Au, Yin Chung (2021) Epistemic values of quantity and variety of evidence in biological mechanism research. [Preprint]

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Abstract

This paper proposes an extended version of the interventionist account for causal inference in the practical context of biological mechanism research. This paper studies the details of biological mechanism researchers’ practices of assessing the evidential legitimacy of experimental data, arguing why quantity and variety are two important criteria for this assessment. Because of the nature of biological mechanism research, the epistemic values of these two criteria result from the independence both between the causation of data generation and the causation in question and between different interventions, not techniques. The former independence ensures that the interventions in the causation in question are not affected by the causation that is responsible for data generation. The latter independence ensures the reliability of the final mechanisms not only in the empirical but also the formal aspects. This paper first explores how the researchers use quantity to check the effectiveness of interventions, where they at the same time determine the validity of the difference-making revealed by the results of interventions. Then, this paper draws a distinction between experimental interventions and experimental techniques, so that the reliability of mechanisms, as supported by the variety of evidence, can be safely ensured in the probabilistic sense. The latter process is where the researchers establish evidence of the mechanisms connecting the events of interest. By using case studies, this paper proposes to use ‘intervention’ as the fruitful connecting point of literature between evidence and mechanisms.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Au, Yin Chung z10608041@email.ncku.edu.tw 0000-0001-7175-8933
Keywords:	Biological mechanism; Evidence; practice; causal inference; independence
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Biology General Issues > Causation General Issues > Evidence
Depositing User:	Dr Yin Chung Au
Date Deposited:	28 Mar 2021 20:20
Last Modified:	28 Mar 2021 20:20
Item ID:	18866
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Biology General Issues > Causation General Issues > Evidence
Date:	28 March 2021
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/18866

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• Epistemic values of quantity and variety of evidence in biological mechanism research. (deposited 28 Mar 2021 20:20) [Currently Displayed]
  • Epistemic values of quantity and variety of evidence in biological mechanism research. (deposited 01 Aug 2021 13:41)

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