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Reasons as Non-Causal, Context-Placing Explanations

Tanney, Julia (2008) Reasons as Non-Causal, Context-Placing Explanations. In: Sandis, Constantine, ed. New Essays on the Explanation of Action. Palgrave MacMillan, London. ISBN 978-0-230-52202-2. (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:10605)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.

Abstract

Philosophers influenced by Wittgenstein rejected the idea that the explanatory power of our ordinary interpretive practices is to be found in law-governed, causal relations between items to which our everyday mental terms allegedly refer. Wittgenstein and those he inspired pointed to differences between the explanations provided by the ordinary employment of mental expressions and the style of causal explanation characteristic of the hard sciences. I believe, however, that the particular non-causalism espoused by the Wittgensteinians is today ill- understood. The position does not, for example, find its place on a map that charts the territory disputed by mental realists and their irrealist opponents. In this paper, I take a few steps toward reintroducing this ill-understood position by sketching my own understanding of it and explaining why it fits so uncomfortably within the contemporary metaphysical landscape.

Item Type: Book section
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of Culture and Languages
Depositing User: Julia Tanney
Date Deposited: 15 Apr 2009 13:54 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 09:49 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/10605 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Tanney, Julia.

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