1.

In everyday life I am very often satisfied with much less: For example, I see a young man and an older lady sitting together in the tearoom and wonder how they fit together. Someone tells me that this is his grandmother and I say "aha". The word "grandmother" appears as a quasi-explanation. This is what H. von Foerster means when he says: "Explanations are semantically linked descriptions" (1999:222).

There is a rule according to which young men sit in a cafe with older ladies if and only if the older lady is their grandmother or if she is extremely rich and seducible. When I hear that the lady is the grandmother, I know of a sufficient condition under which the phenomenon can occur at all.

Of course, it is by no means the case that a young man has to go to a cafe with his grandmother. If I want to know why the two of them are sitting together in the cafe, I need a real explanation. A possible explanation might be: It's the grandmother's birthday and the young man wants to please her and invites her to a cafe with cake. Then the two of them find a convenient time and go to the cafe. And then I can see them there and wonder how that went.

Then I can describe the operations: An invitation, accepting the invitation, going together. These operations make my phenomenon possible. Of course, the young man may also have met his grandmother in the café by chance. There are many explanations, but "being a grandmother" alone is not an explanation.

2.

The difference between recipe and explanation lies in the formulation. In the instructional recipe I describe what the cook must do, in the explanation I describe what he has done. Both texts are operative in that I can read them as descriptions of emergence operations.

In the explanation, reasons can also be given why which operations lead to which results. Often even final and causal reasons themselves are regarded as explanations. However, these reasons do not belong to the explanation in a strict sense. Explanations are of course often based on causal reasons, but an operational description contains much more, it is based on a choice of a causality.

One can - W. Quine and Aristotle do so - distinguish explanatory directions as causes and reasons. The former are causal (because), the others are final (thus). One can also think about the function of "because" and "thus" in linguistic explanations.

3.

On the phenomenal level, I often make blurred formulations, which are then decided by the explanation. The explanation is always also an interpretation of the phenomenon.

4.

H. Maturana therefore says that explanations are social conditions. "But this shows to you, that it is not enough that the answer should have the proper form. "Must satisfy some other elements in the listening. But this is telling something very interesting. This is telling us that an explanation is an interpersonal relation. Isn't that so?" (1992). No, that is not so.
Explanations are not relations, but descriptions. But of course one can speak of a relationship when one person accepts or rejects the explanation of another person. H. Maturana sagt deshalb, dass Erklärungen soziale Verhältnisse seien. "But this shows to you, that it is not enough that the answer should have the proper form. Must satisfy some other elements in the listening. Hm, but this is telling something very interesting. This is telling us that an explanation is an interpersonal relation. Isn't that so?" (). Nein, das ist nicht so. Erklärungen sind keine Verhältnisse, sondern Beschreibungen. Aber natürlich kann man von einem Verhältnis sprechen, wenn ein Mensch die Erklärung eines andern Menschen akzeptiert oder zurückweist.