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Re-reconciling the Epistemic and Ontic Views of Explanation (Or, Why the Ontic View Cannot Support Norms of Generality)

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Abstract

Recent attempts to reconcile the ontic and epistemic approaches to explanation propose that our best explanations simply fulfill epistemic and ontic norms simultaneously. I aim to upset this armistice. Epistemic norms of attaining general and systematic explanations are, I argue, autonomous of ontic norms: they cannot be fulfilled simultaneously or in simple conjunction with ontic norms, and plausibly have priority over them. One result is that central arguments put forth by ontic theorists against epistemic theorists are revealed as not only question-begging, but ultimately self-defeating. Another result is that a more nuanced reconciliation of the epistemic and ontic views is required: we should regard good explanatory practice as a dynamic process with distinct phases of epistemic and ontic success.

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Notes

  1. That is not to say that the ontic theorist is a Quinean in any robust sense: most still countenance “senses,” for example.

  2. Wright has recently suggested that if the ontic camp abandons arguments over the semantics of “explanation,” they must simply “concede the 'debate'” (2015, p. 29, and see also fn. 19). It is true that semantic debate which has most interested Wright is abandoned, but there remains much room for significant dispute.

  3. Wright (2015) does not respond to this challenge, and continues to maintain that any ontic sense of “explanation” is “metaphorical,” “frivolous,” “bizarre,” etc. He still seeks to undermine all varieties of the ontic view by undermining Salmon's historical conception. The new vanguard of the ontic view will likely not be persuaded, though I take Wright's work to complicate any casual and unreflective endorsement of the historical views of Salmon.

  4. The general idea of what I call the “normative turn” is by no means a unique development, but Illari has urged its endorsement most clearly as a development within the epistemic-ontic debate. For a similar view of philosophy of explanation more generally, see for example Weber et al. (2013, esp. ch. 2).

  5. Compare Weisberg (2013, p.19) on disputes at the “epistemic level” in the philosophy of scientific modeling practices.

  6. Weisberg (2013) generally uses “explanation” in an epistemic sense (calling models explanatory), though he seems to tolerate an ontic sense (see, e.g., p. 94), finds nothing curious about, e.g., Strevens' view (p. 101) and at times appears to deploy both ontic and epistemic senses at once (p. 103).

  7. Note that the whole category of explanations text might be replaced with a less restrictive conception of models, and the category of explanations text might fruitfully be further articulated in light of the distinction between models and their description. See Weisberg (2013, pp. 15ff).

  8. Craver (2014) wields syllepsis/conjunction reduction to support this claim. Wright (2012) offers a rejoinder, but I agree with Illari (2013) that this will not move the ontic theorist; the productive debate concerns norms of explanation, not who gets to legislate the semantics of “explanation”.

  9. Craver has confirmed this in personal communication to Illari—see her (Illari 2013, p. 241).

  10. Note that the epistemic camp has sometimes denied this, by permitting false-but-intelligible explanationsC/T/C to be fully successful. See, e.g., Bechtel and Abrahamsen (2005, p. 425), and more recently de Regt (2014). So the new ontic view is still readily distinguished from robust epistemic views, which shows that there is still much room for debate.

  11. Compare Weisberg on “representational fidelity” (2013, p. 41) and “I-CAUSAL” as a practical norm (ibid., pp. 107ff).

  12. More strongly, the ontic theorist might demand we specify the “mapping,” making clear what the ontic explanation actually is. This stronger criterion might track popular talk in the ontic camp about “exhibiting” an ontic explanation – but see Wright (2015) for challenges to this view.

  13. The “and/or” allows (EEM) to cover mixed cases: e.g., Jon engaging in a communicative act of explanationCOMM and offering the HH model as an explanationTEXT of action potentials. Here two mappings must be coordinated.

  14. Craver's more recent preference is to say that explanationsC/T/C “carry explanatory information about a phenomenon when and only when they describe the ontic explanations for those phenomena” (2014, p. 28). This seems one way to specify the notion of “mapping,” so I mention it in (EEM) explicitly. But other (and multiple) specifications may be available or required. To leave this open (and for convenience) I speak mainly of “mappings”.

  15. Marta Halina deserves thanks for making clear to me the importance of this caveat.

  16. See also Kaplan and Craver (2011, p. 612) and likewise Strevens (2004, 2008) throughout. For handy distinctions between varieties of idealization, some of which have not yet been explicitly incorporated into the epistemic-ontic debate, see Elliot-Graves and Weisberg (2014). See further Weisberg (2013, pp. 90ff) on target systems and calibration, and also ch. 6.

  17. Given the four distinct senses of the term “explanation,” we could fix multiple notions of “explanatory force” and thus multiple corresponding notions of “scope.” For example, an explanationCOMM of action potentials which “maps” neatly to mechanisms in pyramidal cells will not “map” neatly to those in fast-firing Purkinje cells. We might say that while the explanationCOMM has little explanatoryONTIC force for Purkinje cells, and does not have them in its “ontic scope,” still it has some explanatoryCOMM force for Purkinje cells (offering a rough and revisable understanding of their action potentials) and has them in its “communicative scope”. I set these issues aside.

  18. On all these points, compare Weisberg on “intended scope” (2013, pp. 39ff) and on implicit and explicit “assignment” (ibid., pp. 69–70) as part of modelers' “construals”.

  19. Locke has an analogous view of explanations COG as abstract ideas: Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II.XI.§9.

  20. Compare Weisberg (2013, ch. 5) on “target-directed modeling” – the real exemplars discussed by Bechtel and Abrahamsen are not to be confused with what he calls “idealized exemplars” (ibid., pp. 18–19).

  21. Given well-known issues (cf. Goodman 1972), I do not presuppose that Bechtel and Abrahamsen's (and Craver and Kaiser's, see below) similarity-based account is the correct analysis of generality. What I share is the view that some account of generality must be provided to account for any model's scope. Appeals to similarity face difficulties in meeting this demand by setting out plausible conditions of category membership. This does not diminish the demand. For a recent, systematic proposal for how to meet the demand by appeal to similarity, see Weisberg (2013).

  22. Compare Weisberg (2013, pp. 75ff) on model construction and “construal change.”

  23. Compare Weisberg's distinction of target-directed models (2013, ch. 5) from modeling a generalized target (ibid., ch. 7).

  24. The distinction between mechanism sketches and schemata (Machamer et al. 2000) adds some nuance here, but brings with it much confusion. The sketch/schema distinction does not properly respect the logical distinction between subsumption under a category and instantiation of singular terms; I avoid invoking it to keep the focus squarely on this logical issue.

  25. In Weisberg's more fine-grained terminology: they realize that many models share a model description (2013, pp. 34ff), and they construe them as having the same intended scope (ibid., pp. 40ff). They reach this view in part by clarifying the models' shared representational capacities (ibid., pp. 42ff), and in part through construal setting (ibid., pp. 116–117).

  26. Compare Weisberg's claims: (1) that model descriptions need not precede construction of models (2013, p. 38); (2) that modeler's construals of a model can change over time (ibid., pp. 77ff); (3) that modeling involves fine-tuning the selection of the model's target over time (ibid., p. 92); (4) that calibration of a model occurs in a feedback process (ibid., pp. 94–95); and (5) that modeling practices involve a dynamic back-and-forth between model-building and collection of data (ibid., p. 154).

  27. In Kantian mode: systematicity requires a rule of unity which unites members under a category. All this is nicely articulated in Weisberg's (2013) conception of a “construal”.

  28. See again fn. 21.

  29. Compare Weisberg (2013, pp. 116–117) on the different construals in target-based modeling versus generalized modeling.

  30. See fn.s 19 and 27.

  31. I thank Daniel Burnston and Daniel Weiskopf for making clear that this needed to be addressed.

  32. Nowhere in his (2007) does Craver clearly commit to the claim that mechanistic explanations can account for mental representation, nor that his quarry, explanation in neuroscience (note: not cognitive neuroscience) makes use of this concept. His account is perhaps better read as focused upon “neural syntax” (Buszáki 2010).

  33. Modulo the concerns of fn. 21.

  34. I am quite certain this is not Craver's intended view, but I flag it to emphasize how this way of talking hides the whole problem of generality and systematicity, and the whole problem of making scope intelligible. The explicit example given here, which may be only a slip of the pen, sensitizes us to less obtrusive cases. For example, throughout his (2007), Craver is constantly discussing such things as “the mechanism of the action potential.” Which one? Much of the text has in focus particular instances of a mechanism which is producing a token action potential as token phenomenon (see e.g., ch. 1). When we get to the mosaic unity of neuroscience, however, there is recourse to an “abstract mechanism” of e.g., long-term potentiation (ibid., p. 228) which can be shared as an explanatory target by multiple practitioners, working in multiple fields, in multiple times and places, studying multiple token cells, organisms, etc. And yet in Craver's favored descriptions, he hides any abstractness, saying for example that all the fields are involved in providing “independent constraints on a common multilevel mechanism” (ibid., p. 232). Which one? It is not as if neuroscientists, psychologists, computer scientists, etc., are all huddled around a single neuron firing an action potential, or a single hippocampal slice exhibiting LTP. Or again, Craver says that findings from different fields “provide different constraints on the same mechanism… expose different aspects of a single mechanism” (ibid., p. 240); “The mosaic unity of neuroscience results from the integration of constraints from multiple fields on a common mechanism” (ibid., p. 248). The claim which is clearly intended throughout concerns a shared conception of a type of mechanism—which is no mechanism.

  35. I thank Trey Boone for pressing me to address this point.

  36. This argument could be extended against any plausible, a posteriori realism about any Platonistic explanationsONTIC which one might posit in (the philosophy of the metaphysics of) natural science.

  37. That Strevens is committed to normative priority is also borne out by a slogan he offered at a symposium for the recent 2014 meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association: “Ontic first, but not only”.

  38. Note that Strevens is noncommittal regarding whether mathematical explanationsONTIC are part of his account of scientific explanation (cf. 2008, pp. 329ff). These, I suppose, could be known a priori – but their use in scientific explanation clearly involves a posteriori knowledge of causal regularities, in his view.

  39. Strevens does discuss the possibility of “accuracy/generality trade-offs” (2008, §5.2). But he does not clearly advocate for them, and further (see below) he does not understand “generality” in the sense at issue.

  40. For Strevens' presupposition of a general and systematic explanationCOG in claiming that regularities obtain, see his claims on “basing generalizations” (2008, p. 228ff).

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Acknowledgments

In addition to the specific acknowledgments made in-text, other thanks are due as follows. Formative discussions with Marta Halina and Carl Craver spurred me to write the paper. For providing helpful feedback on various related drafts, I thank Adele Abrahamsen, William Bechtel, Daniel Burnston, John Dougherty, Sara Green, Joyce Havstad, and Arnon Levy. Members of UCSD’s CT7 Data-Rounds group, in the Center for Circadian Biology, provided helpful feedback on a talk version. This was then presented at the 2014 meeting of the PSA in Chicago, where I received helpful encouragement from Stuart Glennan and Alan Love. Finally, feedback from three anonymous referees helped strengthen the paper considerably.

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    Benjamin Sheredos

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Sheredos, B. Re-reconciling the Epistemic and Ontic Views of Explanation (Or, Why the Ontic View Cannot Support Norms of Generality). Erkenn 81, 919–949 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-015-9775-5

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