The Functional Sense of Mechanism

This article presents a distinct sense of ‘mechanism’, which I call the functional sense of mechanism. According to this sense, mechanisms serve functions, and this fact places substantive restrictions on the kinds of system activities ‘for which’ there can be a mechanism. On this view, there are no...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhilosophy of science Vol. 80; no. 3; pp. 317 - 333
Main Author Garson, Justin
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Chicago, IL University of Chicago Press 01.07.2013
Cambridge University Press
Subjects
Anencephaly
Biology
Biomedical research
Counterexamples
Epistemology
Epistemology. Philosophy of science. Theory of knowledge
Evolution
Heart diseases
Judgment
Natural selection
Normativity
Pathology
Pests
Philosophy
Philosophy of science
Toxicology
Science philosophy
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Summary:This article presents a distinct sense of ‘mechanism’, which I call the functional sense of mechanism. According to this sense, mechanisms serve functions, and this fact places substantive restrictions on the kinds of system activities ‘for which’ there can be a mechanism. On this view, there are no mechanisms for pathology; pathologies result from disrupting mechanisms for functions. Second, on this sense, natural selection is probably not a mechanism for evolution because it does not serve a function. After distinguishing this sense from similar explications of ‘mechanism’, I argue that it is ubiquitous in biology and has valuable epistemic benefits.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
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ISSN:0031-8248
1539-767X
DOI:10.1086/671173