Abstract
This article compares causal and constitutive explanation. While scientific inquiry usually addresses both causal and constitutive questions, making the distinction is crucial for a detailed understanding of scientific questions and their interrelations. These explanations have different kinds of explananda and they track different sorts of dependencies. Constitutive explanations do not address events or behaviors, but causal capacities. While there are some interesting relations between building and causal manipulation, causation and constitution are not to be confused. Constitution is a synchronous and asymmetric relation between relata that cannot be conceived as independent existences. However, despite their metaphysical differences, the same key ideas about explanation largely apply to both. Causal and constitutive explanations face similar challenges (such as the problems of relevance and explanatory regress) and both are in the business of mapping networks of counterfactual dependence—i.e. mechanisms—although the relevant counterfactuals are of a different sort. In the final section the issue of developmental explanation is discussed. It is argued that developmental explanations deserve their own place in taxonomy of explanations, although ultimately developmental dependencies can be analyzed as combinations of causal and constitutive dependencies. Hence, causal and constitutive explanation are distinct, but not always completely separate forms of explanation.
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Notes
As any philosophical reader knows, a huge literature exists on the nature of events, but very little consensus. Readers might not accept my account of events, but I hope they are at least ready to recognize the legitimacy of the distinction I am making in this paper.
In metaphysics and philosophy of mind, related issues have been discussed under topics of the causal basis of dispositions (Harré and Madden 1975; Prior 1985) and realization (Wilson and Craver 2007). However, these debates have rarely discussed such issues in the context of explanation or as topics of scientific research.
In the social sciences, Wendt (1998, 1999: 77–88) is an early advocate of the idea of constitutive explanation. The problem with his discussion is that while his notion of constitution contains the idea of constitution of causal capacities, it also contains many other ideas. For example, he fails to see that many how-possibly explanations are causal: they are about necessary conditions for something happening. He also confuses the criteria for category membership with constitutive relations: asking what makes an entity a member of a certain kind is quite different from asking what makes an entity have a certain property. Finally, he associates the contrast between causation and constitution with that between explanation and understanding in a manner that is ultimately unhelpful. For constitution in the social sciences (see Ylikoski 2012).
Craver’s idea of mutual manipulation has generated much discussion (Fazekas and Kertész 2011; Leuridan 2012; McManus 2012). I tend to agree with Crouch (2011) who argues that Craver primarily gives an account of how scientists find constitutive relations, not of the ontological nature of constitutive relations. In that case there is no conflict between his account and mine: I think Craver’s discussion about the evidential requirements of constitutive claims is excellent. However, his discussion (2007a, b) is a bit ambiguous and it is possible that the mutual manipulability is also intended to have metaphysical import. In that case my account which is based on the idea of asymmetry of existence as the basis of explanatory asymmetry, conflicts with his.
It should be kept in mind that we are not discussing indeterministic dispositions, i.e. propensities, but indeterministic constitution. Traditional propensities are assumed to be deterministically constituted.
Philosophers have distinguished various forms of preemption, for example early, late, and trumping preemption (Lewis 2000), but these differences are not relevant the the current discussion as it does not make sense to look for constitutive parallels for these temporal differences. More relevant is the idea of quantitative overdetermination, where there the cause is so overwhelming that even a fraction of it would have been sufficient. A morbid example is eating a whole package of suicide pills when one would suffice. Parallels for this can be found in constitutive relations.
It is notable that alternative causes, negative causes, and overdetermining causes provide counterexamples to simplistic definitions of cause, but their causal structure is not difficult to understand. (This is why they can serve as counterexamples.) Their structure can be articulated by carefully outlining the network of dependencies. I believe that the same idea applies to constitutive relations. The idea of simple constitutive counterfactual dependence is a building block for understanding more complex relations of dependence, not a straightjacket into which we should force all explanatory claims.
Space limitations do not allow me to explore other possible hybrids. For example, a referee suggested that evolutionary explanations could provide one. I am skeptical about this claim in the cases of straightforward evolutionary explanations that track changes in the composition of the population. I would analyze them as straightforward causal explanations. Still, some explanations in evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) could turn out to be very interesting hybrids.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Tomi Kokkonen, Jaakko Kuorikoski, Lena Kästner, Caterina Marchionni, Veli-Pekka Parkkinen, Jani Raerinne, and anonymous referee for their useful comments. The research was funded by Academy of Finland.
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Ylikoski, P. Causal and Constitutive Explanation Compared. Erkenn 78 (Suppl 2), 277–297 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9513-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9513-9