Abstract

This paper suggests that our everyday explanation talk exhibits a number of important dimensions of variation, then proposes a functionalist account of explanation to help accommodate them. The functional role of explanations is given in terms of answering why-questions, which in turn is spelled out in terms of the provision of information about non-inferential consequence. Realizers of the explanation role can be found by considering various consequence relations, including (for example) relations of causal and nomic consequence.