Arguments vs. Explanations
What is the difference between an argument and an explanation?
In logic, an argument is understood to be a set of statements (premises) intended to justify belief in another statement (the conclusion) [1]. An argument tries to support the conclusion that something is the case; typically, this involves the justification of a belief that is not already known or taken for granted (e.g., "when you open the fridge you will find a shattered beer bottle inside. The following reasons justify this conclusion", or, "we know that Smith was at the murder scene due to the following evidence"). An explanation, on the other hand, is an account of why some state of affairs is the way it is. Typically, an explanation takes for granted some piece of information (e.g., that there is a shattered beer bottle in the fridge, or that Smith was seen at the murder scene) and attempts to shed more understanding on that information. Peter Lipton writes the following:
Imagine, for example, that you open the freezer door to your refrigerator and find a shattered beer bottle inside, with the once aqueous beer now frozen on the bottom. Let's call this phenomenon or piece of data, "D". Naturally, you ask yourself, "why is there a shattered beer bottle in the freezer?" You're looking for an explanation. You take it for granted that D is the case, but you're interested in knowing why it is the case. So, you might appeal to certain laws of nature related to temperature, pressure, the freezing point of water, and so on, which entail (or probilify) that beer, left in the right conditions, will freeze and rupture the glass container in which it is held. These laws, taken together with the appropriate initial conditions (i.e., that the bottle was indeed put in the freezer), predict D [3]. You might consider this as an adequate explanation for D. Perhaps, though, you're not really asking about the physics and chemistry behind the shattered bottle. You might want to know why the bottle was put in the freezer in the first place. Finding out that your friend, Shonn, had intended to cool off the beer quickly the night before and forgot that he had placed it in the freezer would suffice as an explanation. Whatever explanation you're looking for, the goal is to understand a phenomenon or piece of data that you already take for granted.
Arguments, on the other hand, are often used to establish the reasonableness of believing in something that isn't already taken for granted. Before the shattered beer bottle is even found, Shonn could argue that a shattered bottle will be found in the freezer. To do so, he will have to provide an argument. His argument might go like this.
1. I put a beer bottle in the freezer to cool it down faster, forgot about it, and left it there over night.
2. If you leave a full beer bottle in the freezer over night it will probably explode.
_________________
3. Therefore, my beer (Shonn's beer) probably exploded in the freezer overnight.
Notice that this argument attempts to justify belief in something that is not yet observed or taken for granted; you have not yet opened the fridge to see if Shonn is right. If you are persuaded by Shonn's argument, then you won't be wholly surprised when you open the fridge and observe the shattered beer bottle inside; you will have expected it to be there, since Shonn's argument was so convincing. Hence, unless you're interested in the physics and chemistry involved in the event, you won't ask for an explanation. This suggests that, at least in some cases, explanations count as useful if they make a surprising or unexpected event/data, D, less surprising, either by showing how D fits with other beliefs we already hold or by assigning causes to D that we find plausible and adequate. Due to Shonn's argument, you already anticipated the broken bottle in the freezer and had an idea of what the cause(s) of its having been forgotten in the freezer could be (the intentions, actions, and forgetfulness of Shonn), so you didn't have to look for an explanation. Of course, surprise elimination or surprise reduction is not a necessary condition for something to count as an explanation, since there can be events that are not surprising to us but which, nevertheless, need to be explained. Among other reasons, such events are not surprising because they are so familiar. For example, most people are not surprised by the change in pitch that occurs as a vehicle approaches them at high velocity and then moves further away after passing (what is known as the doppler effect), because it happens so often. However, whether you understand how this phenomenon occurs or not is a different matter. Hence, there are familiar and unsurprising states of affairs that nevertheless need to be explained.
In summary, an argument typically intends to justify a belief that something is the case or justify how one knows that something is the case, while an explanation answers the question why something is the case.
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Footnotes:
[1] This is to be contrasted with the sense of "argument" that connotes a heated disagreement between two or more people. In other words, in the world of logic, an argument has to do with an inferential relationship between statements, not with an event (e.g., the event of arguing with a parent about your curfew).
[2] Litpon, Peter. Inference to the Best Explanation. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2005. N. pag. Print.
[3] The model of explanation I just articulated is known as the Deductive-Nomological (D-N) model of explanation, developed by Carl Hempel. For a more thorough understanding of the D-N model of explanation, see Hempel's essay, "Two Models of Scientific Explanation," in Rosenburg and Balashov's Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Reader (Routledge, 2002). For a critique of the D-N model, see Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation, and Rosenberg, Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2011).
In logic, an argument is understood to be a set of statements (premises) intended to justify belief in another statement (the conclusion) [1]. An argument tries to support the conclusion that something is the case; typically, this involves the justification of a belief that is not already known or taken for granted (e.g., "when you open the fridge you will find a shattered beer bottle inside. The following reasons justify this conclusion", or, "we know that Smith was at the murder scene due to the following evidence"). An explanation, on the other hand, is an account of why some state of affairs is the way it is. Typically, an explanation takes for granted some piece of information (e.g., that there is a shattered beer bottle in the fridge, or that Smith was seen at the murder scene) and attempts to shed more understanding on that information. Peter Lipton writes the following:
"Often...we are not satisfied to know that something is the case; we want to know why...Typically someone who asks why something is the case already knows that it is the case. The person who asks why the sky is blue knows that it is blue, but does not yet understand why." [2].
Imagine, for example, that you open the freezer door to your refrigerator and find a shattered beer bottle inside, with the once aqueous beer now frozen on the bottom. Let's call this phenomenon or piece of data, "D". Naturally, you ask yourself, "why is there a shattered beer bottle in the freezer?" You're looking for an explanation. You take it for granted that D is the case, but you're interested in knowing why it is the case. So, you might appeal to certain laws of nature related to temperature, pressure, the freezing point of water, and so on, which entail (or probilify) that beer, left in the right conditions, will freeze and rupture the glass container in which it is held. These laws, taken together with the appropriate initial conditions (i.e., that the bottle was indeed put in the freezer), predict D [3]. You might consider this as an adequate explanation for D. Perhaps, though, you're not really asking about the physics and chemistry behind the shattered bottle. You might want to know why the bottle was put in the freezer in the first place. Finding out that your friend, Shonn, had intended to cool off the beer quickly the night before and forgot that he had placed it in the freezer would suffice as an explanation. Whatever explanation you're looking for, the goal is to understand a phenomenon or piece of data that you already take for granted.
Arguments, on the other hand, are often used to establish the reasonableness of believing in something that isn't already taken for granted. Before the shattered beer bottle is even found, Shonn could argue that a shattered bottle will be found in the freezer. To do so, he will have to provide an argument. His argument might go like this.
1. I put a beer bottle in the freezer to cool it down faster, forgot about it, and left it there over night.
2. If you leave a full beer bottle in the freezer over night it will probably explode.
_________________
3. Therefore, my beer (Shonn's beer) probably exploded in the freezer overnight.
Notice that this argument attempts to justify belief in something that is not yet observed or taken for granted; you have not yet opened the fridge to see if Shonn is right. If you are persuaded by Shonn's argument, then you won't be wholly surprised when you open the fridge and observe the shattered beer bottle inside; you will have expected it to be there, since Shonn's argument was so convincing. Hence, unless you're interested in the physics and chemistry involved in the event, you won't ask for an explanation. This suggests that, at least in some cases, explanations count as useful if they make a surprising or unexpected event/data, D, less surprising, either by showing how D fits with other beliefs we already hold or by assigning causes to D that we find plausible and adequate. Due to Shonn's argument, you already anticipated the broken bottle in the freezer and had an idea of what the cause(s) of its having been forgotten in the freezer could be (the intentions, actions, and forgetfulness of Shonn), so you didn't have to look for an explanation. Of course, surprise elimination or surprise reduction is not a necessary condition for something to count as an explanation, since there can be events that are not surprising to us but which, nevertheless, need to be explained. Among other reasons, such events are not surprising because they are so familiar. For example, most people are not surprised by the change in pitch that occurs as a vehicle approaches them at high velocity and then moves further away after passing (what is known as the doppler effect), because it happens so often. However, whether you understand how this phenomenon occurs or not is a different matter. Hence, there are familiar and unsurprising states of affairs that nevertheless need to be explained.
In summary, an argument typically intends to justify a belief that something is the case or justify how one knows that something is the case, while an explanation answers the question why something is the case.
_____________________________________________________________________
Footnotes:
[1] This is to be contrasted with the sense of "argument" that connotes a heated disagreement between two or more people. In other words, in the world of logic, an argument has to do with an inferential relationship between statements, not with an event (e.g., the event of arguing with a parent about your curfew).
[2] Litpon, Peter. Inference to the Best Explanation. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2005. N. pag. Print.
[3] The model of explanation I just articulated is known as the Deductive-Nomological (D-N) model of explanation, developed by Carl Hempel. For a more thorough understanding of the D-N model of explanation, see Hempel's essay, "Two Models of Scientific Explanation," in Rosenburg and Balashov's Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Reader (Routledge, 2002). For a critique of the D-N model, see Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation, and Rosenberg, Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2011).
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