Meta-Explanatory Questions

This chapter deals with meta-explanatory questions concerning the many dispositional explanations attempted so far. Ultimately, what is it about Dispositional Reality that makes it suitable to be an explanans? By drawing (with appropriate distinctions) on the recent debate on meta-grounding, I favour a brutely connectivist stance which functions by adding primitive meta-explanatory links as postulational posits concerning the introduction of a metaphysically informed notion of dispositionality into the theory. There’s no reductive definition or constitutive explanation that will clarify, in simpler terms, what is it for something to be so-and-so disposed, and why that would make for a good explanation for, say, laws of nature. While this makes dispositionality a primitive of the theory, I will argue that the account is non-trivial. Finally, I argue against essence-based (meta-)explanations, which are somewhat popular in the literature.