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Mixed-Level Explanation

Philosophy of Science 77 (5):933-946 (2010)

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Aggregating Causal Judgments.Richard Bradley, Franz Dietrich & Christian List - 2014 - Philosophy of Science 81 (4):491-515.details Decision-making typically requires judgments about causal relations: we need to know the causal effects of our actions and the causal relevance of various environmental factors. We investigate how several individuals' causal judgments can be aggregated into collective causal judgments. First, we consider the aggregation of causal judgments via the aggregation of probabilistic judgments, and identify the limitations of this approach. We then explore the possibility of aggregating causal judgments independently of probabilistic ones. Formally, we introduce the problem of causal-network aggregation. (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 12 citations
Emergence and interacting hierarchies in shock physics.Mark Pexton - 2016 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 6 (1):91-122.details It is argued that explanations of shock waves display explanatory emergence in two different ways. Firstly, the use of discontinuities to model jumps in flow variables is an example of “physics avoidance”. This is where microphysical details can be ignored in an abstract model thus allowing us access to modal information which cannot be attained in principle in any other way. Secondly, Whitham’s interleaving criterion for continuous shock structure is an example of the way different characteristic scales interact in shock (...) Download Export citation Bookmark
Levels or Domains of Life?Anton Markoš & Pranab Das - 2016 - Biosemiotics 9 (3):319-330.details In the case of living beings – the very concept of “level” of organization becomes obscure: it suggests a value-based assessment, assigning notions like “lower” and “higher” with rather vague criteria for constructing the ladder of perfection, complexity, importance, etc. We prefer therefore the term “domain”, entities ranking equal. Domains may represent natural entities as well as purely human constructs developed in order to gain understanding of some facets of living things; living, evolved beings as well as those abstract constructs, (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 1 citation
Levels: Descriptive, Explanatory, and Ontological.Christian List - 2019 - Noûs 53 (4):852-883.details Scientists and philosophers frequently speak about levels of description, levels of explanation, and ontological levels. In this paper, I propose a unified framework for modelling levels. I give a general definition of a system of levels and show that it can accommodate descriptive, explanatory, and ontological notions of levels. I further illustrate the usefulness of this framework by applying it to some salient philosophical questions: (1) Is there a linear hierarchy of levels, with a fundamental level at the bottom? And (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 30 citations
Mixed-grain Property Collaboration: Reconstructing Multiple Realization after the Elimination of Levels.Robert D. Rupert - manuscriptdetails Download Export citation Bookmark
Naturalism Meets the Personal Level: How Mixed Modelling Flattens the Mind.Robert D. Rupert - manuscriptdetails In this essay, it is argued that naturalism of an even moderate sort speaks strongly against a certain widely held thesis about the human mental (and cognitive) architecture: that it is divided into two distinct levels, the personal and the subpersonal, about the former of which we gain knowledge in a manner that effectively insulates such knowledge from the results of scientific research. -/- An empirically motivated alternative is proposed, according to which the architecture is, so to speak, flattened from (...) Download Export citation Bookmark
Levels of Description and Levels of Reality: A General Framework.Christian List - manuscriptdetails This expository paper presents a general framework for representing levels and inter-level relations. The framework is intended to capture both epistemic and ontological notions of levels and to clarify the sense in which levels of explanation might or might not be related to a levelled ontology. The framework also allows us to study and compare different kinds of inter-level relations, especially supervenience and reduction but also grounding and mereological constitution. This, in turn, enables us to explore questions such as whether (...) Download Export citation Bookmark
A Scientific Metaphysical Naturalisation of Information.Bruce Long - 2018 - Dissertation, University of Sydneydetails The objective of this thesis is to present a naturalised metaphysics of information, or to naturalise information, by way of deploying a scientiﬁc metaphysics according to which contingency is privileged and a-priori conceptual analysis is excluded (or at least greatly diminished) in favour of contingent and defeasible metaphysics. The ontology of information is established according to the premises and mandate of the scientiﬁc metaphysics by inference to the best explanation, and in accordance with the idea that the primacy of physics (...) Download Export citation Bookmark 1 citation
In Defense of Dynamical Explanation.Shannon B. Nolen - unknowndetails Proponents of mechanistic explanation have argued that dynamical models are mere phenomenal models, in that they describe rather than explain the scientific phenomena produced by complex systems. I argue instead that dynamical models can, in fact, be explanatory. Using an example from neuroscientific research on epilepsy, I show that dynamical models can meet the explanatory demands met by mechanistic models, and as such occupy their own unique place within the space of explanatory scientific models. Download Export citation Bookmark

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