 A final point that is suggested by van Fraassen’s theory is this: In considering pragmatic theories, it matters a great deal exactly where the “pragmatic” elements are claimed to enter into the account of explanation. One point at which such considerations seem clearly to enter is in the selection or characterization of what an audience wants explained. This is reflected in van Fraassen’s theory in the choice of a \(P_k\) and an associated contrast class \(X\). Obviously, whether we are looking for an explanation of why, say, this particular conductor is now bent when it was previously straight or whether instead we want to know why this conductor is bent while some other conductor is straight is a matter that depends on our interests. However, this particular sort of “interest relativity” (and associated phenomena having to do with the role of contrastive focus in the characterization of explananda, which really just serve to specify more exactly which particular explananda we want explained) seems something that can be readily acknowledged by traditional  theories.[14]  After all, it is not a threat to the DN or other models with similar traditional aspirations that one audience may be interested in an explanation of the photoelectric effect but not the deflection of starlight by the sun and another audience may have the opposite interests. What would be a threat to the DN and similar models would be an argument that once some explanandum E is fully specified, whether explanans M explains E (that is, whether there is an explanatory relation between M and E) is itself “interest-relative”. It is natural to interpret van Fraassen as making this latter claim, both in connection with explanatory asymmetries and more generally.