The Thing to Do?

Mind Association

The Thing to Do?Author(s): Burleigh Taylor WilkinsSource: Mind, New Series, Vol. 74, No. 293 (Jan., 1965), pp. 89-91Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2252141 .

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THE THING TO DO?

WILLIAM DRAY inl Laws and Explanation in History argues that historical explanation is markedly different from scientific explanation. According to Dray, this difference lies in the fact that when an historian explains a past action he displays the rationale of what was done: " The goal of such explanation is to show that what was done was the thing to have done for the reasons given, rather than merely the thing that is done on such occasions, perhaps in accordance with certain laws (loose or otherwise)." Dray insists upon the im- portance of the phrase ' thing to have done ' and notes that the infinitive ' to do ' functions here as " a value term ". He maintains that " there is an element of appraisal of what was done in such explanations . . . what we want to know when we ask to have an action explained is in what way was it appropriate ".1

An examination of some of the ways in which 'thing to do ' is ordinarily used suggests, however, that this phrase will not do the job Dray intends it to do. To wear a dinner jacket to the captain's table might be called the thing to do. To participate in the activities of the PTA might also be spoken of as the thing to do. On the other hand, to sell stocks in Canadian gold mines to trusting widows or to work with the Mafia might be considered the thing to do-it all depends on what game one is playing. The 'thing to do' may, as Dray claims, function as a value term; but, as the above examples suggest, its uses reflect the customs of a group. If the ' thing to do ' is largely a matter of custom, and if, as is surely the case, custom reflects among other things what is ordinarily or customarily done, then the idea of regularity appears implicit in the very phrase Dray has employed in his attempt to distinguish " rational explanation " from explanation in terms of regularity. If it be objected that Dray's 'thing to do' should be read as 'the rational thing to do, given certain ends and certain beliefs about matters of fact', this still admits of analysis in terms of custom. To wear a dinner jacket to the captain's table is the customary thing to do, if one wants to have dinner at the captain's table, if one believes the captain's in- vitation to have been genuine, if one believes that other guests will be dressed formally, if one believes that a sports shirt would create embarrassment, etc.

Dray seems determined to deny any overlap between the two kinds of explanation-rational explanation and explanation in terms of regularity-but in order to show that an evaluation might function in history as an explanation he finds it necessary to show an overlap between explanation and justification. He writes: " In the ordinary course of affairs, a demand for explanation is often recognized to be at the same time a challenge to the agent to produce either justification or excuse for what was done. In history, too, I want to argue, it will often be found impossible to bring out the point of what is offered as explanation unless the overlapping of these notions, when it is

1 Laws and Explanation in History (Oxford, 1957), p. 124. 89



90 B. T. WILKINS:

human actions we are interested in, is explicitly recognized" (p. 124).

Against Dray it could be argued that in the ordinaiy course of human affairs a demand for an explanation from an agent differs from a request for an explanation of an agent's conduct. A demand for an explanation does, as Dray believes, suggest that the person making such a demand might be seeking a justification-but, it could be argued, this is because such a person has, implicitly at least, an explanation of the agent's conduct already in mind, one which he considers unflattering to the agent. Such an analysis might successfully be made of a mother's demand that her daughter explain her not coming home until 4 a.m. But if this analysis represents the ordinary course of human affairs, it remains to be established that it also represents what happens in the writing of history.

Ordinarily we do not demand that historians explain anything, and when we do ask them to explain something it seems clear that we are not asking for justifications. Justifications abound in what daughters say to their mothers and in what lawyers say about their clients; memoirs, magazines, newspapers, and the Congressional Record are filled with them. One need not deny that they can be found in history as well (but in a kind often labelled contemptuously as C partisan', ' pragmatic ', or 'party' history by its critics) in order to reject Dray's contention that because justification and explanation may occur together (and even in the same sentence, for example: C He was ill') a justification constitutes an explanation of what was done.

In addition to its evaluative element, " rational explanation " as conceived by Dray has an inductive and empirical side in that it requires us to look for data as to what the agent's reasons for a given action really were. He affirms, moreover, that the procedures for constructing rational explanations are " self-corrective ". Since Dray believes that rational explanation " falls short of, as well as goes beyond, subsuming a case under a general empirical law " (p. 138), it is essential that we understand exactly how the procedures of rational explanation are self-corrective.

Dray maintains that " reasons for acting " have a kind of generality or universality: " If y is a good reason for A to do x, then y would be a good reason for anyone sufficiently like A to do x under sufficiently similar circumstances. But this universality of reasons is unlike the generality of an empirically validated law in a way which makes it especially hazardous to say that by giving a rational explanation, an historian commits himself to the tiuth of a corresponding law." If a negative instance is found for a general empirical law, this would lead to the rejection or modification of that law. " But if a negative instance is found for the sort of general statement which might be extracted out of a rational explanation, the latter would not neces- sarily be, falsified." Dray calls the general statement or C implicit



THE THING TO DO? 91

law' in rational explanation a " principle of action " or a ' principle of inference ". Such a principle of action takes the foim: "When in a situation of type C0 . .. .CO the thing to do is x."

Why would negative instances not falsify or at least bring about a modification of this principle of action? A critic of Dray's might say that this is because normative and evaluative principles cainnot be falsified-they can only be violated. (Nor can violations of them properly be called " negative instances.") Dray himself is not clear on this point. He writes-: " It is true that finding a large number of negative instances-finding people who do not act in accordance with it-would create a presumption against the claim of a given principle to universal validity. But it would not compel its with- drawal; and if it were not withdrawn, the explanatory value of the principle for those actions which weie in accordance with it would remain " (p. 132).

Concerning my example of wearing a dinner jacket to the captain's table, Dray might presumably reason as follows. Imagine that society becomes increasingly informal so that practically no one wears a dinner jacket anymore, not even to the captain's table. Only one or two members of the old school persist, heroically, in this practice. The informality of most people, Dray might concede, does create a presumption against the principle that the thing to do is to wear a dinner jacket to the captain's table. He would, however, insist that this principle of action is not falsified thereby-for those who persist in this reactionary practice it is still the ' thing to do '.

On the above reading I must, contra Dray, emphasize once more how considerations of regularity affect this principle of action, in the sense of affecting its range of application. And if no one ever again wore a dinner jacket to the captain's table, it would seem that the explanatory value of this principle of action would be nil by Dray's own argument. Two possibilities exist: either such principles of action must be analyzed as loose empirical generalizations, or they must be admitted not to be explanatory principles but evaluative ones. To say that an action is appropriate, right, or rational can scarcely be considered an explanation of someone's doing something judged to be appropriate, right, or rational, unless we add that he was disposed to do appropriate, right, or rational things. Dray's argument against dispositional analysis (he considers it to be a form of spectatorism) seems inconclusive, a point which I have not the space to develop. One can, however, understand why Dray must argue as he does, for the dispositional addition, if allowed, breaks the back of his argument. To explain A's doing the thing to do in terms of A's disposition to do the thing to do shifts our attention from " rational explanation " as conceived by Dray and directs it once more to the problem of explanation in terms of regularity.

Princeton University BURLEIGH TAYLOR WILKINS



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The Thing to Do?