any causal explanation must refl ect this law-like association. It
will be a nomological explanation, one that cites one or more causal laws,
which cover the explanandum.
One author who tries to keep these two issues distinct is Donald Davidson.
Davidson argues that intentional explanations are law-less (or “anomalous”),
while holding to the broadly Humean view that causation always
involves law-like regularities. Reconciling these two claims is not a simple
matter, for on the face of it, the two issues are closely related. If a proposed
explanation is a causal explanation, and if the causation to which it refers
is a matter of law-like regularities, then one would expect the explanation
to refl ect this. As we shall see, Davidson’s solution is to distinguish two
levels of explanation. Intentional explanations do not cite laws, but facts to
which they refer could also be explained using the language of the natural
sciences, and such language would cite causal laws.
This is an important question, to which I shall return (Appendix 3.3.1).
Like Davidson, I wish to argue that intentional explanations need not cite
causal laws. But in this context, Davidson’s arguments do not leave us
any further ahead. For the question of whether an explanation must cite a
causal law is not quite the same as the question of whether there exist singular
causal explanations, that is to say, explanations relating event-tokens
rather than event-types. The claim that there exist singular explanations
is not merely a claim about the structure of our explanations; it involves a
metaphysical claim, about causation. My own view is that unless one holds
that causation is nothing other than a regular association of events, then
there is no reason to deny the possibility of singular causation. As C. J.
Ducasse put it, an event “could be unique in the history of the universe, and
yet be, and be known to be, a case of causation.” 11 But this is not a position
I can defend here.
All I can do here is to ask: What would follow if my suggestion is wrong?
What if it turns out that there are no singular explanations, that all causal
explanations must relate event-types? What implications would this have
for the theist? Well, it would eliminate a whole class of proposed theistic
explanations, namely those that do not claim to relate event-types. (The
chief rabbi’s suggestion, if I have understood it correctly, could be discredited
immediately, which may be a good thing.) But it would not eliminate
all proposed theistic explanations. For while most proposed explanations
of this kind do not take the form of general causal propositions, some do.
There exist proposed theistic explanations that do purport to express lawlike
regularities, that relate event-types rather than event-tokens.
Edward Schoen offers us an instance of a proposed theistic explanation
of this kind. It has to do with a believer named Fred, an intellectually
sophisticated believer, who “hopes to introduce God as an explanatory
entity to account for certain regular patterns he has noticed in his own
life.” 12 What are those “regular patterns”? Well, at times when he has little
fi nancial support Fred fi nds that his daily needs (for food, clothing, and