Título: Explanations without causes and causes without reasons
Autores: Hudson Meadwell
Periódico: Social Science Information 2010;49 539-562
Abstract: clique aqui
Action is a central category in the social sciences. It is also commonplace to assume that the social world has a causal structure. Yet standard ways of specifying causal relations in social science lack explanatory force when the subject matter is intentional action. The present article considers this problem. The metaphysics of action are distinguished from the metaphysics of intentional action, and it is argued that the former forces an implausible unity on the actions of inanimate nature and of rational agents. Agency in the metaphysics of action adds nothing to state-variable causation. Agency in the metaphysics of intentional action, in contrast, is argued to have a different structure, not reducible to state-variable causation. Work on endogenous choice in social science suggests that the concept of agency that is on view in literature on selection effects and social generation implies the metaphysics of intentional action. Recent research in the philosophy of action is considered in order to specify the structure of intentional action and the force of intentional explanations.
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