Philosophy of Science 78 (2):238-263 (2011)
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Abstract |
The received view of dynamical explanation is that dynamical cognitive science seeks to provide covering law explanations of cognitive phenomena. By analyzing three prominent examples of dynamicist research, I show that the received view is misleading: some dynamical explanations are mechanistic explanations, and in this way resemble computational and connectionist explanations. Interestingly, these dynamical explanations invoke the mathematical framework of dynamical systems theory to describe mechanisms far more complex and distributed than the ones typically considered by philosophers. Therefore, contemporary dynamicist research reveals the need for a more sophisticated account of mechanistic explanation.
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Keywords | Dynamical Systems Mechanistic Explanation Embodied Cognition Cognitive Science |
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DOI | 10.1086/659221 |
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References found in this work BETA
Thinking About Mechanisms.Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden & Carl F. Craver - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (1):1-25.
Discovering Complexity: Decomposition and Localization as Strategies in Scientific Research.William Bechtel & Robert C. Richardson - 1993 - Princeton.
Studies in the Logic of Explanation.Carl Gustav Hempel & Paul Oppenheim - 1948 - Philosophy of Science 15 (2):135-175.
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Citations of this work BETA
From Wide Cognition to Mechanisms: A Silent Revolution.Marcin Miłkowski, Robert Clowes, Zuzanna Rucińska, Aleksandra Przegalińska, Tadeusz Zawidzki, Joel Krueger, Adam Gies, Marek McGann, Łukasz Afeltowicz, Witold Wachowski, Fredrik Stjernberg, Victor Loughlin & Mateusz Hohol - 2018 - Frontiers in Psychology 9.
The Non-Mechanistic Option: Defending Dynamical Explanations.Russell Meyer - 2020 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71 (3):959-985.
One Mechanism, Many Models: A Distributed Theory of Mechanistic Explanation.Eric Hochstein - 2016 - Synthese 193 (5):1387-1407.
Functional Explaining: A New Approach to the Philosophy of Explanation.Daniel A. Wilkenfeld - 2014 - Synthese 191 (14):3367-3391.
View all 55 citations / Add more citations
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