Abstract
In this article I examine whether an influential theory of mechanisms proposed by Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden and Carl Craver can accommodate polygenic effects. This theory is both interesting and problematic, I will argue, because it ascribes a central role to activities. In it, activities are needed not only to constitute mechanisms but also to perform their causal role. These putative functions of activities become problematic in certain situations where several causes or elements of a mechanism contribute simultaneously, i.e. with certain forms of polygenic causation. The problematic form of polygeny, polygeny 2, occurs when the polygenic contribution concerns one and the same property or aspect of the affected object. When the result of such causation is that nothing happens, the theory suggested by Machamer and his colleagues cannot be applied. More generally, it seems that, whenever polygeny 2 is involved, the Machamer approach leads to an impoverished conception of mechanism.
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Notes
- 1.
However, it is clear both from the original work and from Machamer’s further elaboration of the metaphysics of activities that the intended application is wider. The vast majority of activities referred to in Machamer (2004) are not limited to scientific settings at all. Examples of these activities include: running, bonding, flowing, the glass shattering and flying into a thousand pieces, breaking, boozing, covering up, and hiding.
- 2.
To paraphrase Dowe’s (2000) analysis of ‘causal’ omission and prevention.
- 3.
This was more evident in earlier writings on activities. In discussing Aristotle, for example, Ross (1930, 82) said: “In each moment of activity, potentiality is completely cancelled and transformed into actuality.”
- 4.
In fact, we tend to vary the causal expressions we use in accordance with the organization of forces. For instance, depending on whether or not the forces are directed at the actualized endpoint, we use the expression ‘cause’ rather than other types of causal verb such as ‘enable’ (‘help’, ‘leave’, ‘allow’, ‘let’) or ‘prevent’ (‘keep’, ‘block’, ‘hinder’) to describe our causal experiences. Something is reported as a cause, rather than as an enabler or preventer, Wolff claims, when there is a patient (the boat) an affector (the wind) acts upon, and where the tendency of the patient (B) is different from both the affector (the wind) and the actual endstate (C).
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Acknowledgements
This article is a short version (with new introductory sections) of a publication, Activity-based accounts of mechanism and the threat of polygenic effects, forthcoming in Erkenntnis. As a visiting fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, in spring 2007, I received invaluable suggestions that improved my thinking about mechanisms – in particular from the other fellows, and from Peter Machamer, Nicholas Rescher, and John D. Norton. Forerunners to this manuscript have been presented at seminars in Lund, Helsinki, Umeå, and at EPSA 2007. I am very grateful for the comments I received on these occasions. Finally, I want to thank The Swedish Research Council for funding a research project, the ontology and epistemology of mechanisms, which has made the writing of this article possible.
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Persson, J. (2009). Mechanisms: Are Activities up to the Job?. In: Suárez, M., Dorato, M., Rédei, M. (eds) EPSA Epistemology and Methodology of Science. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3263-8_17
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