Mechanistic explanation at the limit

Abstract

Resurgent interest in both mechanistic and counterfactual theories of explanation has led to a fair amount of discussion regarding the relative merits of these two approaches. James Woodward is currently the pre-eminent counterfactual theorist, and he criticizes the mechanists on the following grounds: Unless mechanists about explanation invoke counterfactuals, they cannot make sense of claims about causal interactions between mechanism parts or of causal explanations put forward absent knowledge of productive mechanisms. He claims that these shortfalls can be offset if mechanists will just borrow key tenets of his counterfactual theory of causal claims. What mechanists must bear in mind, however, is that by pursuing this course they risk both the assimilation of the mechanistic theories of explanation into Woodward's own favored counterfactual theory, and they risk the marginalization of mechanistic explanations to a proper subset of all explanations. An outcome more favorable to mechanists might be had by pursuing an actualist-mechanist theory of the contents of causal claims. While it may not seem obvious at first blush that such an approach is workable, even in principle, recent empirical research into causal perception, causal belief, and mechanical reasoning provides some grounds for optimism.

Why there isn’t inter-level causation in mechanisms

“…First, the three views have reached a prominent status in the mechanisms literature. Appeals to interlevel causation in explanations often raise concerns for philosophers of science, and Craver's mutual manipulability account and Woodward's interventionism are mandatory starting points for discussions about explanation in the life sciences, even when critics disagree with them (for instance, Waskan, 2011;Fagan, 2012;Leuridan, 2012;Franklin-Hall, in press). Hence, it is useful to explore their relations, and whether they are consistent, to help move the discussion forward.…”

Selecting Appropriate Cases When Tracing Causal Mechanisms

“…17 Causation is seen as more 16 -For recent developments in process-tracing methods, see Bennett and Checkel, 2014;and AUTHOR. 17 -Note there is some debate about whether mechanisms are really a different understanding of causation, as advocated by Waskan (2011), or whether the mechanism understanding at the deepest level are just more elaborate forms of counterfactual statements about the links between the parts of the mechanism (Woodward, 2005). Woodward claims that adherents to the mechanism understanding cannot logically account for what links each part of a mechanism to each other, and therefore he contends that mechanisms bottom-out in counterfactual claims that if a given part of a mechanism did not exist, the next part of the mechanism would also not have existed.…”

New Mechanistic Explanation and the Need for Explanatory Constraints

“…Needless to say, outsourcing causation may well be the right move for mechanists to make, and those who do so may still contribute to our understanding of scientific explanation; however, their contributions must come from elsewhere, presumably from their elucidations of the other two constraints on mechanistic explanations-on parts and level-which will be explored in due course. * * * Some mechanists have attempted to make sense of the causal relation via the notion of activities (see Bogen 2005Bogen , 2008Machamer 2004;Waskan 2011). Here is an early statement of the view:…”

“…This activities account, also called the "actualist-mechanist theory" (Waskan 2011), is offered as one of many process or production theories of causation (Hall 2004). In this case, what makes for a causal connection is an actual process of a certain type.…”