Abstract
I argue that explanation should be thought of as the phenomenological mark of the operation of a particular kind of cognitive system, the theory-formation system. The theory-formation system operates most clearly in children and scientists but is also part of our everyday cognition. The system is devoted to uncovering the underlying causal structure of the world. Since this process often involves active intervention in the world, in the case of systematic experiment in scientists, and play in children, the cognitive system is accompanied by a ‘theory drive’, a motivational system that impels us to interpret new evidence in terms of existing theories and change our theories in the light of new evidence. What we usually think of as explanation is the phenomenological state that accompanies the satisfaction of this drive. However, the relation between the phenomenology and the cognitive system is contingent, as in similar cases of sexual and visual phenomenology. Distinctive explanatory phenomenology may also help us to identify when the theory-formation system is operating.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Baillargeon, R. (1993), The object concept revisited: New directions in the investigation of infants' physical knowledge. In C. Granrud (ed.), Visual perception and cognition in infancy Carnegie Mellon symposia on cognition. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Bartsch, K. and Wellman, H. M. (1995), Children Talk About the Mind. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Bowlby, J. (1969), Attachment and loss. New York: Basic Books.
Bromberger, S. (1965), An approach to explanation. In R.J. Butler (Ed.), Analytic philosophy (pp. 72–105). Oxford: Blackwell.
Carey, S. (1985), Conceptual Change in Childhood. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Cartwright, N. (1989), Nature's capacities and their measurement. Oxford, New York: Clarendon Press. Oxford University Press.
Ekman, P. (1992), An argument for basic emotions, Cognition and Emotion 6(3/4), 169–200.
Gelman, S. A. and Wellman, H. M. (1991), ‘Insides and Essence: Early Understandings of the Non-obvious’. Cognition, 38(3), 213–244.
Gopnik, A. (1988), ‘Conceptual and Semantic Development as Theory Change’. Mind and Language. 3, pp. 163–179.
Gopnik, A. and Wellman, H. M. (1994), ‘The theory theory’, in L. Hirschfield and S. Gelman (eds), Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 257–293. xiv, 516
Gopnik, A. and Meltzoff, A. N. (1996), Words, Thoughts and Theories. Cambridge, MA: Bradford, MIT Press.
Keil, F. C. (1987), ‘Conceptual Development and Category Structure’. in U. Neisser (ed), Concepts and Conceptual Development: Ecological and Intellectual Factors in Categorization. Emory Symposia in Cognition 1 New York: Cambridge University Press:pp. 175–200. x, 317.
Leslie, A.M. (1987), Pretense and representation: The origins of “theory of mind”, Psychological Review, 94(4), 412–426.
Leslie, A.M. and Keeble, S. (1987), Do six-month-old infants perceive causality? Cognition 25(3), 265–288.
Oakes, L.M. and Cohen, L.B. (1994), Infant causal perception. In C. Rovee-Collier, & L.P. Lipsitt (Eds), Advances in infancy research, Vol. 9 Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Piaget, J. (1962), Play, dreams, and imitation in childhood (Norton library), New York: Norton.
Salmon, W. (1984), Scientific explanation and the causal structure of the world. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Schult, C. and Wellman, H. (in press), Explaining human movements and actions: Children's understanding of the limits of psycyological explanation. Cognition.
Slaughter, V. and Gopnik, A. (1996), Conceptual coherence in the child's theory of mind. Child Development 67(6), 2967–2989.
Spelke, E.S., Breinlinger, K., Macomber, J. and Jacobsen, K. (1992), Origins of knowledge. Psychological Review 99(4), 605–632.
Van Frassen, B. (1980), The scientific image. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wellman, H., Hickling, A., and Schult, C. (In press). Young children's explanations: Psychological, physical and biological reasoning. In H. Wellman, & K. Inagaki (Eds.), Children's theories. San Francisco: Joosey-Bass.
Wellman, H. (1990), The Child's Theory of Mind. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gopnik, A. Explanation as Orgasm* . Minds and Machines 8, 101–118 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008290415597
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008290415597