Can we come up with an approach to social science explanation that incorporates the non-intentional dimension, but avoids an overly descriptive or particularistic solution (à la hermeneutics)
[Elster’s] residual positivism comes in two forms. In the first place, the notion of causal law continues to play a determining role in Elster’s worldview, in which case mechanisms do not succeed in offering us a distinctive enough alternative to the causal law model. Secondly, the causal chain language deployed by Elster belies how the grammar of causal mechanisms is only one of several possible, and indeed contestable, grammars of intelligibility. The question then becomes one of articulating an appropriate grammar of intelligibility in the social sciences. (84-5)
We develop one such grammar of intelligibility in terms of social, political, and fantasmatic logics, which we believe avoids the twin fallacies of psychologism and idealism that bedevil Elster’s account.