Explanatory Aptness and Inquiry
I develop the inquiry-stage account of explanatory aptness and use it to explain why some distinctions must be preserved in an explanation while others may be abstracted away.
Research
Some true explanations are worse explanations. Consider a pigeon that has been conditioned to peck when presented with red stimuli and, separately, when offered food. On a particular occasion, it is presented with a scarlet stimulus and pecks. Why did it peck? We might explain its pecking by citing the scarlet stimulus, the red stimulus, or the fact that it was presented with either something red or food. Intuitively, the first answer seems too specific, the third too abstract, and the second somehow just right. This is the Goldilocks problem: what makes one answer explanatorily apt while nearby alternatives are less apt?
My approach locates explanatory aptness in the structure of inquiry. I argue that which differences matter to a why-question depends on what must be settled next for the inquiry to proceed. As an inquiry advances, those demands can change, and with them which explanations are apt.
Papers in Progress
The Explanatory Goldilocks Problem
I argue that prominent interventionist and cohesion-based solutions to the Goldilocks problem presuppose choices about explanatory representation that they do not themselves explain, and that the problem extends beyond causal explanation.
Explanatory Aptness and the Autonomy of the Special Sciences
I argue that solving the Goldilocks problem does not by itself explain the autonomy of the special sciences, since Goldilocks aptness can be sensitive to lower-level realization while autonomous explanation can derive its value from insensitivity to such variation.