MindPapers: 7.4b. Psychological Explanation

Amundson, Ron & Smith, Laurence D. (1984). Clark Hull, Robert Cummins, and functional analysis. Philosophy of Science 51 (December):657-666. (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)

Bechtel, William & Wright, Cory (forthcoming). What is psychological explanation? In P. Calvo & J. Symons (eds.), Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Psychology. New York: Routledge. (Google | Edit)

Block, Ned (1971). Are mechanistic and teleological explanations of behaviour incompatible? Philosophical Quarterly 21 (April):109-117. (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)

Brown, Robert (1965). The explanation of behaviour. Philosophy 40 (October):344-348. (Google | Edit)

Cummins, Robert E. (1983). Analysis and subsumption in the behaviorism of Hull. Philosophy of Science 50 (March):96-111. (Google | More links | Edit)

Cummins, Robert E. (2000). "How does it work" versus "what are the laws?": Two conceptions of psychological explanation. In F. Keil & Robert A. Wilson (eds.), Explanation and Cognition, 117-145. MIT Press. (Cited by 19 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: In the beginning, there was the DN (Deductive Nomological) model of explanation, articulated by Hempel and Oppenheim (1948). According to DN, scientific explanation is subsumption under natural law. Individual events are explained by deducing them from laws together with initial conditions (or boundary conditions), and laws are explained by deriving them from other more fundamental laws, as, for example, the simple pendulum law is derived from Newton's laws of motion

Cummins, Robert E. (1982). The internal manual model of psychological explanation. Cognition and Brain Theory 5:257-68. (Google | Edit)

Cummins, Robert E. (1983). The Nature of Psychological Explanation. MIT Press. (Cited by 216 | Google | Annotation | Edit)

Ehring, Douglas E. (1985). Dispositions and functions: Cummins on functional analysis. Erkenntnis 23 (November):243-249. (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)

Finn, D. R. (1968). Categories of psychological explanation. Mind 77 (October):550-555. (Google | More links | Edit)

Fodor, Jerry A. (1968). Psychological Explanation: An Introduction To The Philosophy Of Psychology. Ny: Random House. (Cited by 198 | Google | Edit)

Fodor, Jerry A. (1968). The appeal to tacit knowledge in psychological explanation. Journal of Philosophy 65 (October):627-40. (Cited by 46 | Google | More links | Edit)

Glossop, Ronald J. (1970). Explaining human behavior. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 30 (March):444-449. (Google | More links | Edit)

Gregory, Richard L. (1981). Mind In Science: A History Of Explanations In Psychology And Physics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Cited by 63 | Google | Edit)

Gustafson, Donald F. (1964). Explanation in psychology. Mind 73 (April):280-281. (Google | More links | Edit)

Hedman, Carl G. (1970). Gustafson on explanation in psychology. Mind 79 (April):272-274. (Google | More links | Edit)

Heil, John (1986). Formalism and psychological explanation. Journal of Mind and Behavior 7:1-10. (Google | Annotation | Edit)

Jackson, Julian M. (1995). Why mental explanations are physical explanations. South African Journal of Philosophy 14 (3):109-123. (Google | Edit)

Kim, Jaegwon (1989). Mechanism, purpose, and explanatory exclusion. Philosophical Perspectives 3:77-108. (Cited by 84 | Google | More links | Annotation | Edit)

Knight, D. (1997). A poetics of psychological explanation. Metaphilosophy 28 (1-2):63-80. (Google | More links | Edit)

Macklin, Ruth (1969). Explanation and action: Recent issues and controversies. Synthese 20 (October):388-415. (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)

Malcolm, Norman (1967). Explaining behavior. Philosophical Review 76 (January):97-104. (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)

Margolis, Joseph (1980). The trouble with homunculus theories. Philosophy of Science 47 (June):244-259. (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)

McCauley, Robert N. (1987). The role of cognitive explanations in psychology. Behaviorism 15:27-40. (Google | Edit)

McClamrock, Ron (1993). Functional analysis and etiology. Erkenntnis 38 (2):249-260. (Cited by 3 | Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: Cummins (1982) argues that etiological considerations are not onlyinsufficient butirrelevant for the determination offunction. I argue that his claim of irrelevance rests on a misrepresentation of the use of functions in evolutionary explanations. I go on to suggest how accepting anetiological constraint on functional analysis might help resolve some problems involving the use of functional explanations

Millikan, Ruth G. (1993). Explanation. In Biopsychology in Mental Causation. Clarendon Press. (Google | Edit)

Millikan, Ruth G. (1993). Explanation in biopsychology. In John Heil & Alfred R. Mele (eds.), Mental Causation. Oxford University Press. (Cited by 13 | Google | Edit)

Morris, M. (1986). Causes of behavior. Philosophical Quarterly 36 (April):123-44. (Google | Edit)

Moser, Paul K. (1994). Naturalism and psychological explanation. Philosophical Psychology 7 (1):63-84. (Google | Edit)

Owens, Joseph (1998). Psychological explanation and causal deviancy. Synthese 115 (2):143-169. (Google | More links | Edit)

Peacocke, Christopher (1979). Holistic explanation: An outline of a theory. In Rational Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Google | Edit)

Ringen, Jon D. (1976). Explanation, teleology, and operant behaviorism. Philosophy of Science 43 (June):223-253. (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)

Rock, Irvin (1991). On explanation in psychology. In Ernest LePore & Robert Van Gulick (eds.), John Searle and His Critics. Cambridge: Blackwell. (Google | Edit)

Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey (1989). Functional explanations and reasons as causes. Philosophical Perspectives 3:137-164. (Google | More links | Edit)

Abstract: If we assume that a conceptual connection does hold between reasons and action, the arguments for both theses are strikingly simple. In defense of the first thesis, all that need be added is Hume's Principle: between cause and effect only a (logically) contingent relation holds. For given Hume's Principle, and the conceptual connection (which after all is not a contingent one), it follows that no causal connection holds. In defense of the second thesis, all that need be added is one assumption and one observation. The assumption is that the covering-law model of explanation is adequate to the natural sciences; the observation is that if a conceptual connection does hold, then covering-laws are not required to explain a person's action given the presence of the relevant beliefs and desires (because the presence of the latter entail the performance of the former). Together the assumption and the observation undermine the view that one model of explanation will fit both natural science and human psychology

Schechtman, Marya (1996). The story of the mind: Psychological and biological explanations of human behavior. Zygon 31 (4):597-614. (Cited by 2 | Google | Edit)

Searle, John R. (online). Explaining cognition. (Google | Edit)

Sober, Elliott (1978). Psychologism. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 8 (July):165-91. (Cited by 15 | Google | Edit)

Taylor, C. (1964). The Explanation Of Behaviour. Humanities Press. (Cited by 160 | Google | Edit)

Treisman, Michel (1962). Psychological explanation: The 'private data' hypothesis. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 13 (August):130-143. (Google | More links | Edit)

Valentine, Elizabeth (1988). Teleological explanations and their relation to causal explanation in psychology. Philosophical Psychology 1:61-68. (Google | Edit)

Ward, Andrew (1993). Question-begging psychological explanations. Southwest Philosophical Studies 15:82-94. (Google | Edit)

Weil, Vivian M. (1980). Intentional and mechanistic explanation. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 40 (June):459-473. (Google | More links | Edit)

Weisberg, Josh (2003). Being all that we can be: A critical review of Thomas Metzinger's Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity. Journal of Consciousness Studies 10 (11):89-96. (Google | Edit)

Abstract: Some theorists approach the Gordian knot of consciousness by proclaiming its inherent tangle and mystery. Others draw out the sword of reduction and cut the knot to pieces. Philosopher Thomas Metzinger, in his important new book, Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity,1 instead attempts to disentangle the knot one careful strand at a time. The result is an extensive and complex work containing almost 700 pages of philosophical analysis, phenomenological reflection, and scientific data. The text offers a sweeping and comprehensive tour through the entire landscape of consciousness studies, and it lays out Metzinger's rich and stimulating theory of the subjective mind. Metzinger's skilled integration of philosophy and neuroscience provides a valuable framework for interdisciplinary research on consciousness. Metzinger's overall goal in Being No One is to defend a representational theory of subjectivity, one that reduces subjective mental processes to representational mental processes. Subjective experiences take place whe n there is a conscious perspective, an active first-person point of view. It occurs in

Wright, L. (1973). Rival explanations. Mind 82 (October):497-514. (Google | More links | Edit)

7.4b	Psychological Explanation [44]

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