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The Completeness of Mechanistic Explanations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Tudor M. Baetu
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Abstract

The paper discusses methodological guidelines for evaluating mechanistic explanations. According to current accounts, a satisfactory mechanistic explanation should include all of the relevant features of the mechanism, its component entities and activities, and their properties and organization, as well as exhibit productive continuity. It is not specified, however, how this kind of mechanistic completeness can be demonstrated. I argue that parameter sufficiency inferences based on mathematical model simulations provide a way of determining whether a mechanism capable of producing the phenomenon of interest can be constructed from mechanistic components organized, acting, and having the properties described in the mechanistic explanation.

Type
Explanation and Mechanisms
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 82 , Issue 5 , December 2015 , pp. 775 - 786
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

This work was supported in part by a generous fellowship from the KLI Institute. I thank Stuart Glennan, Mathieu Charbonneau, Dan Nicholson, Maarten Boudry, Argyris Arnellos, Laura Nuño de la Rosa, and Michael Rammerstorfer for their much-appreciated input.

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