Mechanistic Explanations in Physics and Beyond by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030107079
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

7.2 Perspectivalism, the New Mechanistic Philosophy, and the Problem of Interlevel Explanations

Apart from some other differences that are not directly relevant in the present context, recent mechanistic approaches essentially agree in conceiving a mechanism as defined by Machamer et al. 2000, that is, as a device consisting of interrelated parts that, starting from an initial situation and ending with a final result, performs some kind of work according to regular and predictable changes (cf. Machamer et al. 2000: 3; Glennan 2002: S344; Bechtel 2006: 26).

Starting from this general idea of mechanism, mechanistic approaches went on to take up and develop the tradition of classical mechanical philosophy, but unlike this latter, as mentioned above, the “new mechanists” decidedly rejected a reductive view of science: descriptions of mechanisms, in which mechanistic explanations essentially consist, have to be as multilevel as the phenomena they are invoked to explain.

In this connection, the possibility of interlevel explanation (and causation) is a crucial question for the new mechanistic philosophy, because it is not easy to deny that claims about interlevel explanation (and causation) are ubiquitous in scientific literature (cf. Craver and Tabery 2017, § 4.2). And from this follows that any account of multi- or interlevel explanation requires, among other things, some clear and applicable criteria for sameness of level. According to Craver’s authoritative suggestion, to say that different components are on the same mechanistic level is meaningful only insofar as we assume that two conditions apply: first, components are in the same mechanism, and second, neither of them is a component of the other (Craver 2007: 191–195).

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