Wittgenstein's Descriptivist Approach to Understanding: Is There a Place for Explanation in Interpretive Accounts?

Wittgenstein’s Descriptivist Approach to Understanding: Is There a Place for Explanation in Interpretive Accounts?

by David Henderson *

Summary In his Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, Wittgenstein holds that in studying or interpret-

ing a language and associated activities we should not attempt to explain what goes on, just describe, for description is able to give us everything we could ask for. He seems to presents two arguments for this descriptivist approach. I criticize both. Generally, 1 argue that Wittgenstein’s position seems to presuppose a radical distinction between description and explanation that cannot be supported.

Specifically, I show that Wittgenstein’s first objection to explanatory concerns in interpretive contexts is an overly quick generalization from limitations in Frazer’s early attempts at explanation. The inadequacy of one attempt at explaining some phenomena hardly implies that it is wrong to attempt an explanation of that phenomena. Nor does the fact that a false explanation may support a false description of some phenomena show that a correct explanation would not support a correct description. Wittgenstein’s second, and most important, objection turns on the crucial claim that correct description is at least as satisfying as explanation. There is one significant respect in which 1 agree this claim, and another in which I disagree. I show that, on Wittgen- stein’s view, a description is a perspicuous story about an effect and its antecedents. It answers a “why”-question. This is to say, a good description is something of a condensed explanation. Now, when description is so understood, it would be foolish to deny that description is as satisfying as explanation, for here, description is not just theory-laden, it is also explanation-laden. However, I argue that in contexts where reliability worries become pressing, the more familiar, explicit, forms of explanation have important advantages.

Resume Dans ses remarques sur le Golden Bough de Frazer, Wittgenstein soutient qu’en ttudiant ou

en traduisant une langue et dans les activitts associkes, on ne devrait pas tenter d’expliquer ce qui se passe, mais seulement dtcrire, car la description est capable de rtpondre a toutes les questions qu’on pourrait se poser. I1 semble apporter deux arguments a I’appui de son approche descriptive. Je les critique tous deux. Je montre que la position de Wittgenstein semble supposer une dtmarcation radicale entre la description et I’explication, demarcation impossible a tracer.

Plus sptcifiquement, je montre que la premikre objection de Wittgenstein a des tentatives d’explication dans des contextes interpretatifs est une gtniralisation hltive des limitations ren- contrkes par Frazer dans ses premitres tentatives d’explication. L’Cchec d’une tentative d’expliquer un phknomtne ne signifie pas qu’il soit faux d’essayer d’expliquer ce phtnomtne. Pas plus que le fait qu’une fausse explication puisse appuyer une fausse description de certains phinome- nes ne montre qu’une explication correcte ne conduirait pas a une description correcte. Quant A la seconde et tres importante objection de Wittgenstein, elle s’appuie sur la these cruciale qu’une

* Department of Philosophy, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS.

Dialectica Vol. 42, No 2 (1988)

106 David Henderson

description correcte est pour le moins aussi satisfaisante comme explication. En un sens, je suis d’accord avec cette these, et en un autre sens, je la conteste. Je montre que, selon les vues de Witt- genstein, une description est une histoire perspicace d’un effet et de ses anttctdents. Elle repond & un ccpourquoi)). C’est-&-dire qu’une bonne description esf quelque chose comme une explication condensee. Si la description est comprise de cette maniere, il serait bien siir absurde de contester qu’elle est aussi satisfaisante en tant qu’explication, car ici, la description n’est pas seulement impregnee de theorie, mais aussi imprtgnke d’explication. Cependant, j e montre que, dans des contextes ob des soucis de fiabilitt deviennent importants, les formes habituelles d’explication proprement dite ont de grands avantages.

Zusammenfassung In seinen Bemerkungen uber Frazer’s Golden Bough behauptet Wittgenstein, dass wir, wenn

wir eine Sprache und die mit ihr verbundenen Aktivitaten untersuchen oder interpretieren, nicht versuchen sollten, das, was vor sich geht, zu erkllren, sondern nur zu beschreiben; denn Beschrei- bung liefert uns alles, was wir zu erwarten haben. Er scheint zwei Argumente zugunsten dieses deskriptiven Standpunktes anzubieten, die ich beide kr ere. Allgemein argumentiere ich, dass Wittgensteins Position eine radikale Unterscheidung zwischen Beschreibung und Erkllrung vor- aussetzt, die nicht aufrechterhalten werden kann.

Im Einzelnen zeige ich, dass Wittgensteins erster Einwand gegen den Gebrauch von Erkll- rungen in interpretativen Kontexten eine vorschnelle Verallgemeinerung der Begrenzungen ist , die in Frazers friihen Versuchen iiber Erkllrung vorkommen. Die Inadaquatheit eines Versuches, Phanomene zu e rkken , gentigt nicht, urn die grundsltzliche Verfehltheit solcher Versuche nach- zuweisen. Die Tatsache, dass eine falsche Erklarung eine falsche Beschreibung einiger Phano- mene nach sich zieht, zeigt nicht, dass eine korrekte Erklarung nicht eine korrekte Beschreibung nach sich ziehen wurde. Wittgensteins zweiter und wichtigster Einwand beruht auf der entschei- denden Behauptung, dass eine korrekte Beschreibung mindestens so befriedigend wie eine ErklB- rung ist. In einer wichtigen Hinsicht stimme ich dieser Auffassung zu; in einer anderen Beziehung verwerfe ich sie. Ich zeige, dass aus Wittgensteins Sicht eine Beschreibung eine klare Geschichte uber ein Ereignis und die ihr vorangegangenen Ereignisse darstellt . Sie beantwortet eine ctWarumw-Frage. D. h. eine gute Beschreibung ist so etwas wie eine kondensierte Erkllrung. Wenn nun eine Beschreibung in dieser Weise aufgefasst wird, ware es tbricht, leugnen zu wollen, dass eine Beschreibung genauso befriedigend wie eine Erklarung ist, da eine Beschreibung in die- sem Sinne nicht nur theoriegeladen, sondern auch erklarungsgeladen ist. Ich argumentiere jedoch, dass in Kontexten, wo die Frage nach der Zuverllssigkeit dringend wird, die ublichen Erklarungsformen wichtige Vorteile aufweisen.

1. Introduction

Wittgenstein holds that in studying a language and associated activities (or in studying language as a general phenomenon) it is fruitful to only describe what is plainly before us. He also holds that such descriptive study is all that is appropriate. In particular, he repeatedly insists that we should not attempt to explain what goes on, just describe, for description is able to give us everything we could ask forl. Wittgenstein’s approach seems to presuppose a radical distinction between description and explanation. To the extent that it is

I Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Frazer’s “Golen Bough”, ed. Rush Rees (Atlantic Highlands, N. J.: Brynmill, Notts, and Humanities Press, 1979). pp. 1-9. Cf. Philosophical Investigations, Enclich text of the third edition, G. E. M. Anscombe, trans. (New York: Mac- millan, 1958), sects. 109, 126. See also, Patrick Sherry, “Is Religion a “Form of life”?” American Philosophical Quarterly 9 (1972), p. 164-6.

107 Wittgenstein’s Descriptivist Approach to Understanding: Is There a Place for Explanation in Interpretive Accounts?

based on such a distinction, the descriptivist approach to language that Witt- genstein advocates must be fundamentally misguided. Here, I am primarily concerned with his repudiation of explanation in those contexts where we seek an interpretive understanding of some particular language, or of some language and set of associated practicesz.

A host of results that are now generally accepted conflict with the view that good description can be had without the assurance that associated good explanation is at least waiting in the wings. Where “description” is understood as a matter of providing true indicative sentences3, description and explanation are inextricably intertwined endeavors. At a very general level, this important connection follows from the realization that all descriptions are more or less theory-laden. We might, for example, describe a sample of gas as either oxygen or de-phlogistonated air. In so doing, we provide a theory-laden description - involving us in theoretical posits, or, in Wittgenstein’s termino- logy, in a scientific (or proto-scientific) language-game. So laden with theory, these and other descriptions come to partake of the virtues and vices of the theory they carry. Thus, in the case of the pair of alternative descriptions above, we reject the Stahlian description as a bad descriptions of the sample, for it carries the presupposition of posits from a theory that is neither true, nor empirically adequate, nor even a useful approximation. To be an acceptable description involves being an otherwise correct application of an acceptable theory. Finally, to make explicit the connection between description and explanation, we need only to add that an important virtue of theories is their explanatory power4.

Of course, there is more to being a good description of some event or thing than simply being a collection of one or more true indicative sentences about it. There are significant pragmatic factors here. For example, we might ask for a description of a particular auto accident. If we were told that it involved the collision of material bodies of intermediate size (smaller than our sun and lar-

* Recently, Paul Seabright has discussed Wittgenstein’s apparent general antipathy to explaining aspects of language usage. He believes that Wittgenstein’s position is a general result of his “resistence to a bootstraps attempt to justify one perspective in terms of itself,” and of his repudiation of facile mentalistic explanations. (“Explaining Cultural Divergence,” Journal of Philosophy 86 (1987), 11-27,22,24.) Seabright’s general results are compatible with (and comple- mentary to) my results concerning Wittgenstein’s misgivings about explanation in a particular context.

This qualification is necessitated by accounts such as Nelson Goodman’s in Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978) that allow to descriptions, or at least representa- tions, where truth, or even approximate truth, is not a particularly salient concern. My concern here with the social sciences requires a more truth-centered notion of description. That Wittgen- stein is likewise concerned with descriptions as true statements is indicated by his talk of “arranging factual material” in descriptions, (Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, p . 8.)

Just what, if anything, is involved in theories having explanatory power, in addition to its being empirically adequate, is not a question that I attempt to answer here.

108 David Henderson

ger than an atom), we should be disappointed with the description. But, the pragmatics of description do not detract from the point of the above para- graph: to describe something is to provide a set of true sentences about it. Among our most important clues as to how well we are doing here is our abil- ity to place the describing sentences within our network of explanatory theories.

Thus, descriptions are quite tentative until a place is found for them within the context of our explanatory theories. (Theory is, of course, quite tentative until it has been shown to explain the phenomena in its domain.) There are several sorts of positions that acceptable theories and associated descriptions can occupy within our network of explanatory theory. Some theories, New- tonian physics, for example, provide explanations for some described events and also provide the vocabulary for (and are constituted by) theoretical descriptions that can themselves be explained by other theories. Because of this place in our network of explanatory theories, such descriptions are acceptable. Other theoretical generalizations, such as the irreducably sta- tistical principles of quantum physics, give rise to much in the way of explanation, but as descriptions of regularities, they apparently cannot themselves be explained. Still, because of their place in our best explanatory theories, such theoretical descriptions are quite acceptable. At the other extreme of our network of explanatory theories are the everyday descriptions of material bodies and human agents. Such everyday descriptions use a vocabulary of common- sense theories that can claim only very limited and modest generalizations and explanatory power. However, more properly scientific theories often provide explanations for events and generalizations described using these common- sense theories. To the extent that this is so, common-sense descriptions and theories can be treated, along with Newtonian theory, as generally proper. Thus, we find described events and generalizations being located within a network of explaining and explained theory and fact.

I believe that this connection between description and explanation is quite general, and, in particular, that it holds good of those descriptions that we call interpretations. I have, for example, argued that the construction of transla- tions and interpretations in the social sciences is constrained by the funda- mental need to construe those who are interpreted so that they are found to be explicable in what they do, say, and believes. Other writers have also recog-

5 David Henderson, “The Principale of Charity and the Problem of Irrationality,” forth- coming in Synthese.


nized the connection between interpretation (thus description) and explana- tion6.

However, as noted above, at least in the case of interpretive description, Wittgenstein apparently denies this connection. Because meaning is a matter of use, for him, interpretation becomes a matter of describing use. Yet he seems to deny a role for explanation in this endeavor. As far as I can determine, all of Wittgenstein’s reasons for this aversion to explanations in the context of understanding are caucused in his Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough. There he presents two arguments against a concern for explanation in the context of interpretive description. I believe that both his arguments are misguided, and will say why below. However, of these two objections, his second is by far the most important and subtle, and I show that it contains clear evidence of a concern for explanatioh in the context of interpretation. Still, this is a concern that Wittgenstein’s own discussion also conceals.

Finally, in order to avoid misunderstanding, before considering Wittgen- stein’s objections, I should explicitly admit that there are cases in which we are not interested in much in the way of explanation, but would rather have a clear description. Suppose I am watching a baseball game. I turn my head to buy a drink from a vendor. Upon refocusing my gaze on the field, I see my favorite player walking, head down, off the playing field. I turn to an associate and ask, “What happened?” If she begins with a discourse on pro- jectile motion, the parameters of muscle contraction, and so forth, I may get annoyed. I want the sort of description that a good play-by-play person would give. However, in any case, even in one such as this, a theoretical background remains important; I bring what I know of it to judging the quality of the descriptions that I receive, and those I propose to give. If a description is such that the events as characterized are physically or psychologically implausible or impossible, I may reject the description I will insist that the events are described in a way that renders them explicable, or at least plausible, given what I know in a (scientific or common-sensical) theoretical way. Ultimately then, even in such cases we are involved in a process of developing a matched pair of explanatory theory and associated descriptions.

Stephen Turner, Sociological Explanation as Translation (Cambrige: Cambrige University Press, 1980); Hilary Putnarn, Meaning and fhe Moral Sciences (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), p. 41 ; Dagfinn Follesdal, “Understanding and Rationality,” in Meaning and Under- standing, eds. H. Parret and J . Bouveresse (New York: de Gruyter, 1981).

110 David Henderson

11. Wittgenstein ’s First Objection

Consider the following remarks by Wittgenstein critizing Frazer’s account of religion and magic:

Frazer’s account of the magical and religious notions of men is unsatisfactory: it makes these notions appear as mistakes. . .

Well - one might say - if he was not mistaken, then the Buddhist holy-man, or some other, whose religion expresses quite different notions, surely was. But none of them was making a mistake except where he was putting forward a theory.

Even the idea of trying to explain the practice - say of the killing of the priest-king - seems to me wrong headed. All that Frazer does is to make this practice plausible to people who think as he does. It is very queer that all these practices are finally pre- sented, so to speak, as stupid actions.

But it never does become plausible that people do all this out of sheer stupidity7.

Here Wittgenstein either misleadingly states a very limited objection to one sort of explanation, or advances a very weak argument against attempts at explanation generally. Wittgenstein certainly seems to be arguing against attempting any explanation while seeking interpretive understanding. If this is indeed his point, his complaints concerning Frazer’s work are surely not deci- sive. For, the inadequacy of one attempt at explaining some phenomena hardly implies that it is wrong to attempt an explanation of that phenomena. Nor does the fact that a false explanation may support a false description of some phenomena show that a correct explanation would not support a correct description. However, it seems that Wittgenstein is here making just such a weak argument.

Frazer, of course, is one of the two classical proponents of intellectualist cultural anthropology. As such, he attempted to provide an account of rituals (religious and magical practices) as foolish technology. He understood these actions as relatively reasonable technological applications of so many foolish beliefs. The beliefs supposedly explained the actions by way of what Davidson calls “rationalizing explanation.” 8 The beliefs themselves were to be explained in terms of a psychology of erroneous thinking. To Frazer, it seemed that religious believers had fallen victim to tendencies evinced in our own childhood thinking. The difference between them and us being that we had learned to control childhood inclinations, while they had remained “childish. ”

Wittgenstein, ibid., pp. 1-2. 8 Donald Davidson, “Actions, Reasons, and Causes, in Davidson, Essays on Actions and

Events, pp.1.19, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), cf. Hilary Putnam, Meaning and the Moral Sciences (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978). p. 41.

1 1 1 Wittgenstein’s Descriptivist Approach to Understanding: Is There a Place for Explanation in Interpretive Accounts?

Wittgenstein objects that Frazer’s explanation is “unsatisfactory,” that it “never does become plausible.” In one case he insists that “where that practice [of killing the priest-king while still healthy] and these beliefs [for example, connecting the condition of the soul of the priest-king to the condition of his state] go together, the practice does not spring from the view, but both of them are there.”9 In these remarks, we get a repudiation of the sort of explanation Frazer attempted - rationalizing explanation of the reported actions - but no basis for objecting to all attempts at explaining such practices. That is, we get no reason for thinking that “the idea of trying to explain” the practices is “wrong headed.” Further, Wittgenstein objects to some of Frazer’s explanations of the persistence of the beliefs he attributes to religious advocateslo. But, again we find no reason to repudiate attempts at explanation generally. The limitations of past attempts at explaining some phenomena do not show that the phenomena cannot be explained as science advances. Nor do they show that explanations would not provide a useful, even necessary, adjunct to descriptions of the phenomena. Thus, Wittgenstein has provided no reason to believe that the attempt to explain the practices while interpreting them is wrongheaded. In fact, as we will see next, his own suggested descriptions seem to contain something of a proposed explanation.

111. Wittgenstein ’s Second Objection

In the following passage, Wittgenstein provides his second, and most important, objection to getting involved with explanation in the context of interpretation:

I think that one reason why the attempt to find an explanation is wrong is that we have only to put together in the right way what we know, without adding anything, and the satisfaction we are trying to get from the explanation comes of itself.

And here the explanation is not what satisfies us anyway. When Frazer begins by telling the story of the King of the Wood at Nemi, he does this in a tone that shows that something strange and terrible is happening here. And that shows that is the answer to the question “why is this happening?”: Because it is terrible. . . (Tlhat is what gave birth to [the practices].

We can only describe and say, human life is like that 11.

Wittaenstein. ibid.. D. 2. . . lo Ibid., pp.2-3.

Wittgenstein, ibid., pp. 2-3. What may seem like a third objection to explanations, although a more confused one than either of the two described here, may be more fruitfully seen as further criticisms of Frazer’s explanation in particular. (Ibid., p. 3.)

112 David Henderson

He makes two closely related claims here: (A) Correct description is at least as satisfying as explanation. (B) Correct description is all we can provide.

Now, (B) may simply be a way of saying that explanation is inappropriate in these contexts (here reading ‘We can only’ as ‘Properly, we can only’ or ‘We should only’)l2. Under this plausible reading, (B) is presumably supported by (A), which becomes the crucial claim. There is one significant respect in which I agree with (A), and another in which I disagree.

To appreciate the sense in which correct descriptions may be as satisfying as explanations, consider what, judging from the above quotation, Wittgen- stein would get out of a good description. It seems that a good description will set out important aspects of the practices in such a way that the certain regularities involving antecedents and effects stand out as salient and instan- tiated in the case as described. More concretely, in that part of Frazer’s description that Wittgenstein approves of, we are brought to see that something about the course of events being “impressive” and “horrible,” something about their being “significant,” is “what gave birth to them.” Further, we are apparently entitled to add, “human life is like that.” Supposedly it is like that (not in the general incidence of ritual regicide, but) in there being a human need for significance that people satisfy by creations with heroic and tragic dimensions. So, in that portion of Frazer’s description commended by Wittgenstein, we have encoded both a generalization to the effect that pro- cesses of a certain sort are characteristic of human life and an account of the rituals described that portrays them as an instantiation of that characteristic process. This looks suspiciously like an explanation, or a closely related lin- guistic form.

Put simply, Wittgenstein’s view seems to be that a description is a perspicuous story about an effect and its antecedents. It answers a “why”-question. That is to say, a good description is something of a condensed explanation. Now, when description is so understood, it would be foolish to deny that description is as satisfying as explanation, for here, description is not just theory-laden, it is also explanation-laden.

What then accounts for Wittgenstein’s claim that we want descriptions, not explanation? There are two possible answers: either Wittgenstein simply fails to recognize the kinship between descriptions (as he himself portrays them) and explanations; or he recognizes the kinship, but still prefers descrip-

l 2 Seabright’s discussion is particulary useful here, for it mitigates against the inclination to take Wittgenstein as flatly claiming that it would be impossible to explain human practices such as were at issue here. (Seabright, ibid.)


tions for some characteristic they have that is not had by explanations that are not encoded in descriptions.

Because Wittgenstein consistently formulates his repudiation of explanation in the starkest possible terms, it seems likely that he does fail to recognize the kinship of explanation and description. His failure here may be due to his preoccupation with two sorts of attempted explanation that he is especially concerned to repudiate. First, there is the Frazerian sort of anthropological attempt at rationalizing explanation that draws his fire as discussed above. Second, there is the philosophical sort of attempt at explaining the working of language by positing all sorts of queer mental and other connections between our sentences and the world13. Perhaps his concern with these doctrines leads him to distrust anything called an explanation and prevents him from considering how like explanations are many of the descriptions that he favors. (He may even have come in this way to have an artificially narrow understanding of what would constitute an explanation, also reflecting the positivist usage of is time.)

Wittgenstein may well overlook the connections and similarities between explanations and descriptions because, while there are striking logical paral- lels here, descriptions of the sort that Wittgenstein seeks also possess differen- tiating characteristics that came to dominate his thinking. (Alternatively, he may recognized the kinship between explanation and description, but hold that we should not settle for just any explanation, that we should demand explanations encoded in descriptions.) He does provide a rather specific model for descriptions, one that goes beyond (while being compatible with) the account discussed above. At base, a good description will, in some sense, “point to an unknown law” that “summarizes the data.” 14 However, while an historical explanation will do so by using “an hypotheses of development,” and while other explanations may do so by way of a classificatory scheme or by way of an hypotheses of constant conjunction, a description will do so in a rather special way. For Wittgenstein, a description points to a law by using ourselves to instantiate the law in a simulation: “And all this points to some unknown law” is what we want to say about the material Frazer has collected. I can set out this law in an hypothesis of development, or again, in analogy with the scheme of a plant I can give it in the scheme of a religious ceremony, but I can also do it just by arranging the factual material so that we can easily pass from one part to another and have a clear view of it - showing it in a “perspicuous” way.. .

‘3 Wittgenstein, Philosophicallnvestigations, sects. 109, 126,654-5. l4 Wittgenstein, Remarksof Frazer’s Golden Bough, p. 8.

114 David Henderson

This perspicuous presentations makes possible that understanding which consists just in the fact that we “see the connections”. Hence the importance of finding infer- mediate linksi5.

Thus in describing we are to find ways of gradually transforming our familiar cases into the strange cases to be understood. We do this and then arrange the results so that we come to be able to make connections that mirror thoses made by the people we seek to understand. It is in this way that we simulate our subjects. Of course, in doing this we must “appeal to an inclination in ourselves” that is also an inclination in our subjects. It is by tapping into common human inclinations or dispositions by finding the characteriza- tions of the relevant facts that we are able to make the connections that our subjects make. This account of interpretive description as simulation can use- fully be compared with Robert Gordon’s recent discussion of folk- psychological explanations as matters of simulation instead of subsump- tion 16).

Again, we see the intimate connections between description and explanation. A description of the sort Wittgenstein advocates encodes an explanation by simulating the connections between explanans and explanandum, by allow- ing us to instantiate (in a limited way) the dispositions or mechanisms involved in its production. Of course, when we then say, “human life is like that,” we point to a shared psychology, to the shared human dispositions.

However, it is just at this point that we find a sense in which descriptions may fail to be as satisfying as explanations. This is reflected in the ways in which, when beginning with candidate descriptions, we may easily slip into familiar (more explicit) sorts of explanations. Consider how two cultural anthropologists might argue about two competing and incompatible descriptions. The descriptions will cite different facts, with different emphases, to the end of bringing us to see different sets of results and antecedents in what is described. The descriptions will thus “point to” different laws; when the anthropologists add “Human life is like that,” they will be alluding to different, even incompatible, generalizations. How should this debate be settled? Obviously, we turn quickly to the familiar scientific method. How do the regularities alluded to in the proposed descriptions fit with what we think we know about human psychology? How well do the implicit general laws hold up in the range of cases where they might be applied? That is, how do they

I s Ibid., pp. 8-9. ’6 Robert Gordon, “Folk Psychology as Simulation” Mind and Language 1 (1986), 158-71.

Cf. also, Turner, ibid.


work as generally applied explanatory laws? Put simply, the competing descriptions come to be evaluated as alternative scientific explanations 17.

This movement from descriptions to explanation is not limited to cases of competing descriptions. It is quite natural and appropriate in any case where the reliability of the descriptions given comes to be an issue. For example, by relying upon simulation and a presumption of shared human inclinations or dispositions, descriptions run a particular danger of ethnocentrism. Sure, such-and-such a movement of thought may seem natural to us, but why think that the same psychological dispositions are shared by those we are studying? This issue (which does concern Wittgenstein) 18 is more explicitly raised and addressed in the context of explanations where we are more explicit about the laws or regularities that we are postulating. Our best psychological theories may provide reasons for believing that certain generalizations have a limited range of application, and that other generalizations are more robust in the human species. In explanation, these concerns are more explicitly addressed.

In summary, it is with respect to concerns for reliability, to bringing to bear the full range of our knowledge to judge our accounts, that explanation is more satisfying than description. But, when these worries are put aside, description, as something of a condensed explanation, can be as satisfying as explanation. In some contexts, descriptions may be more accessible than (the familiar sorts of explicit) explanations, or more easily communicated. In such contexts, which may sometimes characterize the position of the social scientific investigator or writer, and where reliability concerns can be set aside for the moment, descriptions will perhaps be preferable to explanations. The position that has been developed in this paper makes it clear that concerns with, and attempts at, explanation have an important place in attempts at understanding, that explanation and description cannot be conceived as dis- tinct matters, that neither of Wittgenstein’s arguments against a concern for explanation in interpretive description. In part, I am able to make evident the importance of explanation for interpretive description by emphasizing the similarities and connections between these matters that are implicit in Witt- genstein’s own discussion, similarities that he somewhow either overlooks or conceals through hid own formulations.

For several concrete examples, se my “The Principle of Charity and the Problem of Irra- tionality.”

l8 Wittgenstein, ibid., pp. 1,s-6.

Dialectica Vol. 42, No 2 (1988)

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Wittgenstein's Descriptivist Approach to Understanding: Is There a Place for Explanation in Interpretive Accounts?