The causal situationist account of constitutive relevance
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The causal situationist account of constitutive relevance Emily Prychitko1 Received: 4 June 2018 / Accepted: 1 March 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract An epistemic account of constitutive relevance lists the criteria by which scientists can identify the components of mechanisms in empirical practice. Three prominent claims from Craver (Explaining the brain: mechanisms and the mosaic unity of neuroscience, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007) form a promising basis for an account. First, constitutive relevance is established by means of interlevel experiments. Second, interlevel experiments are executions of interventions. Third, there is no interlevel causation between a mechanism and its components. Currently, no account on offer respects all three claims. I offer my causal situationist account of constitutive relevance that respects the claims. By situating a part of a mechanism on the causal chain between the mechanism’s input and output, components can be identified with interventions, without the interventions suggesting interlevel causation. The causal situationist account is the only account on offer so far that clearly fits within Craver’s (2007) framework. Keywords Mechanistic explanation · Constitutive relevance · Interventionism · Interlevel causation
1 Introduction Through a series of experiments, scientists have discovered that the middle temporal visual area (MT) is a component of the mechanism for motion perception. MT cells are active when motion is being perceived (Britten et al. 1992), inhibition of MT cells impairs one’s ability to perceive motion (Newsome and Paré 1988), and direct stimulation of MT cells makes one perceive a particular direction of motion (Salzman et al. 1990). Because MT cells are a physical part of the neural mechanism for motion perception and their activity is relevant to the perceiving of motion, any account of
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Emily Prychitko [email protected] Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, USA
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constitutive relevance should yield that MT cells are a component of the mechanism for motion perception. An epistemic account of constitutive relevance lists the criteria by which scientists can determine, in empirical practice, whether something is a component of a mechanism. Such an account is essential for distinguishing the components of the mechanism from mere parts or causes of the mechanism’s behavior. There are three claims that provide a promising basis for an account of constitutive relevance, as originally put forth by Craver (2007). First, in practice, constitutive relevance between a mechanism and its components is discovered by way of interlevel experiments (Craver 2007; Craver and Bechtel 2007; Kaplan 2012). Second, like experiments that establish causal relevance, interlevel experiments involve Woodwardian interventions (Craver 2007; Craver and Bechtel 2007; Baumgartner and Gebharter 2015; Krickel 2018). Third, constitutive relevance is, nevertheless, distinct from, rather than a type of, causal
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