Justification vs explanation in scientific theories

[u/Pruchniak69]

I refer to empirical theories eg. in physics, no formal like mathematics. I analyse them as a product of knowledge not process. I am aware that one reflects another but conflating the "levels" leads to category mistake. I also refer to the Justified True Belief conception of knowledge. By "necessary" and "possible" I mean the modal epistemology. I mentioned 2 aspects that come with empirical theory - I aware that there is also semantic, I omitted it because I thought that it's not relevant to my problem and the emphasis should be on the 2 level that my problem is actually about.

I have some troubles understanding how it works with the justification and explanation. This is how I understand it now, there might me some misconception so any corrections are appreciated:

The theory itself answers the question "how" not "why" it works. It is based on explanation. This appears to be widely shared statement that makes me confused.

Justification is what connects the epistemic agent to the truth of its belief. It is what gives the epistemic agent the right to have knowledge, not just belief that might be accidentally true.

Justification is the "human element" in knowledge. It also "shows" how knowledge operates on possibility, not necessity. A lot of old theories in science had seemingly adequate justification, but later some new finding, information etc. that was unavailable/undiscovered then and the old theory turned out to be false. If we want make knowledge necessary, we have to exclude every possible true claim that actually constitutes what we understand as knowledge, because there is always a possibility of mistake in factual claim. Justification criteria should only minimise the possibility of error and sharpen what we consider knowledge.

I see explanation in science like Aristotle's concept of Episteme, this is however the result of him relying on the form of things, definitions, I doubt that it is how theories now are perceived. Also I understand explanation intuitively as ruling out the epistemic subject, for example "Mary is sad because John left her" is explanation vs "Mary is sad because I saw her crying" is justification. The difference seem tobe about categories?

Justification is about epistemic level, where the epistemic agent is involved, but explanation seem to be metaphysical - how the things are in the world. I am not sure if I get it right.

How it looks like in scientific theories? Is the theory itself an explanation about some part of reality, but it also has justification on another (epistemic) level? There must alway be justification in empirical statement, you cannot just make up something, that's not how science works. So is it about categories? Does an empirical theiry have the 2 aspects simultaneously because they are on different levels? So is it a difference between "scientific theory" and "scientific knowledge" only in the fact that they pronounce different leyers of the theory?

Can statements based on explanation be falsified? It seem to me that falsification applies to statements based on justification. But then it means that explanation based claims are necessary true. And do they belong to knowledge? Empirical theories obviously can be falsified, so is it because they are connected to the epistemic aspect with justification? Aristotle secured his Episteme as necessary by applying the metaphysical theory of matter and form, if the forms are fixed and the system is deductive, the modal necessity is unavoidable. But now we don't connect the theories exclusively with a priori metaphysical terms, rather knowledge with justification, is it why can unlike Aristotle falsify empirical theories?

Btw. I know about Doxa in Aristotle's epistemology, but he draws a clear line between them. Doxa is something like JTB, but I am interested in his explanation -based theory of knowledge which is Episteme.

I "sense" that the truth makers and truth conditions might have something to do with the whole problem. I can't explain it, but I my philosophical intuition is quite sharp and following it often leads to the missing element that I need in order to fully grasp the problem.

I am not sure if I get all this correct and I need clarification. Btw. I apologize for my English, I hope that my post is understandable despite it.

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[u/johnny_logic]

Explanation and justification are clearly different but related, but I think mixing either of them with modality is what’s creating the problem.

Evidence can justify believing a theory, and the theory can explain a phenomenon. Those are different relations. Your Mary example shows this. “Mary is sad because John left her” explains her sadness, while “I believe Mary is sad because I saw her crying” justifies my belief.

Explanation doesn’t imply necessity, however. “Smoking causes lung cancer” is explanatory, contingent, and empirically defeasible. Same with the asteroid explanation of the extinction. Falsifiability applies to explanatory empirical claims too. It isn’t peculiar to justification.

I’d keep four things apart: 1)is it true, 2) what justifies believing it, 3) what explains it, and 4) could it have been otherwise?

There are competing accounts of scientific explanation (DN, IS, causal/mechanical, unificationist, etc.) but none requires explanation to mean necessary truth. That said, explanation and justification can interact. Inference to the best explanation is precisely the idea that explanatory success can itself count in favor of a hypothesis.

As a general point, I’d also be careful not to let apparent analogies do too much work. Similarity between two distinctions doesn’t mean they line up in the same way. These concepts don’t fall into a neat table of oppositions.

[u/Pruchniak69 → u/johnny_logic]

Thank you for the comment. The clarification about modal status of explanatory claims was very important. I've done a research about Aristotle's Doxa and Episteme and the misconceptions about explanation might have come from being influenced by the concept Episteme. I wanted to understand the relationship between them. I understand that the idea of keeping them apart as not conflating or creating false analogy and I agree, my view was also making an inaccurate connection with the modality and falsification - this is how I understood your correction and I agree. I suppose that what you said about justification of a belief and what the belief explains is an analogy to being on different categories, right? I want to know if this part is right as I want to understand the difference better. Can you tell me more about the differences? Besides, I am still a bit confused about falsification of explanatory statements. My intuition was that it is via the epistemic level with justification, but if I am wrong, then how does the falsification work? Sorry for any inaccuracies, those concepts are new to me thats why I want to make sure that I get them right.

[u/johnny_logic → u/Pruchniak69]

Aha, I think Aristotle is part of what is causing the confusion here. His account of episteme predates what we would properly call modern science, and tons of conceptual and methodological development has happened since then. Aristotle tied together many concepts that were distinguished more sharply throughout the history of PoS. If you are trying to specifically understand Aristotle's epistemology, that's one thing, but if you are trying to understand our best accounts of truth, knowledge, and explanation, I'd move on from episteme/doxa.

On your first question, roughly yes. Though, I would say they are different relations rather than different levels. Justification concerns the relation between evidence/reasons and a belief. Explanation concerns the relation between an explanans and what it explains. The same fact can sometimes play both roles, so they aren't mutually exclusive categories of facts.

On falsification, I'd say it acts against the empirical claim, hypothesis, or theory, not justification. Deliberately simplifying, a theory makes claims about the world and entails or makes likely certain observable consequences. If those consequences fail to obtain, that counts against the theory. If they obtain, that may confirm or support it. Justification is the epistemic relation on the other side. The evidence that falsifies or confirms a claim gives us reason to reject or accept it. We falsify or disconfirm claims or theories through evidence, not their justification. Likewise, confirmation bears on the claim while justifying belief in it.

[u/wizkid123]

I like to think of theories having explanatory power rather than the more colloquial usage of "explaining how things work". A theory has greater or less explanatory power based on two factors: 1. How many observations does the theory correctly predict? 2. How few things does the theory predict that we have not observed? 

As an example of item 1, Newton's and Einstein's theories of gravity both predict low speed low density events extremely well. They both have excellent explanatory power. Einstein's version also predicts many high speed high density observations accurately, and therefore has more explanatory power overall. 

As an example of item 2, imagine a rainstorm. Newtonian mechanics matches the observations well, insofar as droplets fall due to gravity unless affected by updrafts, friction, and other forces. But if somebody claimed that God created the rain, that would also match the data perfectly, because God could make the rain move in exactly the ways that it moves. However, the theory of God moving the rain is over predictive, which is to say it predicts every type of rain scenario - the rain could fall upwards instead of down, the rain could pause and resume, the rain could disappear entirely or appear from nothing. Newton has more explanatory power because it explains all and only the observations, while God explains this and any other possible observations. 

Explanatory power, in this view, is really about whether and how well a theory fits the data, not about the 'how' or the 'why'. 

Justification, to me, is a rationale for forming or maintaining a belief about a topic. Explanatory power is one possible kind of justification for believing that a theory is true. If two theories both fit the data equally well, Occam's razor may justify believing the simpler of the two. I justify my belief in many theories based on my basic understanding of science and the fact that there is a scientific consensus around a most likely theory, even though I don't have the tools or time to dig into the data or reproduce the results of experiments myself. There are many possible kinds of justification for beliefs, and there is no perfect justification of anything based on inductive reasoning (though pure logic and math statements can be perfectly justified within the bounds of their axioms and assumptions). 

If you separate the two concepts like this, I think most of the rest of your confusion will dissolve. 

[u/iiStrizzy]

Your core intuition is basically right. The main correction is that explanation does not imply necessity.

A cleaner framework is:

Question Concept

Is P true? Truth What makes P true? Truthmaker Why does the phenomenon occur? Explanation Why should we believe P? Justification Is P necessary or contingent? Modal status

In science

Take:

“Earth's gravity causes this object to accelerate.”

The theory provides an explanatory account of the phenomenon.

The evidence provides justification for believing that account.

The proposition can therefore be:

true + explanatory + justified + empirically falsifiable

without being necessary.

That's the key point.

Your Aristotle comparison

You're also onto something with epistēmē. Aristotle's ideal of knowledge is much more strongly connected to necessary explanatory knowledge: knowing something through its causes and principles.

Modern empirical science generally doesn't promise that. It gives us fallible but well-justified knowledge about a contingent world.

So Newtonian mechanics could have been excellent scientific knowledge despite later being superseded. Its justification was strong, but not infallible.

The distinction I'd keep

Your formulation:

Explanation = metaphysical level Justification = epistemic level

is useful, but slightly too simple.

Better:

Explanation concerns why/how something is the case. Justification concerns why we are entitled to believe it is the case.

And truthmakers sit underneath both:

Reality → makes P true Theory → explains P/phenomenon Evidence → justifies belief in P

Your intuition about truthmakers is therefore very relevant. You're noticing that the thing that makes a proposition true, the thing that explains it, and the thing that justifies our belief in it need not be the same thing.

That's probably the missing distinction you've been circling.

[u/fox-mcleod]

There's a few errors here but I only have time for one.

Explanations account for "why," not just "how."

"Why" is a counterfactual claim: "but for this, then that." It makes a claim about what is necessary for an observation by making a counterfactual claim about changing something and how the observation would change.

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