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I am thinking about the differences between explanation and argumentation, and i have come across this example which i just can't seem to understand.

Conversation A (Request for explanation):

Speaker: "It is possible that tomorrow will be a better day"

Hearer: "Why will tomorrow be a better day?"

Speaker: "Because if it wasn't possible for tomorrow to be a better day, then there would be no free will."

Conversation B (Request for argument):

Speaker: "It is possible that tomorrow will be a better day"

Hearer: "Why do you believe that tomorrow will be a better day?"

Speaker: "Because if it wasn't possible for tomorrow to be a better day, then there would be no free will."

The answers in conversation A, do not seem to fit in with the notion of explanation and truth, why is this?

Additionally, in conversation A, if the request was formulated along with the modality that was stated, "Why is it possible that tomorrow will be a better day?", the answers seem to result in the same reasons as conversation B where we question the belief, why does this happen too?

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  • You rightly observed a common but perhaps very subtle situation. It really depends on the belief system and knowledge of both the Speaker and Hearer. Conservatively, the speaker should always try to add "perhaps" or "I think", and the Hearer should try to add "do you think/believe"...
    – Double Knot
    Jun 24, 2022 at 3:04
  • Grammar Nazi says: use "weren't" instead of "wasn't". Subjunctive mood.
    – Barry Carter
    Jun 26, 2022 at 14:14

2 Answers 2

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Afaik explanation is literally Latin for "to stretch out" to "ex = out" and "planare = make plane, spread", so it's just filling in more details. While an argument is more of a construct in logic which tries to reason from a set of premises in support of a conclusion.

This examples both feel pretty weird. In terms of the explanation, why is the hearer even asking a "why"-question? Like the speaker has argued in favor of a probability while the hearer asks for a certainty "why will it" not "why could it".

And the "free will" comes in rather unexpected. Like before that could be a small talk about whether it's going to go better tomorrow and suddenly you're struck with a discussion about free will. In which the speaker takes the absolute stance that it does exist, which is a conclusion of it's own. Not to mention that it makes no sense whatsoever as even if from here on out only bad days would follow you could still either have or don't have free will.

Unless you'd treat "bad day" not as something semi-objective (in the sense that while specifics may vary any person could look at someone's day and say yeah that wasn't great), but as a subjective label, in the sense of "at some point you're probably getting used to it and start calling it a good day again. Which again would work as each day could still get worse.

So there's no connection between the argument and the conclusion that tomorrow could be a better day or at least it's not any clearer than it was before so at least the explanation part failed massively and the argumentation part is also to vague to be useful.

Edit: Also it's rather weird that the absolute statement of "why will it" is given as example for an explanation while the question for an opinion is treated as argument, when it would intuitively be the other way around. You'd react to a statement with an argument while an explanation might very well be an opinion.

I guess using the form of stating the same thing twice is meant to imply that it is about the context, but as said, it's better suited the other way around.

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The difference between an argument and an explanation is qualitative; they are slightly different language games, as follows:

  • An explanation conveys details about settled knowledge, purely for informational purposes
  • An argument attempts to convince someone of novel or disputed knowledge, in the hopes it will become settled knowledge

While the two conversations given are an odd example for the principle, you can see the point in the difference between the phrases "Why will..." and "Why do you believe that...". "Why will..." implies that the hearer considers the speaker to have definitive knowledge of the cause; "Why do you believe that..." implies the hearer is questioning the speaker's knowledge, and that the speaker needs to convince the hearer. That means that the last line of each conversation — despite being the same words in each case, carries a different mood.

If the two conversations were extended they would clearly develop differently. The first would become a pedantic lecture on how free will allows the possibility for change and thus the possibility for improvement, while the second would become a debate about the intrinsic nature of free will. But it's a fine line in any case.

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