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  1. Explanation: a mechanist alternative.William Bechtel & Adele Abrahamsen - 2005 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36 (2):421-441.
    Explanations in the life sciences frequently involve presenting a model of the mechanism taken to be responsible for a given phenomenon. Such explanations depart in numerous ways from nomological explanations commonly presented in philosophy of science. This paper focuses on three sorts of differences. First, scientists who develop mechanistic explanations are not limited to linguistic representations and logical inference; they frequently employ diagrams to characterize mechanisms and simulations to reason about them. Thus, the epistemic resources for presenting mechanistic explanations are (...)
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  • Reductive Explanation in the Biological Sciences.Marie I. Kaiser - 2015 - Cham: Springer.
    Back cover: This book develops a philosophical account that reveals the major characteristics that make an explanation in the life sciences reductive and distinguish them from non-reductive explanations. Understanding what reductive explanations are enables one to assess the conditions under which reductive explanations are adequate and thus enhances debates about explanatory reductionism. The account of reductive explanation presented in this book has three major characteristics. First, it emerges from a critical reconstruction of the explanatory practice of the life sciences itself. (...)
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  • Time Scales and Levels of Organization.James DiFrisco - 2017 - Erkenntnis 82 (4):795-818.
    The concept of levels of organization, despite its widespread scientific currency, has recently been criticized by a number of philosophers of science. This paper diagnoses the main source of problems facing theories of levels. On this basis, the problems with the usual criteria for distinguishing levels are evaluated: compositional relations, organizational types, and spatial scales. Drawing on some work on hierarchies in ecology, I argue in favor of an alternative conception of levels defined by the criterion of rates or time (...)
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  • The structure of ill structured problems.Herbert A. Simon - 1973 - Artificial Intelligence 4 (3-4):181--201.
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  • Robustness and reality.Markus I. Eronen - 2015 - Synthese 192 (12):3961-3977.
    Robustness is often presented as a guideline for distinguishing the true or real from mere appearances or artifacts. Most of recent discussions of robustness have focused on the kind of derivational robustness analysis introduced by Levins, while the related but distinct idea of robustness as multiple accessibility, defended by Wimsatt, has received less attention. In this paper, I argue that the latter kind of robustness, when properly understood, can provide justification for ontological commitments. The idea is that we are justified (...)
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  • Conceptualizing Evolutionary Novelty: Moving Beyond Definitional Debates.Ingo Brigandt & Alan C. Love - 2012 - Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution 318:417-427.
    According to many biologists, explaining the evolution of morphological novelty and behavioral innovation are central endeavors in contemporary evolutionary biology. These endeavors are inherently multidisciplinary but also have involved a high degree of controversy. One key source of controversy is the definitional diversity associated with the concept of evolutionary novelty, which can lead to contradictory claims (a novel trait according to one definition is not a novel trait according to another). We argue that this diversity should be interpreted in light (...)
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  • Levels of organization: a deflationary account.Markus I. Eronen - 2015 - Biology and Philosophy 30 (1):39-58.
    The idea of levels of organization plays a central role in the philosophy of the life sciences. In this article, I first examine the explanatory goals that have motivated accounts of levels of organization. I then show that the most state-of-the-art and scientifically plausible account of levels of organization, the account of levels of mechanism proposed by Bechtel and Craver, is fundamentally problematic. Finally, I argue that the explanatory goals can be reached by adopting a deflationary approach, where levels of (...)
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  • No Levels, No Problems: Downward Causation in Neuroscience.Markus I. Eronen - 2013 - Philosophy of Science 80 (5):1042-1052.
    I show that the recent account of levels in neuroscience proposed by Craver and Bechtel is unsatisfactory since it fails to provide a plausible criterion for being at the same level and is incompatible with Craver and Bechtel’s account of downward causation. Furthermore, I argue that no distinct notion of levels is needed for analyzing explanations and causal issues in neuroscience: it is better to rely on more well-defined notions such as composition and scale. One outcome of this is that (...)
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  • The Limitations of Hierarchical Organization.Angela Potochnik & Brian McGill - 2012 - Philosophy of Science 79 (1):120-140.
    The concept of hierarchical organization is commonplace in science. Subatomic particles compose atoms, which compose molecules; cells compose tissues, which compose organs, which compose organisms; etc. Hierarchical organization is particularly prominent in ecology, a field of research explicitly arranged around levels of ecological organization. The concept of levels of organization is also central to a variety of debates in philosophy of science. Yet many difficulties plague the concept of discrete hierarchical levels. In this paper, we show how these difficulties undermine (...)
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  • Levels: A Semantical Preliminary.Mario Bunge - 1960 - Review of Metaphysics 13 (3):396 - 406.
    The aim of the present paper is to list the usual and some possible meanings--or at least those the writer found the most interesting--of the word 'level,' to specify them briefly, to illustrate them, and to propose some problems in which those concepts are involved. Should this semantical clarification prove useful in clearing the ground for ontological speculation, the thesis would be confirmed that there is no conflict between semantics and ontology as long as the former does not deny the (...)
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  • Scientific Problems and Constraints.Thomas Nickles - 1978 - PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1978:134 - 148.
    In this paper the relation between scientific problems and the constraints on their solutions is explored. First the historical constraints on the solution to the blackbody radiation problem are set out. The blackbody history is used as a guide in sketching a working taxonomy of constraints, which distinguishes various kinds of reductive and nonreductive constraints. Finally, this discussion is related to some work in erotetic logic. The hypothesis that scientific problems can be identified with structured sets of constraints is interesting; (...)
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  • From Developmental Constraint to Evolvability: How Concepts Figure in Explanation and Disciplinary Identity.Ingo Brigandt - 2014 - In Alan C. Love (ed.), Conceptual Change in Biology: Scientific and Philosophical Perspectives on Evolution and Development. Berlin: Springer Verlag, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. pp. 305-325.
    The concept of developmental constraint was at the heart of developmental approaches to evolution of the 1980s. While this idea was widely used to criticize neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, critique does not yield an alternative framework that offers evolutionary explanations. In current Evo-devo the concept of constraint is of minor importance, whereas notions as evolvability are at the center of attention. The latter clearly defines an explanatory agenda for evolutionary research, so that one could view the historical shift from ‘developmental constraint’ (...)
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  • Natural Kinds and Concepts: A Pragmatist and Methodologically Naturalistic Account.Ingo Brigandt - 2011 - In Jonathan Knowles & Henrik Rydenfelt (eds.), Pragmatism, Science and Naturalism. Peter Lang Publishing. pp. 171-196.
    In this chapter I lay out a notion of philosophical naturalism that aligns with pragmatism. It is developed and illustrated by a presentation of my views on natural kinds and my theory of concepts. Both accounts reflect a methodological naturalism and are defended not by way of metaphysical considerations, but in terms of their philosophical fruitfulness. A core theme is that the epistemic interests of scientists have to be taken into account by any naturalistic philosophy of science in general, and (...)
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  • How do Scientists Think? Capturing the Dynamics of Conceptual Change in Science.Nancy Nersessian - 1992 - In R. Giere & H. Feigl (eds.), Cognitive Models of Science. University of Minnesota Press. pp. 3--45.
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  • Re-engineering philosophy for limited beings: piecewise approximations to reality.William C. Wimsatt - 2007 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
    This book offers a philosophy for error-prone humans trying to understand messy systems in the real world.
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  • (1 other version)Explaining the brain: mechanisms and the mosaic unity of neuroscience.Carl F. Craver - 2007 - New York : Oxford University Press,: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press.
    Carl Craver investigates what we are doing when we sue neuroscience to explain what's going on in the brain.
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  • What is a problem that we may solve it.Thomas Nickles - 1981 - Synthese 47 (1):85 - 118.
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  • Role functions, mechanisms, and hierarchy.Carl F. Craver - 2001 - Philosophy of Science 68 (1):53-74.
    Many areas of science develop by discovering mechanisms and role functions. Cummins' (1975) analysis of role functions-according to which an item's role function is a capacity of that item that appears in an analytic explanation of the capacity of some containing system-captures one important sense of "function" in the biological sciences and elsewhere. Here I synthesize Cummins' account with recent work on mechanisms and causal/mechanical explanation. The synthesis produces an analysis of specifically mechanistic role functions, one that uses the characteristic (...)
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  • Our World Isn't Organized into Levels.Angela Potochnik - 2021 - In Daniel Stephen Brooks, James DiFrisco & William C. Wimsatt (eds.), Levels of Organization in the Biological Sciences. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
    Levels of organization and their use in science have received increased philosophical attention of late, including challenges to the well-foundedness or widespread usefulness of levels concepts. One kind of response to these challenges has been to advocate a more precise and specific levels concept that is coherent and useful. Another kind of response has been to argue that the levels concept should be taken as a heuristic, to embrace its ambiguity and the possibility of exceptions as acceptable consequences of its (...)
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  • (1 other version)Levels: Descriptive, Explanatory, and Ontological.Christian List - 2017 - Noûs 53 (4):852-883.
    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 (...)
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  • Levels of Organization in Biology.Markus Eronen & Daniel Stephen Brooks - unknown - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Levels of organization are structures in nature, usually defined by part-whole relationships, with things at higher levels being composed of things at the next lower level. Typical levels of organization that one finds in the literature include the atomic, molecular, cellular, tissue, organ, organismal, group, population, community, ecosystem, landscape, and biosphere levels. References to levels of organization and related hierarchical depictions of nature are prominent in the life sciences and their philosophical study, and appear not only in introductory textbooks and (...)
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  • In Defense of Levels: Layer Cakes and Guilt by Association.Daniel S. Brooks - 2017 - Biological Theory 12 (3).
    Despite the ubiquity of “levels of organization” in the scientific literature, a nascent “levels skepticism” now claims that the concept of levels is an inherently flawed, misleading, or otherwise inadequate notion for understanding how life scientists produce knowledge about the natural world. However, levels skeptics rely on the maligned “layer-cake” account of levels stemming from Oppenheim and Putnam’s defense of the unity of science for their critical commentary. Recourse to layer-cake levels is understandable, as it is arguably the default conception (...)
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  • The Epistemic Goal of a Concept: Accounting for the Rationality of Semantic Change and Variation.Ingo Brigandt - 2010 - Synthese 177 (1):19-40.
    The discussion presents a framework of concepts that is intended to account for the rationality of semantic change and variation, suggesting that each scientific concept consists of three components of content: 1) reference, 2) inferential role, and 3) the epistemic goal pursued with the concept’s use. I argue that in the course of history a concept can change in any of these components, and that change in the concept’s inferential role and reference can be accounted for as being rational relative (...)
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  • Reducing mind to molecular pathways: Explicating the reductionism implicit in current cellular and molecular neuroscience. [REVIEW]John Bickle - 2006 - Synthese 151 (3):411-434.
    As opposed to the dismissive attitude toward reductionism that is popular in current philosophy of mind, a “ruthless reductionism” is alive and thriving in “molecular and cellular cognition”—a field of research within cellular and molecular neuroscience, the current mainstream of the discipline. Basic experimental practices and emerging results from this field imply that two common assertions by philosophers and cognitive scientists are false: (1) that we do not know much about how the brain works, and (2) that lower-level neuroscience cannot (...)
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  • Reductionism, levels of organization, and the mind-body problem.William C. Wimsatt - 1975 - In Gordon G. Globus, Grover Maxwell & I. Savodnik (eds.), Consciousness and the Brain. Plenum Press.
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  • (1 other version)Levels: descriptive, explanatory, and ontological.Christian List - 2017
    Scientists and philosophers frequently speak about levels of description, levels of explanation, and ontological levels. This paper presents a framework for studying levels. I give a general definition of a system of levels and discuss several applications, some of which refer to descriptive or explanatory levels while others refer to ontological levels. I illustrate the usefulness of this framework by bringing it to bear on some familiar philosophical questions. Is there a hierarchy of levels, with a fundamental level at the (...)
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  • The role of models in the process of epistemic integration: the case of the Reichardt motion detector.Daniel S. Brooks - 2014 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 36 (1):90-113.
    Recent work on epistemic integration in the life sciences has emphasized the importance of integration in thinking about explanatory practice in science, particularly for articulating a robust alternative to reductionism and anti-reductionism. This paper analyzes the role of models in balancing the relative contributions of lower- and higher-level epistemic resources involved in this process. Integration between multiple disciplines proceeds by constructing a problem agenda (Love 2008), a set of interrelated problems that structures the problem space of a complex phenomenon that (...)
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  • Theory change in science: strategies from Mendelian genetics.Lindley Darden - 1991 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    This innovative book focuses on the development of the gene theory as a case study in scientific creativity.
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  • (1 other version)Explaining the Brain.Carl F. Craver - 2007 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    Carl F. Craver investigates what we are doing when we use neuroscience to explain what's going on in the brain. When does an explanation succeed and when does it fail? Craver offers explicit standards for successful explanation of the workings of the brain, on the basis of a systematic view about what neuroscientific explanations are.
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  • Integrating mechanistic explanations through epistemic perspectives.Lena Kästner - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 68:68-79.
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  • Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings. Piecewise Approximations to Reality.William C. Wimsatt - 2010 - Critica 42 (124):108-117.
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  • The Dynamics of Scientific Concepts: The Relevance of Epistemic Aims and Values.Ingo Brigandt - 2012 - In Uljana Feest & Friedrich Steinle (eds.), Scientific Concepts and Investigative Practice. de Gruyter. pp. 75-103.
    The philosophy of science that grew out of logical positivism construed scientific knowledge in terms of set of interconnected beliefs about the world, such as theories and observation statements. Nowadays science is also conceived of as a dynamic process based on the various practices of individual scientists and the institutional settings of science. Two features particularly influence the dynamics of scientific knowledge: epistemic standards and aims (e.g., assumptions about what issues are currently in need of scientific study and explanation). While (...)
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  • (1 other version)A Theory of Conceptual Advance: Explaining Conceptual Change in Evolutionary, Molecular, and Evolutionary Developmental Biology.Ingo Brigandt - 2006 - Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh
    The theory of concepts advanced in the dissertation aims at accounting for a) how a concept makes successful practice possible, and b) how a scientific concept can be subject to rational change in the course of history. Traditional accounts in the philosophy of science have usually studied concepts in terms only of their reference; their concern is to establish a stability of reference in order to address the incommensurability problem. My discussion, in contrast, suggests that each scientific concept consists of (...)
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  • The significance of levels of organization for scientific research: A heuristic approach.Daniel S. Brooks & Markus I. Eronen - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 68:34-41.
    The concept of 'levels of organization' has come under fire recently as being useless for scientific and philosophical purposes. In this paper, we show that 'levels' is actually a remarkably resilient and constructive conceptual tool that can be, and in fact is, used for a variety of purposes. To this effect, we articulate an account of the importance of the levels concept seen in light of its status as a major organizing concept of biology. We argue that the usefulness of (...)
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  • Part-whole science.Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther - 2011 - Synthese 178 (3):397-427.
    A scientific explanatory project, part-whole explanation, and a kind of science, part-whole science are premised on identifying, investigating, and using parts and wholes. In the biological sciences, mechanistic, structuralist, and historical explanations are part-whole explanations. Each expresses different norms, explananda, and aims. Each is associated with a distinct partitioning frame for abstracting kinds of parts. These three explanatory projects can be complemented in order to provide an integrative vision of the whole system, as is shown for a detailed case study: (...)
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  • Explaining evolutionary innovations and novelties: Criteria of explanatory adequacy and epistemological prerequisites.Alan C. Love - 2008 - Philosophy of Science 75 (5):874-886.
    It is a common complaint that antireductionist arguments are primarily negative. Here I describe an alternative nonreductionist epistemology based on considerations taken from multidisciplinary research in biology. The core of this framework consists in seeing investigation as coordinated around sets of problems (problem agendas) that have associated criteria of explanatory adequacy. These ideas are developed in a case study, the explanation of evolutionary innovations and novelties, which demonstrates the applicability and fruitfulness of this nonreductionist epistemological perspective. This account also bears (...)
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  • Without Hierarchy: The Scale Freedom of the Universe.Mariam Thalos - 2013 - New York, USA: Oxford University Press.
    A venerable tradition in the metaphysics of science commends ontological reduction: the practice of analysis of theoretical entities into further and further proper parts, with the understanding that the original entity is nothing but the sum of these. This tradition implicitly subscribes to the principle that all the real action of the universe (also referred to as its "causation") happens at the smallest scales-at the scale of microphysics. A vast majority of metaphysicians and philosophers of science, covering a wide swath (...)
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  • Goals and Fates of Concepts: The Case of Magnetic Poles.Friedrich Steinle - 2012 - In Uljana Feest & Friedrich Steinle (eds.), Scientific Concepts and Investigative Practice. de Gruyter. pp. 105-126.
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