Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T21:28:45.715Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Causal Depth, Theoretical Appropriateness, and Individualism in Psychology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Robert A. Wilson
Robert A. Wilson*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy Queen's University, Kingston
*
‡Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, 313 Watson Hall, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, K7L 3N6, Canada.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Individualists claim that wide explanations in psychology are problematic. I argue that wide psychological explanations sometimes have greater explanatory power than individualistic explanations. The aspects of explanatory power I focus on are causal depth and theoretical appropriateness. Reflection on the depth and appropriateness of other wide explanations of behavior, such as evolutionary explanations, clarifies why wide psychological explanations sometimes have more causal depth and theoretical appropriateness than narrow psychological explanations. I also argue for the rejection of eliminative materialism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 61 , Issue 1 , March 1994 , pp. 55 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Versions of this paper were presented at the 1992 meetings of the Pacific Division of the A.P.A. in Portland, Oregon, and the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology in Memphis, Tennessee; I thank Dion Scott-Kakures and Andrew Cling, respectively, for their helpful comments on these occasions, and audiences there for useful reactions. I would also like to thank Sydney Shoemaker, Bob Stalnaker, Ed Stein, and J. D. Trout for discussion of and comments on earlier drafts.

References

Churchland, P. M. (1981), “Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes”, Journal of Philosophy 78: 67–90.Google Scholar
Churchland, P. S. (1986), Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind/Brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cosmides, L. and Tooby, J. (1987), “From Evolution to Behavior: Evolutionary Psychology as the Missing Link”, in Dupré, J. (ed.), The Latest on the Best. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 277–306.Google Scholar
Cummins, R. (1983), The Nature of Psychological Explanation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Dawkins, R. (1982), The Extended Phenotype: The Gene as the Unit of Selection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dawkins, R. (1986), The Blind Watchmaker. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Dawkins, R. (1989), The Selfish Gene. 2d ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dennett, D. (1987), The Intentional Stance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Dretske, F. (1988), Explaining Behavior: Reasons in a World of Causes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Egan, F. (1992), “Individualism, Computation, and Perceptual Content”, Mind 101: 443–459.10.1093/mind/101.403.443CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (1987), Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/5684.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. A. (1991), “A Modal Argument for Narrow Content”, Journal of Philosophy 88: 5–26.10.2307/2027084CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garfinkel, A. (1981), Forms of Explanation: Rethinking the Questions in Social Theory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Horgan, T. and Graham, G. (1991), “In Defense of Southern Fundamentalism”, Philosophical Studies 62: 107–134.10.1007/BF00419048CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, F. and Pettit, P. (1990), “Program Explanation: A General Perspective”, Analysis 50: 107–117.10.1093/analys/50.2.107CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lycan, W. (1981), “Psychological Laws”, Philosophical Topics 12: 9–38.10.5840/philtopics198112141CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lycan, W. (1987), Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lycan, W. (1988), Judgement and Justification. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McGinn, C. (1989), Mental Content. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Miller, R. (1987), Fact and Method: Explanation, Confirmation and Reality in the Natural and the Social Sciences. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Putnam, H. ([1973] 1981), “Reduction and the Nature of Psychology”, reprinted in modified form in J. Haugeland (ed.), Mind Design: Philosophy, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence. (Originally published in Cognition 2: 131–146.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 205–219.10.1016/0010-0277(72)90033-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramsey, W., Stich, S., and Garon, J. (1991), “Connectionism, Eliminativism, and the Future of Folk Psychology”, in Greenwood, J. (ed.), The Future of Folk Psychology: Intentionality and Cognitive Science. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, pp. 93–119.Google Scholar
Segal, G. (1989), “Seeing What is Not There”, Philosophical Review 98: 189–214.10.2307/2185282CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shoemaker, S. (1981), “Some Varieties of Functionalism”, Philosophical Topics 12: 93–119.10.5840/philtopics198112145CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stich, S. (1983), From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, C. (1964), The Explanation of Behaviour. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Wilson, R. A. (1992), “Individualism, Causal Powers, and Explanation”, Philosophical Studies 68: 103–139.10.1007/BF00354473CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, R. A. (1993), “Against A Priori Arguments for Individualism”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 74: 60–79.10.1111/j.1468-0114.1993.tb00351.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar