Dynamical causes
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Dynamical causes Russell Meyer1 Received: 1 October 2019 / Accepted: 18 June 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Mechanistic explanations are often said to explain because they reveal the causal structure of the world. Conversely, dynamical models supposedly lack explanatory power because they do not describe causal structure. The only way for dynamical models to produce causal explanations is via the 3M criterion: the model must be mapped onto a mechanism. This framing of the situation has become the received view around the viability of dynamical explanation. In this paper, I argue against this position and show that dynamical models can themselves reveal causal structure and consequently produce non-mechanistic, dynamical explanations. Taking the example of cell fates from systems biology, I show how dynamical models, and specifically the attractor landscapes they describe, identify the causes of cell differentiation and explain why cells select particular fates. These dynamical features of the system better fit Woodward’s (Biol Philos 25(3):287–318, 2010. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10539-010-9200-z; Synthese, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1007/s1122 9-018-01998-6) criteria of specificity and proportionality and make them the best candidate causes of cell fates than mechanisms. I also show how these causes are irreducible and inaccessible to mechanistic models, making 3M unworkable and counterproductive in this case. Dynamical models can reveal dynamical causes and thereby provide causal explanations. Keywords Mechanistic explanation · Mechanism · Dynamical models · Dynamical explanation · Cell fates · Systems biology
* Russell Meyer [email protected] 1
School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia
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Introduction The concept of causal structure of the world, or just causal structure, is a touchstone of modern Mechanism1 originating from Salmon’s (1984) causal-mechanical approach to scientific explanation. The claim that a close relationship exists between causal structure and explaining a phenomenon is outlined by Craver (2007): There are perhaps many interesting things to be said about explanatory texts, but one crucial aspect of their adequacy has to do with whether explanatory texts accurately characterize the causal structure of the world. (Craver 2007, p. 27) A related and complementary claim made by mechanists is that scientific explanations should describe the causal relationships which comprise this causal structure: In many areas of science, explanations are said to be adequate to the extent, and only to the extent, that they describe the causal mechanisms that maintain, produce, or underlie the phenomenon to be explained, the explanandum phenomenon. (Kaplan and Craver 2011, p. 601). Putting these ideas together, I take causal structure to refer to the comprehensive web of causal relations that underlie or produce a phenomenon. Something explanatory ought to follow on from having a descrip
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