Scientific psychology and hermeneutical psychology: Causal explanation and the meaning of human action

Abstract

About 20 years ago it was fashionable to recognise that explanations of hu? man action in terms of agent's reasons, purposes, values etc. were of a dif? ferent logical order from causal explanations. Nowadays the fashion seems to be to recognise that they are bona fide examples of causal explanation. The debate about 'reasons and causes' has been around for centuries, at least since Kant and probably since Aristotle, although it has perhaps generated more confusion than illumination. It has alternatively been dis? missed as a purely verbal dispute, or treated as the most fundamental ques? tion of the philosophy of the human sciences. The present contribution to this debate is offered because most of the discussions of this question (at least since Kant) are vitiated by the presup? position of an inadequate philosophy of science. It is also offered because the question is not of mere philosophical interest: it has rather profound implications for the practise of social psychological sciences. Indeed the confusions of this debate have had a very definite and detrimental impact upon the practise of scientific social psychology. The issue is of course too large to encompass in the scope of a single ar? ticle. In the present article I hope to show that none of the arguments which purport to demonstrate that explanations of human action are non-causal in fact establish this, although they do illustrate important truths about the subject matter of psychological and social sciences. In a future article (Greenwood, 1986) I hope to explicate the sense(s) in which explanations of human action are causal. In these articles the primary concern is with a putative science of social psychology, insofar as this may be held to be closely co-ordinated with a science of human action: the implications apply