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SCENE XIV. Ontology Drives Explanation

1 KATHERINE. Anything else?

2 CHRISTIANUS. Yes. It is important to use a correct ontology; that is, a correct view of what actually exists, whether it is in our ordinary human material world, or in some supra-material, supra-human world.

3 KATHERINE. Why is it important?

4 CHRISTIANUS. For ontology drives explanation.

5 KATHERINE. Can you lay it out for me?

6 CHRISTIANUS. Well, when ordinary people explain things they commonly use those things that they believe exist. For example, when you explain to someone why you won an important legal case last week, you populate your scenario with entities that you believe existed at the point of the trial; and with those entities you build an explanation to show how you ended up winning.

7 KATHERINE. Sure. So I may have populated my scenario with a judge, the opposing counsellor, myself, the jury, some guards, some secretary, etc.?

8 CHRISTIANUS. Exactly. And then you describe those characters — including their psychology, their actions, their relations, their motives, their background, etc. — in such a way as to arrive at the main effect that you wanted to explain, namely that you finally won the case.

9 KATHERINE. Are you saying that this is one way to provide an explanation, and that there are alternative ways, and perhaps even better ways, to do it?

10 CHRISTIANUS. No, that’s not what I am saying. At least not right now. I am simply saying that this is what ordinary people do all the time: based on what they want to explain, and how they want to explain it, they populate their little scenarios in different ways.

11 KATHERINE. Why is that?

12 CHRISTIANUS. Because they know that they can adjust the explanation to suit their needs by setting up the ontology in different ways.

13 KATHERINE. But would they always admit that they know that, and do that?

14 CHRISTIANUS. Not always.

15 KATHERINE. Can you elaborate?

16 CHRISTIANUS. Well, one important aspect of scenario-construction is that we normally don’t populate our scenarios with entities that we think do not exist, at least not when we want to provide an explanation of events that we believe really happened. So if we, for some reason, think that there aren’t any green-coloured cats, then we will not put any green-coloured cats into any of our explanatory scenarios that are geared towards explaining ‘reality’ as it is, or ‘reality’ as it was.

17 KATHERINE. But we can still talk about green-coloured cats, can’t we?

18 CHRISTIANUS. Sure! We may put green-coloured cats into other scenarios, for other purposes than trying to describe ‘real facts’ or ‘real events’: we may, for instance, use them as part of a joke scenario, or use them in a bedtime story scenario; or we may put them in some scenario in order to try to disprove their existence.

19 KATHERINE. Fair enough. But what’s your point, more exactly?

20 CHRISTIANUS. I actually have two points. My first point is this. If you populate your scenario with the wrong entities, it may be very hard to provide a believable explanation. So in our previous example, if you do not populate your scenario with, say, a judge, it becomes very difficult to explain how you really could have won, in a legally binding way.

21 KATHERINE. But why would I not populate my scenario with a judge? Many witnesses can testify that the judge really was in the room, and that it was ‘business as usual’?

22 CHRISTIANUS. Yes, the judge is very hard to extricate from your scenario. But this is not only because there were so many witnesses, but also because it would be very hard for this particular explanation to make sense without him. For if you do not include him, it will be hard to explain how this alleged courtroom event could have occurred in a way as to have been legally won by anyone.

23 KATHERINE. So?

24 CHRISTIANUS. All explanation scenarios are not as simple as the public courtroom case. There are more difficult scenarios.

25 KATHERINE. Yes. Take for instance some unsolved murder mystery without witnesses, where there is nothing but a dead corpse lying around: no blood, no obvious weapon, no obvious break-in, no obvious things stolen, no obvious motive, etc. Who was there? What happened? What was the motive?

26 CHRISTIANUS. Sure. But also other scenarios may be difficult. Take those, for example, where there are some witnesses but where different people still do not agree about how to populate the explanatory scenarios.

27 KATHERINE. So the problem is then that one has many scenarios to deal with, and that it is difficult to populate them in such a way as to be able to explain the effects or phenomena in different, plausible ways?

28 CHRISTIANUS. Sure, that’s part of the problem. But plausibility is not the only measure. And the fact that one can explain something in a ‘plausible’ scenario does not prove that it is the right explanation.

29 KATHERINE. I am well aware of that. So what is your point?

30 CHRISTIANUS. My second point is this: in order to have a chance to really solve the murder case, at least one of your explanatory scenarios must be populated with the real murderer. If you fail to populate at least one of your scenarios with the real murderer, you will never be able to really solve the case, no matter how many alternate scenarios you have produced.

31 KATHERINE. But it’s all right, of course, to use some alternate scenarios in which the real murderer does not have a role? For then I may sound more objective and better prepared, and be able to produce a more convincing courtroom performance.

32 CHRISTIANUS. Yes, that’s a good strategy. So you may populate some scenarios in such a way that the real murderer is not in them. But your ‘select’ scenario as a prosecutor — at least if you want real justice, and are unconcerned with issues such as your personal safety or future career opportunities — must be a scenario that you have populated with the real murderer.

33 KATHERINE. Yes, that sounds just about right. But so what?

34 CHRISTIANUS. Isn’t that enough? Any scenario that doesn’t include the real murderer is a wrong scenario, no matter how many other details you may get right. So any explanation of that dead body that doesn’t include the real murderer is a wrong explanation. In other words, an incomplete ontology, or an incomplete population of your scenario, guarantees a wrong explanation.

35 KATHERINE. All right. That is an excellent point! Perhaps I am just a little tired. We have covered so many arguments; and I have had a long day.

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Notes (SCENE XIV)

[This scene has no notes in this version of the play.]

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HOW TO CITE: Bo C. Klintberg (2008), ‘Ontology Drives Explanation’ in Katherine’s Questionable Quest for Love and Happiness. Online edition of Philosophical Plays, 1 Jan. 2008. Retrieved [today’s date] from http://philosophicalplays.googlepages.com/pgKQQv1sc14.htm.

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