Explanation

An explanation is an account of how or why something is so. Following Popper’s Critical Rationalism, CF treats explanatory content as what makes ideas valuable. A bare list of predictions that matches the data cannot be refuted by data alone — but it can still be criticized as an arbitrary claim lacking any explanation or general principle, and that criticism can refute it. Because infinitely many contradictory prediction-lists fit any finite data, and each is “justified” by the data exactly as much as a good idea is, evidence alone cannot pick the good idea out. Only explanatory content distinguishes it.

CF’s distinctive move is to define criticism itself in explanatory terms. A criticism is not a demand for proof and not a low score; it is an explanation of why an idea fails to solve a problem (or class of problems). Saying “prove it” or invoking a burden of proof is therefore not a criticism at all. This grounds CF’s preference for decisive criticism: an explanation of a specific defect can refute an idea outright, whereas tallying merits never establishes success.

When an idea is refuted, the response is explanatory error correction — replacing the flawed solution with a variant that lacks the explained error, rather than nudging a numeric weight. CF opposes this to weighted-factor scoring (and, more broadly, credences), which adjust quantities without explaining anything. Explanation also underwrites generality: an explanatory criticism can reach where data cannot — an arbitrary prediction-list survives every data test yet is refuted the moment it is shown to lack any explanation. And explanations are general-purpose, spanning argument, aesthetics, and emotion, not just science.