'Because you'll find out anyway, your wife is having an affair' If and Because Rani Lill Anjum rani.anjum@umb.no Abstract In an explanation 'y because x', because can be used to express an explanatory relation between an explanandum 'y' and an explanans 'x'. But because can also be used to express the speaker's reason for uttering 'y'. This difference will be elucidated by connecting it with the distinction between the atissue dimension and the speaker dimension of meaning. There are also internal relations between if and because that can help us find and analyse different uses of because, and thus also different types of explanatory relations. Causation, conditionals, explanation, confirmation, dispositions and laws form a cluster of closely related topics in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science. 1 1. Introduction Explanations form a central part of our scientific and everyday lives. We want to understand why things happen, how things are related, and what will happen if something else happens. We seek and offer explanations of natural phenomena, but also of our social, psychological and moral lives. Through explanations, we seek to understand ourselves and each other and why we act, react and interact as we do with each other and the things we are surrounded by in our lives. In explanations, we often start out with a phenomenon that we want to say certain things about. We want for instance to understand why this phenomenon occurred, what its cause was, what would have prevented it, what triggered it, and why this happened instead of something else. And then we would also want to know whether this was an instance of a general relation, a causal relation, an actualization of a disposition, a physical law, a coincidence, a matter of probability, a matter of necessity, a matter of chance, and so on. Explanations are, and have to be, performed through language. By looking at how we use language to explain facts, events, actions and reactions and relations between facts, events, actions and reactions, we will hopefully elucidate more of the nature of explanations per se. 1 Sosa & Tooley (1993), p. 1. 2 How do we for instance express an explanation? And how do we understand an explanation? In general, what do we consider to be an explanation? First of all, an explanation can be seen as an answer to a certain type of question: Why did this happen? Why did you do this? How could this have happened? What triggered this? An answer to such questions could be expressed in different ways: Often x causes these things. This always happens if x. It could have been many things, but in this case, it was most likely x that triggered it. The reason for this was x. It happened because x. I did it because x. In its plainest form, an explanation can be given the general formulation 'y because x'. I will here look into how we use this expression in language, with focus on because. And since the explanatory because is closely related to the conditional if, I will analyze because in light of different types and uses of if identified in a classification of conditionals by Schapansky and Anjum. 2. Causation That there is a relation between causation and conditionals is generally recognized, but there is no general agreement on what this relation is: What relationship is there between causal laws and causal relations? In particular, are causal relations between events logically supervenient upon causal laws together with the totality of non-causal states of affairs? If not, do causal relations at least presuppose the existence of corresponding, covering laws, or, on the contrary, is a singularist account of causation correct? 2 A main concern in the discussion on causation is how to understand the relation between 'x' and 'y' in causal explanations 'y because x': 'The fire broke out because of a short circuit.' There are several suggestions to what this relation consists in: 3 1. C is a cause of E if and only if C and E are actual and C is ceteris paribus sufficient for E. 2 Sosa & Tooley (1993), p. 5. 3 Sosa & Tooley (1993), pp. 5-8. 3 2. C is a cause of E if and only if C and E are actual and C is ceteris paribus necessary for E. 3. If C is a cause of E (on a certain occasion) then C is an INUS condition of E, i.e. C is an insufficient but necessary part of a condition which is itself unnecessary but exclusively sufficient for E (on that occasion). 4 As we see, the relation between 'x' and 'y' is explained in terms of sufficient and necessary conditions. There are however several other approaches to causation than these: Some philosophers (e.g. Ducasse) have tried to offer an account of causation without relying at all on conditionality or lawfulness. Others (e.g. von Wright) have tried supplementing conditionality with other notions  such as that of agency  in order to explain causation. Others (e.g. Reichenbach, Good, Suppes, and Salmon) have argued in support of accounts of causation in which it is the concept of probability, rather than that of conditionality, which plays a central role. Others (e.g. Lewis) have suggested that the analysis of causation needs to be framed in terms of counterfactuals. Still others (e.g. Tooley) have argued that the reason that the problem of finding a satisfactory analysis of causal concepts has proven so intractable is due to the mistaken idea that an analysis of causal concepts must be reductionist in form: causal concepts can be analysed, but only along realist lines. Others (Anscombe and Fales) have also supported a realist view, but hold, in addition, that causation is, in favourable circumstances, directly observable, and thus does not stand in need of analysis. Finally, some philosophers (e.g. Davidson) have set aside the problem of the analysis of causation, and have addressed themselves to the more modest task of characterizing the logical form of singular causal statements. 5 This paper is meant as a contribution to the debate on causation via an analysis of explanations. My focal point is to argue that the relation between 'x' and 'y' in 'y because x' is dependent on the type of explanation, and that we therefore can have more than one type of relation. 3. At-issue and speaker dimension According to Bach, there are at least two different uses of because. 6 We can use because to express an explanatory relation between the facts described in the two clauses, as in the following utterance: 4 The INUS condition is according to Mackie (1965), p. 245. 5 Sosa & Tooley (1993), pp. 9-10. 6 Bach (1994), pp. 147-148. 4 (1) Because the verdict was unjust, a riot broke out. The because-clause is here the explanation of the second clause, and could be an answer to questions such as: Why did a riot break out? What caused the riot? The hearer can specify what is said in (1) by indirect quotation: (1IQ) She said that because the verdict was unjust, a riot broke out. On the other hand, we can use because to perform what Grice calls non-central speech acts: (2) Because you'll find out anyway, your wife is having an affair. Here, because is used to explain or justify the speech act of informing the hearer of the fact expressed by the second clause, and not to express an explanatory relation between the facts described by the two clauses. If understood as an explanation, (2) would serve as an answer to the question: Why are you telling me this? That because is not used to express an explanatory relation becomes clearer when we see that the hearer cannot specify what is said in (2) by putting it into indirect quotation: (2IQ)* He said that because I'll find out anyway, my wife is having an affair. However, (2IQ) can be reformulated as 'He said that my wife is having an affair because I'll find it out anyway', which is not a report of (2). Bach refers to Grice in noting that specifications of non-central speech acts do not fit comfortably into specifications of 'what is said'. These non-central speech acts can be triggered by certain discourse connectives, as for instance accordingly, anyway, besides, by the way, frankly, in contrast, in my opinion, nevertheless, not to mention, strictly speaking, to get to the point, and so on (Bach: 148). (3) To be honest, Portia is making a big mistake. A specification of 'what is said' cannot include the non-central speech act: (3IQ)* She said that to be honest, Portia is making a big mistake. One cannot refer meaningfully to such speech acts in third person, because one cannot mention these phrases without at the same time performing the speech acts for which they are used; to be honest, frankly, in my opinion, and so on. This distinction between non-central 5 speech acts and 'what is said' is related to an aspect of meaning, namely what Potts refer to as the distinction between the at-issue dimension and the speaker dimension. This bisection of semantics helps us clarify the two different uses of because in (1) and (2): (1) Because the verdict was unjust, a riot broke out. (2) Because you'll find out anyway, your wife is having an affair. In (1), the whole sentence is part of the at-issue meaning, while only the second clause in (2) is part of the at-issue meaning. The because-clause in (2) is speaker-oriented. The speaker dimension is about the subject (Bach: about the utterance), and is therefore not part of the atissue content, namely that your wife is having an affair. This distinction between at-issue and speaker dimension can be made clearer by other examples than those containing because: (4) Celia said that Oswald, a confirmed psychopath, is fit to watch the kids. The at-issue content of (4) is: (4AI) Celia said that Oswald is fit to watch the kids. In (4AI) we have left out the speaker's comment, and merely reported that Celia said that Oswald is fit to watch the kids. We cannot utter (4) without at the same time having committed ourselves to having said that Oswald is a confirmed psychopath; although we would consider (4) as an accurate and complete report of what Celia said, without committing her to having said that Oswald is a confirmed psychopath. That Oswald is a confirmed psychopath is the speaker's comment to the at-issue content, and not part of what Celia has said. A consequence of this two-dimensional semantics is that the at-issue content of a sentence can be true and the speaker-oriented issue false at the same time, as in (5): (5) That stupid cow Diana is on the phone again. That Diana is a stupid cow is a speaker-oriented contribution, and not part of the at-issue content: that Diana is on the phone again. The distinction between the at-issue dimension and 6 the speaker dimension also elucidates the complexity of the relation between because and if, as will be made clearer in the following. 4. An analysis of because Traditionally, there has been an inclination to give one unified account of if, mostly represented by the material conditional '' or the strict conditional ''. There are, however, several different types of conditionals, depending on for instance what type of if is in use and on what kind of relation is expressed between the antecedent and the consequent. I will here analyze because in light of the conditional marker if. In my analysis, I will make use of distinctions and terms from the classification of Schapansky and Anjum (as for instance existential, generic, causative and non-causative). It is important to notice that my classification is based on analyses of concrete examples. This does however not mean that my analysis is considered as the only possible interpretation of these examples: I only use the examples as illustrations, in the sense that they can be interpreted as being part of a certain type of explanation. The main thesis that I want to substantiate with this classification is that there are many different types of explanations 'y because x', depending on the underlying conditional relation expressed between 'x' and 'y'. I hope my use and discussion of examples will help establish at least this. 4.1 At-issue if and because Following the terminology above, we can say that there are at least two distinct classes of conditionals: at-issue conditionals and non-central speech act conditionals. In the at-issue conditionals, if is used to express a conditional relation between the matters described by the antecedent and the consequent. This conditional relation is then used in explanations expressed with because. However, while at-issue conditionals 'If x then y' can appear with various degrees of hypotheticality, 'y because x' cannot: If Dion didn't do it, Julia did. If Julia was home, she did it. If Julia was home, she would do it. If Julia is home, she does it. If Julia is home, she'll do it. If Julia were home, she did it. If Julia were home, she would do it. If Julia had been home, she would have done it. Because Dion didn't do it, Julia did. Because Julia was home, she did it. --Because Julia is home, she does it. Because Julia is home, she'll do it. --- --- --- 7 Naturally, because does not take the forms with higher degree of hypotheticality, since it is part of the expression's meaning that the because-clause is actualized. An explanation will therefore have one of the four grammatical forms above to the right, when expressed with because. In a conditional, however, we do not have any restriction on the truth-value of the ifclause, since the at-issue conditionals are used to express a (purely) hypothetical relation between the matters described by the antecedent and the consequent. Because can be used to express different types of explanatory relations, either between events or between facts. This relation can be generic or existential, depending on the type of explanation. When because is used to express a generic explanatory relation between two events, we can have an instance of a sufficient/necessary relation, as in: 1. The iron bar expanded because it was heated. 2. The cat died because we didn't feed him. 3. The girl is crying because you hit her. Such explanations depend on corresponding generic sufficient/necessary conditionals of the form; 'For any x, if x is in the state G, it will, as a result, be in state H', or; '(x) (if Gx then Hx)': 'If an iron bar is heated, it will expand.' 'If a cat doesn't get food, it will die.' 'If a girl is hit, she'll cry.' Further, we can have generic explanatory relations that are not instances of a strict sufficiency/necessity relation, but rather a relation of possibility: 4. The fire broke out because of a short-circuit. 5. Oliver got cancer because he smoked twenty cigarettes a day for twenty years. 6. Because Margaret was so clumsy, she fell down the well. In these explanations, we cannot say that the because-clause is a sufficient or necessary condition, but rather, that the explanations depend on corresponding conditionals of the form; 'For any x, if x is in the state G, it is possible (or even probable) that x will, as a result, be in state H', or; '(x) (if Gx then (Hx))': 'If there is a short-circuit, there might be a fire.' 'If one smokes twenty cigarettes a day for twenty years, there is a great risk of getting cancer.' 'If one is clumsy, one might fall down a well.' 8 When because is used to express a generic explanatory relation between two facts, one explains a fact about an object by referring to one of the properties of this kind of object: 7. Because Orlando is a dog, he is mortal. 8. Because 6 is an even number, it is divisible on 2. 9. Ophelia can't walk because her leg is broken. Such explanations depend on corresponding generic conditionals; 'For any x, if x is G, then it has the property H', or; '(x) (if Gx then Hx)': 'If something is a dog, it is mortal.' 'If n is an even number, it is divisible on 2.' 'If someone has a broken leg, they can't walk.' What is explained in generic because statements can be an actualization of a causal law, as for instance a physical, biological, economical, or psychological law, or an actualization of a dispositional property, a fact by classification or definition, a general empirical fact, or of other theories about continuities and connections in the world. We observe that even though these because statements are generic, they must have a singular definite form, as opposed to their corresponding conditional expressions. So even though because statements rely on hypothetical conditionals, they still often express a singular manifestation of the because-clause. This means that even though the explanatory relation expressed is generic, an explanation will often not be formulated as more general than the question it is supposed to answer. So if the question is: 'Why are all men so mean?' the explanation will have to be equally general: 'Because that's just how men are.' On the other hand, if the question is formulated in a more singular mood: 'Why is Daddy so mean?' the explanation, even though it relies on a generic conditional, must be formulated in a singular mood as well: 'Because Daddy is a man, honey.' And then one might add for further explanation, if this is not already understood: 'All men are mean, you see. One day you'll learn that.' Because can further be used to express an existential explanatory relation between two events, where what is explained can be the reason for a certain reaction or event: 10. Because I didn't hesitate, I got a good price on the house. 11. Your husband's jealous because you flirted with that young, handsome professor. 12. Because the babysitter never turned up, we had to stay home. 9 Such explanations depend on corresponding existential conditionals that are predictions of what consequent will follow from a particular antecedent in a particular situation; 'If p then q': 'If I don't hesitate, I will get a good price on the house.' 'If you flirt with that handsome young professor, your husband will get jealous.' 'If the babysitter never turns up, we'll have to stay home.' In existential because statements, many of the explanatory relations expressed are sufficient/necessary conditions, but many are also a matter of possibility. Which explanations are what will of course be discussable, and probably more so for existential than for generic ones. However, the important point is that the explanatory relation expressed in all because statements will rely on corresponding conditionals where the type of explanatory relation can be included in the conditional expression. For instance, whether the conditional relation between a broken leg and the ability to walk should be best expressed as a matter of sufficient/necessary conditions, or by the more modified: 'If someone has a broken leg, they usually cannot walk', will be a question of what type or degree of conditional relation one wants to express. 'If someone has a broken leg, then she probably cannot walk.' Often, someone will first make the stronger claim, but then modify it after an objection or a convincing counter-example: 'You know, Aemilia broke her leg, but didn't know it till two days after. And she could walk, even though it hurt a lot.' What we learn from this is that explanations are easily, and perhaps even best, analyzed in terms of the conditional relation between what is explained (explanandum) and what explains it (explanans). And since we know that an at-issue conditional relation can be of several different types, according to whether the relation between the antecedent and the consequent is of a causal, dispositional, modal, empirical, logical or other type, we can conclude that there is, correspondingly, a variety of types of at-issue explanations, depending on the conditional relation expressed between the explanandum and the explanans. 4.1.1 Explanatory relation We have seen that the explanatory relation between 'x' and 'y' in 'y because x' can be of various kinds. It is therefore inadequate to treat all explanations as if they represented a sufficient/necessary relation between explanandum and explanans. Take for instance the following explanation: 10 (5) Audrey is angry because Beatrice slept with her (Audrey's) husband. We can think of several ways that Beatrice sleeping with Audrey's husband is an explanation of Audrey being angry. For instance, Audrey is human, and it is part of the human nature to have a disposition to feel love, jealousy, anger, and so on. This can be supported by psychological theories and empirical data, but we will probably find infidelity to be a sufficient reason to feel betrayed, hurt, and angry. Infidelity can thus be regarded as a sufficient condition for being angry, but it can also be a dispositional matter. Humans have a disposition to feel anger, and several things can trigger the anger. Furthermore, some will perhaps say that infidelity will not necessarily trigger anger, and then one would have to modify the explanatory relation. So even though the infidelity was what caused Audrey's anger now, it would perhaps not bother her at another time, when her personal situation is different. It could for instance be the case that Audrey is having an affair herself, and that this affair is getting so serious that she hopes to get a divorce. Would we regard such objections as decisive for how we should describe the explanatory relation between the affair and Audrey's anger? I think not. One could always come up with scenarios where an event would not trigger another event, no matter how causal a relation. The following conditional will normally be regarded as a matter of necessity: (6) If I drop this pen, it will fall. Because of our knowledge of gravity, we would think that this conditional is true and necessary, and that dropping the pen would necessarily trigger the pen to fall. But then one does not take into consideration all the elements that can block the fulfillment of the falling pen. We do not imagine all the possible changes of context. For instance, the pen might be tied to my hand, I might be in a gravity-free zone, the pen can be filled with helium, and so on. When we find an explanation satisfactory, we do this because we consider the situation under normal circumstances. And if an event, an action, a reaction, or whatever, is explained by referring to the triggering factor, we will normally consider this a satisfying, adequate and correct explanation, independently of whether this triggering factor in all other circumstances would cause the same event, action, reaction, or whatever; that is, whether it was an instance of a sufficient, dispositional, modal or causal relation between explanandum and explanans. 11 4.2 At-issue if and speaker dimension because So far we have considered explanations where because is used to express explanatory relations between two at-issue clauses. We have seen that the explanatory relation between the two clauses is closely connected to the conditional relation in a corresponding conditional statement. However, there are some uses of because that are speaker-oriented, even though their corresponding statements with if are part of the at-issue dimension: 13. Nell's not home, because the lights are out. 14. Iris has worked hard, because this paper is better than the last one I got from her. 15. Miranda is home, because the dog's barking. 16. The room's occupied, because the red lamp is on. 17. Jaques is here, because his shoes are in the hallway. 18. You've got measles, because you have all these red spots on your body. 19. You have been unfaithful to me, because you have lipstick on your shirt. 20. I see that Hermia's been here, because there's a bra on the chair. 21. I must have done something wrong, because my husband is angry. In these uses of because, the because-clause is speaker-oriented, while the other clause is the at-issue content and is therefore what is first of all communicated. The because-clause is not used to explain the at-issue content, as in the at-issue uses of because. Rather, the speaker is giving the reason why she thinks herself justified in holding the knowledge expressed in the at-issue clause. The speaker indirectly explains to the hearer the reason why she is telling him what is expressed in the at-issue clause. First, she makes a claim, and then she refers to some indicator that gave her a clue, criterion or symptom that enabled her to draw this conclusion. This is why the because-clause comes after the at-issue part. If we replace because with if, however, the antecedent can appear before or after the consequent: 'If you have lipstick on your shirt, you have been unfaithful.' 'The room is occupied if the red lamp is on.' This is because the statements containing if are not speakeroriented, but pure at-issue statements where there is a degree of a sufficiency/necessity relation between the antecedent and the consequent, as for instance in: 'If the red lamp is on, then the room is occupied.' This indicates that if has a weaker, in the sense wider, communicative effect than because. While because specifies an explanation to a phenomenon, if can also be used to give expression to a sufficient indicator/indicated relation, so that the manifestation of the if-clause would be a sufficient condition for us to infer the manifestation of the consequent. 12 4.3 Speaker dimension if and because In addition to expressing a degree of a sufficiency/necessity relation between antecedent and consequent, if can be used to express relevance with respect to the information given in the consequent. For instance, when someone says: 'If you have time, can you give me a hand with this?' they could also have said just the consequent: 'Can you give me a hand with this?' Here, the if-clause can also serve as a question: 'Do you have time? Because if you do, can you give me a hand with this?' Here, the if-clause is hypothetically assertive and the consequent has an illocutionary force other than assertion. Another example of this is: 'If you see Philip, tell him that I want to see him.' In such uses of if, one can specify what was said by just referring to the consequent: 'Philip, Olivia said that she wants to see you.' 'Angelo asks if I can give him a hand.' In these types of conditionals, the if-clause is speaker-oriented, while the matter spoken of in the consequent is the at-issue part of the utterance. However, if we include the if-clause in our specification, we will be informing the hearer about more than what is actually of interest to him, which is the at-issue message: 'Olivia said that if I see you, I should tell you that she wants to see you, Philip.' A similar relation between a speaker-oriented clause and an at-issue clause is found in some uses of because: (7) Because you're already up, can you get me a glass of water? Here, the because-clause is used to express relevance with respect to the information given or question posed in the consequent in a way that gives the hearer a context for the at-issue message. But as in the speaker-oriented uses of if above, the speaker could also have said only the at-issue part: (7AI) Can you get me a glass of water? By adding the because-clause, one explains or justifies the speech act of asking a question, as in (7), or of informing the hearer of the fact expressed by the second clause: 7 22. Because Demetrius is taking Gertrude to the party, why can't we go together? 23. Because you have to know everything, Rinaldo stayed over last night. 7 Here it would of course be more natural to use 'since' instead of 'because'. 13 24. Because you're going out, can you let the cat in? 25. Because I can see that it hurt you, I'm sorry. It won't happen again. 26. Because I want you to be the first to know, I'm getting married next month. 27. Because I don't want you to make a fool out of yourself, Viola has a boyfriend. 28. Because you've been so honest with me, my name is not Adrian. 29. Because your brother works at Avis, perhaps he could give me a discount? 30. Because I told you where I hid the earrings, can you forgive me? 31. Because I don't want you to hear it from someone else, I'm moving in with Lennox. If we try to transpose these speaker-oriented because statements into corresponding if statements, we see that this does not work for all of them. One can for instance not say meaningfully: 'If I don't want you to hear it from someone else, I'm moving in with Lennox.' One can however say meaningfully: 'If I tell you where I hid the earrings, can you forgive me?' 'If you have to know everything, Rinaldo stayed over last night.' Nevertheless, when we can replace because with if in these examples, the if-clause will remain speaker-oriented. The relations between the two clauses in these speaker-oriented uses of because are not causal, modal, dispositional, logical, or anything like in the at-issue uses of because. We can therefore not say that such statements are explanations per se, at least not in the sense that the second clause is the explanandum and the because-clause is the explanans. However, even though because is here not used to explain the at-issue content in the second clause, it is nevertheless used to explain the reason for performing the speech act of telling or asking the hearer the at-issue clause. One might say that such speaker-oriented uses of because are used to express the explanatory relation between the speaker dimension and the speech act performed, e.g. 'Because you've been so honest with me, I'm telling you this: I'm not Adrian.' In these speaker-oriented uses of because, the speaker has a self-reflecting attitude to her own utterance. By adding the because-clause, the speaker performs a speech act and explains it at the same time. 8 However, this kind of speech acts can only be performed in a situation where 8 Another type of utterances where one performs a speech act and comments on it at the same time, is for instance: 'Not to be rude, but that is an ugly dress' and 'Not to stick my nose in your business, but did you sleep with Juliet last night?' Here, one safeguards oneself in a way that is intended to disallow the hearer to take the 14 the speaker addresses herself in an 'I' and 'you' communication directly with a hearer. For instance, we cannot change the indexicals in a way that lets the speaker address a hearer about a third person and then simultaneously perform the speech act addressed to the hearer: (193rd person)* Because she's been so honest with me, I'm not Adrian. The hearer would not understand why the speaker told him (the hearer) the at-issue information that he is not Adrian, when the speaker-oriented because-clause indicates that the information is to be given to the hearer, and that the reason for telling this to the hearer is explained at the same time by the speaker. One could however reformulate the supposedly intended statement to make it meaningful: (19') Because she's been so honest with me, I'll tell her that I'm not Adrian. But this would no longer be a speaker-oriented because statement, since the because-clause serves here in an ordinary way as explanans and the second clause as explanandum. What is explained here is not a speech act while performing it, but rather the intention of performing some speech act in the future and the reason for this intention. The two different types of speaker-oriented uses of because that we have discussed here have one feature in common: Since the because-clause is part of another communicative level than the at-issue clause, the hearer cannot specify what was said by indirect quotation, if he also includes the explanation for performing the speech act: (23IQ)* Nerissa said that Nell's not home, because the lights are out. (14IQ)* Nerissa said that because I have to know everything, Rinaldo stayed over. By including both clauses in the indirect quotation, the speaker indicates that they are on the same communicative level; namely the at-issue dimension. The hearer would then have committed himself to having said that Nerissa said that 'Because the lights are out, Nell's not home' and 'Rinaldo stayed over because I have to know everything'. Such a mistake would have changed the whole meaning of the original utterances, and an unsuspecting third party would ask herself why Nell couldn't just turn the lights on if she didn't like to be home in the utterance for what it is; namely rude and nosy, respectively. Accordingly, one performs two speech acts that are related to each other. 15 dark, or whether it was a power failure in the whole neighborhood that caused the blackout that made Nell so uncomfortable that she didn't want to stay at home. She would also be amazed of the strong influence the messenger has on Nerissa's personal life. 4.4 Cause versus reason We have seen that because plays a key role in explanations, and that it can serve to express different types of explanations, depending on the use of because. In the speaker-oriented uses of because, what is marked with because is a reason, not a cause, for the at-issue matter to be explained. In the at-issue uses of because, we can explain both with reasons and causes, depending on the matter explained. A cause seems to be causally stronger than a reason, in the sense that when we ask for the cause of a phenomenon, we ask for the triggering factor in a more mechanical way than when we ask for a reason, which we expect to be more personal and related to our inner, private life. Causes are connected with effects, while reasons are connected with actions. We ask for reasons when we want to understand someone's behavior, actions or reactions: 'Why is Julia so mysterious? – She has her reasons; I saw Gregory sneak out her window this morning.' However, we can also ask for the cause of a certain behavior: 'Why is Mariana crying?' 'Because her husband is dying.' This is the cause of Mariana's crying, and we will consider it a reasonable cause, where a dying husband is the triggering factor of sorrow and expression of sorrow. If this explanation is not satisfactory, we can ask for the reasons for Mariana's crying: 'But why is Mariana crying? Does she want our sympathy? Surely, she doesn't love her husband. She married him only for his money.' 9 That reasons are associated with our behavior, actions and intentions, explains why the speaker-oriented uses of because – that are connected with speech acts – always concern reasons, and not causes. We use the speaker-oriented because-clause to explain the reason why we say what we say in the at-issue clause. If the whole utterance is an at-issue matter, we necessarily have an explanatory relation, where the because-clause is used as explanandum to state the cause or reason of the explanans. And this is not the case for the speaker-oriented uses of because, since what is explained here are rather our own speech acts while performing them. So if a hearer specifies what is said by indirect quotation, and includes the speaker- 9 Like John Pierpoint Morgan, an American financier, said: "A person always has two reasons for his actions – a good reason and the real reason." 16 oriented because-clause, the whole utterance becomes at-issue oriented, so that the becauseclause would be considered the cause of the at-issue part of the utterance. 5. Concluding remarks The analysis of because has proven instructive in several respects. First of all, it establishes that an explanatory relation can be of many different kinds, depending on the conditional relation asserted or expressed between explanandum and explanans. In addition, the degree of strength in this relation seems to be, as a rule, open for discussion and modification. Secondly, the uses of because that combine the at-issue and speaker perspective seem elucidative for many reasons. Since they are used both as actions and explanations of actions at the same time, and are therefore used both to perform a speech act and give the reason for performing the speech act, it would be interesting to see if, by taking a closer look at such uses of because, we would be able to throw some new light on the distinction between reasons and causes, and also over action theories and indexicality. Finally, the distinction between the at-issue and speaker dimensions, in addition to helping us differentiate between two uses of because, gives us a new entrance to the relation between different levels of meaning than the semantics versus pragmatics division. Following this traditional distinction, we could say that the speaker-oriented uses of because are more pragmatically oriented than the at-issue uses, since the first includes speech acts and have a self-reflective aspect. However, this does not help us much in our analysis. With the introduction of these new concepts, we have been able to treat both the speech act and the atissue aspect of the utterance within one analysis, without having committed ourselves to saying that they are on the same communicative level. Acknowledgments I would like to thank Arnt Myrstad for valuable conversations and detailed comments. Thanks also to Øystein Nilsen and Gillian Ramchand for introducing to me the distinction between atissue and speaker dimension and for providing useful examples, and to Lene Bomann-Larsen, Inga Bostad, Jacob Elster, Ingvald Fergestad, Ellen-Marie Forsberg, Ingeborg Owesen, Gry Oftedal, Bjørn Ramberg and Karin Tan for helpful comments to an earlier version of this paper, presented at a seminar at Isegran, Fredrikstad in December 2003. I have also benefited from the comments of an anonymous referee. Finally, I would like to thank the University of Tromsø and the Norwegian Research Council for financial support. 17 References Bach, K.: 'Conversational Impliciture', Mind and Language, Vol. 9 No. 2, 1994, pp. 124-162. Mackie, J.L.: 'Causes and Conditions', American Philosophical Quarterly, No. 2, 1965, pp. 245-264. Potts, C.: 'The Logic of Conventional Implicatures', To appear in Gillian Ramchand and Charles Reiss (eds.), Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces, Oxford, Oxford University Press 2005. Schapansky, N. and R. Anjum: 'A Classification of Conditionals', unpublished, 2004. Sosa, E. and M. Tooley (eds.): Causation, Oxford, Oxford University Press 1993.