Functions and Mechanisms in Structural-Modelling Explanations

Noûs, 2023

Social scientists appeal to various "structures" in their explanations including public policies, economic systems, and social hierarchies. Significant debate surrounds the explanatory relevance of these factors for various outcomes such as health, behavioral, and economic patterns. This paper provides a causal account of social structural explanation that is motivated by Haslanger (2016). This account suggests that one way that social structure is explanatory is in virtue of operating as a causal constraint, which is a causal factor with unique characteristics. A novel causal framework is provided for understanding these explanations-this addresses puzzles regarding the mysterious causal influence of social structure, how to understand its relation to individual choice, and what makes it more explanatory (and causally responsible) for various outcomes.

Quality & Quantity

There is no unified theory of causality in the sciences and in philosophy. In this paper, we focus on a particular framework, called structural causal modelling (SCM), as one possible perspective in quantitative social science research. We explain how this methodology provides a fruitful basis for causal analysis in social research, for hypothesising, modelling, and testing explanatory mechanisms. This framework is not based on a system of equations, but on an analysis of multivariate distributions. In particular, the modelling stage is essentially distribution-free. Adopting an SCM approach means endorsing a particular view on modelling in general (the hypothetico-deductive methodology), and a specific stance on exogeneity (namely as a condition of separability of inference), on the one hand, and in interpreting marginal-conditional decompositions (namely as mechanisms), on the other hand.

Methodological innovations, 2018

Causal attribution is the problem of establishing what causes what. In the past decades, a number of quantitative approaches have been developed, notably the so-called structural modeling approach. The latter, at least in the account given by Mouchart and Russo (2011) and Wunsch et al. (2014), models the mechanism of the phenomenon of interest. This is particularly useful in social science, in which experimentation is often limited for practical or ethical reasons that are beyond the scope of this discussion. The way in which mechanistic modeling and structural modeling intersect is of particular interest here. Glennan and Illari (2018: Chapter 1) explain that in the social sciences, as well as in the life sciences, the search for mechanisms has been a reaction to the tradition of logical empiricism, which depicted the scientific enterprise as the search for laws (of nature) and explanation as an exercise in subsuming particular events under the said laws. Glennan and Illari propose a formulation that is supposed to capture the main features of mechanisms in the social and life sciences. They call it minimal mechanism: "A mechanism for a phenomenon consists of entities (or parts) whose activities and interactions are organized so as to be responsible for the phenomenon." This formulation blends earlier attempts to generally characterize what a mechanism is, notably those given by Illari and Williamson (2012) and by Glennan (2017). In different disciplines, the search, discovery, and validation of mechanisms take different forms. See, for instance, Demeulenaere (2011) for a thorough discussion of mechanisms in sociology. As mentioned above, in quantitative social science, mechanisms can be modeled using "structural models." These models, which will be presented in detail in the following section, have the characteristic of modeling a given phenomenon by elucidating its probabilistic structure.

Mind & Society, 2005

This paper discusses various problems of explanations by mechanisms. Two positions are distinguished: the narrow position claims that only explanations by mechanisms are acceptable. It is argued that this position leads to an infinite regress because the discovery of a mechanism must entail the search for other mechanisms etc. Another paradoxical consequence of this postulate is that every successful explanation by mechanisms is unsatisfactory because it generates new ''black box'' explanations. The second-liberal-position that is advanced in this paper regards, besides explanations by mechanisms, also the discovery of bivariate correlations as a first step of an explanation by mechanisms as meaningful. It is further argued that there is no contradiction between causal analysis and the explanation by mechanisms. Instead, explanations by mechanisms always presuppose the analysis of causal structures (but not vice versa). The final point is that an explanation by mechanisms is not inconsistent with the Hempel-Oppenheim scheme of explanation.

We propose a new definition of actual causes, using structural equations to model counterfactuals. We show that the definition yields a plausi ble and elegant account of causation that handles well examples which have caused problems for other definitions and resolves major difficulties in the traditional account.

A philosophically useful account of social structure must accommodate the fact that social structures play an important role in structural explanation. But what is a structural explanation? How do structural explanations function in the social sciences? This paper offers a way of thinking about structural explanation and sketches an account of social structure that connects social structures with structural explanation.

Causality in the Sciences, 2011

This paper deals with causal explanation in quantitative-oriented social sciences. In the framework of statistical modelling, we first develop a formal structural modelling approach which is meant to shape causal explanation. Recursive decomposition and exogeneity are given a major role for explaining social phenomena. Then, based on the main features of structural models, the recursive decomposition is interpreted as a mechanism and exogenous variables as causal factors. Arguments from statistical methodology are first offered and then submitted to critical evaluation.

2010

During the past decade, social mechanisms and mechanism-based ex- planations have received considerable attention in the social sciences as well as in the philosophy of science. This article critically reviews the most important philosophical and social science contributions to the mechanism approach. The first part discusses the idea of mechanism- based explanation from the point of view of philosophy of science and relates it to causation and to the covering-law account of explanation. The second part focuses on how the idea of mechanisms has been used in the social sciences. The final part discusses recent developments in analytical sociology, covering the nature of sociological explananda, the role of theory of action in mechanism-based explanations, Merton’s idea of middle-range theory, and the role of agent-based simulations in the development of mechanism-based explanations.

2011

This paper provides an overview of structural modelling in its close relation to explanation and causation. It stems from previous works by the authors and stresses the role and importance of the notions of invariance, recursive decomposition, exogeneity and background knowledge. It closes with some considerations about the importance of the structural approach for practicing scientists.

Like domestic explanations, international-structural explanations could provide a more accurate, and simpler, alternative to the argument forwarded earlier about sovereignty and the public interest. Structural theo-rists might argue that these legislative discussions in fact occurred, and they did in a microsense shape policies' details, but that the choices legislators thought that they were making from scratch were in a sense predetermined. Changes in the distribution of power, or in the country's terms of trade and public demands for better living standards, or another equally broad phenomenon could have placed so much pressure on a country that a legislator would have had to favor restriction. The arguments, in this view, reveal legislators' attempts to come to terms with the action they were compelled to take anyway, rather than the justi‹cations that are necessary to sanctify democratic action and move the nation forward. This chapter assesses structural theories generally as explanations for the changes examined earlier. Although systems-level structural theories of international relations, which deal directly with sovereignty and power, do not discuss immigration policy, each does imply hypotheses concerning quantitative restriction concerning border control, the correlation between immigration and trade policies, 1 and directional trends in each of those policies-as well as suggest a basis for determining which characteristics a country will seek in its immigrant population. Neorealism, functionalism, and hege-monic stability theories each identify minimal commonalities among states that de‹ne their constraints and incentives. The following sections outline the predictions they would make concerning boundary control, then evaluate them in the light of American immigration policy in the twentieth century. Since the evidence each requires is macrolevel time-series data, most of the evidence used to evaluate the theories is quantitative. Since none distinguishes between transborder ›ows of goods and persons (labor), they are all tested on data about both trade and migration. The ‹nal section evaluates the degree to which relatively simple structural theories explain either the content of immigration policy or the timing and direction of changes in it. 245