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Mechanisms in Science
Mechanisms in Science
MDC: “Mechanisms are entities and activities organized such that they are
productive of regular changes from start or set-up to finish or termination
conditions” (2000: 3).
Glennan: “A mechanism for a behavior is a complex system that produces that
behavior by the interaction of a number of parts, where the interaction between
parts can be characterized by direct, invariant, change-relating generalizations”
(2002: S344).
Bechtel and Abrahamsen: “A mechanism is a structure performing a function in
virtue of its component parts, component operations, and their organization. The
orchestrated functioning of the mechanism is responsible for one or more
phenomena” (2005: 423).
Each of these characterizations contains four basic features: (1) a phenomenon, (2)
parts, (3) causings, and (4) organization. We consider each of these in detail below.
A useful canonical visual representation of a mechanism underlying a phenomenon is
shown in Figure 1 (from Craver 2007). At the top is the phenomenon, some
system S engaged in behavior ψ. This is the behavior of the mechanism as a whole.
Beneath it are the parts (the Xs) and their activities (the φs) organized together. The
dotted roughly-vertical lines reflect the fact that the parts and activities are contained
within, are components of, the mechanism engaged in this behavior. Thus represented,
mechanisms are decompositional in the sense that the behavior of the system as a whole
can be broken down into organized interactions among the activities of the parts.
Figure 1. A visual representation of a mechanism (adapted from Craver 2007).
2.1 Phenomenon
The phenomenon is the behavior of the mechanism as a whole. All mechanisms are
mechanisms of some phenomenon (Kauffman 1971; Glennan 1996, 2002). The
mechanism of protein synthesis synthesizes proteins. The mechanism of the action
potential generates action potentials. The boundaries of a mechanism—what is in the
mechanism and what is not—are fixed by reference to the phenomenon that the
mechanism explains. The components in a mechanism are components in virtue of
being relevant to the phenomenon.
MDC (2000) describe mechanisms as working from start- or set-up conditions to
termination conditions. They insist that it is impoverished to describe the phenomenon
as an input-output relation because there are often many such inputs and outputs from a
mechanism and because central features of a phenomenon might be neither inputs nor
outputs (but rather details about how the phenomenon unfolds over time). Darden,
appealing to the example of protein synthesis, often associates the phenomenon with the
end-state: the protein (Darden 2006). Craver (2007), following Cummins (1975) and
Cartwright (1989), often speaks of the phenomenon roughly as a capacity or behavior of
the mechanism as a whole.
2.1.1 Producing, Underlying, and Maintaining
New mechanists speak variously of the mechanism as producing, underlying, or
maintaining the phenomenon (Craver and Darden 2013). The language of production is
best applied to mechanisms conceived as a causal sequence terminating in some end-
product: as when a virus produces symptoms via a disease mechanism or an enzyme
phosphorylates a substrate. In such cases, the phenomenon might be an object (the
production of a protein), a state of affairs (being phosphorylated), or an activity or event
(such as digestion). For many physiological mechanisms, in contrast, it is more
appropriate to say that the mechanism underlies the phenomenon. The mechanism of
the action potential or of working memory, for example, underlies the phenomenon,
here characteristically understood as a capacity or behavior of the mechanism as a
whole. Finally, a mechanism might maintain a phenomenon, as when homeostatic
mechanisms hold body temperature within tightly circumscribed boundaries. In such
cases, the phenomenon is a state of affairs, or perhaps a range of states of affairs, that is
held in place by the mechanism. These ways of talking can in many cases be inter-
translated (e.g., the product is produced, the production has an underlying mechanism,
and the state of affairs is maintained by an underlying mechanism). Yet clearly
confusion can arise from mixing these ways of talking.
2.1.2 Regularity
Must the relationship between the mechanism and the phenomenon be regular? This is
an area of active discussion (DesAutels 2011; Andersen 2011, 2014a,b; Krickel 2014).
MDC stipulate that mechanisms are regular in that they work “always or for the most
part in the same ways under the same conditions” (2000: 3). Some have understood this
(incorrectly in our view) as asserting that there are no mechanisms that work only once,
or that a mechanism must work significantly more than once in order to count as a
mechanism.
Some argue that mechanisms have to be regular in this factual sense (Andersen
2014a,b); i.e., repeated on many occasions (see Leuridan 2010). This view would seem
to require a somewhat arbitrary cut-off point in degree of regularity between things that
truly count as mechanisms and those that do not. Some mechanists (Bogen 2005;
Glennan 2009) argue that there is no difficulty applying the term “mechanism” to one-
off causal sequences, as when an historian speaks of the mechanism that gave rise to
World War I. Other mechanists argue that the type-token distinction is too crude a
dichotomy to capture the many levels of abstraction at which mechanism types and
tokens might be characterized (Darden 1991).
It is possible, however, to read the MDC statement as asserting, not a factual kind of
regularity, but as a counterfactual kind of near-determinism: were all the conditions the
same, then the mechanism would likely produce the same phenomenon, where “likely”
accommodates mechanisms with stochastic elements.
While the MDC account leaves open the possibility that some mechanisms are
stochastic, it clearly rules out mechanisms that usually fail to produce their phenomena.
Skipper and Millstein (2005) press this point to argue that the MDC account cannot
accommodate the idea that natural selection is a mechanism. If, as Gould (1990) argued,
one could not reproduce the history of life by rewinding the tapes and letting things
play forward again, then natural selection would not be an MDC mechanism (see
also Section 2.6 below). It is unclear why MDC would allow for the possibility of
stochastic mechanisms and rule out, by definition, the possibility that they might fail
more often than they work. Whether any biological mechanisms are truly irregular in
this sense (i.e., all the causally relevant factors are the same but the product of the
mechanism differs) is a separate question from whether they are mechanisms
simpliciter (see Bogen 2005; Machamer 2004; Steel 2008 develops a stochastic account
of mechanisms).
Krickel (2014) reviews the many different ways of unpacking the relevant notion of
regularity (see also Andersen 2012). Her favored solution, “reverse regularity,” holds
that there must be a generalization to the effect that, typically, when the phenomenon
occurs, the mechanism was acting.
2.2 Parts
Mechanists have struggled to find a concise way to express the idea of parthood
required of the components in a mechanism. The project is to develop an account that is
both sufficiently permissive to include the paradigmatic mechanisms from diverse areas
of science and yet not vacuous.
Formal mereologies are difficult to apply to the material parts of biological
mechanisms. Axioms of mereology, such as reflexivity (everything is a part of itself)
and unrestricted composition (any two things form a whole) do not apply in standard
biological uses of the “part” concept.
Glennan (1996) recognized the difficulty of defining parthood very early on. His
proposal:
The parts of mechanisms must have a kind of robustness and reality apart from their
place within that mechanism. It should in principle be possible to take the part out of
the mechanism and consider its properties in another context. (1996: 53)
Yet even this is perhaps too strong, given that some parts of a mechanism might
become unstable when removed from their mechanistic context. Later, Glennan (2002:
S345) says that the properties of a part must be stable in the absence of interventions, or
that parts must be stable enough to be called objects. This notion is perhaps too strong
to accommodate the more ephemeral parts of some biochemical mechanisms or of the
mechanisms of natural selection (Skipper and Millstein 2005; but see Illari and
Williamson 2010).
2.3 Causings
Mechanists have disagreed with one another about how to understand the cause in
causal mechanism. New mechanists have in general been at pains both (1) to liberate
the relevant causal notion from any overly austere view that restricts causation to only a
small class of phenomena (such as collisions, attraction/repulsion, or energy
conservation), and (2) to distance themselves from the Humean, regularist conception
of causation common among logical empiricists (see also the entry on the the
metaphysics of causation). Four ways of unpacking the cause in causal mechanism have
been discussed: conserved quantity accounts, mechanistic accounts, activities accounts,
and counterfactual accounts. (It should be noted that some mechanists have evolved in
their thinking about causation.)
2.3.1 Conserved Quantity Accounts
According to transmission accounts, causation involves the transmission and
propagation of marks or conserved quantities (Salmon 1984, 1994; Dowe 1992). The
most influential form of this view holds that two causal processes causally interact
when they intersect in space-time and exchange some amount of a conserved quantity,
such as mass. On this view, causation is local (the processes must intersect) and
singular (it is fully instantiated in particular causal processes), though the account relies
upon laws of conservation (Hitchcock 1995). Although this view inspired many of the
new mechanists, and although it shares their commitment to looking toward science for
an account of causation, it has generally been rejected by new mechanists (though see
Millstein 2006; Roe 2014).
This view has been unpopular in part because it has little direct application in
nonfundamental sciences, such as biology. The causal claims biologists make usually
don’t involve explicit reference to conserved quantities (even if they presuppose such
notions fundamentally) (Glennan 2002; Craver 2007). Furthermore, biological
mechanisms often involve causation by omission, prevention, and double prevention
(that is, when a mechanism works by removing a cause, preventing a cause, or
inhibiting an inhibitor) (Schaffer 2000, 2004). Such forms of causal disconnection are
ubiquitous in the special sciences.
2.3.2 Mechanistic Accounts
Glennan (1996, 2009) sees causation (at least non-fundamental causation) as derivative
from the concept of mechanism: causal claims are claims about the existence of a
mechanism. The truth-maker for a causal claim at one level of organization is a
mechanism at a lower level. In short, mechanisms are the hidden connexion Hume
sought between cause and effect. Like the Salmon-Dowe account, Glennan’s view is
singular: particular mechanisms link particular causes and particular effects (Glennan
forthcoming)
This view has been charged with circularity: the concept of mechanism ineliminably
contains a causal element. However, Glennan replies that many accounts of causation
(such as Woodward’s 2003 account, see Section 2.3.4 below) share this flaw.
Furthermore, he argues that for at least all non-fundamental causes, a mechanisms
clearly explains how a given cause produces its effect.
Whether the analysis succeeds depends on how one deals with the resulting regress
(Craver 2007). As Glennan (2009) notes, the decomposition of causes into mechanisms
might continue infinitely, in which case there is no point arguing about which notion is
more fundamental, or the decomposition might ground out in some basic, lowest-level
causal notion that is primitive and so not analyzable into other causal mechanisms. The
latter option must confront the widely touted absence of causation in the theories of
fundamental physics (Russell 1913); at very small size scales, classical conceptions of
objects and properties no longer seem to apply, making it difficult to see what content is
left to the idea that there are mechanisms at work (see also Teller 2010; Kuhlman and
Glennan 2014).
2.3.3 Activity-Based Accounts
Still other mechanists, such as Bogen (2005, 2008a) and Machamer (Machamer 2004),
embrace an Anscombian, non-reductive view that causation should be understood in
terms of productive activities (see also the entry on G.E.M. Anscombe). Activities are
kinds of causing, such as magnetic attraction and repulsion or hydrogen bonding.
Defenders of activity-based accounts eschew the need to define the concept, relying on
science to say what activities are and what features they might have. This view is a kind
of causal minimalism (Godfrey-Smith 2010). Whether an activity occurs is not a matter
of how frequently it occurs or whether it would occur always or for the most part in the
same conditions (Bogen 2005).
This account has been criticized as vacuous because it fails to say what activities are
(Psillos 2004), to account for the relationship of causal and explanatory relevance
(Woodward 2002), and to mark an adequate distinction between activities and
correlations (Psillos 2004), though see Bogen (2005, 2008a) for a response. Glennan
(forthcoming) argues that these problems can be addressed by recognizing that
activities in a mechanism at one level depend on lower-level mechanisms. (See also
Persson 2010 for a criticism of activities based on their inability to handle cases of
polygenic effects.)
2.3.4 Counterfactual Accounts
Lastly, some new mechanists, particularly those interested in providing an account of
scientific explanation, have gravitated toward a counterfactual view of causal relevance,
and in particular, to the manipulationist view expressed in Woodward (2001, 2003)
(see, e.g., Glennan 2002; Craver 2007). The central commitment of this view is that
models of mechanisms describe variables that make a difference to the values of other
variables in the model and to the phenomenon. Difference-making in this
manipulationist sense is understood as a relationship between variables in which
interventions on cause variables can be used to change the value of effect variables (see
the entry on causation and manipulability).
Unlike the views discussed above, this way of thinking about causation provides a
ready analysis of explanatory relevance that comports well with the methods for testing
causal claims. Roughly, one variable is causally relevant to a second when there exists
an ideal intervention on the first that changes the value of the second via the change
induced on the first. The view readily accommodates omissions, preventions, and
double preventions—situations that have traditionally proven troublesome for
production-type accounts of causation. In short, the claim that C causes E requires only
that ideal interventions on C can be used to change the value of E, not that C and E are
physically connected to one another. Finally, this view provides some tools for
accommodating higher-level causal relations and the non-accidental laws of biology.
On the other hand, the counterfactual account is non-reductive (like the mechanistic
view), and it inherits challenges faced by other counterfactual views, such as pre-
emption and over-determination which are common in biological mechanisms (see the
entry on counterfactual theories of causation).
2.4 Organization
The characteristic organization of mechanisms is itself the subject of considerable
discussion.
2.4.1 Organization and Aggregativity
Wimsatt (1997) contrasts mechanistic organization with aggregation, a distinction that
mechanists have used to articulate how the parts of a mechanism are organized together
to form a whole (see Craver 2001b). Aggregate properties are properties of wholes that
are simple sums of the properties of their parts. In aggregates, the parts can be
rearranged and intersubstituted for one another without changing the property or
behavior of the whole, the whole can be taken apart and put back together without
disrupting the property or behavior of the whole, and the property of the whole changes
only linearly with the addition and removal of parts. These features of aggregates hold
because organization is irrelevant to the property of the whole. Wimsatt thus conceives
organization as non-aggregativity. He also describes it as a mechanistic form of
emergence (see Section 4.2 below).
Mechanistic emergence is ubiquitous—truly aggregative properties are rare. Thus
mechanists have tended to recognize a spectrum of organization, with aggregates at one
end and highly organized mechanisms on the other. Indeed, many mechanisms studied
by biologists involve parts and causings all across this spectrum. (For further discussion
of mechanistic emergence in relationship to other varieties, see Richardson and Stephan
2007.)
2.4.2 Varieties of Organization
Following Wimsatt, mechanists have detailed several kinds of organization
characteristic of mechanisms. A canonical list includes both spatial and temporal
organization. Spatial organization includes location, size, shape, position, and
orientation; temporal organization includes the order, rate, and duration of the
component activities. More recently, mechanists have emphasized organizational
patterns in mechanisms as a whole. Bechtel, for example, discusses how mathematical
models, and dynamical models in particular, are used to reveal complex temporal
organization in interactive mechanisms (Bechtel 2006, 2011, 2013b). Some argue that
dynamical models push beyond the limits of the mechanistic framework (e.g., Chemero
and Silbestein 2008 and, at times, Bechtel himself; see Kaplan and Bechtel 2011).
Others argue that dynamical models are, in fact, often merely descriptive (i.e., non-
explanatory models) or, alternatively, that they are used to describe the temporal
organization of mechanisms (Kaplan and Bechtel 2011; Kaplan 2012).
Mechanists have also recently borrowed from Alon’s (2006; Milo et al. 2002) work on
network motifs, repeated patterns in causal networks, to expand the vocabulary for
thinking about abstract patterns of organization (Levy 2014; Levy and Bechtel 2012).
Understanding how parts compose wholes is likely to be a growth area in the future of
the mechanistic framework. (For some other recent additions, see Kuorikoski and
Ylikoski 2013; Kuhlmann 2011; Glennan forthcoming.)
2.4.3 Modularity
Woodward’s (2001, 2002, 2011, 2014) counterfactual definition of a mechanism (which
is indirectly specified via an account of mechanistic models), as well as a descendant
elaborated by Menzies (2012), require that models of mechanisms be modular. This
means, roughly, that it should be physically possible to intervene on a putative cause
variable in a mechanism without disrupting the functional relationships among the other
variables in the mechanism. In terms of structural equation models in particular, this
means that one should be able to replace the right-hand side of an equation in the model
with a particular value (i.e., set the left-hand variable to a value) without needing to
change any of the other equations in the model. This is intended to formally capture the
sense in which mechanism is composed of separable, interacting parts. For arguments in
favor of a modularity condition on mechanistic models see Menzies (2012).
Steel (2008) appeals to a somewhat weaker form of modularity in his probabilistic
analysis of mechanisms—one that follows directly from Simon’s (1996 [1962]) idea of
nearly decomposable systems. On Simon’s view, the parts of a mechanism have more
and stronger causal relations with other components in the mechanism than they do
with items outside the mechanism. This gives mechanisms (and parts of mechanisms) a
kind of “independence” or “objecthood” defined ultimately in terms of the intensity of
interaction among components. Grush (2003), following Haugeland (1998), develops an
idea of modularity in terms of the bandwidth of interaction, where modules are high-
bandwidth in their internal interactions and low-bandwidth in their external interactions.
On this view, modularity is not an all-or-none proposition but a matter of degree;
mechanisms are only nearly decomposable. Craver (2007) argues that such a generic
notion fails to account for the relevance of different causal interactions for different
mechanistic decompositions; what counts as a part of a mechanism can only be defined
relative to some prior decision about what one takes the mechanism to be doing. For
criticisms of modularity, see Mitchell (2005) and Cartwright (2001, 2002).
2.4.4 Jointness
Fagan (2012, 2013) emphasizes the interdependent relationship between parts of a
mechanism. Components in a mechanism, she points out, often form a more complex
unit by virtue of the individual properties that unite them—their “meshing properties”;
the complex unit then figures into the mechanism’s behavior. This interdependent
relationship—jointness—is exemplified by the lock-and-key model of enzyme action.
Fagan applies this notion to research on stem cells (Fagan 2013) but argues that it is a
general feature of experimental biology (Fagan 2012).
2.4.5 Levels
Many mechanists emphasize the hierarchical organization of mechanisms and the
multilevel structure of theories in the special sciences (see especially Craver 2007, Ch.
5). Antecedents of the new mechanism focused almost exclusively on etiological,
causal relations. However, the new emphasis on mechanisms in biology and the special
sciences demanded an analysis of mechanistic relations across levels of organization.
From a mechanistic perspective, levels are not monolithic divides in the furniture of the
universe (as represented by Oppenheim and Putnam 1958), nor are they fundamentally
a matter of size or the exclusivity of causal interactions within a level (Wimsatt 1976).
Rather, levels of mechanisms are defined locally within a multilevel mechanism: one
item is at a lower level of mechanisms than another when the first item is a part of the
second and when the first item is organized (spatially, temporally, and actively) with
the other components such that together they realize the second item. Thus, the
mechanism of spatial memory has multiple levels, some of which include organs such
as the hippocampus generating a spatial map, some of which involve the cellular
interactions that underlie map generation, and some of which involve the molecular
mechanisms that underlie those cellular interactions (Craver 2007). For more on levels,
see Section 4.2 below.
2.4.6 Stable and Ephemeral Mechanisms
Finally, mechanists have found it necessary to distinguish between stable mechanisms,
which rely fundamentally upon the more or less fixed arrangement of parts and
activities, and ephemeral mechanisms, which involve a process evolving through time
without fixed spatial and temporal arrangement (Glennan 2009). The time-keeping
mechanism in a clock, for example, is a relatively stable assemblage of components in
relatively fixed locations that work the same way, with the same organizational
features, each time it works. Ephemeral mechanisms, in contrast, involve a much looser
kind of organization: items still interact in space and time, but they do not do so in
virtue of robust, stable structures. Many chemical mechanisms in a cell are like that
(Richardson and Stephan 2007). Ephemeral mechanisms are surely a primary focus of
historical sciences, such as archaeology, history, and evolutionary biology (Glennan
2009).
4. Metaphysics of Mechanisms
In this section, we review some of the ways that the concept of mechanism has been
used in diverse areas of metaphysics. Of all the areas we have discussed, this is likely
the most in need of future development. Here we discuss the relationship between
mechanisms and laws, emergence, realization, natural kinds, and functions.
7. Conclusion
The new mechanical philosophy and, more generally, attention to the framework
concept of “mechanism” has expanded rapidly over the last two decades bringing with
it new orientations toward a wide range of issues in the philosophy of science. Yet it is
clear that many of the major topics are only beginning to develop, leaving a lot of work
for scholars to elaborate the basic commitments of this framework and to consider what
it means to do science outside of that framework. The near future is likely to see
continued discussion of the implications and limits of this framework for thinking about
science and scientific practice.
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