ABSTRACT
The previous chapter explored some ways of thinking about psychological explanation and the interface problem associated with the picture of the autonomous mind. In the approaches of Dennett, Davidson and those who offer a deflationary account of mental causation in terms of counterfactuals we find different attempts to reconfigure what one can think of as the standard conception of psychological explanation. Part of the aim of the autonomous picture of the mind is to show that the interface problem should not be taken seriously. Personal-level commonsense psychological explanation can be understood on its own terms and does not require validation from subpersonal levels of explanation. In fact, there can be no such validation, due to the radical incommensurability between personal and subpersonal levels of explanation. If the autonomy picture is well grounded, then the interface problem ceases to be a pressing concern. Let us suppose, however, that the proponents of the autonomous mind have yet to make their case, so that the standard conception of psychological explanation remains in play. This leaves us with the interface problem as originally presented in Chapter 2 – with the obligation to explain how the personal-level explanations of commonsense mesh with the explanations given at levels of explanation lower down in the hierarchy of explanation.
