Abstract
Integration is a grand challenge for many contemporary research endeavors. Mechanistic explanations provide a multi-level approach especially suited to bring out different aspects of the causal-mechanical structure of the world. Yet, we encounter a triad of differently structured producing, underlying and maintaining mechanistic explanations. Understanding how the elements of this triad can be fruitfully and systematically linked, I suggest, may help drive scientific progress and integration. This paper discusses important conceptual ties between an explanandum and the metaphysical relations highlighted in the corresponding explanans: to explain how an end product or result is generated, scientists will usually search for the mechanism that produced it; to explain a process, they will typically search for the mechanism underlying it; and to explain how a system’s stable state or continuous behavior is maintained, they search for the mechanism maintaining it. Appreciating these different projects, and understanding the connections between them, provides an important backdrop for explanatory integration. Besides, it allows us to reconcile apparently different conceptions of mechanistic explanations without heavy metaphysical baggage.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
I am using “kinds” as a non-technical notion throughout the paper to refer to different sorts, types, or classes of explanations and phenomena, respectively.
- 5.
To pick up on Kaiser and Krickel’s (2016) distinction: underlying mechanisms are of the constitutive kind while producing ones are of the causal kind.
- 6.
They may of course postulate causal connections between entities at different levels. However, this does not give them a systematic interlevel character.
- 7.
Note that the relation I am after here is one between producing and underlying mechanisms for a phenomenon, not between the genesis of the mechanism responsible for the phenomenon and the operation of that mechanisms.
- 8.
But see discussions of modeling mechanisms using recursive Bayes nets, e.g. Casini et al. (2011), Clarke et al. (2014), and Gebharter and Kaiser (2014). Outside Bayesian models a notable exception is Bechtel’s (2011) suggestion that “mechanistic explanation […] must be extended to deal with biological mechanisms whose operations are not sequential but involve cyclic organization” (p. 554). Notice, however, that Bechtel is focusing on mechanisms within which there is a cyclic interaction of component yielding complex dynamic behavior. These could still qualify as underlying mechanisms in Craver and Darden’s scheme, depending on how we read them.
- 9.
One might argue that maintaining mechanisms have a normative character distinguishing them from producing and underlying mechanisms; for they serve to keep something as it is supposed to be. For current purposes I will gloss over this issue.
- 10.
Obviously, before something can be maintained it has to be initially established. Therefore, the operation of maintaining mechanisms may require the previous operation of producing or underlying mechanisms.
- 11.
There are actually different ways to achieve this transformation. But sketching one of them here shall suffice for illustration.
- 12.
The notion of force seems much more abstract than that of an entity. But given that entities in mechanistic explanations can be fairly abstract (remember that all of this is about mechanism schema construction), acting entities here should not be taken to be in any way more concrete or material than forces. After all, all of this can be black boxes and filler terms that are merely functionally described.
- 13.
An alternative way to think about disturbing forces is to include them in the setup conditions of the mechanism or the phenomenon description. Analogously, correcting forces may be considered the entities and activities in the mechanism underlying the phenomenon. In this case, too, Craver and Darden’s forces are implicit in the new figure.
- 14.
Thanks to an anonymous discussant for pointing this out.
- 15.
This is of course a highly simplified description but it will do for my purposes here.
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Acknowledgments
I’m indebted to Lindley Darden, Carl Craver, Ruey-Lin Chen, Jens Harbecke, Marie Kaiser, Beate Krickel, Lara Pourabdolrahim, Richard Moore, Michael Pauen, Astrid Schomäcker, Alfredo Vernazzani, Dan Burnston, and two anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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Kästner, L. (2021). Integration and the Mechanistic Triad: Producing, Underlying and Maintaining Mechanistic Explanations. In: Calzavarini, F., Viola, M. (eds) Neural Mechanisms. Studies in Brain and Mind, vol 17. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54092-0_15
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