Abstract
Reduction reconciles diversity and directionality with strong unity, without relying on elimination. Unity is achieved by identification; diversity is conceptual or descriptive in nature; but what about directionality? Directionality can be accounted for in terms of explanation. The present and the following chapter motivate this idea and connect it to the thesis that reductive diversity is conceptual diversity. To get an idea of what reductive explanation consists in, it is compared to recent models of mechanistic explanation. It is shown that reductive explanation is a cognate of mechanistic explanation. It is argued that characterizations of mechanistic explanation fail in several respects – for example, the alleged importance of differences between ‘by’- and ‘because’-explanations in recent models of mechanistic explanation is overestimated, and the ontological dimension of mechanistic dependence is often misinterpreted.
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Notes
- 1.
Intuitively, the form of reduction we are concerned with here is tied to metaphysical as opposed to conceptual dependence.
- 2.
Later, it will be argued that the idea that reduction is an explanatory relation or goes together with explanatory relations is wide spread: The early Nagel-model describes reduction as explanation (see below, Sect. 7.2), models of functional reduction often describe reduction as explanatory, and Melnyk (2003, Chapter 3) regards one form of reductive relation to be crucial for his version of physicalism – he argues that the form of physicalism he defends, which builds on the notion of multiple realization, is compatible with reductive explanation of, intuitively, higher level facts (this is not the term he uses on this occasion) in terms of physical facts and necessary truths (Melnyk 2003, 83).
- 3.
There are numerous different formulations, instantiating different forms. Here are two others: “The heart pumps blood by coordinated muscular contraction” (Doerschuk et~al. 1977, 258); “[T]he heart pumps blood by continuously and rhythmically contracting and relaxing” (Byrnes and Jensen 2001, 25). An interpretation of how these formulations interrelate would take us too far from our actual target. It would be interesting enough if at least one of them fits a reductive interpretation.
- 4.
It is worth noting that the mechanistic approach to explanations is associated with an anti-reductionist tendency in the philosophy of science. In their (1977) paper, Darden and Maull criticized the classical reductionist view, which can be regarded as a mixtum compositum of Nagelian reduction and the Oppenheim/Putnam picture of a hierarchy of sciences. They claim that “it becomes natural to view the unity of science, not as a hierarchical succession of reductions between theories, but rather as the bridging of fields by interfield theories” (Darden and Maull 1977, 61). The observation that in fact, explanations in high-level science are often multi-level (Wimsatt 1976; Darden and Maull 1977; Bechtel and Richardson 1993; Bechtel 1994; Schaffner 2006) and at least superficially distinct from explanations as classically conceived (by answering non-causally construed ‘how’-questions as opposed to causally construed ‘why’-questions) is perfectly compatible with believing the notion of reduction discussed here to be relevant: Even if general reductionism is not even a regulative idea of science, it might nevertheless be the case that for some areas of investigation, parts of sciences or fragments of theories, reductive relations hold. This is also Schaffner’s more modest point, that partial reductions are relevant (Schaffner 2006), see Sect. 7.6.
- 5.
For a comprehensive illustration of the differences between definitions of mechanisms, see (Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005, footnote 5).
- 6.
Note that if you prefer a more ontic interpretation of explanations, you could, for the discussion to follow, assume that explanation-relations are themselves explanatory relations, and that what corresponds to explanatory relations are ways of presenting an explanation within language. This difference becomes apparent in the passage quoted above:
A constitutive explanation is an exhibition of the internal causal structure of the explanandum; such an explanation exposes the causal mechanism within the explanandum (Salmon 1984, 270)
Here, the expression ‘explanandum’ is used in an ontic way. The explanandum is here interpreted as an entity (type) – an idea common among those working on mechanistic explanation. It is things and events that have some internal causal structure and, according to this picture, instantiate explanation relations.
- 7.
Note that this is not to say that expressions such as ‘because’ or ‘by’ used in explanations are ambiguous (this is an additional claim). Here is an argument to the effect that prima facie, we should not assume that even if different kinds of explanation correspond to different sorts of explanatory relations, ‘because’ is ambiguous. Assume that a crazy wizard brought it about that whenever Peter uses a match, a tree next to him burns down, even if there is no causal connection between Peter’s using the match and the tree burning down, unbeknownst to Peter. Assume that similarly, Paul, dedicated environmental activist, does not know about this strange connection. Now assume that at some point, Paul sees Peter and the crazy wizard standing close to the still glowing ashes of a once beautiful redwood tree. Paul asks Peter what happened; Peter shrugs, and the wizard answers: ‘Well, the tree burned down because Peter lit a match …’. At this point, Paul interrupts him blaming Peter for what he did. After a while, the wizard manages to continue, ‘…but there was no causal connection between his using the match and the tree burning down – it was a miracle.’ Did Paul misunderstand Peter in the first place? In a sense he did. He drew an incorrect conclusion about the connection between using the match and the tree burning down. But was this a kind of misunderstanding comparable to that of ordinary ambiguous expressions? It seems not. For example, it seems intuitively clear that Paul was in a position to know that the tree burned down because Peter lit the match, even if he misunderstood the situation. This is not the case for ordinary ambiguous expressions: If in ‘Fa’, ‘F’ is ambiguous, and Paul interprets ‘F’ such that ‘Fa’ is false, he is not in a position to know that Fa. Thus, the truth of ‘The tree burned down because Peter lit the match’ is independent of whether or not the relevant relation is causal or non-causal. This shows that, prima facie, ‘because’ is not ambiguous. The causal ‘because’ is, then, something like this: It is a relationally individuated ‘because’ – individuated with respect to (i) occurrences in sentences and (ii) these sentences relevantly corresponding to or being about causal relations.
- 8.
Why ‚supposed to be’? Because explanations, as the term is used here, might be false.
- 9.
One common way to approximate the notion of organization (or a mechanism) is to contrast it with Wimsatt’s notion of an aggregate (Bechtel 2007; Craver 2007; for the original idea, see Wimsatt 1997, 2006). An aggregate of an object x is a property of x with respect to specific decompositions of x into parts (and their properties), which, intuitively, remains unchanged (or changed only in value) under decomposition and reaggregation of x’s parts, under substitution of equivalent parts and under rearrangement of parts of x, under adding parts to x, and which does not depend upon any causal interaction between x’s parts (Wimsatt 2006). Relying on an intuitive notion of organization will prove useful here, since the notion of organization (being a teleological notion) will be changed later on; reduction is not only concerned with objects being the possibly subject of a teleological description.
- 10.
It is noteworthy that the notion of a mechanism seems to convey some naturalist co-notation, which is, in this definition, not explicitly covered: intuitively, mechanisms are opposed to souls and spirits. This would limit possible applications of reductive explanation as mechanistic explanation to possible cases of reduction to spiritual things – an option our description of reduction should leave room for.
- 11.
Some remarks on components are rather confused. Craver (2007) for example argues that mechanisms and components are not ordinary objects, and that our usual ways of classifying things into events, properties, substances and the like falls short of an appropriate characterization of the metaphysics of mechanisms and their components. Craver discusses this issue in the context of mechanistic levels. He assumes that these levels of mechanisms are not levels of objects, like ‘societies, organisms, cells, molecules and atoms’ (Craver 2007, 190). Rather, they are levels of ‘behaving components’ (Craver 2007, 190). Thus, components (which are themselves mechanisms) are not objects, but rather ‘behaving components’. Roughly, the confusion seems to be due to a misunderstanding: Some of the expressions used to designate components in a mechanism designate events; blending this with mereological talk about proper parts leads to the confusion that there are what is sometimes called “behaving components” of a mechanism, which are not to be conflated with ordinary objects.
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
The term ‘level’ is notoriously ambiguous. One common way to conceive of distinctions between sciences and scientific levels (in the ordinary sense of the expression ‘science’) is in terms of some paradigm or shared assumption about how to account for a set of problems. Let me briefly argue that these aspects do not give rise to an interesting sort of reductionistic hierarchy and, thus, do not help distinguishing between the relevant levels, even though they might be of utmost importance for what makes a science (an object comprising psychological, social and pragmatic aspects) the science it is. Wimsatt, for example, gives a detailed account of scientific levels, characterizing his prototype-account (Wimsatt 1976). In addition to claiming that levels are partly individuated by objects (here: objects of similar size) and relations among these objects, Wimsatt refers to techniques of investigation and disciplinary perspectives that play a crucial role in the individuation of scientific levels. One could easily see that these latter features are irrelevant for a notion of a scientific level that supposedly corresponds to the notion of reduction. Change in disciplinary perspective and change in techniques of investigation by preservation of some set of objects and kinds does not necessitate reduction, even though it will lead to some sort of theory succession. Similar to Wimsatt’s idea of perspectives, Darden and Maull (1977), Kuhn (1962), and Lakatos (1977) account for sciences partly in terms of what is the socio-psychological or epistemological glue holding different theories together. Craver describes this glue as amounting to level-distinctions (Craver 2007, 171). He seems to assume that it makes sense to talk about different levels as being solely distinguished by different paradigms (or similar aspects). Maybe it does. However, it should be obvious that this talk does not make for reductive levels – shift in paradigms does not necessarily make for straightforward reductions, but allows for replacements. For a purely ontological conception of levels, see Kim (2002).
- 15.
According to Craver (2007, 190) and Bechtel (2007, 550), mechanistic levels are not supposed to be ‘monolithic divisions in the structure of the world’ (Craver 2007, 190). Thus, it is not the case that for any two kinds of components, one is a component within the same hierarchy as the other. At first sight, this does not come as a surprise. However, classical conceptions of scientific hierarchies tend to suggest that level-talk commits us to the assumption that there is one unique hierarchy where every scientifically relevant kind finds its place. This is the reading the Oppenheim-Putnam division of sciences (Oppenheim and Putnam 1958) has been given, and on that interpretation, it was criticized, for example, by Wimsatt (1976). The most important argument is epistemological in nature: Craver argues that we cannot ‘read off’ the mechanisms from ‘a menu of levels in advance’. Rather, we have to answer questions of how many levels there are ‘on a case-by-case basis by discovering which components at which size scale are explanatorily relevant for a given phenomenon’ (Craver 2007, 191). Epistemological considerations aside: It should be obvious that a mechanistic hierarchy does not necessarily comprise all sorts of objects there are in the world, just because not all such sorts of objects are mechanistically related.
- 16.
Maybe, it does concern the level of expressions only; if the explanans and the explanandum in a conceptual explanations, such as ‘Donald is a drake because Donald is a male duck’, are synonymous, and if synonymity is sufficient for conceptual identity, then even conceptual containment does not amount to triviality.
- 17.
In his (2006) Schaffner suggests that something like mechanistic explanation may go together with identity. His rich description of the epistemic and pragmatic aspects does not involve an evaluation of how this relates to ‘by’-explanations, and how alleged problems of such identifications could be solved.
- 18.
A structurally similar case is described in Nagel (1961, 434), where Nagel argues that we are not in a position right now to reduce biology to physics or chemistry. This goal would be achieved if we were able to formulate conditions in physical or chemical language for the occurrence of biological phenomena. This matches a prominent idea to be found, for example, in Friedman (1982, 17), who describes theory-reduction in terms of explanation of the phenomena of the reduced theory by the reducing theory. This idea already shows in Nagel (1935), where reduction is described in terms of constitution.
- 19.
Removing teleological talk, this model of explanation is basically to be found in (Salmon 1984). Salmon, however, focuses on the relation between aeteological explanation and constitutive explanation, basically arguing that to account for causal explanation, we have to account for both these aspects. Whereas causal chains are described in terms of transmission of marks (intuitively: changes in character), the constitutive aspect gains little attention.
- 20.
Notions of structural explanation are well known in Philosophy. The term is highly ambiguous. When used in the context of constitutive explanation, as it is done here, it is often conceived of as some sort of causal explanation (McMullin 1978). There are at least two additional uses: The first is associated with the semantic program in the Philosophy of Science. Here, the term ‘structural explanation’, as used, for example, by Sneed (1994) picks out some sort of explanation based on a model-theoretic account of theories. Jackson and Pettit, on the other hand, use ‘structural explanation’ as it is often used in the social sciences, namely as some sort of macro-level explanation which, intuitively, abstracts from the details (Pettit and Jackson 1992). The sort of explanation focused on here is not to be conflated with these sorts of explanation.
- 21.
Recall Nagel’s headache-example given above: obviously, these explanations did not escape his attention.
- 22.
Mulligan (2006) describes a similar explanation as reductive.
- 23.
For additional examples, see Schnieder (2009), who points out that also evaluative questions may come in the ‘how’-format.
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van Riel, R. (2014). Reductive Explanation and Mechanistic Explanation. In: The Concept of Reduction. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 121. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04162-9_4
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