explicans

plural explicantia

1. The underlying meaning of an explicandum.

   The single pattern that came to have wide acceptance was that the explicandum must follow as a logical consequence of the explicans.

   1992, John O’Shaughnessy, “Explanation”, in Explaining Buyer Behavior: Central Concepts and Philosophy of Science Issues, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 14

   2 more examples

   Thus when a function statement gives the explicandum, e.g. alcohol consumption, privileged joking, witchcraft inheritance, as a sufficient condition of the explicans (anxiety reduction, friendly relations, agnatic confidence), a law statement can easily be framed on this basis.

   1963, Robert Brown, Explanation in Social Science (The International Library of Sociology & Social Reconstruction), London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, published 1968, →ISBN, page 122

   The explicans in such an explanation is an event the occurrence of which possessing a certain property, in conjunction with other events with suitable properties, nomically determines the occurrence of the explicandum-event with a certain property.

   1968, Richard Bevan Braithwaite, Scientific Explanation: A Study of the Function of Theory, Probability and Law in Science, Cambridge: At the University Press, page 321