The psycho-logical explanation of behavior: thoughts on a possible model

This research focuses on the explanation of actions and behavior with the objective to compare mechanistic explanations, considered by many to be the only scientific explanation, to hermeneutic explanations, which include intentional explanations, which are based on reasons rather than causes. If practical syllogisms make explicit reasons that are the basis for action and which are indicated in the premises, then thinking expresses its causal power in order to configure behavior. Thus, outlining an explanation makes explicit inferences in the form of conditional syllogisms. Explanations are related to meanings and reasons that justify intentional actions and cannot be reduced to simple mechanistic explanations. When meanings appear, the production processes cease to be automatic and subjectivity comes into play. The formal and syntactic dimensions are integrated by the semantic, and then cognitive functions become hermeneutic functions that are the result of conscious thought and are expressed by natural language. The latter, as a meta-language allows one to formulate an explanation in speech, which properly rigorized, can be configured as a "psycho-logical explanation" which goes beyond a mechanistic and physicalist explanation while retaining its nature as a scientific explanation.

Aldo Stella, John L. Dennis, Chiara Nucci, La spiegazione psico-logica di un comportamento: riflessioni su un possibile modello in "RICERCHE DI PSICOLOGIA " 4/2010, pp 479-503, DOI: 10.3280/RIP2010-004001