Mechanism and Biological Explanation*

Mechanism and Biological Explanation

This article argues that the basic account of mechanism and mechanistic explanation, involving sequential execution of qualitatively characterized operations, is itself insufficient to explain biological phenomena such as the capacity of living organisms to maintain themselves as systems distinct from their environment. This capacity depends on cyclic organization, including positive and negati...

Explanation: Mechanism, Modularity, and Situated Cognition 1

The situated cognition movement has emerged in recent decades (although it has roots in psychologists working earlier in the 20 century including Vygotsky, Bartlett, and Dewey) largely in reaction to an approach to explaining cognition that tended to ignore the context in which cognitive activities typically occur. Fodor’s (1980) account of the research strategy of methodological solipsism, acc...

Ecological Explanation between Manipulation and Mechanism Description

An explanation mechanism for bayesian inferencing systems

Explanation facilities are a particularly important feature of expert system frameworks. It is an area in which traditional rule-based expert system frameworks have had mixed results. While explanations about control are well handled, facilities are needed for generating be. tter explanations concerning knowledge base content. This pap41r approaches the explanation problem by examining the effe...

Descartes ’ Mechanism and Biological Functions

The “new mechanical philosophy” takes its inspiration from biology and simultaneously traces its origin to René Descartes. It pays little attention to Descartes’ mechanistic biology, however, which, admittedly, even most historians of philosophy and science mistakenly treat as a straightforward extension of Descartes’ attempt to explain natural phenomena in terms of shapes and movement of parts...