The focus in the literature on scientific explanation has shifted in recent years towards model-b... more The focus in the literature on scientific explanation has shifted in recent years towards model-based approaches. In recent work, Alisa Bokulich has argued that idealization has a central role to play in explanation. Bokulich claims that certain highly-idealized, structural models can be explanatory, even though they are not considered explanatory by causal, mechanistic, or covering law accounts of explanation. This paper focuses on Bokulich's account in order to make the more general claim that there are problems with maintaining that a structural criterion can capture the way that highly-idealized models explain. This paper examines Bokulich's claim that the structural model explanation of quantum wavefunction scarring, featuring semiclassical mechanics, is deeper than the explanation provided by the local quantum model. The challenge for Bokulich is to show that the semiclassical model answers a wider range of w-questions (what-if-things-had-been-different-questions), as this is her method of assessing structural information. I look at two reasonable approaches employing wquestions, and I argue that neither approach is ultimately satisfactory. Because structural similarity has preferences for more fundamental models with dynamics, I argue that the local quantum model provides explanations that at least as deep as the semiclassical ones. Thus, I argue that structural criteria are ill-suited to capture the way highly-idealized models explain.
The focus in the literature on scientific explanation has shifted in recent years towards model-b... more The focus in the literature on scientific explanation has shifted in recent years towards model-based approaches. In recent work, Alisa Bokulich has argued that idealization has a central role to play in explanation. Bokulich claims that certain highly-idealized, structural models can be explanatory, even though they are not considered explanatory by causal, mechanistic, or covering law accounts of explanation. This paper focuses on Bokulich's account in order to make the more general claim that there are problems with maintaining that a structural criterion can capture the way that highly-idealized models explain. This paper examines Bokulich's claim that the structural model explanation of quantum wavefunction scarring, featuring semiclassical mechanics, is deeper than the explanation provided by the local quantum model. The challenge for Bokulich is to show that the semiclassical model answers a wider range of w-questions (what-if-things-had-been-different-questions), as this is her method of assessing structural information. I look at two reasonable approaches employing wquestions, and I argue that neither approach is ultimately satisfactory. Because structural similarity has preferences for more fundamental models with dynamics, I argue that the local quantum model provides explanations that at least as deep as the semiclassical ones. Thus, I argue that structural criteria are ill-suited to capture the way highly-idealized models explain.
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Papers by Martin L King