Imagine two buildings: the first a sleek new hi-rise with a large sign in front, SCIENTIFIC MOUSETRAP COMPANY; the second, a dilapidated two-story with a small sign stuck in its scraggly front yard, AD HOC MOUSETRAP COMPANY. SMC builds a dandy mousetrap. As a mouse approaches its black box, a series of lights begins to flash, hypnotizing the mouse and freezing it in its tracks. A laser beam then painlessly severs key nerves, killing the mouse. Finally, a shot of perfume assures pleasant sensations for the homeowner who must remove the mouse from its point of demise. The Ad Hoc Mousetrap Company, on the other hand, makes the same old garden-variety mousetrap with which most of us are familiar. A spring-loaded piece of heavy-gauge wire smashes down on the mouse when it nibbles cheese from the trip mechanism. No pretty lights and no pleasant smells.
Let's suppose you need a mousetrap. Assuming that cost is not a factor, you would probably prefer SMC's mousetrap over AHMC's. But before you buy, there is something you ought to know: the scientific mousetrap doesn't work, but the garden variety one does. Now which mousetrap will you buy?
A.R. Louch asks something of the same question in Explanation and Human Action. Only he asks it in reference to explanations, not mousetraps. Loueh believes that many of the explanations manufactured by (what I shall call) the Scientific Explanation Company don't work. But explanations manufactured by the Ad Hoc Explanation Company do work. One difference between the two companies is that SEC employs social scientists, while AHEC employs ordinary everyday people. The ordinary man who couches his action explanations in terms of reasons, motives, intentions, and the like is truly offering an explanation