Different why-questions emerge under different contexts and require different information in order to be addressed. Hence a relevance relation can hardly be invariant across contexts. However, what is indeed common under any possible context is that all explananda require scientific information in order to be explained. So no scientific information is in principle explanatorily irrelevant, it only becomes so under certain contexts. In view of this, scientific thought experiments can offer explanations, should we analyze their representational strategies. Their representations involve empirical as well as hypothetical statements. I call this the “representational mingling” which bears scientific information that can explain events. Buchanan’s thought experiment from constitutional economics is examined to show how mingled representations explain.

不同的为什么问题出现在不同的背景下，需要不同的信息才能得到解决。因此，相关关系几乎不可能跨上下文保持不变。然而，在任何可能的情况下确实普遍的是，所有的解释都需要科学信息才能被解释。因此，原则上没有任何科学信息在解释上是不相关的，只有在某些情况下才会如此。有鉴于此，科学思想实验可以提供解释，我们是否应该分析它们的表征策略。他们的陈述涉及经验和假设陈述。我称之为“代表性混合”，它包含可以解释事件的科学信息。考察了布坎南从宪政经济学中的思想实验，以说明混合表征是如何解释的。