ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2020
Network explanations and explanatory directionality.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Physiological Network Is Disrupted in Severe COVID-19.Frontiers in physiology · 2022Article
- Sex Differences in the Physiological Network of Healthy Young Subjects.Frontiers in physiology · 2021Article
- General theory of topological explanations and explanatory asymmetry.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Unifying the essential concepts of biological networks: biological insights and philosophical foundations.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Metabolic Physiological Networks: The Impact of Age.Frontiers in physiology · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
1 author.
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Abstract
Network explanations raise foundational questions about the nature of scientific explanation. The challenge discussed in this article comes from the fact that network explanations are often thought to be non-causal, i.e. they do not describe the dynamical or mechanistic interactions responsible for some behaviour, instead they appeal to topological properties of network models describing the system. These non-causal features are often thought to be valuable precisely because they do not invoke mechanistic or dynamical interactions and provide insights that are not available through causal explanations. Here, I address a central difficulty facing attempts to move away from causal models of explanation; namely, how to recover the directionality of explanation. Within causal models, the directionality of explanation is identified with the direction of causation. This solution is no longer available once we move to non-causal accounts of explanation. I will suggest a solution to this problem that emphasizes the role of conditions of application. In doing so, I will challenge the idea that
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