British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (3) (2017)
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Abstract |
The central aim of this article is to specify the ontological nature of constitutive mechanistic phenomena. After identifying three criteria of adequacy that any plausible approach to constitutive mechanistic phenomena must satisfy, we present four different suggestions, found in the mechanistic literature, of what mechanistic phenomena might be. We argue that none of these suggestions meets the criteria of adequacy. According to our analysis, constitutive mechanistic phenomena are best understood as what we will call ‘object-involving occurrents’. Furthermore, on the basis of this notion, we will clarify what distinguishes constitutive mechanistic explanations from etiological ones.
1 Introduction
2 Criteria of Adequacy
2.1 Descriptive adequacy
2.2 Constitutive–etiological distinction
2.3 Constitution
3 The Ontological Nature of Constitutive Mechanistic Phenomena
3.1 Phenomena as input–output relations
3.2 Phenomena as end states
3.3 Phenomena as dispositions
3.4 Phenomena as behaviours
4 Phenomena as Object-Involving Occurrents
4.1 What object-involving occurrents are and why we need them
4.2 The object in the phenomenon
4.3 The adequacy of option
5 Conclusion.
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Keywords | Mechanisms Mechanistic Explanation Constitution Phenomenon Part-Whole Relation |
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Reprint years | 2016, 2017 |
DOI | 10.1093/bjps/axv058 |
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References found in this work BETA
Thinking About Mechanisms.Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden & Carl F. Craver - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (1):1-25.
Explanation: A Mechanist Alternative.William Bechtel & Adele Abrahamsen - 2005 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36 (2):421-441.
Top-Down Causation Without Top-Down Causes.Carl F. Craver & William Bechtel - 2007 - Biology and Philosophy 22 (4):547-563.
View all 37 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Are More Details Better? On the Norms of Completeness for Mechanistic Explanations.Carl F. Craver & David M. Kaplan - 2020 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71 (1):287-319.
What is an Animal Personality?Marie I. Kaiser & Caroline Müller - 2021 - Biology and Philosophy 36 (1):1-25.
Making Sense of Interlevel Causation in Mechanisms From a Metaphysical Perspective.Beate Krickel - 2017 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 48 (3):453-468.
Extended Cognition, The New Mechanists’ Mutual Manipulability Criterion, and The Challenge of Trivial Extendedness.Beate Krickel - 2020 - Mind and Language 35 (4):539–561.
Discovering Patterns: On the Norms of Mechanistic Inquiry.Lena Kästner & Philipp Haueis - forthcoming - Erkenntnis 3:1-26.
View all 18 citations / Add more citations
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