Marie I. Kaiser

The Metaphysics of Constitutive Mechanistic Phenomena

The central aim of this article is to specify the ontological nature of constitutive mechanistic phenomena (that is, of phenomena that are explained in constitutive mechanistic explanations). After identifying three criteria of adequacy that any plausible approach to constitutive mechanistic phenomena must satisfy, we present four different suggestions, found in the mechanistic literature, of what mechanistic phenomena might be. We argue that none of these suggestions meets the criteria of adequacy. According to our analysis, constitutive mechanistic phenomena are best understood as what we will call ‘object-involving occurrents’. Furthermore, on the basis of this notion, we will clarify what distinguishes constitutive mechanistic explanations from etiological ones. 1 Introduction 2 Criteria of Adequacy 2.1 Descriptive adequacy 2.2 Constitutive–etiological distinction 2.3 Constitution 3 The Ontological Nature of Constitutive Mechanistic Phenomena 3.1 Phenomena as input–output relations 3.2 Phenomena as end states 3.3 Phenomena as dispositions 3.4 Phenomena as behaviours 4 Phenomena as Object-Involving Occurrents 4.1 What object-involving occurrents are and why we need them 4.2 The object in the phenomenon 4.3 The adequacy of option (5) 5 Conclusion 1 Introduction 2 Criteria of Adequacy 2.1 Descriptive adequacy 2.2 Constitutive–etiological distinction 2.3 Constitution 3 The Ontological Nature of Constitutive Mechanistic Phenomena 3.1 Phenomena as input–output relations 3.2 Phenomena as end states 3.3 Phenomena as dispositions 3.4 Phenomena as behaviours 4 Phenomena as Object-Involving Occurrents 4.1 What object-involving occurrents are and why we need them 4.2 The object in the phenomenon 4.3 The adequacy of option (5) 5 Conclusion

Mechanisms and Laws: Clarifying the Debate

Leuridan (2010) questions whether mechanisms can really replace laws at the heart of our thinking about science. In doing so, he enters a long-standing discussion about the relationship between the mechanistic structures evident in the theories of contemporary biology and the laws of nature privileged especially in traditional empiricist traditions of the philosophy of science (see, e.g., Wimsatt 1974; Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005; Bogen, Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci, 36:397–420, 2005; Darden 2006; Glennan, Erkenntnis, 44:49–71, 1996; MDC, Philos Sci, 67:1–25, 2000; Schaffner 1993; Tabery 2004; Weber 2005). In our view, Leuridan misconstrues this discussion. His weak positive claim that mechanistic sciences appeal to generalizations is true but uninteresting. His stronger claim that all causal claims require laws is unsupported by his arguments. Though we proceed by criticizing Leuridan’s arguments, our greater purpose is to embellish his arguments in order to show how thinking about mechanisms enriches and transforms old philosophical debates about laws in biology and provides new insights into how generalizations afford prediction, explanation, and control.

Causal Graphs and Biological Mechanisms

Modeling mechanisms is central to the biological sciences – for purposes of explanation, prediction, extrapolation, and manipulation. A closer look at the philosophical literature reveals that mechanisms are predominantly modeled in a purely qualitative way. That is, mechanistic models are conceived of as representing how certain entities and activities are spatially and temporally organized so that they bring about the behavior of the mechanism in question. Although this adequately characterizes how mechanisms are represented in biology textbooks, contemporary biological research practice shows the need for quantitative, probabilistic models of mechanisms, too. In this chapter, we argue that the formal framework of causal graph theory is well suited to provide us with models of biological mechanisms that incorporate quantitative and probabilistic information. On the basis of an example from contemporary biological practice, namely, feedback regulation of fatty acid biosynthesis in Brassica napus, we show that causal graph theoretical models can account for feedback as well as for the multilevel character of mechanisms. However, we do not claim that causal graph theoretical representations of mechanisms are advantageous in all respects and should replace common qualitative models. Rather, we endorse the more balanced view that causal graph theoretical models of mechanisms are useful for some purposes while being insufficient for others.

Why It Is Time to Move Beyond Nagelian Reduction

In this paper I argue that it is finally time to move beyond the Nagelian framework and to break new ground in thinking about epistemic reduction in biology. I will do so, not by simply repeating all the old objections that have been raised against Ernest Nagel’s classical model of theory reduction.1 Rather, I grant that a proponent of Nagel’s approach can handle several of these problems but that, nevertheless, Nagel’s general way of thinking about epistemic reduction in terms of theories and their logical relations is entirely inadequate with respect to what is going on in actual biological research practice.

On the Limits of Causal Modeling: Spatially-Structurally Complex Biological Phenomena

This article examines the adequacy of causal graph theory as a tool for modeling biological phenomena. I argue that the causal graph approach reaches its limits when it comes to modeling biological phenomena that involve complex spatial and chemical-structural relations. Using a case study from molecular biology, I show why causal graph models fail to adequately represent and explain biological phenomena of this kind. The inadequacy of these models is due to their failure to include relevant spatial-structural information in a way that does not render the models nonexplanatory, unmanageable, or inconsistent with basic assumptions of causal graph theory.

Problems and Prospects of Interdisciplinarity: The Case of Philosophy of Science

In this paper, we discuss some problems and prospects of interdisciplinary encounters by focusing on philosophy of science as a case study. After introducing the case, we give an overview of the various ways in which philosophy of science can be interdisciplinary in the section “Different forms of interdisciplinarity in philosophy of science”. In the section “General impediments for interdisciplinarity”, we name some general problems regarding possible points of interaction between philosophy of science and the sciences studied. In the section “The institutional and the individual perspective” we compare the advantages and risks of interdisciplinarity for individual researchers and institutions. In the section “Interdisciplinary PhD programs”, we discuss interdisciplinary PhD programmes, in particular concerning two main problems: increased workload and the quality of supervision. In the final section “Interdisciplinarity beyond the PhD”, we look at interdisciplinary careers beyond the PhD.

A Closer Look at Biological Explanations

Chapter 5 serves two purposes: It specifies which understanding of ‘ontic’ underlies characterizing my account of explanatory reduction as ontic and it clarifies how questions about explanation are related to questions about explanatory reduction. I show that discussions about accounts of reduction are independent from questions about explanation but that debates about explanatory reductionism, in fact, boil down to specific questions about explanation, namely, to questions about the adequacy of higher- and lower-level explanations. How one answers these questions depends on one’s stance on the pragmatics of explanation. I develop a refined version of van Fraassen’s pragmatic account of explanation that clarifies in which sense the adequacy of explanation is far from subjective or exclusively determined by pragmatic factors.

Philosophy of Microbiology

brings to the standard practice of conceptual analysis, along with the appeal to armchair intuitive judgments about hypothetical cases. Experimental philosophy—XPhi, as some authors have called it—focuses on experimental work as surveying the intuitive judgements made not only by philosophers, but by non-philosophers as well. The fact that our intuitions about nature often tell us more about our own prejudices than about the world, and that our former natural insights about the physical world were clearly mistaken, feeds doubts about the appropriateness of intuition as ground for philosophical inquiry. The final chapters of the book explore alternative strategies that could settle the discussion. Responses to the challenge range from suggesting that the role of intuition in philosophical practice has been somewhat exaggerated (Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa), to claiming that experimental philosophy has been attacking a straw man (Herman Cappelen), to stating that we can grasp the essences of at least some mind-independent entities, but not by means of intuitions (Jonathan Lowe). The book is perfect reading not only for those who are interested in the philosophical discussion about intuitions, but for philosophers concerned with the appropriateness of their own practices as well. Useful both for scholars and for advanced students of philosophy, the volume constitutes a worthwhile addition to the literature on intuitions.

Potentiality in Biology

We take the potentialities that are studied in the biological sciences (e.g., totipotency) to be an important subtype of biological dispositions . The goal of this paper is twofold: first, we want to provide a detailed understanding of what biological dispositions are. We claim that two features are essential for dispositions in biology: the importance of the manifestation process and the diversity of conditions that need to be satisfied for the disposition to be manifest. Second, we demonstrate that the concept of a disposition (or potentiality) is a very useful tool for the analysis of the explanatory practice in the biological sciences. On the one hand it allows an in-depth analysis of the nature and diversity of the conditions under which biological systems display specific behaviors. On the other hand the concept of a disposition may serve a unificatory role in the philosophy of the natural sciences since it captures not only the explanatory practice of biology, but of all natural sciences. Towards the end we will briefly come back to the notion of a potentiality in biology.

Themen aus den Lebenswissenschaften

Beschaftigt man sich als Metaphysiker/in mit den Lebenswissenschaften und dem Lebendigen, so ist eine grundlegende Frage, was Leben ist und was Lebewesen wie Tiere und Pflanzen von nicht-lebendigen Entitaten wie Steinen unterscheidet.