ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Causal Explanation. The avowed goal of social psychological science is to advance empirically supported causal explanations of actions such as aggression, dishonesty, obedience, altruism, suicide. The traditional empiricist account of causal descriptions is a natural consequence of the principle of meaning empiricism and the verification principle: according to this account, causal descriptions are naturally held to describe the observable correlations that confirm them. In the standard account, the 'covering laws' are held to describe events are constantly conjoined. Causal-explanatory propositions are based upon the causal powers of particulars and expressed as qualified conditionals concerned with possibilities. An explanation of an action in terms of human agency involves the claim that the action was self-determined by the agent, rather than being determined by any conditions, including the psychological states of the agent. The real possibility of human agency does delimit the traditionally avowed goal of social psychological science as the prediction and control of human action.
