Levels of Explanation Reconceived

Potochnik, Angela

doi:10.1086/650208

Cited by 49 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…And though the focus of this paper has been on competition between 'horizontal' alternatives, all of which have been relatively high-level, legitimate alternatives can also vary vertically: low-level explanations, such as those often called 'mechanistic,' may cost and deliver a lot, but offer the same economy as high-level ones that cost little and deliver proportionality. Alternatives may even vary along both horizontal and vertical dimensions simultaneously-as Potochnik (2010) has noted is characteristic of alternative scientific explanations for the same phenomenon.…”

Section: -Conclusion: Relativization Revisitedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining Causal Selection with Explanatory Causal Economy: Biology and Beyond

Franklin-Hall

2015

History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences

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Among the factors necessary for the occurrence of some event, which of these are selectively highlighted in its explanation and labeled as causes -and which are explanatorily omitted, or relegated to the status of background conditions? Following J. S. Mill, most have thought that only a pragmatic answer to this question was possible. In this paper I suggest we understand this 'causal selection problem' in causal-explanatory terms, and propose that explanatory trade-offs between abstraction and stability can provide a principled solution to it. After sketching that solution, it is applied to a few biological examples, including to a debate concerning the 'causal democracy' of organismal development, with an anti-democratic (though not a gene-centric) moral. 1-Introduction: Explanatory Sparseness and SystematicityOur universe is dizzyingly complex, and everything that happens within it causally depends on innumerable other things. The living world in particular can appear almost horrifically complicated. Though some of this complexity remains beyond our grasp, scientists have unraveled ever-larger portions of it. The combination of this complex world and our increasingly sophisticated theories accounting for it should make two features of our causal-explanatory practice appear surprising: its sparseness and its systematicity.Explanatory practice is sparse in that many apparently legitimate causal explanations are rather thin affairs, in which happenings are accounted for with only the tiniest sliver of information, and not by citing all, or even very many, of an event's causal influences. 2 Explanatory practice is systematic in that those few morsels that sparse explanations feed to us do not seem to emerge higgledy-piggledy, as if they were the output of some 'explanatory lottery' in 1 For helpful comments on this paper, thanks to David Frank, Maria Kronfleldner, Michael Strevens and David Velleman. Special thanks are due to the editors of this volume, PierreAlain Braillard and Christophe Malaterre, both for their patience and for their perceptive editorial suggestions. 2 The distinction between explanations as communicative acts and explanations construed in an 'ontic' mode as sets of facts will not loom large in this paper; throughout, I will presume that the content of communicative acts are the explanatorily relevant facts.

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Section: -Conclusion: Relativization Revisitedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining Causal Selection with Explanatory Causal Economy: Biology and Beyond

Franklin-Hall

2015

History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences

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“…Alternatives may even vary along both horizontal and vertical dimensions simultaneously-as Potochnik (2010) has noted is characteristic of alternative scientific explanations for the same phenomenon. The selection principle allows for multiplicity in virtue of simply requiring an explanation to maximize the ratio of delivery to cost, and, as noted already, there may often be multiple ways of achieving this maximum.…”

Section: Conclusion: Relativization Revisitedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explanation in Biology

Braillard¹,

Malaterre

2015

History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences

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“…So such responses threaten to eliminate explanatory appeals to intentional states altogether. is problem of overgeneration can be placed in the broader context of debates about special scientific laws and explanatory ecumenicalism; see, for a small sample: Fodor (1991), Jackson and Pettit (1992), Lange (2002), andPotochnik (2010). 8 In the same spirit, Wray (2006) argues that conceiving of collaborative research teams as subjects that are over and above their members helps to explain how collaborating scientists actually behave.…”

Section: E Explanatory Non-superfluousness Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collective De Se Thoughts and Centered Worlds

Liao

2013

Ratio

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Two lines of investigation into the nature of mental content have proceeded in parallel until now. e first looks at thoughts that are attributable to collectives, such as bands' beliefs and teams' desires. So far, philosophers who have written on collective belief, collective intentionality, etc. have primarily focused on thirdpersonal attributions of thoughts to collectives. e second looks at de se, or selflocating, thoughts, such as beliefs and desires that are essentially about oneself. So far, philosophers who have written on the de se have primarily focused on de se thoughts of individuals.is paper looks at where these two lines of investigations intersect: collective de se thoughts, such as bands' and teams' beliefs and desires that are essentially about themselves. ere is a surprising problem at this intersection: the most prominent framework for modeling de se thoughts, the framework of centered worlds, cannot model a special class of collective de se thoughts. A brief survey of this problem's solution space shows that collective de se thoughts pose a new challenge for modeling mental content. * anks to Salvatore Florio, Eric Guindon, Jason Konek, Sara Protasi, and (especially!) an anonymous referee for helpful criticisms and suggestions. I am grateful to Dustin Tucker for finely combing through the antepenultimate version.† P V. For citation and reference, please see the definitive and final version in Ratio

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Levels of Explanation Reconceived

Cited by 49 publications

References 15 publications

Explaining Causal Selection with Explanatory Causal Economy: Biology and Beyond

Explaining Causal Selection with Explanatory Causal Economy: Biology and Beyond

Explanation in Biology

Collective De Se Thoughts and Centered Worlds

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