Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T00:17:54.816Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An Abductive Theory of Constitution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Michael Baumgartner  and
Lorenzo Casini
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The first part of this article finds Craver’s mutual manipulability theory (MM) of constitution inadequate, as it definitionally ties constitution to the feasibility of ideal experiments, which, however, are unrealizable in principle. As an alternative, the second part develops an abductive theory of constitution (NDC), which exploits the fact that phenomena and their constituents are unbreakably coupled via common causes. The best explanation for this fact is the existence of an additional dependence relation, namely, constitution. NDC has important ramifications for constitutional discovery—most notably, that there is no experimentum crucis for constitution, not even under ideal discovery circumstances.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 84 , Issue 2 , April 2017 , pp. 214 - 233
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

We thank the audiences of the annual conference of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, Manchester, July 2–3, 2015, and of the European Society for the Philosophy of Science, Düsseldorf, September 23–26, 2015. We are especially grateful to Beate Krickel for very helpful comments and discussions and to three anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions of the article. This research was generously supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, grant PP00P1_144736/1 for Baumgartner and grants CRSII 1_147685/1 and 100012E_160866/1 for Casini.

References

Baumgartner, Michael, and Gebharter, Alexander. 2015. “Constitutive Relevance, Mutual Manipulability, and Fat-Handedness.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. Electronically published February 20. doi:10.1093/bjps/axv003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casati, Roberto, and Varzi, Achille C.. 1999. Parts and Places: The Structures of Spatial Representation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Causey, Robert L. 1977. Unity of Science. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Couch, Mark B. 2011. “Mechanisms and Constitutive Relevance.” Synthese 183:375–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craver, Carl F. 2007. Explaining the Brain: Mechanisms and the Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craver, Carl F., and Bechtel, William. 2007. “Top-Down Causation without Top-Down Causes.” Biology and Philosophy 22:547–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eberhardt, Frederick. 2013. “Experimental Indistinguishability of Causal Structures.” Philosophy of Science 80:684–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eronen, Marcus I. 2011. Reduction in Philosophy of Mind: A Pluralistic Account. Frankfurt am Main: Ontos.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eronen, Marcus I., and Brooks, Daniel S.. 2014. “Interventionism and Supervenience: A New Problem and Provisional Solution.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 28:185–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glennan, Stuart. 1996. “Mechanisms and the Nature of Causation.” Erkenntnis 44:49–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harbecke, Jens. 2010. “Mechanistic Constitution in Neurobiological Explanations.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 24:267–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harbecke, Jens 2015. “The Regularity Theory of Mechanistic Constitution and a Methodology for Constitutive Inference.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 54:10–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harinen, Totte. 2014. “Mutual Manipulability and Causal Inbetweenness.” Synthese. Electronically published October 10. doi:10.1007/s11229-014-0564-5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hofmann, Urs, and Baumgartner, Michael. 2011. “Determinism and the Method of Difference.” Theoria 26:155–76.Google Scholar
Kaplan, David M. 2012. “How to Demarcate the Boundaries of Cognition.” Biology and Philosophy 27:545–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leuridan, Bert. 2012. “Three Problems for the Mutual Manipulability Account of Constitutive Relevance in Mechanisms.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63:399–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Machamer, Peter K., Darden, Lindley, and Craver, Carl F.. 2000. “Thinking about Mechanisms.” Philosophy of Science 67:1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mill, John S. 1843. A System of Logic. London: Parker.Google Scholar
Romero, Felipe. 2015. “Why There Isn’t Inter-level Causation in Mechanisms.” Synthese 192:3731–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, Don, and Ladyman, James. 2010. “The Alleged Coupling-Constitution Fallacy and the Mature Sciences.” In The Extended Mind, ed. Menary, Richard. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Scheines, Richard. 2005. “The Similarity of Causal Inference in Experimental and Non-experimental Studies.” Philosophy of Science 72:927–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spirtes, Peter, Glymour, Clark, and Scheines, Richard. 2000. Causation, Prediction, and Search. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Spohn, Wolfgang. 2006. “Causation: An Alternative.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57:93–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodward, James. 2003. Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Woodward, James 2015. “Interventionism and Causal Exclusion.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 91:303–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar