Abstract
What kinds of things are we committed to if AE-mechanisms exist? Defenders of the AE-approach to mechanisms argue that mechanisms are organized entities and activities. This entity–activity dualism is understood as a metaphysical claim: the fundamental units of mechanisms are entities and activities that cannot be reduced to anything more fundamental. In this chapter I investigate this claim. In the first section, I analyze the notion of an entity. In the second section, I illuminate the notion of an activity. To combine the results from these two sections, and in order to accommodate the criticisms of entity–activity dualism that I bring forward, in the third section I introduce the notion of an entity-involving occurrent. In the fourth section, I elaborate on one central motivation for introducing the notion of an activity: activities are supposed to be essentially causal, and thus are the kinds of things that bring causation into the world. How this is supposed to happen is, so far, not well understood. I illuminate this idea and introduce a new account of causation: activity causation.
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Notes
- 1.
For an argument in favor of entity–activity dualism over process ontology, see Austin (2016).
- 2.
For a discussion of the relevance of processes for a descriptively adequate metaphysics of the life sciences, see also DiFrisco 2016.
- 3.
Using term ‘entity’ seems to be a bad terminological choice. In metaphysics the term ‘entity’ is used as an umbrella term for everything that exists—for example objects, properties, relations, and the like—depending on what one thinks exists. That is, in its original meaning activities are also entities. What the new mechanists mean by ‘entity’ might better be described as ‘object.’ Machamer (2004, 27) justifies the choice of terminology by arguing that “these terms seemed to carry fewer historical and philosophical presuppositions than ‘substance’ or ‘process’.” Since it has become common practice to use the term ‘entity’ in the mechanistic literature, I use this term as well. In order to be able to refer to what is usually referred to by the term ‘entity,’ for lack of a better expression I often use the term ‘thing.’
- 4.
Despite being metaphysically fallacious, reifications might play an important role in modeling mechanisms (Weiskopf 2011, 328).
- 5.
On the one hand, they argue that what is intrinsic to an entity need not to be internal to it (Harré and Madden 1975, 87). On the other hand, they state that “[t]he natures of physical objects […] are given in terms of their inner structures and the nature of the individuals of which that structure is composed” (Harré and Madden 1975, 104; my emphasis).
- 6.
Note that my interpretation of activeness is rather liberal. For, on the one hand, it does not rely on any substantial notion of the “intrinsic nature” of things. On the other hand, for example, it renders my hair growing as an activity of me. This liberalness is not problematic in the present context, however; rather it is an advantage, because it does not confuse ‘being active’ with, for example, ‘doing something intentionally’ or ‘willingly.’
- 7.
I thank Geert Keil for suggesting this label.
- 8.
Dowe presents a solution to the omission problem as well. In his view, causal statements involving omissions do not refer to causation but to what he calls “quasi-causation” which corresponds to a counterfactual analysis of causal statements mentioning omissions (Dowe 2004).
- 9.
Cases like this are labelled (apparent) causation by disconnection (Schaffer 2000).
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Krickel, B. (2018). Entity–Activity Dualism. In: The Mechanical World. Studies in Brain and Mind, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03629-4_4
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