Abstract
The exploration of causes and causal explanation owes much to the traditions of pragmatics and neo-Wittgensteinian philosophy. The exponents of the two schools of thought (William Dray, G. H. von Wright, G. E. M. Anscombe, R. S. Peters, Peter Winch, A. I. Melden, Charles Taylor) separate different language games, with their own use of language, activities, concept formation and paradigms. One language game relates to natural science, with its observation of natural events and regularities, its identification of causes and its formulation of laws without exceptions. Another relates to social science, which accounts for human actions, together with the reasons and goals connected to them, and the rules and norms to which they refer.1
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Notes
Turner citing Davidson, ibid. D. Davidson, ‘Actions, Reasons and Causes’, Journal of Philosophy, 60 (1963), 697.
S. P. Turner, ‘Practice Then and Now’, Human Affairs, 17 (2007), 113.
Some of the most ardent proponents of an individual, ‘interpretative’ approach, such as Mark Bevir, ‘Concept Formation in Political Science’, Perspectives on Politics, 6 (2008), 507
See references to Anthony Giddens in Chapter 6. See also B. McCullagh, ‘Causal Theories of Action’, Philosophical Studies, 27 (1975), 201–9.
G. E. M. Anscombe, ‘Causality and Extensionality’, journal of Philosophy, 66 (1969), 155
For an interesting discussion of the relationship, see L. O. Mink, ‘Philosophical Analysis and Historical Understanding’, Review of Metaphysics, 21 (1968), 667–98
McCullagh, Truth of History, 172–208. Also, D. Lewis, ‘Causation as Influence’, Journal of Philosophy, 97 (2000), 188
M. Mandelbaum, ‘Causal Analysis in History’, journal of the History of Ideas, 3 (1942), 42.
On the widespread use of comparison, often unacknowledged, see M. Mandelbaum, ‘Some Forms and Uses of Comparative History’, American Studies International, 18 (1980), 19–34.
A. Giddens, The Constitution of Society (Cambridge, 1984), 162–354. A. Reckwitz, ‘Toward a Theory of Social Practices: A Development of Culturalist Theorizing’, European Journal of Social Theory, 5 (2002), 243–63.
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© 2014 Mark Hewitson
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Hewitson, M. (2014). Explanation and Understanding. In: History and Causality. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137372406_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137372406_6
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