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The Explanatory Power of Network Models

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Carl F. Craver
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Abstract

Network analysis is increasingly used to discover and represent the organization of complex systems. Focusing on examples from neuroscience in particular, I argue that whether network models explain, how they explain, and how much they explain cannot be answered for network models generally but must be answered by specifying an explanandum, by addressing how the model is applied to the system, and by specifying which kinds of relations count as explanatory.

Type
Network Analysis
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 83 , Issue 5 , December 2016 , pp. 698 - 709
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Thanks to Steve Petersen and the McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience for funding leave time, and to Petersen lab members, especially Becky Coalson, Tim Laumann, and Haoxin Sun. Thanks to Andre Ariew, Mike Dacey, Eric Hochstein, David Kaplan, Anya Plutynski, Gualtiero Piccinini, Mark Povich, and Felipe Romero for comments.

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