Mechanisms, laws and explanation
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(2020) 10:25
PAPER IN GENERAL PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Mechanisms, laws and explanation Nancy Cartwright 1,2
& John
Pemberton 3
& Sarah
Wieten 4
Received: 31 May 2019 / Accepted: 28 February 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Mechanisms are now taken widely in philosophy of science to provide one of modern science’s basic explanatory devices. This has raised lively debate concerning the relationship between mechanisms, laws and explanation. This paper focuses on cases where a mechanism gives rise to a ceteris paribus law, addressing two inter-related questions: (1) What kind of explanation is involved? and (2) What is going on in the world when mechanism M affords behavior B described in a ceteris paribus law? We explore various answers offered by ‘new mechanists’ and others before setting out and explaining our own answers: (1) mechanistic explanations are a species of oldfashioned covering-law explanation and this often accounts in part for their explanatory power; and (2) B is what it takes for some set of principles that govern the features of M’s parts in their arrangement in M all to be instanced together. Keywords Mechanism . Law . Explanation . Covering law explanation . Mechanistic
explanation
* John Pemberton [email protected]
1
Department of Philosophy, University of Durham, 50 Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HN, UK
2
Department of Philosophy, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr, LaJolla, CA 92093, USA
3
CPNSS, Lakatos Building, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK
4
Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, 1215 Welch Road, Modular A, Stanford, CA 94305-5417, USA
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European Journal for Philosophy of Science
(2020) 10:25
1 Introduction Mechanisms –‘… entities and activities organized in such a way that they are responsible for [a] phenomenon’ – are now widely taken in philosophy of science to provide one of modern science’s basic explanatory devices.1 Among the many different kinds of things they explain are the regular(ish) behaviors recorded in ceteris paribus (cp) laws: like ‘Ceteris paribus, the arrival of neurotransmitter particles at the head of a neuron is followed by the release shortly after of neurotransmitter particles from the synaptic vesicles at the other end’; or the recurring elliptical orbits of the planets around the sun recorded in Kepler’s laws. In 1999 Nancy Cartwright introduced the idea of a ‘nomological machine’ characterized as a ‘fixed (enough) arrangement of components, or factors, with stable (enough) capacities that in the right sort of stable (enough) environment will, with repeated operation, gives rise to the kind of regular behavior that we represent in our scientific laws.’ (Cartwright 1999, page 50)2 The description of the nomological machine explains the law, which holds ‘ceteris paribus’ – relative to the nomological machine and its proper operation. Much of the more recent literature on mechanistic explanation of cp laws can be seen to make the same supposition when it comes to exp
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