Abstract
This chapter critiques the new mechanistic explanatory program on grounds that, even when applied to the kinds of examples that it was originally designed to treat, it does not distinguish correct explanations from those that blunder. First, I offer a systematization of the explanatory account, one according to which explanations are mechanistic models that satisfy three desiderata: they must (1) represent causal relations, (2) describe the proper parts, and (3) depict the system at the right “level.” Second, I argue that even the most developed attempts to fulfill these desiderata fall short by failing to appropriately constrain explanatorily apt mechanistic models.
For comments on an earlier draft, we are grateful to Geoff Pynn, Jonathan Schaffer, and Craig Warmke.
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- 1.
One might think we could use the term “non-causal” relations, but as we outline below this would beg some questions since one approach to verticality in nature takes it to be causal or of a kind with causation. As we outline below, we also do not use the terms “Grounding” or “realization”, and so on, because each of these terms is associated with one of the competing accounts of the nature of verticality. We therefore plump for the neutral expression “vertical relation”.
- 2.
Other terms include “reductive explanation”, “microstructural analyses”, “functional explanation”, “constitutive explanation”, or “mechanistic explanation”.
- 3.
There are other vertical relations posited in the sciences (Healey 2013), but our primary focus here is upon the vertical relations posited in compositional explanations.
- 4.
To take just one example, there is the tradition in analytic metaphysics built around formal mereological systems adapted from work on sets. The latter tradition, like the Grounding traditions, allows that the relata of vertical relations may be causally inert, so the points we make below for the Grounding tradition also apply to this approach and show it offers one more competing kind of V-framework for certain object phenomena involving verticality.
- 5.
The workshop took place at Rutgers, Newark, in April 2015, and in addition to the papers collected in this volume also included presentations by Ned Block and Kit Fine.
- 6.
See Kaiser and Krickle (2016) for a recent survey of such work.
- 7.
A number of neo-Causal accounts often include conditions that compositional relations are not causal, or hold between entities that are not logically distinct, but these accounts then all still go on to use the machinery developed for causal relations with these conditions added to the machinery. We therefore call these “neo-Causal” accounts and contend they treat causation and scientific composition as being of a kind.
- 8.
To highlight the variety of concepts of “realization” in versions of “functionalism”, consider just the three most familiar kinds highlighted by Endicott (2005). First, there is what we may term “M-realization” relations, which are asymmetric, ontological determination relations between causally individuated property instances, or properties, instantiated by individuals located in space–time. Second, there are notions that we may term “linguistic”, or “L-”, realization holding between entities in the world and some set of sentences. Famously, for example, the work of David Lewis on topic-neutral Ramseyfication and theoretical terms uses a notion of L-realization. Crudely put, an entity X L-realizes some theoretical term “F” when the entity X-satisfies the relevant Ramsey sentences for “F”. Third, there is a kind of computational or mathematical relation that we term “abstract”, or “A-”, realization. Again putting things roughly, X is taken to A-realize Y if the elements of X map onto, or are isomorphic with, the elements of Y. This notion of “realization” is commonly utilized with formal models and the relata of such “realization” relations are largely unconstrained because A-realization simply holds in virtue of a mathematical mapping or isomorphism. Both L- and A-realization therefore contrast with M-realization which is an ontological relation having as relata causally individuated entities in the world, often (though as we shall see, not exclusively) property instances. The neo-Functionalist accounts are all focused on M-realization.
- 9.
- 10.
As will become clearer below, Schaffer (2016, this volume) offers a Grounding V-framework that may be a species of neo-Causalism. Nonetheless, other Grounding accounts still conflict with neo-Causal views accounts of the relation backing compositional explanation, and all Grounding accounts offer rivals to neo-Functionalist views.
- 11.
Given the latter points, there a number of different projects a Global Account (see below) could be intended to pursue. One Global Account defends the claim that a V-framework captures the nature of vertical relations as they appear in all successful explanations positing verticality and that this V-framework also covers all vertical relations found in the world. However, one could also offer a Global Account as a V-framework just covering all vertical relations in the world, but be neutral about whether one’s account covers conceptions of verticality or even accept that other V-frameworks offer the best accounts of the concepts of verticality used in some successful explanation.
- 12.
See Koslicki (2015) for a more detailed discussion of some of the options for the type of general accounts that might be intended by proponents of Grounding V-frameworks.
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Aizawa, K., Gillett, C. (2016). Introduction: Vertical Relations in Science, Philosophy, and the World: Understanding the New Debates over Verticality1 . In: Aizawa, K., Gillett, C. (eds) Scientific Composition and Metaphysical Ground. New Directions in the Philosophy of Science. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56216-6_1
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