title: Collaborative explanation and biological mechanisms.
abstract: This paper motivates and outlines a new account of scientific explanation, which I term 'collaborative explanation.' My approach is pluralist: I do not claim that all scientific explanations are collaborative, but only that some important scientific explanations are-notably those of complex organic processes like development. Collaborative explanation is closely related to what philosophers of biology term 'mechanistic explanation' (e.g., Machamer et al., Craver, 2007). I begin with minimal conditions for mechanisms: complexity, causality, and multilevel structure. Different accounts of mechanistic explanation interpret and prioritize these conditions in different ways. This framework reveals two distinct varieties of mechanistic explanation: causal and constitutive. The two have heretofore been conflated, with philosophical discussion focusing on the former. This paper addresses the imbalance, using a case study of modeling practices in Systems Biology to reveals key features of constitutive mechanistic explanation. I then propose an analysis of this variety of mechanistic explanation, in terms of collaborative concepts, and sketch the outlines of a general theory of collaborative explanation. I conclude with some reflections on the connection between this variety of explanation and social aspects of scientific practice.
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy, University of Utah, United States. Electronic address: mel.fagan@utah.edu.
authors.forename: Melinda Bonnie
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Fagan
mesh_terms: D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D008954:Models, Biological; D012586:Science / Q000379:methods*; D049490:Systems Biology / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Collaborative explanation; Explanation; Mechanisms; Scientific practice