Explanation vs Understanding

• ZM is very similar to Collingwood’s method (see historicism), but lacks the subjective element, the re-experiencing of the original situation.
• In the history of ideas, two traditions can be identified: Aristotelian, which is teleological/finalistic explanation, and Galilean, which is casual-mechanistic explanation.
• The contrast between the two traditions is usually characterized as causal (casual explanation) versus teleological (finalists explanation), with the first type being mechanistic and the second finalists.
• Teleology is the study of the apparent ends or purposes of things.
• Human science (sociology, history, psychology, pedagogy) in the course of 19th century began independent/autonomous of philosophy, leading to two kinds of questions: what is their relation with the natural science and what is their specific status.
• Positivism, according to which all knowledge has to be rooted in positive data, namely, experiential facts, is a philosophy that opposes historicism/hermeneutics.
• Historicism-hermeneutics arose in the German-speaking environment as a reaction to positivism, supporting a methodological pluralism (dualism) and recognizing that human sciences are interested in very different objects, requiring the development of different kinds of methods.
• Historicism and hermeneutics both agree that different epistemological tools are needed to address the issues of human beings.
• Anti-positivist philosophy, represented by authors such as Droysen, Dilthey, Simmel, Weber, rejects the methodological monism of positivism and considers natural sciences not as the supreme ideal of understanding the world.
• Different disciplines have different aims, with many emphasizing a contrast between those sciences which aim at generalization about reproducible and predictable phenomena (chemistry, physiology), and those which, like history, want to grasp the individual and unique features of their object.
• The rationality principle or zero method or situational logic
• Agent x is not prevented from realizing q.
• His point is that the use of universal laws is trivial:
• D-N Human sciences: Empirical universal law.
• For Popper, the psychological process of re-experiencing is NOT essential.
• I go to Alex and explain my plan.
• Factual conclusion: Agent x brings about q.
• In the premises we have the cause and in the conclusion the effect (the causes is the law of gravity and the effect is that the paper will fall) -> the law of gravity is the outcome of field of forces (natural state).
• Analytic principle: doesn’t mean to be proven, true by devotion
• Using zero method, we as historian, we should reconstruct the situation in which the agents mattered.
• Cause-effect: (natural state-natural state)
• There are not obstacles because Alex has money.
• In this way, the rationality (zero character) of her actions can be explained.
• Popper was against dualist and he wanted to propose something that was fitting to history but that wasn’t strictly tight to irrationalism and subjectivism.
• Means-end: (mental state-natural state)
• P-I Natural sciences: Analytic principle.
• The explanation of actions entails the conjectural reconstruction of the situation and its background
• We are interested as historian about the specificity.
• As in the car of natural sciences, here we use conjectures and refutations in order to reconstruct the social situation in which the agents mattered
• The unity of the method is guaranteed by the use of the method of conjectures and refutations.
• We shouldn’t empathize.
• We think a plan (eating pizza) we start with a mental state and then if things will go in the right direction the conclusion will be factual (natural state).
• Karl popper declare himself as monist -
• The method entails the construction of a model of the social situation where an agent acts
• Despite being a monist, Popper highlights the triviality of the use of universal laws in historic explanations
• This second branch of analytical philosophy progressively became interested in the methodology of behavioral and social sciences.
• Elizabeth Anscombe was one of the sources of Von Wright, who drew attention to a peculiar logical character of the reasoning called practical syllogism (Aristotle).
• According to Von Wright, we can understand an action in a nomothetic sense.
• Psychological explanations are NOT causal, but teleological or finalistic in character, according to Von Wright.
• The epistemic premise in the practical inference states that the subject believes that in order to bring about p it is necessary to bring about q (means).