General theory of topological explanations and explanatory asymmetry
Open accessAbstract
In this paper, I present a general theory of topological explanations, and illustrate its fruitfulness by showing how it accounts for explanatory asymmetry. My argument is developed in three steps. In the first step, I show what it is for some topological property A to explain some physical or dynamical property B. Based on that, I derive three key criteria of successful topological explanations: a criterion concerning the facticity of topological explanations, i.e. what makes it true of a particular system; a criterion for describing counterfactual dependencies in two explanatory modes, i.e. the vertical and the horizontal and, finally, a third perspectival one that tells us when to use the vertical and when to use the horizontal mode. In the second step, I show how this general theory of topological explanations accounts for explanatory asymmetry in both the vertical and horizontal explanatory modes. Finally, in the third step, I argue that this theory is universally applicable across biological sciences, which helps in unifying essential concepts of biological networks. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Unifying the essential concepts of biological networks: biological insights and philosophical foundations'.
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Dandl et al. formulate counterfactual search as a multiobjective optimization problem using a distance metric for mixed feature spaces aiming to obtain sparse and most plausible counterfactuals.
“Dandl et al. [134] formulate counterfactual search as a multiobjective optimization problem using a distance metric for mixed feature spaces aiming to obtain sparse and most plausible counterfactuals.”
From A Survey of Contrastive and Counterfactual Explanation Generation Methods for Explainable Artificial Intelligence (2021) · cites this paper as [134]
Visual counterfactual explanations for non-visual input data plot feature-value pair dependencies.
“On the one hand, visual explanations for non-visual input data (i.e., datasets containing continuous or categorical featurevalue pairs) plot feature-value pair dependencies [134], [141], [142].”
From A Survey of Contrastive and Counterfactual Explanation Generation Methods for Explainable Artificial Intelligence (2021) · cites this paper as [134]
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“Kos-tic defines a counterfactual to be a statement describing a hypothetically different situation to the actual state of affairs [96].”
Background
- Authors
- Kostić, D.
- Affiliations
- Université de Bordeaux (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Kostić, Daniel
- ORCID
- Kostić, Daniel
- Venue
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2020-02-24
- Volume
- 375
- Issue
- 1796
- Pages
- 20190321-20190321
- ISSN
- 0962-8436 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-2970
- PMC
- PMC7061961
- OpenAlex
- W2987973843
- Cited by
- 53
- References
- 36
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 21 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 3
- FWCI
- 33.55
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- Locations
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PhilSci-Archive (University of Pittsburgh) (acceptedVersion)
- PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) (submittedVersion)
- Leiden Repository (Leiden University) (submittedVersion)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (REA GA n° 703662, Project acronym: TOPEX.)
- Conseil régional Nouvelle-Aquitaine + Bordeaux Montaigne University. (Project: Neuroessentialism.)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Philosophy and History of Science
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Complex Systems and Dynamics
- Keywords
- topological properties, biological networks, philosophy of biology, dynamic characteristics
- MeSH terms
- Biological Science Disciplines, Models, Theoretical
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