Introduction
Summary
This book is about explaining social behavior. In the first part, I spell out my conception of explanation, and in the remaining four parts, I construct a toolbox of concepts and mechanisms that apply to particular cases. Needless to say, it does not aspire to completeness. Rather than trying to spell out the gaps, which will be obvious, let me begin by enumerating a sample of the puzzles that, I submit, can be illuminated by the approach I am taking. In the Conclusion, I return to the same puzzles with brief references to the explanations I have cited in earlier chapters.
The examples and the explanations must be taken with two caveats. First, I do not claim that all the explananda are well-established facts. In an actual explanation, this is of course a crucial first step – it makes no sense to try to explain what does not exist. For the purpose of building a toolbox, however, one can be less rigorous. Second, even for the explananda whose existence is well documented I do not claim that the explanations I cite are the correct ones. I only claim that they satisfy a minimal condition for an explanation – that they logically imply the explananda. The puzzles and explanations are intended to show “if this kind of thing happens, here is the kind of mechanism that might explain it” as well as “if this mechanism operates, here is the kind of thing it can produce.”
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- Explaining Social BehaviorMore Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences, pp. 1 - 6Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007