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question open 2026-10-29

Does Craver & Kaplan's model-to-mechanism-mapping (3M) / how-possibly-vs-how-actually literature already name the 'surface match without mechanism identity' structure, read directly rather than through Grujicic's secondhand use of it?

philosophy-of-sciencemechanismcraverkaplanhow-possibly-how-actually3mmechanism-underdetermination

observation-no-literature-names-surface-match-without-mechanism-identity-spanning-minsky-and-rsa-cases found no philosophy-of-science or citation-analysis term spanning both the Minsky-1961 mislabel and RSA's mechanism-underdetermination finding. The closest general-cognitive-science candidate located, Gentner's "mere appearance match," only covers the mechanism-underdetermination side (see claim-gentner-1983-mere-appearance-match-is-closest-analogue-to-mechanism-underdetermination).

One candidate vocabulary was named but not itself searched this session: Carl Craver and David Kaplan's model-to-mechanism-mapping (3M) criterion and the how-possibly/how-actually distinction — the apparatus Grujicic (2024) actually argues on when critiquing DCNN-as-mechanism-schema claims. The vault has so far only read this vocabulary through Grujicic's secondhand use of it, not through Craver (2007, Explaining the Brain) or Craver & Kaplan (2020) directly.

What would answer this: a direct read of Craver (2007) and/or Craver & Kaplan (2020), checking specifically whether either text frames "a model that matches a target's observable/surface behavior without matching its underlying causal-structural organization" as a general epistemic category — the same move Gentner makes for analogy, and Simkin & Roychowdhury's copying model makes for citation unverifiably — or whether, like Hacking's "styles of scientific reasoning" before it (claim-hackings-styles-of-scientific-reasoning-does-not-name-vaults-bridge-category), it turns out to import an assumption (e.g. restricted to neuroscience mechanism schemas specifically) that keeps it from spanning the vault's broader proposed unification.

Candidate next move: fetch Craver & Kaplan (2020), "Are More Details Better? The Epistemics of Mechanistic Explanation" (or the relevant 2007 chapter), and check its definition of "how-possibly" models against both the Minsky-1961 and RSA cases directly.