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The Joint Account of Mechanistic Explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Melinda Bonnie Fagan
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Abstract

Many explanations in molecular biology, neuroscience, and other fields of experimental biology describe mechanisms underlying phenomena of interest. These mechanistic explanations (MEx) account for higher-level phenomena in terms of causally active parts and their spatiotemporal organization. What makes such a mechanistic description explanatory? The best-developed answer, Craver's causal-mechanical account, has several weaknesses. It does not fully explicate the target of explanation, interlevel relation, or interactive nonmodular character of many biological mechanisms as we understand them. An alternative account of MEx, emphasizing interdependence among a mechanism's components (‘jointness’), remedies these difficulties.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 79 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 448 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

This article has benefited from comments by Hasok Chang, Richard Grandy, Matt Haber, Angela Potochnik, Paul Teller, Joseph Ulatowski, and two anonymous reviewers for Philosophy of Science. Thanks also to participants in my Fall 2010 Philosophy of Science Seminar (Rice University) on mechanisms and causality. An earlier version of part of this article was presented at the 2012 meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division (Seattle, WA).

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