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Pragmatic Aspects of Explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Theodore Mischel
Theodore Mischel*
Affiliation:
Colgate University
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Abstract

How can reasons explain actions? What is the force of “because” in “He did this because...” followed by a statement of the agent's intentions? The answer involves some concept of what can count as explanation, and the history of science indicates that the acceptability of explanations depends, in part, on a scientific community which has decided to pursue its inquiries in one direction rather than another. The first part of this paper examines this pragmatic aspect of explanations; the second part draws on this examination in the hope of elucidating the way reasons explain actions. The possibility of eliminating our ordinary, “purposive,” explanations of actions in favor of some “mechanistic,” neuro-physiological, account is then considered.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , March 1966 , pp. 40 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © 1966 by The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

∗∗

The research for this paper was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation through a post-doctoral Faculty Fellowship, 1964-1965. Parts of this paper were read at a Colloquium of the Department of the History of Science and Medicine, Yale University, March 1965.

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