Nested Explanations

Abstract

Suppose that you are welcomed into a friend’s home only to find, as you enter her living-room, a mutual acquaintance frantically stamping on your friend’s coat. Unless you are a mind reader or have had a particularly strange upbringing, you will probably ask yourself the question ‘why on earth is this person doing this to my friend’s coat?’ Different sorts of facts may serve to answer this question, in a plethora of interrelated ways (see Knobe and Malle 2002). Many will explicitly point to your acquaintance’s psychology (e.g. through marked beliefs), others only implicitly (e.g. through unmarked beliefs), and a few might completely bypass it. Here is a list, by no means exhaustive, of available modes of explanation (some will differ only linguistically, others by appealing to different sorts of factor):

(i) Further specifying ( be it explicitly or implicitly) what kind of action it was: whether or not it was intentional, voluntary, consciously performed, a mere reflex, etc. e.g. ‘she didn’t know what she was doing’, ‘she thought it was a carpet’, , ‘her older brother forced her to do it’, ‘she meant to avoid it but slipped’ (categorial explanation).

(ii) Revealing her motive e.g. ‘she did it out of jealousy’ or out of spite, fear, lust, greed, envy, etc. that renders the action intelligible (motive explanation).

(iii) Re-describing what she did ( thereby pointing to an intention, aim, goal, desire etc.) e.g. ‘she was flattening it’, ‘she was testing the material’, etc. (descriptive explanation).

(iv) Explicitly pointing to an intention, aim, goal etc. e.g. ‘she was seeking attention’, ‘she wanted to dry her new shoes’, and so on (teleological explanation).

(v) Revealing facts about the agent’s past experience (including upbringing) which she may or may not be conscious of e.g. ‘she had a difficult upbringing’, ‘she went to school x’ (where, as it is well known, they don’t teach you manners), ‘when she was a child her favourite coat caught fire’, ‘she was raised by coat-stampers’, etc (biographical explanation).

(vi) Pointing to facts about the agent’s culture (or background beliefs) e.g. ‘where she comes from stepping on a coat is thought to bring good luck’ , ‘it is traditional to step on a person’s coat before they leave on a long journey’, and so on (cultural explanation).

(vii) Offering contextual information about the situation in which the action was performed e.g. ‘the coat was on fire’, ‘it was a bet’, ‘they are rehearsing a play’, ‘everyone had agreed it was a hideous coat’, etc. (situational or contextual explanation)

(viii) Appealing to character traits of the agent e.g. ‘because she is cruel’ or clumsy, insolent, superstitious, weak-willed, etc (trait explanation). (ix) Appealing to the agent’s psychological state e.g. ‘because she was drunk’ or on drugs, under hypnosis, annoyed, worried, nervous etc. (mental-state explanation).

(x) Pointing to facts about the agent’s beliefs and desires e.g. ‘because she believed it was a carpet and wanted to dry her feet’, ‘she believed it would bring good fortune and wanted to wish the owner luck’, ‘she wanted to humiliate the owner and thought this was the most efficient way of doing so’, etc (Humean explanation).

(xi) Providing information relating to the individual agent’s medical condition e.g. ‘she suffers from paltomania’,’she was born with an aggressive disorder’, ‘she forgot to take her Quaaludes’ etc. (medical explanation).

(xii) Pointing to some general fact about human nature, e.g. ‘most of us are born with aggressive tendencies’, ‘and so on (nativist explanation).

(xiii) Pointing to the considerations in the light of which she acted (things the agent believed). These may or may not be good reasons but – at least typically (and, according to Plato, always) – the agent will have taken them to be good reasons for acting (reasons which favoured the action) e.g. ‘because, as she believed, it was a carpet’, ‘your friend asked her to’, ‘the coat was on fire’, and so on (reasoning explanation).