Are Reason-Explanations Explanations by Means of Structuring Causes?

Abstract

i. Dretske's book is lucid account of the general features of the explanation of the behavior of any beings capable of behaving (including plants and some artifacts). I seem to agree (and have agreed in my earlier works) with most things that Dretske says. I shall below concentrate on the issue of explaining processes. My views seem to differ somewhat from Dretske's on this issue, and hence the topic is worth taking up in this note. Behavior is process for Dretske. Thus rat's moving its paw, when understood as the rat's behavior, is to be taken as the paw movement's being produced by some (appropriate) internal cause (Dretske, i988, p. 15). Let us call the internal cause C and the produced movement M. Now behavior is to be identified with a process C's causing that begins with C and ends with M (p. I7). I would myself say that here the process is the sequence of events C and M, such that C causes M. Thus the process can be taken to consist of the singular events C and and the causal relation holding between them. It seems that Dretske would agree with this view and I shall below assume that he does (cf. his criticism on p. 3 5 of the view that the process here consists only of which has the property of being caused by C).' Let us then agree that behavior is causal process