The Problem of Other Cultures and Other Periods in Action Explanations

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1991 21: 345Philosophy of the Social SciencesRex Martin

ExplanationsThe Problem of Other Cultures and Other Periods in Action

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345

The Problem of Other Cultures andOther Periods in Action Explanations

REX MARTIN

University of Kansas

This essay develops a general account of one type of explanation found in historyin particular: that an individual action is conceived as an exemplification of arather complex schema of practical inference, under the provision that the factswhich instantiate the various terms of the schema have an intelligible connectionto one another. The essay then raises the question whether historians, anthropol-ogists, and their contemporaneous audience can have an internal understandingof the actions of others, where those others come from radically different culturesor times from the historians or anthropologists. An account is offered that,arguably, can resolve this problem and do justice to both the claim of internalunderstanding and the presumed cultural differentness between the agentsstudied and the historians and anthropologists who do the study.

I. INTENTIONALIST EXPLANATIONS

Preliminary Remarks

One of the standard kinds of explanation is that in which an ac-tion of an agent is accounted for by reference to certain thoughts-motivations and beliefs-of the agent. We often call these the agent’s&dquo;reasons&dquo; for action.

I want in this section to give a brief account of such explanations,namely, intentionalist explanations. We can start with the claim thatactions typically occur in a context of states of affairs and that theagent’s thoughts about any given state often help provide a motiva-tion for action there. We also believe that the agent intends to bringabout something with the action and that this something-this end tobe achieved or relevant purpose-will resolve or help resolve theoriginal situation that motivated the action in the first place. Theaction, in its turn, is a means to that end or part of accomplishing it.

I am much indebted to Allan Hanson and Jack Bricke for helpful comments on an earlierdraft of this essay.

Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Vol. 21 No. 3, September 1991 345-366

0 1991 York University, Toronto, and Contributors.

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Characteristically, then, an explanation would mention these points.It would go like this: (a) The agent faced a certain situation, (b) the agenthad a certain end in view, and accordingly, (c) the agent acted in a cer-tain way. Thus we might say, to give an example: Caesar was facedwith a lot of trouble from the British tribes (for they were engaged inraids and were causing unsettlement in the Gaulish world, which hehad only recently conquered), and Caesar wanted to put an end tothis trouble, so he invaded Britain to carry out an expedition againstthe tribes, hoping thereby to conquer and pacify them.We should bear in mind, though, that the three things itemized in

the previous paragraph are not simply independent or isolated points;rather, they are points connected with each other in certain definiteways. Thus the end in view is connected with the original motivatingperception of the situation in that it represents a way of resolving thatsituation. And the action is a means to the end in view or part ofaccomplishing it. And so on.

The Basic Schema and Its Amplification

We could readily translate these points and the idea of their con-nection into a schema for explanations of the sort we are concernedwith here. Thus we could say that the agent does A, the deed per-formed, because (1) the agent is in a particular situation in which heor she is motivated to act, (2) one of the courses of action the agentmight take is A, (3) the agent has a purpose or end in view, (4) theagent is of a mind that this situation will be resolved if that end is ac-complished, and (5) doing A is judged by the agent to be a means to,or part of accomplishing, this purpose. I will call this the fundamentalor basic schema for the explanation of actions done for a reason.

More complex schemas could be generated out of the basic one. Wecould do so by adding complexity at one of the focal points-theagent’s situation cum motivation, the agent’s relevant purpose, thedeed performed----cr along one of the basic lines of their connection.The point of any such attempt to move beyond the basic schema is toidentify a set of conditions contextually sufficient to explain the per-formance of a typical individual action, where that action is said to be&dquo;done for a reason.&dquo;

Often, the main additions will consist simply in amplifying one ormore of the conditions in the basic schema through the addition of anexplicit gloss. For example, building on the important idea that ac-



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tions typically occur in a situation, we might want to add that in asituation for acting, there are often several possible courses of actionthat could be taken.

Once we have said this, we have raised a new issue: Why wouldone of these actions-the one actually performed, the one here calledA-be done and not one of the others? Thus the schema would haveto be extended not only to include the idea of multiple possiblecourses of action (given a particular situation) but to recognize asimplified set of considerations under which all those alternativescould be eliminated except for the action performed. In this latterregard, then, we might add as a new condition that the agent does notprefer any of the alternative courses of action-B or C-to doing A.

After the main conditions are in place, we may want to add yetothers, which have been assumed to hold in such cases. These second-

ary conditions are designed to make for watertightness: to round outthe total set of conditions that are contextually sufficient to explain theperformance, in typical fashion, of an individual intentional action.Thus we might add, for example, a condition bearing on the physicaland other abilities of the agent, or we might want to add that, giventhe agent’s motivation in the situation as perceived and the agent’send in view, the action to be performed is at some point &dquo;timely&dquo; andthat when the time comes, the agent has not forgotten this purpose orforgotten about the time, and so on.’ We can take some such schema,in a suitably amplified version, as the standard one for the purposesof this essay.What we would have in such a schema is a sort of ideal type or

criterion for accounting for actions done for a reason. It is a schema ofinference. The set of conditions belongs to our conception (a revisableconception, I would add) of how an action of that sort typicallyhappens. The conditions flesh out a whole host of relevant consider-ations and hence will figure in an explanation of any deed under sucha fully rounded view.

Explanations as Exemplifications of the Schema

An explanation of an individual action (in the account I am giving)is, then, an exemplification of such a standard schema. Here anexplanation is afforded by substituting, under each condition of theschema, statements of fact that satisfy-in one way or another-theterms of that condition. Every such explanation breaks down, then,



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into two main dimensions: the formal one given in the schema itselfand a material one, represented by the statements of fact that satisfythe schema in a given case.

Are there constraints on the things that can be introduced at thefactual or material level? Of course there are. The things cited in anexplanation must be so; the sentences that describe them as occurring(thereby satisfying the schema) must be true. But this is not the onlysignificant constraint.

It must also be the case that the filling in of certain elements of theschema (with characterizations of particular matters of fact) has beendone in such a way as to yield an intelligible connection between them.Thus in the illustrative case used earlier, Caesar’s having the purposecited (to conquer and pacify) is, in fact, intelligible in light of hissituation cum motivation (where he was disposed to curb hostileincursions by the Britons). Here one is saying something over andbeyond what the agent thinks-believes or intends-in the matterand thus over and beyond what the evidence might support as to thetruth about agent beliefs and so on. One is saying not so much thatthe agent’s particular end in view was intended to be responsive to hisor her specific perception of the situation and motivation there butthat it was intelligible to us, and presumably to any other seriousinquirer, in that role.

The leading idea here, then, is that the factual filler descriptionswhich provide the stuff of any given explanation should not onlyinstantiate one or another of the conditions of the schema but shoulddo so in an intelligible or plausible way. This is provided for when thefocal points in the schema-the agent’s situation cum motivation, theagent’s relevant purpose, the deed performed-are satisfied by factswhich are themselves intelligibly connected in the specific relation-ships they have with one another as, respectively, a plausible thing todo in a situation, a situationally responsive end in view, or an actionthat serves understandably as a means to that end (or as part ofaccomplishing it).

The Requirement of IntelligibilityAn attempt at explanation which used false statements might

count as schematically sound, even though it was-beyond this point-unsatisfactory or inadequate as an explanation. By the same token,



349

we would have an explanation of sorts-at least a schematically soundone-where the relevant conditions were factually filled, even if thefacts cited were not intelligibly related to one another along thevarious lines of connection just mentioned. But such an explanationwould only be schematically sound; it would not be an adequate orsatisfying one, for it would fall below the standard for action expla-nation, which requires having intelligible connections at the appro-priate points. The function of these judgments, of factuality and ofintelligibility, is similar in each case; they represent conditions forapplying the standard schema in an explanation to a particular set offacts in a given case.

I have taken the idea of a judgment of intelligible connectionfrom Collingwood (1946). If we were to put the matter in the wayCollingwood did, we would say that any such judgment, even if itremains only implicit, allows us, once we have in mind a particularperception of the situation (and attendant motivation) and a particu-lar purpose of the agent, to re-enact the agent’s action, for we can see,with these points in mind and in the light of available evidence, thatone of the courses of action-the deed actually performed-makessense in the situation envisioned, and its being done is plausible, allthings considered. Here, then, we could successfully get to the deedperformed, by citing thoughts and beliefs that the agent had, and inthat sense, re-enact it (in imagination).

II. THE PROBLEM OF OTHER CULTURES

Preliminary Statement

Thus a historian might say that Brutus’s purpose (to save the re-publican constitution of Rome) explains his action (joining Cassius’sconspiracy against Caesar). We can readily imagine an alternative (acompeting) explanation for Brutus’s deed, in which the operativepurpose cited was, for example, Brutus’s desire to rid himself of anenvied political rival. But this alternative explanation still has crucialfeatures in common with the original explanation. In each case, thesame conception of action explanation is being presupposed: that theaction is to be explained by referring it to the agent’s purpose, withrespect to which the action is a means or a way of accomplishing the



350

particular end envisioned, and so on. In each case, the purpose asdescribed could be a plausible reason for Brutus’s action.We could, though, imagine an explanation of sorts in which the

purpose as described and the deed did not cohere, for they did notappear to be intelligibly connected (e.g., see Martin 1976, 310-11,317-18;1977, 87-88). Often, the accounts of action offered by psycho-analysts, at least preliminarily, have this character, for the first stageof the account, where the agent’s version is set out, is one in whichodd or unfamiliar or puzzling patterns of connecting particular pur-poses with particular deeds are relied on.

The point here seems to be that the psychiatrist is setting somesort of initial problem that needs resolving. Even so, it is possible totreat such first-stage accounts as conforming to the standard schema,whereby actions are explained as means to or ways of accomplishingsome end. Now, we move to the second stage of the account, in whichthe opaque behavior pattern is psychoanalytically explained. Here,the psychiatrist characterizes the purpose and deed differently fromthe way the agent did, and it often results that we now have intelligi-bility of connection (see Martin 1976, 325-28).

Of course, we do not regard psychoanalytic explanations as comingfrom another time or another culture. But differences of culture mightwell give us-were we to focus on the agent’s accounts of deeds andpurposes-similarly strange or puzzling patterns, and give them tous in abundance. This, then, would afford us a problem at the level ofintelligible connection.An even more profound difference is seemingly possible, for we

can imagine the situation in which the basic conception of actionpointed to by the standard schema was not presupposed or employedat all in the understanding of human behavior by persons fromanother time or culture. In such an alien society, human behaviorwould not be understood as motivated through the agent’s perceptionof a situation; it would not be understood as involving, further, apurpose or end in view, which, if achieved, would resolve whateverwas problematic in that situation, as the agent conceived it, andbehavior would not be understood as a way, or as part of achieving,such an end.

This would afford us a problem at a second level, at the level of thestandard schema itself, at the level of our basic conception of what isinvolved in action explanations. Is it reasonable to suppose therecould be a problem at this level?



351

Could There Be a Difference in Basic Conceptions?

Let us begin with an extreme case. Here, by hypothesis, the catego-ries of situation cum motivation, purpose, means / end behavior donot exist. We are in a past or culturally different society where theysimply have no purchase. Human behavior and its explanation, to allappearances, have run along an altogether different track.

It is hard to come up with a good example of such a thing. Moreimportant, there is little reason to accept such a possibility at all, inmy view.

Presumably, in any human society there will be beliefs. For exam-ple, there is the belief in our society, among both ordinary agents andinvestigators (historians, anthropologists, and others), that intentionalactions are to be accounted for in a certain way, along the lines of thestandard schema. We can presume that agents and investigators in ahypothetical other society are, like us, reflective and hence could comeup with a correct version of their schema for action explanations,whatever it is. This would be an object of belief for them, just as ourschema is an object of belief for us.

It could be argued, however, that one could not have beliefs in theabsence of desires. But beliefs and desires are all we need to generatethe focal points of the standard schema. Accordingly, one could notargue that the relevant categories did not exist in that other society(for that is most unlikely) or that they could not (for that, in effect, isself-contradictory).

Consider now another argument. Knowledge of nature and ofanimal life, in our society or theirs, would probably generate, onreflection, such ideas as end states and means to ends. Thus it is atleast possible that these ideas would be used in the explanation ofaction (as they are, for example, in our own society). Accordingly, oneis again unable to argue that the relevant categories could not exist inthat other society 2A less extreme case than the one just encountered is, however,

possible. Here, persons in a hypothetical other society had availableto them the same categories as are included in the standard schema(and thus conceivably had the schema itself available to them), butthey also had other categories or schemas which they preferred. Theymight think, for example, that this alternative way of looking atactions was deeper or more coherent with other beliefs they had thanwas the model of explanation afforded by the standard schema andits intelligible instantiations.



352

They would stand toward their alternative schema (and its pre-ferred status) in their society in roughly the same way that Marxistsstand in our society toward a deterministic historical-materialist ex-planation (and its preferred status over standard-schema action ex-planations), for in the case of Marxists, too, talk of individual motiva-tions and intentions is often suppressed or immediately discountedby translation into terms of the demands of class struggle, into termsof the categories of socialist political economy and of stages of mate-rialist historical development. Now, Marxists do sometimes use gar-den variety standard-schema explanations of actions. And where theydo, these explanations are regarded as relatively trivial or superficialand in need of supplementation or correction by the deeper, alterna-tive conception.

Thus the likeliest account of alternative schemas, for Marxists andfor persons from a hypothetical other society, is that these schemasexplain something else altogether (such as institutions, global beliefs,and fundamental background matters, like the economic base of asociety), things that simply may be more important than explanationsof individual pieces of intentionalist action and into which suchexplanations are typically to be fitted.

(Let me add, parenthetically, that even though these alternativeexplanatory strategies might concern themselves with these things, itdoes not follow that the strategies are thereby deeper than intentional-ist explanations or that these strategies could, in fact, reductively andsatisfactorily handle intentional behavior. Indeed, the very oppositeresult might occur: intentionalist action might come to be seen as basicand its explanation schema to be seen as reductively able to handlethese other kinds of things more or less satisfactorily Or the resultmight be that neither is basic and total reduction dismissed as a merewill-o’-the-wisp. Here, I am deliberately leaving questions such asthese open and unaddressed. My point is simply that the variety ofkinds of things that historians and social scientists attempt to explainmay call for a variety of noncompeting strategies.)

Accordingly, if there really are other schemas, it is not likely theyare on all fours with the standard schema. Rather than offer competingaccounts of individual actions, it is more likely they are trying toexplain other kinds of things-things which are (for these other per-sons) more interesting or more fundamental than particular pieces ofbehavior of individual persons.



353

In light of all these arguments, it seems, then, we should assume thatthe standard schema is or could be something that holds good (assomething common and potentially invariant) between our cultureand that of another time or place. This leaves, though, the problemalready established: the problem of narrative diversity, as betweenagent and investigator.

This is a problem that could emerge and often does emerge at thematerial level-at the level of the facts deployed, in the respectivecases, under the categories of the schema. It is the problem describedearlier as one in which odd or unfamiliar or puzzling patterns ofconnecting particular purposes with particular deeds and so on arefound. It is the problem of the possible implausibility (the unintel-ligibility) of the narrative of action developed by persons in onesociety, when viewed by persons in another society. This, then, isspecifically the problem I am concerned with here.

I would surmise that significant differences (as represented byradically diverging and mutually incoherent narratives) can be ex-pected where there is a marked temporal or cultural distance betweenagents and investigators. Historians and anthropologists, in particu-lar, are typically faced with situations of just this sort. They shouldpresume, then, if only as a heuristic maxim, the ever-present possibil-ity of significant divergences in narratives of action, with attendantunintelligibility, between agents in one cultural or temporal formationand investigators in another (see Martin 1977, chaps. 2, 11).

The question is whether such a difference, or its presumption,would pose a serious problem for those investigators. I think that itwould. It would pose a thoretical problem; it would call into questionthe scientific status of all such inquiries. Let me try to make this lastpoint clearer.

Why This Is a Problem for Social Science

It would appear that present-day investigators, under the condi-tion of profound difference that we have just postulated, could notunderstand the past on its own terms at all. This seems sufficient atleast to question the possibility of historical knowledge. A similar lineof argument would throw open equivalent difficulties for anthropo-logical understanding (see Martin 1977,221-22).

The account of intentionalist explanation developed at the outsetof this essay seems, on reflection, to demand an internal understand-



354

ing of past agents (or agents from another culture). It sets an intelligi-ble construction of the presumed thought of the agent as a standard.This then requires, or so I would argue, that the thought of such anagent cannot only be reasonably accurately recreated by the investi-gator but can also be intelligible to the investigator and his or hercontemporaries when so recreated.

However, the investigator would, if the argument is sound so far,have to include, in accurately formulating the thought of such agents,elements which rendered that thought unintelligible to the investi-gator’s audience. So, insofar as the investigator carried out one partof the main task, by recreating the thought of the agent faithfully, theinvestigator and his or her contemporaries would necessarily fail tounderstand it.

If, on the other hand, the investigator were to take up the other partof the main task, by employing the only standard of intelligibilityavailable-the familiar standards of the present day-then the inves-tigator could understand the thoughts and actions of a past agent (orof a person in another culture)-but only by importing standards ofintelligibility that were quite alien to the people under study. Here,then, the investigator can at best only project contemporary forms ofunderstanding onto conduct in other cultures or in the distant past.But this is not the same thing as really understanding, as understand-ing from within, the behavior of agents in the other culture or otherperiod.

So, if the proper understanding of conduct in another culture orperiod is conceived as an internal one, then it follows that proper orreal understanding by historians or anthropologists is impossibleunder the condition of profound difference that we have postulated.In sum, there is a problem whenever the very bridges by which theanthropologist or the historian could cross the gap of cultural or oftemporal difference-by using various singular judgments of intelli-gible material connection within the confines afforded by the stan-dard schema-are not thought to be transcultural.

The demands of intentionalist explanation and the implications ofassuming (if only as a theoretical possibility) the doctrine of radicalcultural or temporal difference are evidently at cross purposes. Thereappears to be a tension here, amounting perhaps to an inconsistency,between the notion of intentionalist explanation and the cases withinhistory and anthropology to which it is normally thought to be applicable.



355

III. A PROPOSED SOLUTION

To conclude that this tension-this apparent inconsistency-is in-surmountable would, however, be premature. What we should tryfirst is a philosophical strategy for accommodating these differences,thus preserving the possibility of an objective, scientific explanationof actions performed in other times or in other cultures. The task, inshort, is to try to give an account of historical or of anthropologicalknowledge on the assumption that what counts as intelligible instan-tiation of the standard schema may differ-probably will differ sharply-from culture to culture or age to age. Let me suggest, then, how thisdeep problem in the philosophy of social science might be resolved.

An Example of the Problem

The ancient Aztecs, the pre-Columbian rulers of much of what wetoday call Mexico, gained their ascendancy through warfare. One oftheir most notable practices was the periodic ritual slaughter of largenumbers of people (many of them captives taken in war). This Aztecpractice of human sacrifice deeply offended the Spanish conquista-dors ; it was one of the things the Spaniards pointed to as an example ofthe Aztec’s moral depravity, which in turn was part of the Spaniards’justification for the conquest, the Christianization, the looting, and theeventual enslavement (for a season) of the Mexican peoples.

The Aztec practice is, needless to say, regarded even to this day asrepugnant; it still seems, to us as it did to the Spaniards, horrifyingand barbaric. Explanations of it by outsiders (like us or the conquis-tadors) tend to follow, then, a characteristic line. The practice is putdown to Aztec savagery or to blood lust, a kind of postbattle frenzy.

Only recently has an attempt been made to put the explanation inan Aztec perspective along the following lines: The Aztecs believed,among other things, that the present eon (the age in which theylived and flourished) was dying, so to speak; the sacrifices were a wayof revivifying the cosmos itself, thereby staving off the end of the pres-ent age.’

This is a puzzling explanation, even if true, for the act itself and thebeliefs ostensibly behind it are, as Collingwood (1946) said on adifferent occasion, totally &dquo;unlike anything that happens in the expe-rience of contributors to the Cambridge Ancient History&dquo; (p. 240). There



356

is a clear sense, then, in which the Aztec practice as thus explained isstill not intelligible to us. We do not see how the ritual killing of peoplewould serve the end identified; we do not really understand thatparticular practice in the role of means to that particular end.

There is another thing we should note about this more recent lineof explanation. It is not precisely identical to an explanation the Aztecsthemselves would offer, for their explanation, if it were made explicit,would characteristically be in the Aztecs’ own language, Nahuatl,using terms and metaphors of that language, would be addressed toan audience of Aztecs or other Mexicans, and would bear the imprintof their cultural formation and exhibit the presuppositions and si-lences (the worldview, in sum) of that particular formation. Any suchexplanation would be bound by what the Aztecs knew or thoughtthey knew; the motivations identified would be Aztec motivationsand the beliefs expressed would be sincere Aztec beliefs (at some pointwe must presume this). The explanation, in those terms, would beintelligible to the Aztecs and the other Mexicans. It would afford anarrative they could follow, for the various connections (of deed per-formed as a means to a certain end and so on) would all be plausibleto them.

However, the explanation we are concerned with is offered bypresent-day investigators. That explanation is in a modem language,Spanish, say, or English, with terms and metaphors from those lan-guages. The explanation necessarily goes into the Aztecs’ complicatedcosmology and calendrical system (not to mention their method ofcounting). Thus the explanation is (probably) far more explicit andstructured and detailed than the Aztecs’ normally was (for the inves-tigators are moving into an area of enormous unfamiliarity to theinvestigators themselves and, to an even greater degree, to their audi-ence). Moreover, the present-day explanation necessarily includesthings that go beyond the Aztecs’ actual thought (for example, itmight presuppose alternative courses of action never entertained bythem or include an account-presumably accurate-of their situationor of their abilities which would differ, perhaps markedly, from theAztecs’ own account or include facts and theories not available to theAztecs and so on).

Most important, though, as I have already noted, the connection ofritual human sacrifice as a means to the end identified is not clear tothese investigators or to us. And such an attitude can persist, as Isuggested in section I, even where we think the proffered explanatory



357

account does yield a factually correct exemplification of the standardschema.

The thing the explanation recounts might even be extrapolated incapsulized form from Aztec behavior in general and thereby consid-ered a rule of behavior for them, a rule that is well supported by allavailable evidence and invariably useful on relevant occasions. Thepoint is, nonetheless, it must be a rule that we can use not only in thisway but can understand when so used.

How, then, might we come to understanding? Perhaps the best wayto begin is to reflect again-and with more precision-on how such aproblem could even take hold.

How the Problem Arose in the First Place

The crucial point, I think, is that there must be an overlap of in-stances between the contrasting explanations-as appears to be thecase in the example under consideration (for each explanation-theoriginal Aztec one and the relatively sophisticated one from thepresent day-seemingly refers to the same deed of ritual humansacrifice). Unless this were so, we would not have explanations of thesame thing, explanations that were even commensurable with eachother (and thus capable of being usefully contrasted, in the way weare doing).

In any case, it is only when we reach the point of contrasting aysof conceiving or explaining the same thing that we reach groun forthe sort of wholesale skepticism about social scientific knowledge atsurfaced in section II, for, here, it was the putting together of differ-ences between agent’s explanation and the investigator’s explanauonof the same piece of behavior, with the requirement of in rn 1 under-standing implicit in the very notion of intentionalist explanations ofaction that created the very problem of genuine historical or anthro-pological, knowledge that we have been puzzling over.

Just as the idea of sameness of instances (in the actions beingexplained) is necessary for the problem we have been discussing evento arise, so it also provides a necessary basis for resolving that prob-lem. I will try to show that this is so by starting from this point andthen tracing the main steps toward a solution, giving in the processan account of what can be called, for want of a better name, &dquo;associa-tion&dquo; or, sometimes, &dquo;juxtaposing.&dquo;



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Association

The first stage, as I said, is the one that we have already noted. Twodiffering and, in a sense, competing explanations of the practice ofAztec ritual human sacrifice have been offered. Each has arisen in itsown particular cultural milieu and, presumably, has thereby its ownpeculiar battery of descriptions, which normally attend it. But thesetwo different explanations must, nonetheless, be capable of coveringthe same instances, no matter how differently described or perceivedthese instances might be in each of the respective cultures. (Recall herethe moral revulsion which was the response-almost a reflex-whenthe Spaniards first encountered the practice or that we exhibit whenwe first hear about it.) These differences aside, the requisite samenessis given by the fact that the instances, which are the tokens of theaction element (the category of &dquo;deed performed&dquo;) in each of the twoexplanations, are identical: they name the same thing(s). The crucialfirst step, then, is simply the sameness, in this sense, of the instances(the actions) being explained.

Now, what makes for the overlapping of these two differing expla-nations on the same instances is the fact that the stock of normallycovered instances, in the case of one such explanation, can be extendedto include instances that were originally part of the preferred stock ofthe other one. Thus, for example, the &dquo;outsider’s&dquo; explanation (theone originally given by the Spaniards) was extended from its originalhome (in European and, before that, Greco-Roman warfare) to includeinstances (of ritual human sacrifice) hitherto wholly outside theirexperience. By the same token, the more sophisticated present-dayexplanation must be extended to include instances (the Aztecs’ sinceretheological and cosmological beliefs) that are wholly outside theinvestigators’ personal experiences and may, in fact, up to that pointnever have been encountered by them in any form. Presumably, thisextending of instances would run in the other direction as well, so thatthe original stock of instances covered under the Aztecs’ repertory ofdescriptions and explanations could be extended (in principle at least)to include new and different instances, for were the Aztecs, perimpossible, to encounter the present-day explanation of their behavior,they would have to come to understand it, and in the same way. Inany case, this extending of coverage to include new and unfamiliarinstances is the second main step.What happens now, put simply, is that these differing explanations

(the one the Aztecs would offer and the present-day one), each using



359

different terms and exhibiting different categories of thought, withdifferent original extensions, can be brought together, can be broughtinto some sort of head-to-head confrontation, through the (partial)overlap of their covered instances, or, putting matters less pugna-ciously, these contrasting explanations can be aligned with one an-other through the limited interpenetration of what were originallywholly different stocks of covered instances.

Thus what can stand between and bridge two different cultures ortwo different times is simply the practice of bringing together mutuallyalien batteries of descriptive and explanatory categories by extend-ing their &dquo;stock&dquo; of covered instances so as to partially interpenetrate,thereby juxtaposing the explanations themselves, from other periods /other cultures and from our own, with each other. This bringing to-gether of (culturally) different batteries of terms and explanatorycategories constitutes, then, step 3. It is in this way-by first overlap-ping instances and then associating in a limited but regimented waythe varying descriptive and explanatory narratives themselves-thattranshistorical or cross-cultural understanding becomes possible 4

Hence the often repeated claim that we understand other periodsor other cultures by &dquo;analogy&dquo; with our own is somewhat misleading.It is not the &dquo;likeness&dquo; of things, or the similarity of alien things to thethings we are familiar with, that governs our bringing them together.Rather, the crucial fact is that they can all be brought together underthe same basic conception of action (the standard schema which, byhypothesis, is common to all times and places), a conception that iscapable of accommodating an enormous variety of descriptive andexplanatory exemplifications, two of which (from differing cultures)themselves happen to have these instances among their overlappingbut disparate extensions.’

Internal Understanding

But does juxtaposing or association, in the account thus far offered,really yield understanding, let alone internal understanding? It doesnot seem that it could, for the problem of (culturally) differing mate-rial standards of intelligibility has not really been touched on. The nextstage in the argument, then, is to take the necessary steps to resolvethis problem, within the framework already developed.

The Aztecs tell one story about their practice (and describe andexplain it thereby); we tell another (and thereby describe and explain



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it differently). Neither story, as told, will invariably meet-or meetcomfortably-the standard of plausibility or intelligibility adhered toby those in the other culture.

Sometimes, the stories involved, from different times or cultures,seem downright bizarre to the investigators, but we can leave thisdetail aside. I have deliberately picked an example where this is notso, where the differences (on the point of plausibility) between theagent’s account and the investigator’s are subtle, in order to focus onthe crucial issue of achieving intelligibility

It should be noted at the very outset that, in the Aztec example, noproblem in linguistic understanding has been assumed. The investi-gators can translate and recite the Aztecs’ account in a reasonablyaccurate way (even though, in those terms, they do not understandit), and they can put it alongside their own (which, of course, they dounderstand). Presumably, the Aztecs could have accomplished thissame feat but in reverse, putting our story (now translated into Nahuatl)alongside their own.

I have assumed there is no problem with linguistic understandingbecause that in fact is the normal case with historians and anthropol-ogists. The linguistic competence required to understand and trans-late these alien stories (more or less accurately) is unquestionablythere, or, at least, we can presume that such competence is not ruledout in principle. In any event, the problem we have been contemplating-that of considering an explanation offered by another culture to beunintelligible-would not even arise in the total absence of thatcompetence.

The historian or the anthropologist can, in fact, become quiteproficient not only in the other culture’s language but in its narrativepractices. The historian can follow them, perhaps perform or criticizethem (by pointing out mistakes, for example, mistakes by local stan-dards, or by anticipating details, and so on). Such proficiency canbecome very complex, very detailed, very nuanced. None of this is atissue, however.

The point is, the preexisting narrative (the one the Aztecs told andthat the investigators can accurately recite) is still there. It is the bonethat originally set the investigators to gnawing, and they still do notunderstand it, as told. They can begin to understand it only when theycan tell it, in understandable fashion, in their way, in the way they tellit in their books and articles.



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One might retort that here I have gone too far: There is another waythan this to understand. The Aztecs understand, but they do so fromwithin the practice; they have no need to tell it another way. Why, then,couldn’t the investigator do it that way as well? It would take work,but there is no barrier in principle that would prevent an investigatorfrom gaining a &dquo;sympathic&dquo; understanding, an understanding fromwithin. The investigator, in effect, could become an Aztec. To use avulgar but useful phrase, the investigator could &dquo;go native.&dquo; Whyhave I precluded this possibility?

Well, beyond the fact that there are today no Aztecs to team up with,the investigator might have other good reasons as well not to want tobecome one. The investigator might not want to share these beliefs (formany of them are false or can be shown to be) nor engage in the Aztecpractices (for some of them, like ritual human sacrifice, are deeplyrepugnant).

There is, for our purposes, however, a more compelling reason eventhan these. The investigator, while in character as investigator, neces-sarily is trying to explain something to someone. This requires, giventhe argument of section I (as amplified in section II), that the narrativeof facts be intelligible. When the investigator is from the present dayor from a particular culture, the understanding sought by both theinvestigator and the investigator’s audience must conform or beavailable to the standards of intelligibility of that day or that culture.For investigators to go native, they would have to desert the veryexplanatory stance that they occupy with respect to that time or thatculture (hitherto their own) to whom the explanation is offered. Thusif there are to be any explanations at all by one culture or time ofanother, such a stance must be retained. This is why I said, then, thatinvestigators and their audiences can begin to understand only whenthe story is told their way.

This brings us, then, to the main point I want to make. Wheninvestigators overlap instances taken from different stocks, from an-other society and from their own experience, they are then able tobring together and juxtapose different stories, different narratives, inthe way I have been describing (and to do so with real expertise, onecan add). But they are able to do something even more important: theyare able to draw together material standards of intelligibility, fromother periods and other cultures and from their own, and therebyjuxtapose and ultimately integrate these with one another.



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In the case of ritual sacrifice in ancient Mexico, the investigatormight note that for the Aztecs, the drawing out of the heart and theshedding of blood was a crucial feature. The investigator might reflectthen on this fact and come to see that perhaps blood and the beatingheart not only symbolize life; in a sense they are life. The shedding ofblood, with death at that point, might make for life for another (andnot merely metaphorically). Such shedding of blood might even havea general cosmological effect, a redemptive effect on the whole orderof things. The world itself is revivified. I do not claim that I understandall this, but it seems on the right track. Adding it to the basic accountdoes seem to make for intelligibility.Why? Well, for one thing, it resonates with events in our own

culture-with the Christian story of the crucifixion, for example, orthe slaying of the scapegoat in the Old Testament-with cases wherethe shedding of blood has a redemptive effect on the cosmos itself.Thus the eucharistic mass, where the faithful are invited with the

phrase &dquo;This is [Christ’s] blood&dquo; to drink from the cup, becomes astructural parallel to the Aztec practice, and the story behind the massbecomes an aid to understanding that practice.

Here, the troubling dissonance between deed and end in view, oneof the things that was puzzling and opaque in the original, unex-panded explanation of the Aztec practice, is removed by addingsomething. The new information, added to the bare account withwhich we started, does seem to afford a satisfactory explanation ofthe Aztecs’ action. It &dquo;fills in&dquo; our picture of the deed. This &dquo;filling in&dquo;exhibits the original elements, the agent’s deed and purpose, morefully by, in effect, redescribing them; more important, it brings theseelements into a kind of coherence. Their connection is made perspic-uous or, if not that, plausible.6

Putting the point more precisely now: The historian (or anthropol-ogist) is enabled by such measures (by &dquo;filling in&dquo;) to understand apractice in another society and to follow, as intelligible, the narrativeof that practice as given in that society by referring to narratives in thehistorian’s own society. The historian (or anthropologist) can say:When they say x, that is, tell their story in a linguistically understand-able way, we say y, in other words, tell our story in a way understand-able to us and, in principle, to anyone.What is achieved here is a genuine understanding: It allows the

investigator to operate with the other society’s material standards as



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standards of intelligibility, for in association with norms (of intelligi-bility) native to the investigator’s own society, as exhibited in intelli-gible narratives found there, the standards of the other society canactually be entered into and used by the investigator. This idea of theinvestigator’s becoming able to use the norms of the other society asstandards of intelligibility, for the investigator and the investigator’saudience, constitutes the next main step, the fourth so far, in ouraccount.

The practice of integrating, of assimilating standards of intelligibil-ity from different times and places to those of the investigator’s ownsociety, allows the investigator (while staying in character as aninvestigator) to follow, in the sense of make intelligible, the materialconnections between particular actions, intentions, beliefs, and so onof agents in another culture or in another period. Indeed, the practiceof so assimilating is the following, as intelligible, of those connections.Hence it can count as an internal understanding.’

Assimilative Association as a Practice

Association so conceived-as proceeding through the four stepsthus far identified and culminating, through assimilation, in internalunderstanding of a sort-is not a matter of duplication,’ for it requiresnot only that the standards of intelligibility of one society, exhibitedfor example in the Aztecs’ narrative, remain distinct from the stan-dards of the other society, as exhibited for example in the much moredetailed present-day explanation (supplemented, as I have suggested,by a model drawn from that society’s own cultural resources), but thatthe difference in the formulation of the two narratives be retained aswell.

The maintenance of this distinctness is important, for rather thansaying that one society projects its cultural perspective via the practicejust described, the retained distinctness allows us to say-which issurely the better thing to say-that the practice itself is projectible intwo different directions. It can indifferently cover our thought andaction and attendant norms of understanding, thereby assimilatingour norms to their standards of intelligibility, or cover their thoughtand action and attendant norms, thereby assimilating their norms toours.



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Further-and more important, in my view-there need not be, andprobably is not, any ideal rule which, if formulated, would bringtogether and make explicit what these diverse material norms ofintelligibility have in common (or, rather, there is no such rule otherthan the standard schema itself, which is not at issue here). What thereis, instead, is simply a practice of assimilating disparate rules or stan-dards to one another.

One might say that the practice of assimilative association is likethat of bringing qualitatively diverse phenomena under a single rule(for that is its regulative idea~like it, I say, except that there is not(necessarily) any canonical rule (analogous to the standard schema)there at all (see Martin 1977, 232).

Let me fill in behind this point a bit. In the account of assimilativeassociation, we have an important reason why some of the rulesinvolved can never be usefully formulated in advance. I have in mindspecifically those rules or standards from the other culture or anothertime onto which the present-day investigator fastens, for these canbecome standards of intelligibility for any such investigator only afterthe fact, only after they have been assimilated to our standards ofintelligibility (to our and the present-day investigator’s material stan-dards of intelligible connection). In short, they can become rules ofintelligibility for that investigator only after he or she has learned touse them as rules of intelligibility, as in effect reformulations of rulesalready indigenous to present-day explanatory practice.

It is a complete misunderstanding, then (as I have already sug-gested), to think that we must first formulate an ideal general rule orstandard of intelligibility to cover both our practice and that of thealien society in order to understand the alien practice. The procedure,rather, is that we learn to understand the relevant alien standard(however it might be formulated, if anyone has even bothered to doso explicitly) by assimilating it to standards we can already use-ourown. If there is any superordinate rule here, it necessarily superveneson an understanding already established (in the very practice ofassimilation). Thus-and this is the crucial point-there need be nosuch rule (see Martin 1977, 248-49).

If my account of assimilative association is sound and can be

applied to material standards of intelligibility, as I have attempted todo in this essay, then it gives us the sketch of a solution to the problemwith which we are concerned. It is possible, then, to believe on thegrounds provided, that the understanding achieved by investigators



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can count, despite radical differences between past and present orbetween one culture and another, as an internal understanding of thebehavior of persons in the culture or period under study 9

NOTES

1. See Martin (1990,207-8) for an example of a schema that has been amplified in theways indicated. The point about timeliness is emphasized by von Wright (1971, 107),and I have taken that point over from him.

2. I owe the argument in the previous paragraph or two to Jack Bricke (who wasfollowing the lead of Donald Davidson). The argument in the present paragraph wassuggested to me by Allan Hanson.

3. For discussion of the Aztec practice and the beliefs behind it, see León-Portilla(1963, chaps. 2 and 3; 1964, esp. 41-45). I do not mean here to suggest that this particularexplanation is uncontested. My point is simply that it is among the explanations whichcurrently command widespread support. There are explanations that compete with it:for example, Harris’s (1977) idea that one important feature of Aztec ritual sacrifice—cannibalism—existed to redress a deficiency in protein (or at least a deficiency of largerdomesticated animals, such as cattle or sheep, as foodstuffs) in the Aztec diet (see chap.9, esp. 108-10, also 121). For discussion, see Sahlins (1978, esp. sec. 1).

4. See Martin (1977, 231-33, in particular, and for the overall argument, chaps. 11 and12). In the writing of the present essay, I have drawn on this book, especially on chapter11, at a number of points—sometimes verbatim.

5. See Martin (1977, 227-28, 242-43) for the idea that the terms used in descriptionsand explanations are, or can be restated so as to become, "multitrack."

6. "When we explain an action, by giving the reason, we do redescribe the action;redescribing the action gives the action a place in a pattern, and in this way the actionis explained" (Davidson 1980, 10). See also Martin (1977, chap. 5).

7. There are many ways, it should be clear, in which the understanding so achievedwould not count as internal. For discussion, see Martin (1977, esp. 233-35) and Hansonand Martin (1973, esp. 202-4).

8. The four steps so far are (1) sameness of instances of action between twocontrasting explanations from different cultures or times; (2) extension of the stock ofinstances normally or originally covered by the battery of terms in each explanation—where normality is defined for those terms by what is covered when they are on homeground (this extension is to include the instances referred to in step 1, so that theseinstances and the ones in the original stock can be said to interpenetrate); (3) the abilityto juxtapose or align the explanations themselves, and even their differing standards ofintelligibility, once the explanatory stocks have been extended and come to interpene-trate in this way; and (4) the ability to use the standards of intelligibility of another timeor another culture, as standards of intelligibility, by drawing on the aid of seeminglyrelevant cultural resources in the investigator’s own society. The final step, of course,is the claim just made that understanding so achieved can count as internal. See alsoHanson and Martin (1973,205-7) and Martin (1977,236-40) for the important distinction,within internal understanding, between investigator’s understanding and participant’sunderstanding—a point which I do not address but do presuppose in the present essay.



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9. The present essay draws, sometimes verbatim (esp. in secs. II and III), from Martin(1981).

REFERENCES

Collingwood, R. G. 1946. The idea of history. Edited with an introduction by T. M. Knox.Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Davidson, Donald. 1980. Essays on actions and events. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Hanson, F. Allan, and Rex Martin. 1973. The problem of other cultures. Philosophy of the

Social Sciences 3:191-208.

Harris, Marvin. 1977. Cannibals and kings: The origins of cultures. New York: RandomHouse.

León-Portilla, MigueL 1963. Aztec thought and culture: A study of the ancient Nahuatl mind.Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. (First published as La Filosofía Náhuatl in1956; a 2d ed. was issued in 1959 by the National University of Mexico: "The presentEnglish edition is not a direct translation of the second edition in Spanish, but ratheran adaptation and rewriting of the text" [p. viii]. Translation from the Spanish wasdone by J. E. Davis.)

—. 1964. Philosophy in the cultures of ancient Mexico. In Cross-cultural understand-ing: Epistemology in anthropology, edited by F.S.C. Northrop and Helen H. Livingston,35-54. New York: Harper & Row.

Martin, Rex. 1976. Explanation and understanding in history. In Essays on explanationand understanding, edited by J. Manninen and R. Tuomela, 305-34. Dordrecht, Holland:ReideL

—. 1977. Historical explanation: Re-enactment and practical inference. Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press.

—. 1981. Collingwood’s doctrine of absolute presuppositions and the possibilityof historical knowledge. In Substance and form in history: A collection of essays inphilosophy of history, edited by L. Pompa and W. H. Dray, 89-106. Edinburgh,Scotland: Edinburgh University Press.

—.1990. G. H. von Wright on explanation and understanding: An appraisal Historyand Theory 29:205-33.

Sahlins, Marshall. 1978. Review of Cannibals and Kings, by Marvin Harris. New YorkReview of Books, 23 November, 45-53.

von Wright, G. H. 1971. Explanation and understanding. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UniversityPress.

Rex Martin is a professor of philosophy at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Hismajor fields of interest are political and legal philosophy (in particular, rights) and thephilosophy of history. He is the author of Historical Explanation: Re-enactment andPractical Inference (Cornell University Press,1977) and Rawls and Rights (Univer-sity Press of Kansas, 1985).



Documents

The Problem of Other Cultures and Other Periods in Action Explanations