The explanatory gap: the pragmatic deconstruction of a myth

Abstract

This paper presents the proposal to address the problem of an explanatory gap in the philosophy of mind. As an alternative to traditional approaches, I analyze the meaning of the explanatory gap according to James’s pragmatism in consonance with the perspective of ordinary language philosophy of Ryle, Austin, and Wittgenstein. As a strategy for developing the paper proposal, I try to show that the explanatory gap results from a misunderstanding on the uses of the psychological terms. The result is an obsessive insistence in entifying the meaning of ‘mind’ and the belief that some psychological terms mean a type of entity existing beyond their uses. Such belief takes the form of a foundationalist view understanding of the mental. What I try to show finally, and also in consonance with recent enactivist perspectives, is that the meaning of the psychological terms has nothing to do with the existence of (non-physical or physical) entities. The belief in such entities as a condition for meaning the psychological terms reveals a philosophical myth derived from the acceptance of the explanatory gap. The proposal of the paper is the philosophical demystification of the explanatory gap.