Everyday Explanation

Abstract

Pettit’s discussion (1978) of “rational man theory” is based on two assumptions: “I assume (1) that the theory of the human agent generally supposed in commonsense explanation depicts man as rational, and (2) that such a theory is that which social-science explanation of action ought also to suppose” (p. 43). The second assumption is fully discussed in the following chapters. As we have already seen, and as Pettit himself at least partly appreciated, social-scientific explanations of action, regardless of what they ought to be like, are, in fact, typically reliant on a theory of the rational actor. What I want to demonstrate in this chapter is that Pettit’s first assumption is correct, that commonsense explanation is profoundly rational, and that this rationality is, in fact, a presupposed feature of explanations, crucial to comprehending them. The standard theory is implicit in the explanations that we routinely offer to one another in the course of our everyday social intercourse. I hold that this is true of American culture (of which I am a native) and of Thai culture (of which I am a student). The ethnographic literature gives us strong reason to suppose that Thais and Americans are not anomalous in this respect. We may leave open, however, the question of whether the phenomena described below are universal. A negative answer to this question would, in its way, be as interesting as a positive one. For convenience of expression, I will write as if discussing a universal, using people or some similar general term, rather than “Thais and Americans,” and relying on the reader to supply the necessary qualifications.

I endowed thy purposes with words that made them known.

Shakespeare, The Tempest