Suppose I
pointed to a piece of paper and said, to some one:
“this colour I call
‘red’”. Afterwards I give him
the order: “now paint me a red
patch”. I then ask him: “why,
in carrying out my order, did you paint just this
colour?” His answer could then be:
“This colour (pointing to the sample which I have
given him) was called red; and the patch I have painted has, as
you see, the colour of the sample”. He has now
given me a reason for carrying out the order in the way he
did. Giving a reason for something one did or said means
showing a
way which leads to this
22.
action. In some
cases it means telling the way which one has gone oneself; in
others it means describing a way which leads there and is in
accordance with certain accepted rules. Thus when asked,
“why did you carry out my order by painting just this
colour?” the answer could have described the way the
person had actually taken to arrive at this particular
shade. This would have been so if, hearing the word
“red”, he had taken up the sample I had given
him, labelled “red”, and had
copied that
sample when painting the patch. On the other hand he
might have painted it “automatically” or from a
memory image; but when asked to give the reason he might still
point to the sample and show that it matched the patch he had
painted. In this latter case the reason given would have
been of the second kind; i.e. a justification
post hoc.