Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://doi.org/10.25358/openscience-660| Authors: | Anderson, Michael L. |
| Title: | Beyond componential constitution in the brain : starburst amacrine cells and enabling constraints |
| Online publication date: | 24-Oct-2016 |
| Year of first publication: | 2015 |
| Language: | english |
| Abstract: | Componential mechanism (Craver 2008) is an increasingly influential framework for understanding the norms of good explanation in neuroscience and beyond. Componential mechanism “construes explanation as a matter of decomposing systems into their parts and showing how those parts are organized together in such a way as to exhibit the explanandum phenomenon” (Craver 2008, p. 109). Although this clearly describes some instances of successful explanation, I argue here that as currently formulated the framework is too narrow to capture the full range of good mechanistic explanations in the neurosciences. The centerpiece of this essay is a case study of Starburst Amacrine Cells —a type of motion-sensitive cell in mammalian retina —for which function emerges from structure in a way that appears to violate the conditions specified by componential mechanism as currently conceived. I argue that the case of Starburst Amacrine Cells should move us to replace the notion of mechanistic componential constitution with a more general notion of enabling constraint. Introducing enabling constraints as a conceptual tool will allow us to capture and appropriately characterize a wider class of structure-function relationships in the brain and elsewhere. |
| DDC: | 100 Philosophie 100 Philosophy |
| Institution: | Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz |
| Department: | FB 05 Philosophie und Philologie |
| Place: | Mainz |
| ROR: | https://ror.org/023b0x485 |
| DOI: | http://doi.org/10.25358/openscience-660 |
| URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:77-publ-550078 |
| Version: | Published version |
| Publication type: | Buchbeitrag |
| License: | In Copyright |
| Information on rights of use: | https://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Citation: | Open MIND Metzinger, Thomas |
| Pages or article number: | Kap. 1(T) |
| Publisher: | MIND Group |
| Publisher place: | Frankfurt am Main |
| Issue date: | 2015 |
| Publisher URL: | http://dx.doi.org/10.15502/9783958570429 |
| Publisher DOI: | 10.15502/9783958570429 |
| Appears in collections: | JGU-Publikationen |
