Actions and explanations  (Page 2/3)

An explanation for an action is best when it eliminates the other possible explanations for that action. An explanation should point towards causes, not otherwise irrelevant factors. However, if the background knowledge of the person you are explaining the action to is insufficient, it may fail to count as an explanation because of the way in which it engages with the background knowledge of those seeking enlightenment. A statement which explains an event must give us a casual understanding; and the understanding it gives us must be an advance on the cognitive status quo. In a phrase, the explanation of an event must advance us in the search for the event's causes.

Three sorts of advancement in casual understanding, and there may well be others, can be characterized as causal embedding, casual excavation and casual enrichment. We embed an event casually when we point to its immediate origin; we excavate it when we turn up its remoter springs; and we we enrich it when we see how one or another features is the legacy of its ancestors.

A description provides a good explanation when it advances us in our search for the causes of the action. The first explanation of an action is most simple - it points to its obvious or immediate origin - the further explanations progressively reveal more and more. The explanation of an action also shows how the action was the desire or belief of the person doing the action. They desired to see that action done, that is why it was intentional on their part. It may also be the belief of the person doing the action that the action is being done. Furthermore, as the action progresses, so too will the desires, beliefs and understanding about it progress.

The desires and beliefs people have when performing actions can vary from very simple ones (usually for instance when someone is performing a simple action), to very complex ones (for instance some sort of complex motivation or goal). There is also the potential appeal of promise-keeping. With some actions the goal you have is very strong or motivated, and you 'promise' to yourself that the goal is going to be achieved.

What we seek now is a feature in the perceived appeal of promise keeping which would let us understand the surprising property in the desire it occasions, that the desire prevails over powerful competing urges. What feature in the cause could have passed on this property to the effect?

There are at least four different ways in which the casual enrichment required in this question is provided. All of them have in common that they locate the operative feature of the prompting cause in the agent. The first would relate it in a long term policy or commitment on the agent's part, the second to the agent's motivational profile, the third to his character or personality, and the fourth to his social position. The idea is that the perceived appeal of promise keeping, granted that is has the feature of engaging someone with such and such a policy, profile, personality or position, passes on to the desire occasioned the property of outweighing certain opposed desires. Some remarks will be useful on the invocation of the factors mentioned since the explanations in which they appear constitute the major action accounting varieties over and beyond the explanations, i.e. the explanations of (non-ultimate) desires.