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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.
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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

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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.

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