Abstract

In this dissertation an attempt is made to find a satisfactory account of the nature of commonsense psychological explanation of behavior. The starting point is the current debate in philosophy of mind between the theory theory of folk psychology and the simulation theory. The discussion in the first chapter shows that although simulationists claim that their view can replace the theory theory across the board, their arguments are directed merely at the strand of the theory theory that is to do with the nature of the cognitive mechanism underlying our explanation-giving. ;In the second chapter the theory theory of the nature of commonsense psychological explanation is examined. The suggestion that the underlying motivation of theory theorists is that their view allows folk explanations to fit the covering law model is discussed and a proposal is made for the source of the type of law that is often put forward to play the role of commonsense psychological covering laws, i.e. ceteris paribus laws with completions in the vocabulary of some lower-level science. The viability of such a suggestion is weighed as is the suggestion that such laws are probabilisitic laws of one type or another. ;The third chapter lays out two well-known versions of the simulation theory of the cognitive mechanism that underlies our explanation-giving as well as the theoretical committments of each view. An attempt is then made to extend the simulation theory in order to provide it with a plausible formulation of simulation-based conditions for correct commonsense psychological explanation, a suggestion which is ultimately rejected. ;The fourth chapter summarizes the far-reaching implications of the arguments used in the rejection of the above two views and attempts to find an account of the nature of explanation that is satisfactory in that it draws the lines with respect to what qualifies as a correct commonsense psychological explanation where our pretheoretic intuitions tell us they should be and provides an answer to the questions that our preceding discussion has raised. A view that fills these two requirements is the view that says that a correct commonsense psychological explanation is one that cites the properties of states or events which, besides being causally and counterfactually relevant to the occurrence of the explanandum event, also satisfy certain conditions of pragmatic relevance, that is, reference to them provides true answers to commonsense 'why'-questions.