Levels of Explanation and the Individuation of Events: a difficulty for the token identity theory

TY - JOUR

T1 - Levels of Explanation and the Individuation of Events: a difficulty for the token identity theory

AU - Brewer, Bill

PY - 1998

Y1 - 1998

N2 - The paper argues that the nature of commonsense psychological explanation as a special kind of causal explanation in which events are made intelligible as being "reasonable from the subject's point of view" undermines the orthodox attempt to reconcile the causal efficacy of the mind with the existence of physical explanations of all of a person's physical movements. Given their radically different guiding principles, it is implausible to expect both the physical and the psychological explanatory schemes to identify the very same explanatory units and interconnected webs of causal explanatory events. I propose and develop an analogue of Wiggins' conceptualist realism for the events which are brought to light by each of these explanatory projects; and I explain why this is perfectly compatible with the existence of physical explanations of all physical events.

AB - The paper argues that the nature of commonsense psychological explanation as a special kind of causal explanation in which events are made intelligible as being "reasonable from the subject's point of view" undermines the orthodox attempt to reconcile the causal efficacy of the mind with the existence of physical explanations of all of a person's physical movements. Given their radically different guiding principles, it is implausible to expect both the physical and the psychological explanatory schemes to identify the very same explanatory units and interconnected webs of causal explanatory events. I propose and develop an analogue of Wiggins' conceptualist realism for the events which are brought to light by each of these explanatory projects; and I explain why this is perfectly compatible with the existence of physical explanations of all physical events.

M3 - Article

SN - 0353-5150

VL - 13

SP - 7

EP - 24

JO - Acta Analytica

JF - Acta Analytica

IS - 20

ER -