The PI will engage in research to develop a new philosophical account of collaborative explanations, an important kind of scientific explanation that answers questions about how complex systems work in terms of their interacting parts; they produce understanding by unifying causal systems at multiple levels. The key notion to be explored and analyzed is jointness, the relation among components working together. The PI will investigate how collaborative explanations contrast with other philosophical accounts of explanation, determine what analogies (if any) are there between collaborative explanation and collaborative scientific practices, and explore the kinds of knowledge or understanding that results from collaborative explanation. The study will yield an account of collaborative explanation explicitly distinguished from alternatives, a cogent analysis of jointness that yields plausible diagnoses of several important cases, and provides epistemic grounds for distinctive features of collaborative explanation.
Intellectual Merit
The proposed research fills a significant gap in current philosophical accounts of scientific explanation. The latter fall mainly into two classes: covering-law views, and causal theories that take physics to be fundamental. But neither clarifies the remarkable progress in biology since the mid-20th century. Though recent accounts of mechanistic explanation do so, these treat it as a special case of causal explanation. Focusing on collaboration, the PI's approach offers a fresh perspective on a traditional topic. The proposed research also contributes to social epistemology. Though science is intensely collaborative, philosophers often downplay this aspect. By making the concept of collaboration central to scientific explanation, the proposed research is well-suited to explore analogies (and perhaps stronger connections) between features of scientific explanations and the practices that give rise to them.
Broader Impacts
The proposed research has potential to open new theoretical terrain in philosophy of science, foster ties with allied fields of study, and promote greater participation of women in philosophy. It will articulate new theoretical connections with social epistemology thereby forging connections with other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. The PI participates in several interdisciplinary initiatives that will bring results before diverse audiences; results of the proposed research will be communicated to historians, anthropologists, environmental philosophers, biologists, social scientists, and policy researchers. Finally, the PI belongs to an under-represented group, women philosophers of science, and support for this research will help redress this imbalance
