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Explanation, Understanding and Typical Action
Author(s) -
Manicas Peter
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
journal for the theory of social behaviour
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.615
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1468-5914
pISSN - 0021-8308
DOI - 10.1111/1468-5914.00034
Subject(s) - situated , action (physics) , epistemology , object (grammar) , generative grammar , grasp , cognitive science , psychology , natural (archaeology) , affordance , sociology , cognitive psychology , computer science , philosophy , artificial intelligence , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics , history , programming language
There are immense differences in the social sciences both as regards what is to be explained and how it is to be explained. I make an initial distinction between the understanding, construed roughly as acquiring a grasp of the generative mechanisms and structures at work in the world, natural and social, and explanation, which I construe as causal. I clarify several candidates for the objects of explanation and reject the idea that the “explanation of behavior”—if that means the acts of concrete situated persons—is ever the proper object of explanation. Critical to my account is the idea of a typical actor, created for purposes of explanation. I conclude by applying this analysis to the explanation of crime.