Causation at different levels: tracking the commitments of mechanistic explanations
Causation at different levels: tracking the commitments of mechanistic explanations
复制标题
不同层面的因果关系：追踪机械解释的承诺
DOI：
10.1007/s10539-011-9247-5
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发表时间：
2011
影响因子：
2.5
通讯作者：
Gergely Kertész
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
P. Fazekas;Gergely Kertész
本文跟踪的承诺机制的解释，侧重于在不同层次的活动之间的关系。有人指出，机械的方法是内在的承诺，以确定因果关系在较低的水平与因果关系在较高的水平。为了使机械论方法取得成功，一个机制作为一个整体必须做与以特定方式组织起来的它的各部分所做的完全相同的事情。机械论方法还必须利用桥梁原则连接不同理论词汇的不同因果术语，以使因果联系的身份透明。这些一般承诺遇到了机械论方法的某些支持者提出的两个主张：William Bechtel经常认为，在机械论框架内，可以在减少较高层次和同时保持其自主性之间取得平衡，而在最近的一篇论文中，Craver和Bechtel认为，机械论方法能够使向下的因果关系变得可理解。本文的结论是，充满同一性陈述的机械论方法并不是更好的候选人锚定较高的水平，同时保持他们的自主性比标准的还原帐户是，什么机械论的解释是能够做的最好的是显示，向下的因果关系不存在。
This paper tracks the commitments of mechanistic explanations focusing on the relation between activities at different levels. It is pointed out that the mechanistic approach is inherently committed to identifying causal connections at higher levels with causal connections at lower levels. For the mechanistic approach to succeed a mechanism as a whole must do the very same thing what its parts organised in a particular way do. The mechanistic approach must also utilise bridge principles connecting different causal terms of different theoretical vocabularies in order to make the identities of causal connections transparent. These general commitments get confronted with two claims made by certain proponents of the mechanistic approach: William Bechtel often argues that within the mechanistic framework it is possible to balance between reducing higher levels and maintaining their autonomy at the same time, whereas, in a recent paper, Craver and Bechtel argue that the mechanistic approach is able to make downward causation intelligible. The paper concludes that the mechanistic approach imbued with identity statements is no better candidate for anchoring higher levels to lower ones while maintaining their autonomy at the same time than standard reductive accounts are, and that what mechanistic explanations are able to do at best is showing that downward causation does not exist.