Abstract
This paper makes a phenomenological contribution to the distinction between personal and subpersonal types of explanation. I expound the little-known fact that Husserl gives an account of personal level explanation via his exposition of our capacity to express the understanding of another’s motivational nexus when we are in the personalistic attitude. I show that Husserl’s unique exposition of the motivational nexus conveys its concrete, internally coherent, and intentional nature, involving relationships amongst the sense contents of acts of consciousness. Moreover, the motivational nexus is a generative space of possibility and choice. I show that, for these reasons, motivational explanation is not causal, nor deductive nomological, nor does it (or should it) reduce to subpersonal explanation. I finish with the comment that the uniqueness of personal level explanation points towards the possibility that the human sciences (including psychology) ought also employ types of explanations not found in natural sciences.
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Notes
This paper does not discuss that some authors think that the border between phenomenology and cognitive science is roughly homologous with the personal/subpersonal distinction (Cappuccio and Wheeler 2010: 131; Gallagher 1997: 196; Reynolds 2015: 334, 335); I won’t be looking at the relation between the personal level and phenomenological science. For an interesting recent discussion of the way the personal/subpersonal distinction has played out in debates between phenomenologists and their interlocutors see Musholt (2018).
As we shall see, however, this lawfulness is not the source of motivational explanation’s efficacy.
Although this particular comment is made by Husserl about practices in the human sciences, I think it is safe to generalise and say that it covers the individual’s explanatory practices in the personal attitude.
Even scientific anti-realists would distinguish between the postulates of science and that which is purely imagined or merely meant.
One might think, given the account of empathy I outlined in “Husserl on the Personal Level of Explanation” section, that it might be more important to discuss whether Husserl is some type of simulationist. I do not have space here to assess the question of how to understand the difference between theory-theory and simulation theory in relation to Husserl, and my point here is that it is the nomological nature of the motivational nexus which drives the present discussion. I have discussed the relation between Husserl and simulation elsewhere (see Williams 2019).
Though not all universally quantified propositions are laws of nature. We need not discuss the ‘X-factor’ that distinguishes laws of nature from merely universal statements as it would take us further afield than required [see Psillos (2002) for an extended discussion]. As we’ll see, motivational laws don’t even meet the necessary but insufficient criterion of universality.
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Williams, H. Husserl on Personal Level Explanation. Hum Stud 43, 1–22 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-020-09537-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-020-09537-4