ABSTRACT
The chapter outlines the approach to explaining human action in terms of its meaning and then examines notions like rules and norms crucial to this enterprise. It considers the interpretationalists' perspective, whether this explanatory strategy can be reconciled with a causal treatment of desires and beliefs. The chapter shows how wide the gulf is between naturalism and interpretative social science. As a predictively improvable theory of human action, folk psychology leaves much to be desired. Students of hermeneutics insist that explaining action is a matter of meaning. It is tempting to suppose that the fact that rules and norms must somehow be represented in beliefs and desires, makes for a possible line of reconciliation between causal explanation and the explanation of action as meaningful. John Searle means his analysis of the social construction of society to be at least compatible with naturalism about human action and the institutions it results in.
