Mechanisms, Modularity and Constitutive Explanation
Erkenntnis 77 (3):361-380 (2012)
Abstract
Mechanisms are often characterized as causal structures and the interventionist account of causation is then used to characterize what it is to be a causal structure. The associated modularity constraint on causal structures has evoked criticism against using the theory as an account of mechanisms, since many mechanisms seem to violate modularity. This paper answers to this criticism by making a distinction between a causal system and a causal structure. It makes sense to ask what the modularity properties of a given causal structure are, but not whether a causal system is modular tout court. The counter-examples to the interventionist account are systems in which a particular structure is modular in variables, but not in parameters. A failure of parameter-modularity does not by itself threaten the interventionist interpretation of the structure and the possibility of causally explaining with that structure, but it does mean that knowledge of the structure is not sufficient to constitutively explain system-level properties of the embedding systemAuthor's Profile
DOI
10.1007/s10670-012-9389-0
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Citations of this work
There Are No Mathematical Explanations.Jaakko Kuorikoski - 2021 - Philosophy of Science 88 (2):189-212.
On the Incompatibility of Dynamical Biological Mechanisms and Causal Graphs.Marcel Weber - 2016 - Philosophy of Science 83 (5):959-971.
The Compatibility of Differential Equations and Causal Models Reconsidered.Wes Anderson - 2020 - Erkenntnis 85 (2):317-332.
How to Be a Humean Interventionist.Jaakko Kuorikoski - 2014 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (2):333-351.
References found in this work
Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation.James Woodward - 2003 - Oxford University Press.
Explaining the Brain: Mechanisms and the Mosaic Unity of Neuroscience.Carl F. Craver - 2007 - Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press.
Thinking about mechanisms.Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden & Carl F. Craver - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (1):1-25.