"An explanatory taste for mechanisms" by Russell Meyer
Mechanistic explanations, according to one prominent account, are derived from objective explanations (Craver 2007, 2014). Mechanistic standards of explanation are in turn pulled from nature, and are thereby insulated from the values of investigators, since explanation is an objectively defined achievement grounded in the causal structure of the world (Craver 2014). This results in the closure of mechanism’s explanatory standards—it is insulated from the values, norms and goals of investigators. I raise two problems with this position. First, it relies on several ontological claims which, ...