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65Anchoring fictional models: Adam Toon: Models as make-believe. Plagrave-Macmillan, 2012Biology and Philosophy 28 (4): 693-701. 2013.
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289Abstraction and the Organization of MechanismsPhilosophy of Science 80 (2): 241-261. 2013.Proponents of mechanistic explanation all acknowledge the importance of organization. But they have also tended to emphasize specificity with respect to parts and operations in mechanisms. We argue that in understanding one important mode of organization—patterns of causal connectivity—a successful explanatory strategy abstracts from the specifics of the mechanism and invokes tools such as those of graph theory to explain how mechanisms with a particular mode of connectivity will behave. We disc…Read more
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521What was Hodgkin and Huxley’s Achievement?British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 65 (3): 469-492. 2013.The Hodgkin–Huxley (HH) model of the action potential is a theoretical pillar of modern neurobiology. In a number of recent publications, Carl Craver ([2006], [2007], [2008]) has argued that the model is explanatorily deficient because it does not reveal enough about underlying molecular mechanisms. I offer an alternative picture of the HH model, according to which it deliberately abstracts from molecular specifics. By doing so, the model explains whole-cell behaviour as the product of a mass of…Read more
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96Makes a Difference: Review of Michael Strevens’ Depth: An Account of Scientific Explanation. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008Biology and Philosophy 26 (3): 459-467. 2011.Michael Strevens has produced an ambitious and comprehensive new account of scientific explanation. This review discusses its main themes, focusing on regularity explanation and a number of methodological concerns
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2405Three kinds of new mechanismBiology and Philosophy 28 (1): 99-114. 2013.I distinguish three theses associated with the new mechanistic philosophy – concerning causation, explanation and scientific methodology. Advocates of each thesis are identified and relationships among them are outlined. I then look at some recent work on natural selection and mechanisms. There, attention to different kinds of New Mechanism significantly affects of what is at stake.
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26Review of In Search of Mechanisms - Carl F. Craver and Lindley Darden, In Search of Mechanisms. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (2013), 256 pp., $75.00 (review)Philosophy of Science 82 (2): 321-325. 2015.
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142Explaining what? Review of explaining the brain: Mechanisms and the mosaic unity of neuroscience by Carl F. Craver (review)Biology and Philosophy 24 (1): 137-145. 2009.Carl Craver’s recent book offers an account of the explanatory and theoretical structure of neuroscience. It depicts it as centered around the idea of achieving mechanistic understanding, i.e., obtaining knowledge of how a set of underlying components interacts to produce a given function of the brain. Its core account of mechanistic explanation and relevance is causal-manipulationist in spirit, and offers substantial insight into casual explanation in brain science and the associated notion of …Read more
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216Causal Order and Kinds of RobustnessIn Snait Gissis, Ehud Lamm & Ayelet Shavit (eds.), Landscapes of Collectivity in the Life Sciences, Mit Press. pp. 269-280. 2017.This paper derives from a broader project dealing with the notion of causal order. I use this term to signify two kinds of parts-whole dependence: Orderly systems have rich, decomposable, internal structure; specifically, parts play differential roles, and interactions are primarily local. Disorderly systems, in contrast, have a homogeneous internal structure, such that differences among parts and organizational features are less important. Orderliness, I suggest, marks one key difference betwee…Read more
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