Switch to: Citations

References in:

Prosthetic Models

Philosophy of Science 77 (5):840-851 (2010)

Add references

You must login to add references.
  1. Functional analysis.Robert E. Cummins - 1975 - Journal of Philosophy 72 (November):741-64.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   872 citations  
  • When mechanistic models explain.Carl F. Craver - 2006 - Synthese 153 (3):355-376.
    Not all models are explanatory. Some models are data summaries. Some models sketch explanations but leave crucial details unspecified or hidden behind filler terms. Some models are used to conjecture a how-possibly explanation without regard to whether it is a how-actually explanation. I use the Hodgkin and Huxley model of the action potential to illustrate these ways that models can be useful without explaining. I then use the subsequent development of the explanation of the action potential to show what is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   258 citations  
  • Who is a Modeler?Michael Weisberg - 2007 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 58 (2):207-233.
    Many standard philosophical accounts of scientific practice fail to distinguish between modeling and other types of theory construction. This failure is unfortunate because there are important contrasts among the goals, procedures, and representations employed by modelers and other kinds of theorists. We can see some of these differences intuitively when we reflect on the methods of theorists such as Vito Volterra and Linus Pauling on the one hand, and Charles Darwin and Dimitri Mendeleev on the other. Much of Volterra's and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   224 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   258 citations  
  • Does matter really matter? Computer simulations, experiments, and materiality.Wendy S. Parker - 2009 - Synthese 169 (3):483-496.
    A number of recent discussions comparing computer simulation and traditional experimentation have focused on the significance of “materiality.” I challenge several claims emerging from this work and suggest that computer simulation studies are material experiments in a straightforward sense. After discussing some of the implications of this material status for the epistemology of computer simulation, I consider the extent to which materiality (in a particular sense) is important when it comes to making justified inferences about target systems on the basis (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   137 citations  
  • Novum Organum.Francis Bacon, Peter Urbach & John Gibson - 1996 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (1):125-128.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   136 citations  
  • Regularities and causality; generalizations and causal explanations.Jim Bogen - 2005 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36 (2):397-420.
    Machamer, Darden, and Craver argue that causal explanations explain effects by describing the operations of the mechanisms which produce them. One of this paper’s aims is to take advantage of neglected resources of Mechanism to rethink the traditional idea that actual or counterfactual natural regularities are essential to the distinction between causal and non-causal co-occurrences, and that generalizations describing natural regularities are essential components of causal explanations. I think that causal productivity and regularity are by no means the same thing, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   82 citations  
  • Theoretical neuroscience: computational and mathematical modeling of neural systems.Peter Dayan & L. Abbott - 2001 - Philosophical Psychology 15 (4):563-577.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   98 citations  
  • Physical law and mechanistic explanation in the Hodgkin and Huxley model of the action potential.Carl F. Craver - 2008 - Philosophy of Science 75 (5):1022-1033.
    Hodgkin and Huxley’s model of the action potential is an apparent dream case of covering‐law explanation in biology. The model includes laws of physics and chemistry that, coupled with details about antecedent and background conditions, can be used to derive features of the action potential. Hodgkin and Huxley insist that their model is not an explanation. This suggests either that subsuming a phenomenon under physical laws is insufficient to explain it or that Hodgkin and Huxley were wrong. I defend Hodgkin (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   48 citations