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Processes, Mechanisms, and Mechanistic Models

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Explaining Disease: Philosophical Reflections on Medical Research and Clinical Practice

Part of the book series: European Studies in Philosophy of Science ((ESPS))

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Abstract

Among the philosophical approaches to explanation in the biological and biomedical sciences, the so-called mechanistic approach has doubtless been the subject of the widest, most lively debate. The inevitably incomplete account presented in this chapter will be confined to some of the main philosophical issues addressed, some of the most successful views put forward, and their possible impact on the approach to debating mechanisms in the health sciences, their epistemic import and the limits of the mechanistic approach.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Salmon (1984, 1989, 1998).

  2. 2.

    For an extended account, see, e.g., Andersen (2014a, b), Craver and Tabery (2015), Glennan and Illari (2017). I will here be concerned only with epistemological issues. On the metaphysics of mechanisms, see, e.g., Matthews and Tabery (2017), Krickel (2018).

  3. 3.

    On activities, see e.g., Machamer (2004).

  4. 4.

    On different ways to conceive of relations between macro- and micro-level explanations, see, for instance, Garfinkel (1981), Sober (1999), Weber and Van Bouwel (2002), Marchionni (2008), Ylikoski (2012).

  5. 5.

    See e.g., Craver and Bechtel (2007).

  6. 6.

    We will consider Woodward’s view extensively in Chap. 7.

  7. 7.

    See e.g., Darden and Craver (2013), esp. chs. 8 and 9.

  8. 8.

    For instance, the structural decomposition of the cell, with the identification of its component parts (mitochondrion, cytoplasm, matrix, …) has historically occurred, by means of electronic microscope, long before its functional understanding, i.e., long before the three main operations of cellular respiration were localized and understood. See Machamer et al. (2000).

  9. 9.

    That explanations in terms of “lower-level” mechanisms are not a self-evident improvement in explanatory knowledge has been argued, e.g., by Kuorikoski and Ylikoski (2010), giving the example of explanations in neuroeconomics. The authors argue that each explanation finds its own level by embracing a contrastive, what-if-things-had-been-different, account of explanation. We will get back to this perspective in Chap. 7.

  10. 10.

    The controversial ideas, for instance, of informational and non-informational processes, and their roles in biology, have been discussed also in works by authors directly embracing a neo-mechanist perspective, such as Jim Bogen and Peter Machamer (2011).

  11. 11.

    See Bapteste and Dupré (2013), Nicholson and Dupré (2018), Dupré and Nicholson (2018).

  12. 12.

    Standard microbial evolutionary biology is taken by Bapteste and Dupré (2013) as a field in which a processual ontology can prove particularly suitable.

  13. 13.

    Paul Thagard too has maintained that “biochemical pathways are a kind of mechanism. […] In biochemical pathways, the entities are the molecules and the activities are the chemical reactions that transform a molecule into other molecules” (Thagard, 2002, pp. 237–238, italics added).

  14. 14.

    Ioannidis and Psillos (2017) support their view considering apoptosis, its regulatory role in the organism, and the two signaling pathways (intrinsic and extrinsic) through which it can occur.

  15. 15.

    This appears for instance in: Giovannetti et al. (2013), Kimball, Jefferson (2006), Nethi et al. (2015), Wang and Gu (2016), Nosrati et al. (2017).

  16. 16.

    Obviously, if the pathway is composed of only one step, then the direct function and the final function coincide.

  17. 17.

    Another example of the same molecule having two different final functions insofar as it belongs to two different pathways is provided by the SCF, a growth factor. See Boniolo and Lanfrancone (2016). On the role of biomarkers in establishing causal pathways, see e.g., Vineis and Perera (2007).

  18. 18.

    See, e.g,, Meyer et al. (2011).

  19. 19.

    This point will be addressed in greater detail in Chap. 5.

  20. 20.

    A perspectival flavor is also held to characterize the attribution of functions to mechanisms. Craver, e.g., maintains that his account of functional descriptions is ineliminably perspectival insofar as what an observer decides and/or what her interests in a given object of investigation are is taken to matter in the assessment of functions (Craver, 2013).

  21. 21.

    “ExplanationsONTIC (i.e., things in the world) have no normative dimensions, yet the full success of all explanationsC/T/C depends upon meeting an ontic norm of getting things right (in conjunction with meeting highly variable, epistemic success conditions). ExplanationsONTIC are held to be always explanatory, since it is held that they just do account for phenomena. What is “good” as explanatoryC/T/C practice is held to ultimately bottom out in what is true. I refer to this as the thesis of the normative priority of ontic norms over epistemic norms” (Sheredos, 2016, p. 925).

  22. 22.

    On this see for instance Bokulich (2016).

  23. 23.

    See Craver and Kaplan (2020). See also O’Malley et al. (2014): “building more of everything into the model does not automatically augment knowledge” (p. 818).

  24. 24.

    See also Kästner (2018).

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  1. Department of Philosophy and Communication Studies, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Raffaella Campaner

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Campaner, R. (2022). Processes, Mechanisms, and Mechanistic Models. In: Explaining Disease: Philosophical Reflections on Medical Research and Clinical Practice. European Studies in Philosophy of Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05883-7_2

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