Many existing defenses of group rights seem to rely on the notion of group freedom. To date, however, no adequate analysis of this notion has been offered. Group freedom is best understood in terms of processes of social categorization that are embedded in social mechanisms. Such processes often give rise to group-specific constraints and enablements. On the proposed social mechanism account, group rights are demands for group freedom. Even so, group rights often serve to eradicate individual (...) unfreedom. Furthermore, generic measures sometimes provide the most appropriate solution to a problem of group unfreedom. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present a conceptualization of cultural groups and cultural difference that provides a middle course between the Scylla of essentialism and the Charybdis of reductionism. The method I employ is the social mechanism approach. I argue that cultural groups and cultural difference should be understood as the result of cognitive and social processes of categorization. I describe two such processes in particular: categorization by others and self- categorization. Categorization by others is (...) caused by processes of ascription: the attribution by outsiders of certain characteristics, beliefs, and practices to indi- viduals who share a specific attribute. Self-categorization is caused by processes of inscription and community-building: the adoption of certain beliefs and practices as a result of socialization and enculturation. I therefore shift the focus from groups to categories, and from categories to processes of categorization. I show that this analytical distinction between categorization by others and self-categorization can clarify an ambiguity in dominant debates in contemporary multiculturalism. I conclude by indicating how injustices, commonly associated with multiculturalism, can better be understood as socially generated injustices, and how government should deal with these injustices. (shrink)

The debate on empirical tests of social mechanisms suffers from a fragmented view on the relative benefit of the empirical method a researcher considers to be superior, compared to the flaws of all other methods. In this outlook. I argue that disciplinary barriers might be surmounted by a common methodological perspective on the analysis of social mechanisms. First, experimental, quantitative, qualitative, and simulation methods (agent-based modeling) are all required, but also capable to deal with the issue of causal (...) identification, respectively. Second, having established causal identification (among which I subsume strategies to deal with causal heterogeneity). each method disposes of genuine techniques to deal with the most crucial property of mechanism-based explanations: input-mechanism-output (IMO) relations. (shrink)

Generalization from a case study is a perennial issue in the methodology of the social sciences. The case study is one of the most important research designs in many social scientific fields, but no shared understanding exists of the epistemic import of case studies. This article suggests that the idea of mechanism-based theorizing provides a fruitful basis for understanding how case studies contribute to a general understanding of social phenomena. This approach is illustrated with a re- (...) construction of Espeland and Sauder's case study of the effects of rankings on US legal education. On the basis of the reconstruction, it is argued that, at least with respect to sociology, the idea of mechanism-based theorizing captures many of the generalizable elements of case studies. (shrink)

_On Mechanism in Hegel's Social and Political Philosophy_ examines the role of the concept of mechanism in Hegel’s thinking about political and social institutions. It counters as overly simplistic the notion that Hegel has an ‘organic concept of society’. It examines the thought of Hegel’s peers and predecessors who critique modern political intuitions as ‘machine-like’, focusing on J.G. Herder, Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis. From here it examines the early writings of Hegel, in which Hegel makes a (...) break with the Romantic way of thinking about ethical community. Ross argues that in this period, Hegel devises a new way of thinking about the integration of mechanistic and organic features within an organizational whole. This allows Hegel to offer an innovative theory of modern civil society as a component in ethical life. The second half of the book examines how Hegel develops this thought in his later works. It offers an in depth commentary on the chapter on mechanism in the Science of Logic, and it demonstrates the role of these thoughts in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. _On Mechanism in Hegel's Social and Political Philosophy_ offers a critical response to debates over communitarianism by arguing against one of the central figures used by scholars to associate Hegel with communitarian thought, namely the notion that society is organic. In addition, it argues that Hegel political theory is deeply informed by his formal ontology, as developed in the Science of Logic. (shrink)

This chapter explores a philosophical hypothesis about the nature of (some) probabilities encountered in social sciences. It should be of interest to those with philosophical concerns about the foundations of probability, and to social scientists and philosophers of science who are somewhat puzzled by the nature of probability in social domains. As will become clear below, the chapter is not intended as a contribution to an empirical methodology such as a particular way of applying statistics.

Jon Elster worries about the explanatory power of the social sciences. His main concern is that they have so few well-established laws. Elster develops an interesting substitute: a special kind of mechanism designed to fill the explanatory gap between laws and mere description. However, his mechanisms suffer from a characteristic problem that I will explore in this article. As our causal knowledge of a specific problem grows we might come to know too much to make use of an (...) Elsterian mechanism but still lack a law. We might then find ourselves in the paradoxical position of knowing more relevant causal truths about the phenomenon we are interested in than we did before, but being able to explain less. If this possibility is realized in social science settings, as I argue it might well be, Elster?s mechanistic account is threatened. Moreover, even if the possibility is rarely realized in that way, it raises, simply as a possibility, a conceptual problem with Elster?s mechanistic framework. (shrink)

The past two decades have witnessed an increase in interest in social mechanisms and mechanistic explanations of social macro-phenomena. This paper addresses the question of what the components of social mechanisms in mechanistic explanations of social macro-phenomena must be. Analytical sociology’s initial position and the main new proposals by analytical sociologists are discussed. It is argued that all of them are faced with outstanding difficulties. Subsequently, a minimal requirement regarding the components of social mechanisms is (...) introduced. It is held that a component of a social mechanism in a mechanistic explanation of a social macro-phenomenon must not have the explanandum phenomenon as a part of it. (shrink)

In this article we analyze the methodological commitments of a radical embodied cognition (REC) approach to social interaction and social cognition, specifically with respect to the explanatory framework it adopts. According to many representatives of REC, such as enactivists and the proponents of dynamical and ecological psychology, sociality is to be explained by (1) focusing on the social unit rather than the individuals that comprise it and (2) establishing the regularities that hold on this level rather than (...) modeling the sub-personal mechanisms that could be said to underlie social phenomena. We point out that, despite explicit commitment, such a view implies an implicit rejection of the mechanistic explanation framework widely adopted in traditional cognitive science (TCS), which, in our view, hinders comparability between REC and these approaches. We further argue that such a position is unnecessary and that enactive mechanistic explanation of sociality is both possible and desirable. We examine three distinct objections from REC against mechanistic explanation, which we dub the decomposability, causality and extended cognition worries. In each case we show that these complaints can be alleviated by either appreciation of the full scope of the mechanistic account or adjustments on both mechanistic and REC sides of the debate. (shrink)

Prominent research programs dealing with the nature and mechanisms of interpersonal social coordination have emerged in cognitive science, developmental psychology and evolutionary anthropology. I argue that the mechanistic approach to explanation in contemporary philosophy of science can facilitate interdisciplinary integration and division of labor between these different disciplinary research programs. By distinguishing phenomenal models from mechanistic models and structural decomposition from functional decomposition in the process of mechanism discovery, I argue that behavioral and cognitive scientists can make interlocking (...) contributions to families of mechanism models representing a) what central forms of interpersonal social coordination consist in, b) what types of agents engage in such forms of coordination, c) what types of cognitive mechanisms give rise to such forms of coordination, d) how the operation of such mechanisms is modulated by the natural and social environments that the agents populate. Thus mechanistic philosophy of science can play a heuristic role in guiding the research strategies of scientists in different scientific disciplines in a manner that is complementary to the research strategies of scientists in other disciplines and thereby efficient from the point of view of the division of epistemic labor. (shrink)

Robert Schofield explores the rational elements of British experimental natural philosophy in the 18th century by tracing the influence of two opposing concepts of the nature of matter and its action—mechanism and materialism. Both concepts rested on the Newtonian interpretation of their proponents, although each developed more or less independently. By integrating the developments in all the areas of experimental natural philosophy, describing their connections and the influences of Continental science, natural theology, and to a lesser degree social (...) and institutional changes, the author demonstrates that mechanistic concepts dominated interpretations from about 1687 to 1740, when they were replaced by materialistic concepts. A revival of the mechanistic approach early in the next century made England a fertile field for ideas on the dynamic interaction of forces. Originally published in 1970. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Is there a field of social intelligence? Many various disciplines ap-proach the subject and it may only seem natural to suppose that different fields of study aim at explaining different phenomena; in other words, there is no spe-cial field of study of social intelligence. In this paper, I argue for an opposite claim. Namely, there is a way to integrate research on social intelligence, as long as one accepts the mechanistic account to explanation. Mechanistic inte-gration of different (...) explanations, however, comes at a cost: mechanism requires explanatory models to be fairly complete and realistic, and this does not seem to be the case for many models concerning social intelligence, especially models of economical behavior. Such models need either be made more realistic, or they would not count as contributing to the same field. I stress that the focus on integration does not lead to ruthless reductionism; on the contrary, mechanistic explanations are best understood as explanatorily pluralistic. (shrink)

Researchers in the enactivist tradition have recently argued that social interaction can constitute social cognition, rather than simply serve as the context for social cognition. They contend that a focus on social interaction corrects the overemphasis on mechanisms inside the individual in the explanation of social cognition. I critically assess enactivism’s claims about the explanatory role of social interaction in social cognition. After sketching the enactivist approach to cognition in general and social (...) cognition in particular, I identify problems with an enactivist taxonomy of roles for social interaction in the explanation of social cognition (contextual, enabling, and constitutive). In particular, I show that this enactivist taxonomy does not clearly distinguish between enabling conditions and constitutive elements, which would make them in danger of committing the coupling-constitution fallacy found in some attempts to extend cognition. I explore resources enactivism has to more clearly demarcate constitutive parts of a cognitive system, but identify problems in applying them to some of the main cases of social cognition enactivists characterize as being constituted by social interaction. I offer the mechanistic approach to explanation as an alternative that captures much of what enactivists want to say about the relations between social and individual levels, but views social interactions from the perspective of embedded cognition rather than as being constitutive of social cognition. (shrink)

The ArgumentFranz Borkenau's book,The Transition from Feudal to Modern Thought(Der Übergang vom feudalen zum bürgerlichen Weltbild[literally:The Transition from the Feudal to the Bourgeois World-Picture]), serves as background for Grossmann's study. The objective of this book was to trace the sociological origins of the mechanistic categories of modern thought as developed in the philosophy of Descartes and his successors. In the beginning of the seventeenth century, according to Borkenau, mechanistic thinking triumphed over medieval philosophy which emphasized qualitative, not quantitative considerations. This (...) transition from medieval and feudal methods of thought to modern principles is the general theme of Borkenau's book, and is traced to the social changes of this time. According to this work, the essential economic change that marked the transition from medieval to modern times was the destruction of the handicraft system and the organization of labor under one roof and under one management. The roots of the change in thought are to be sought here. With the dismemberment of the handicraft system and the division of labor into relatively unskilled, uniform, and therefore comparable activities, the conception of abstract homogeneous social labor arises. The division of the labor process into simple repeated movements permits a comparison of hours of labor. Calculation with such abstract social unities, according to Borkenau, was the source from which modern mechanistic thinking in general derived its origin.Grossmann, although he considers Borkenau's work a valuable and important contribution, does not believe that the author has achieved his purpose. First of all, he contends that the period that Borkenau describes as the period of the triumph of modern thought over medieval should not be placed at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but in the Renaissance, and that not Descartes and Hobbes but Leonardo da Vinci was the initiator of modern thought. Leonardo's theories, evolved from a study of machines, were the source of the mechanistic categories that culminated in modern thought.If Borkenau's conception as to the historical origin of these categories is incorrect in regard to time, Grossmann claims it follows that it is incorrect also in regard to the social sources to which it is ascribed. In the beginning, the factory system did not involve a division of labor into comparable homogeneous processes, but in general only united skilled handicraftsmen under one roof. The development of machinery, not the calculation with abstract hours of labor, is the immediate source of modern scientific mechanics. This goes back to the Renaissance and has relatively little to do with the original factory system that was finally superseded by the Industrial Revolution.While Borkenau, in tracing the social background of the thought of the period, relies chiefly on the conflicts and strife of political parties, Grossmann regards this as one element only in the formation of the general social situation, which in its entirety and in the interaction of its elements explains the development of modern thought. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to elucidate the notions of explanation and mechanism, in particular of the social kind. A mechanism is defined as what makes a concrete system tick, and it is argued that to propose an explanation proper is to exhibit a lawful mechanism. The so-called covering law model is shown to exhibit only the logical aspect of explanation: it just subsumes particulars under universals. A full or mechanismic explanation involves mechanismic law statements, (...) not purely descriptive ones such as functional relations and rate equations. Many examples from the natural, biosocial, and social sciences are examined. In particular, macro-micro-micro-macro social relations are shown to explain other wise puzzling macro-macro links. The last part of the article relates the author's progress, over half a century, toward understanding mechanism and explanation. (shrink)

The revival of action based explanations as well as their formal structuring have been two of the most important topics within explanatory sociology since the 1980s. The two newly developed approaches, being structural individualism and analytical sociology based on mechanism models, will be outlined in this article. The article is dedicated to a comparison of the aims and the formal structure of both approaches. It is shown that explanations within analytical sociology tend to be more realistic but also more (...) complex. They do not differentiate between micro and macro levels in analytical terms and use micro mechanisms instead of an analytically strong action theory that makes it difficult to systemize mechanism models. On the other hand, structural individualistic explanations that use a general action law from which social interdependencies are to be interpreted as an opportunity structure can formulate a default-option from which models can be expanded and also worked out to mechanism types. (shrink)

It has been said that new discoveries and developments in the human, social, and natural sciences hang “in the air” (Bowler, 1983; 2008) prior to their consummation. While neo-Darwinist biology has been powerfully served by its mechanistic metaphysic and a reductionist methodology in which living organisms are considered machines, many of the chapters in this volume place this paradigm into question. Pairing scientists and philosophers together, this volume explores what might be termed “the New Frontiers” of biology, namely contemporary (...) areas of research that appear to call an updating, a supplementation, or a relaxation of some of the main tenets of the Modern Synthesis. Such areas of investigation include: Emergence Theory, Systems Biology, Biosemiotics, Homeostasis, Symbiogenesis, Niche Construction, the Theory of Organic Selection (also known as “the Baldwin Effect”), Self-Organization and Teleodynamics, as well as Epigenetics. Most of the chapters in this book offer critical reflections on the neo-Darwinist outlook and work to promote a novel synthesis that is open to a greater degree of inclusivity as well as to a more holistic orientation in the biological sciences. (shrink)

With the increasing urbanization in China, the mental health problems of migrant children have attracted widespread attention. From the perspective of social cognition, psychological capital, self-esteem, and other factors are closely related to the social and cultural adaptation of the group. In order to explore the relationship among the psychological capital, self-esteem and socio-cultural adaptations of migrant children, a total of 245 Chinese migrant children were investigated with the psychological capital scale, self-esteem scale, and socio-cultural adaptation scale. At (...) the same time, 24 months group longitudinal intervention exercises was designed scientifically, the participants were provided with it continuously to enhance their psychological capital. According to the results, there were significant differences in t-test in experiment group and control group of migrant children. At the same time, there was a significant linear correlation between predictive variables’ psychological capital and self-esteem and outcome variable’s socio-cultural adaptation. In the next step of mediating effect analysis, psychological capital and self-esteem were adopted for predicting socio-cultural adaptation. The psychological capital could not only directly affect the social and cultural adaptation of migrant children, but also indirectly affect the degree of social and cultural adaptation of migrant children through changing self-esteem. The results showed that the self-esteem mediation model fitted well with the data. Furthermore, the mediation effect accounted for 17.3% in the direct effect. Longitudinal group intervention could improve the psychological capital and social and cultural adaptation of migrant children. In a word, the research was helpful to explore the influence mechanism of migrant children’s psychological capital on social and cultural adaptation, and had certain practical value in preventing and reducing the crisis caused by the social and cultural adaptation of migrant children. (shrink)

Two seemingly contradictory tendencies have accompanied the development of the natural sciences in the past 150 years. On the one hand, the natural sciences have been instrumental in effecting a thoroughgoing transformation of social structures and have made a permanent impact on the conceptual world of human beings. This historical period has, on the other hand, also brought to light the merely hypothetical validity of scientific knowledge. As late as the middle of the 19th century the truth-pathos in the (...) natural sciences was still unbroken. Yet in the succeeding years these claims to certain knowledge underwent a fundamental crisis. For scientists today, of course, the fact that their knowledge can possess only relative validity is a matter of self-evidence. The present analysis investigates the early phase of this fundamental change in the concept of science through an examination of Hermann von Helmholtz's conception of science and his mechanistic interpretation of nature. Helmholtz (1821-1894) was one of the most important natural scientists in Germany. The development of this thoughts offers an impressive but, until now, relatively little considered report from the field of the experimental sciences chronicling the erosion of certainty. (shrink)

This commentary expands on Burt's concept of downward causation to include any association between genomic variants and a given outcome that is forged through social practices rather than biochemical pathways. It proposes the social stratification of population, through which endogamy over a period of generations produces allele frequency differences between socioeconomic strata, as a mechanism of downward causation.

Recently, we notice an increasing support for mechanism-based social explanations. Earlier pleas for social mechanisms were often closely linked to defenses of methodological individualism. However, more recent contributions by, e.g., Daniel Little and Petri Ylikoski, seem to be loosening that link and develop a more sophisticated account. In this paper, we review the impact of the social mechanisms approach on methodological individualism and draw conclusions regarding the individualism/holism debate, severing the link between the social mechanisms (...) approach and individualism. Four steps will be taken: there are more than two levels of social explanation; levels of explanation are perspectival, neither absolute, nor unique; seeking microfoundations has value, but so has seeking macrofoundations; there are no general preference rules with respect to the level of social explanations. In conclusion, the answer to the title question is that the social mechanisms approach does not strengthen the case for methodological individualism. (shrink)

Evidence-based medicine (EBM), the dominant approach to assessing the effectiveness of clinical and public health interventions, focuses on the results of association studies. EBM+ is a development of EBM that systematically considers mechanistic studies alongside association studies. In this paper we provide several examples of the importance of mechanistic evidence to coronavirus research. (i) Assessment of combination therapy for MERS highlights the need for systematic assessment of mechanistic evidence. (ii) That hypertension is a risk factor for severe disease in the (...) case of SARS-CoV-2 suggests that altering hypertension treatment might alleviate disease, but the mechanisms are complex, and it is essential to consider and evaluate multiple mechanistic hypotheses. (iii) To be confident that public health interventions will be effective requires a detailed assessment of social and psychological components of the mechanisms of their action, in addition to mechanisms of disease. (iv) In particular, if vaccination programmes are to be effective, they must be carefully tailored to the social context; again, mechanistic evidence is crucial. We conclude that coronavirus research is best situated within the EBM+ evaluation framework. (shrink)

The claim that conceptual systems change is a platitude. That our conceptual systems are theory-laden is no less platitudinous. Given evolutionary theory, biologists are led to divide up the living world into genes, organisms, species, etc. in a particular way. No theory-neutral individuation of individuals or partitioning of these individuals into natural kinds is possible. Parallel observations should hold for philosophical theories about scientific theories. In this paper I summarize a theory of scientific change which I set out in considerable (...) detail in a book that I shall publish in the near future. Just as few scientists were willing to entertain the view that species evolve in the absence of a mechanism capable of explaining this change, so philosophers should be just as reticent about accepting a parallel view of conceptual systems in science evolving in the absence of a mechanism to explain this evolution. In this paper I set out such a mechanism. One reason that this task has seemed so formidable in the past is that we have all construed conceptual systems inappropriately. If we are to understand the evolution of conceptual systems in science, we must interpret them as forming lineages related by descent. In my theory, the notion of a family resemblance is taken literally, not metaphorically. In my book, I set out data to show that the mechanism which I propose is actually operative. In this paper, such data is assumed. (shrink)

Customer citizenship behavior has attracted widespread attention from scholars due to its capacity of enabling enterprises to gain competitive advantages of low costs and high efficiency by giving full play to the initiative of customers. Based on the S-O-R Model, we have established the theoretical model to study the influence imposed by social support of online travel platform enterprises on customer citizenship behavior against the backdrop of the sharing economy. This research tests the fitting of the theoretical model and (...) its fundamental hypotheses using 626 samples acquired from the investigation with SPSS26.0 and AMOS25.0. Results indicate that the social support has a positive influence on customer citizenship behavior. Social support could have a positive influence on positive emotions. Social support has no significant negative effect on negative emotions. Positive emotions have a positive influence on customer citizenship behavior. Negative emotions have a negative influence on customer citizenship behavior. Positive emotions play a mediating effect in the positive influence of social support on customer citizenship behavior. Social support could have a positive influence on customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction has a positive influence on customer citizenship behavior. Customer satisfaction plays a mediating effect in the positive effect of social support on customer citizenship behavior. Positive emotions and customer satisfaction play a chain mediating effect in the positive effect of social support on customer citizenship behavior. (shrink)

Embodied cognition has attracted significant attention within cognitive science and related fields in recent years. It is most noteworthy for its emphasis on the inextricable connection between mental functioning and embodied activity and thus for its departure from standard cognitive science's implicit commitment to the unembodied mind. This article offers a review of embodied cognition's recent empirical and theoretical contributions and suggests how this movement has moved beyond standard cognitive science. The article then clarifies important respects in which embodied cognition (...) has not departed fundamentally from the standard view. A shared commitment to representationalism, and ultimately, mechanism, suggest that the standard and embodied cognition movements are more closely related than is commonly acknowledged. Arguments against representationalism and mechanism are reviewed and an alternative position that does not entail these conceptual undergirdings is offered. (shrink)

Wegner, Giuliano, and Hertel (1985) defined the notion of a transactive memory system (TMS) as a group level memory system that “involves the operation of the memory systems of the individuals and the processes of communication that occur within the group (p. 191). Those processes are the collaborative procedures (“transactions”) by which groups encode, store, and retrieve information that is distributed among their members. Over the past 25+ years, the conception of a TMS has progressively garnered an increased interest among (...) social and organizational psychologists, communication scholars, and management theorists (Ren & Argote 2011). But there remains considerable disagreement about how exactly Wegner’s appeal to group memory should be understood. My goal in this paper is contribute to this debate, by articulating more clearly the value of conceptualizing groups as TMSs. This value, I argue, consists in providing us with a blueprint for how to explain group memory in terms of collective information-processing mechanisms. Collective information-processing mechanisms are dependent on, and interact with, the brain-bound information-processing of individuals, but cannot be reduced to the latter. In my analysis, I lean on extant accounts of mechanistic explanation in the philosophy of science (Bechtel & Richardson 1993; Machamer, Darden, & Craver 2000; Wimsatt 2007) that have been used to analyze the explanatory practices of psychology and cognitive neuroscience (Bechtel 2008, 2009). Based on my reconstruction of Wegner’s conceptualization of a TMS, I argue that the reality of emergent group cognition is compatible with its mechanistic explanation. More generally, my analysis shows that group cognition cannot be reduced to individual cognition, while avoiding the false dilemma between “wholism” and “nothing but-ism” which has hampered traditional construals of the “group mind” thesis (Allport 1968). (shrink)

The paper explores the emergence and development of socially responsible investment (SRI) in Japan. SRI is a recent field in Japan. It is not clear which model it will follow: the European, American or its own model. Through the analysis of the historical roots of SRI, the key actors and motivations that have contributed to its diffusion, the paper provides explorative grounds to sketch the translation mechanisms of SRI in Japan and offers insight into its future path. Based on primary (...) and secondary sources of information, the paper shows that although SRI in Japan holds some similarities with the U.S. and especially with the European model, it remains unique. It highlights the importance of translation and re-interpretation in adopting a practice in a new context. SRI in Japan is still in a dynamic construction process. Although we expect it to develop further, it is difficult to depict its future shape and form. (shrink)

Men think in terms of models. Their sense organs abstract the events which touch them; their memories store traces of these events as coded symbols; and they may recall them according to patterns which they learned earlier, or recombine them in patterns that are new. In all this, we may think of our thought as consisting of symbols which are put in relations or sequences according to operating rules. Both symbols and operating rules are acquired, in part directly from interaction (...) with the outside world, and in part from elaboration of this material through internal recombination. Together, a set of symbols and a set of rules may constitute what we may call a calculus, a logic, a game or a model. Whatever we call it, it will have some structure, i.e., some pattern of distribution of relative discontinuities, and some “laws” of operation. (shrink)

Causal mediation mechanisms are well supported by available experimental evidence and provide a practicable way to reductive physicalism. According to the causal mediation account of mechanistic explanation, descriptions as diverse as ‘black-box’ phenomena, mechanistic sketches and schemas mixing physically interpreted and operationalized biological, psychological and social variables, and detailed descriptions of mechanisms refer to the same causal structure circumscribed within the spatiotemporal boundaries of a replicable experimental setup. The coreference of coarser- and finer-grained descriptions of causal structures opens new (...) possibilities for testing the reductive physicalism conjecture. I discuss experimental designs supporting the causal mediation account and show how recent studies demonstrating the biological mediation of mind-mind causal processes can provide evidence for reductive physicalism. (shrink)

The idea at the core of the New Mechanical account of explanation can be summarized in the claim that explaining means showing ‘how things work’. This simple motto hints at three basic features of Mechanistic Explanation (ME): ME is an explanation-how, that implies the description of the processes underlying the phenomenon to be explained and of the entities that engage in such processes. These three elements trace a fundamental contrast with the view inherited from Hume and later from strict logical (...) empiricism (see Creath 2017), focused on epistemic and formal features of science and according to which issues concerning the kind of entities and processes that lie within a theory’s domain are extraneous to science and belong instead to ontology or metaphysics. Philosophers belonging to the new mechanical philosophy believe that the received view of scientific explanation (Hempel 2001), pivoting on the notion of law of nature, overshadows this insight. Since its origin in the 17th century, mechanical philosophy aimed to explain natural phenomena by reducing them to mechanisms. Traditional attempts to define the concept of mechanism involved the identification of a limited set of fundamental elements as, for instance, contact action, action at a distance, inertial motion (see e.g. Hesse 2005), and, more recently, transmission of a mark, or of a conserved quantity (see Frisch, this volume). The new mechanical philosophy rejects this austere characterization of mechanisms and mechanistic explanation and aim at providing a novel, philosophically rigorous explication of the concept of mechanism and of its role in scientific explanation and practice. ME has been adopted with profit in philosophy of special sciences (for instance in biomedical sciences, e.g. in the explanation of chemical transmission at synapses ((Machamer, Darden and Craver 2000), MDC henceforth); but also in social sciences, e.g. the three kinds of social mechanisms in Coleman’s analysis of Max Weber’s account of the role of the Protestant ethic in the growth of capitalism (Hedström and Swedberg 1998)), where exceptionless regularities are rarely ever found. In physics, it is generally possible to formulate explanations in law-based form, with the result that the plurality of explanatory forms might be overlooked. This should not come as a surprise, given that physics was the main inspiration for logical empiricists, and, in particular, Newtonian physics was a template for Hempel’s formulation of the covering law model. However, this situation is unfortunate, since, we will argue, knowing how things work is often part of the explanation of physical phenomena. In this chapter, we provide an introduction to the basic features of ME, with specific focus on its application to physics (section 1). The main part of the chapter is devoted to the defence of two theses: on the one hand, some domains of physics are not compatible with mechanistic reasoning and explanation (section 2); on the other hand, a comprehensive account of explanation in physics can’t dispense with ME (section 3). (shrink)

Occupational gender segregation is an obdurate feature of gender inequality in the United States The “family plans thesis”—the belief that women and men deliberately adjust their early career decisions to accommodate their anticipated family roles—is a common theoretical explanation of this segregation in the social sciences and in popular discourse. But do young men and women actually account for their family plans when making occupational choices? This article investigates the validity of this central mechanism of the family plans (...) thesis. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 100 college students at three universities, I find that most women and men report no deliberate consideration of their family plans in their college major or post-graduation career choices. Only a quarter of men accommodate provider role plans in their choice of occupations, and only 7 of 56 women accommodate caregiving plans. Further, men who anticipate a provider role are not typically enrolled in more men-dominated fields, and women who seek caregiver-friendly occupations are not typically enrolled in more women-dominated fields. These findings question the validity of the family plans thesis and suggest instead that the thesis itself may reproduce segregation as a cultural schema that buttresses essentialist stereotypes about appropriate fields for men and women. (shrink)

The use of neuroscientific evidence in criminal trials has been steadily increasing. Despite progress made in recent decades in understanding the mechanisms of psychological and behavioral functioning, neuroscience is still in an early stage of development and its potential for influencing legal decision-making is highly contentious. Scholars disagree about whether or how neuroscientific evidence might impact prescriptions of criminal culpability, particularly in instances in which evidence of an accused’s history of mental illness or brain abnormality is offered to support a (...) plea of not criminally responsible. In the context of these debates, philosophers and legal scholars have identified numerous problems with admitting neuroscientific evidence in legal contexts. To date, however, less has been said about the challenges of evaluating the evidence upon which integrative mechanistic explanations that bring together evidence from different areas of neuroscience are based. As we explain, current criteria for evaluating such evidence to determine its admissibility in legal contexts are inadequate. Appealing to literature in the philosophy of scientific experimentation and theoretical work in the social, cognitive and behavioral sciences, we lay the groundwork for reforming these criteria and identify some of the implications of modifying them. (shrink)

This volume addresses fundamental issues in the philosophy of science in the context of two most intriguing fields: biology and economics. Written by authorities and experts in the philosophy of biology and economics, Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics provides a structured study of the concepts of mechanism and causality in these disciplines and draws careful juxtapositions between philosophical apparatus and scientific practice. By exploring the issues that are most salient to the contemporary philosophies of biology and (...) economics and by presenting comparative analyses, the book serves as a platform not only for gaining mutual understanding between scientists and philosophers of the life sciences and those of the social sciences, but also for sharing interdisciplinary research that combines both philosophical concepts in both fields. -/- The book begins by defining the concepts of mechanism and causality in biology and economics, respectively. The second and third parts investigate philosophical perspectives of various causal and mechanistic issues in scientific practice in the two fields. These two sections include chapters on causal issues in the theory of evolution; experiments and scientific discovery; representation of causal relations and mechanism by models in economics. The concluding section presents interdisciplinary studies of various topics concerning extrapolation of life sciences and social sciences, including chapters on the philosophical investigation of conjoining biological and economic analyses with, respectively, demography, medicine and sociology. (shrink)

The paper argues that there is a fruitful analogy to be made between classic pre-analytic Euclidean geometry and a certain kind of mechanism models, called ideal mechanisms. Both supply necessary truths. Bunge is of the opinion that pure mathematics is about fictions, but that mathematics nonetheless is useful in science and technology because we can go “to reality through fictions.” Similarly, the paper claims that ideal mechanisms are useful because we can go to real mechanisms through the fictions of (...) ideal mechanisms. The view put forward takes it for granted that two important distinctions concerned with the classification of fictions can be made. One is between ideal and non-ideal fictions, and the other between social and non-social fictions. Pure numbers, purely geometric figures, and ideal mechanisms are claimed to be ideal and social fictions. (shrink)

In the past decade many studies have demonstrated the existence of a mirror mechanism that matches the sensory representation of a biological stimulus with its somatomotor and visceromotor representation. This mechanism, likely phylogenetically very old, explains several types of mirroring behaviours, at different levels of complexity. The presence in primates of dedicated neuroanatomical pathways for specific sensorimotor integrations processes implies, at least in the primate lineage, a hard-wired mirror mechanism for social cognitive functions.

When you type the word “serendipity” in a word-processor application such as Microsoft Word, the autocorrection engine suggests you choose other words like “luck” or “fate”. This correcting act turns out to be incorrect. However, it points to the reality that serendipity is not a familiar English word and can be misunderstood easily. Serendipity is a very much scientific concept as it has been found useful in numerous scientific discoveries, pharmaceutical innovations, and numerous humankind’s technical and technological advances. Therefore, there (...) have been many books written around the concept. So why do we need this additional book? This is not just another book about serendipity. It has evolved from the Editor’s question lingering for a decade after finishing his widely cited article (coauthored with Prof. Nancy K. Napier of Boise State University, ID, USA) “Serendipity as a strategic advantage?” in T. Wilkinson’s edited volume Strategic Management in the 21st Century, published by Praeger. The Editor and contributing authors have tried to achieve the following in this title. Demystifying the Serendipity Myth The phenomenon of serendipity has always been thought of as a “miracle”. It is the mystery of human innovation and one of the ultimate secrets of our society. But serendipity is not just a lucky coincidence nor any hidden conspiracy. This book explores the science of the information process behind this seemingly miraculous phenomenon. It connects human society with nature, going back to the root of our existence and looking at the flame of survival to discover the harmony in making creativity. Presenting the nuts and bolts of being an adventurer of science The authors present their conceptual investigations into serendipity’s nature and its mechanism by examining interesting real events and stories. The content is thought-provoking, and readers are led to question and explore their own life stories and problems along the journey of reading this book. Catching an elusive high-value target requires great strategies and efforts. But there are no dark secrets here because this is the “way of nature” – how we humans have always strived for innovation without realizing the blueprints behind such processes. Unlike other books on serendipity, this book will show you that a powerful “secret” is closer than you think. Delivering practical uses for different audiences By understanding the conditionality and survival drivers of serendipity, individuals or organizations can make better decisions on creating the right environment to facilitate the encounter and attainment of this valuable phenomenon. For scientists: With clear explanations of the information processes underlying serendipity, flexible theoretical frameworks of mindsponge and the 3D principle of creativity, researchers are provided with the tools they need to dig deeper into their own fields of study and find practical applications, be it psychology, economics, sociology, or anything that involves innovation (which is, in fact, every scientific discipline). For curious casual readers: Everybody needs innovation to make breakthroughs or spice up one’s life. If you think great ideas come to people randomly from an unknown fairy place, this book will convince you otherwise without taking away that awe and wonder. But above all, you will know how to become more creative, scientifically and straightforwardly, with no snake oil and no weird tricks. For ambitious business people: The flame that brought about great successes throughout human history is within you. But you can only use it if you understand it. While others wait for serendipity to come, you will be able to actively hunt for those precious moments. As it has always been: the best hunters triumph, not the passive wanderers. And in this age of information chaos, finding the golden fruits is not easy. Those from information technology know this problem well, and this book is the treasure map that they have been seeking to navigate that stormy ocean looking for jewels. Like a kingfisher tracking its prey through the water, waiting to gracefully strike, with serendipity, a person seizes the prize of creativity amid the chaos of life. ¤ ¤ ¤ Official introduction: The book explores the nature, underlying causes, and the information processing mechanism of serendipity. It proposes that natural or social survival demands drive serendipity, and serendipity is conditional on the environment and the mindset, on both individual and collective levels. From Darwin's evolution theory to Sun Tzu's war tactics, major innovations throughout human history are unified by this key concept. In the rapidly changing world, information is abundant but rather chaotic. The adaptive power of serendipity allows people to notice treasures within this wild sea, but only for those who understand how it works. To increase the probability of encountering and attaining serendipity, one should employ the mindsponge mechanism and the 3D process of creativity, for without these frameworks, serendipity is truly an elusive target. The book also discusses methods to build environments and cultures rich in navigational and useful information to maximize the chance of finding and capitalizing on serendipity. As a skill, serendipity has a resemblance to how kingfishers observe and hunt their prey. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relationship between economic theory and theories of justice in the design of public policy. In particular, it focuses on the role of mechanism design in policy contexts beset with issues of social, racial and distributive justice. Economists’ involvement in redesigning Boston’s algorithm for allocating K-12 students to public schools serves as an instructive case study. The paper draws on the distinction betweenideal theoryandnon-ideal theoryin political philosophy and the concept ofperformativityin economic sociology to argue that (...) mechanism design can enact elaborate ideal theories of justice. Anormative gapthus emerges between the goals of the policymakers and the objectives of economic designs. As a result, mechanism design may obstruct stakeholders’ avenues for normative criticism of public policies, and serve as a technology of depoliticization. (shrink)

Despite widespread recognition that psychiatry would be better served by a classificatory system based on etiology rather than mere description, it goes without saying that much of the necessary work is yet to be done. In this chapter I take up the increasingly important question of how mechanistic explanation fits into the larger effort to build a scientifically sound etiological and nosological framework. I sketch a rough picture of what mechanistic explanation should look like in the context of psychiatric research, (...) with a focus on several potential challenges posed by the special features of many psychiatric conditions. These include the role of social and environmental factors, the relatively transient nature of symptoms, the presumably complex organization of underlying systems, and the likelihood that many disorders are the product of nonstandard development. I suggest that these explanatory challenges can be met with a sufficiently broad notion of mechanism, one that allows for something less than the flawless execution of internal operations, appeals to the influence of contextual factors, and attends to organizational relations both within the mechanism itself and across the wider cognitive system. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss the issue of context-dependence of mechanism-based explanation in the social sciences. The different ways in which the context-dependence and context-independence of mechanism-based explanation have been understood in the social sciences are often motivated by different and apparently incompatible understandings of what explanatory mechanisms are. Instead, we suggest that the different varieties of context-dependence are best seen as corresponding to different research goals. Rather than conflicting with one another, these goals are complementary (...) to each other and therefore pave the way to a methodologically more cooperative approach to mechanism-based explanation in the social sciences. (shrink)

Osiurak and Reynaud offer a unified cognitive approach to cumulative technological culture, arguing that it begins with non-social cognitive skills that allow humans to learn and develop new technical information. Drawing on research focusing on how children acquire knowledge through interactions others, we argue that social learning is essential for humans to acquire technical information.

Mechanism design is a form of optimization developed in economic theory. It casts economists as institutional engineers, choosing an outcome and then arranging a set of market rules and conditions to achieve it. The toolkit from mechanism design is widely used in economics, policymaking, and now in building and managing online environments. Mechanism design has become one of the most pervasive yet inconspicuous influences on the digital mediation of social life. Its optimizing schemes structure online advertising (...) markets and other multi-sided platform businesses. Whatever normative rationales mechanism design might draw on in its economic origins, as its influence has grown and its applications have become more computational, we suggest those justifications for using mechanism design to orchestrate and optimize human interaction are losing traction. In this article, we ask what ideological work mechanism design is doing in economics, computer science, and its applications to the governance of digital platforms. Observing mechanism design in action in algorithmic environments, we argue it has become a tool for producing information domination, distributing social costs in ways that benefit designers, and controlling and coordinating participants in multi-sided platforms. (shrink)

I develop an interdisciplinary framework for understanding the nature of agents and agency that is compatible with recent developments in the metaphysics of science and that also does justice to the mechanistic and normative characteristics of agents and agency as they are understood in moral philosophy, social psychology, neuroscience, robotics, and economics. The framework I develop is internal perspectivalist. That is to say, it counts agents as real in a perspective-dependent way, but not in a way that depends on (...) an external perspective. Whether or not something counts as an agent depends on whether it is able to have a certain kind of perspective. My approach differs from many others by treating possession of a perspective as more basic than the possession of agency, representational content/vehicles, cognition, intentions, goals, concepts, or mental or psychological states; these latter capabilities require the former, not the other way around. I explain what it means for a system to be able to have a perspective at all, beginning with simple cases in biology, and show how self-contained normative perspectives about proper function and control can emerge from mechanisms with relatively simple dynamics. I then describe how increasingly complex control architectures can become organized that allow for more complex perspectives that approach agency. Next, I provide my own account of the kind of perspective that is necessary for agency itself, the goal being to provide a reference against which other accounts can be compared. Finally, I introduce a crucial distinction that is necessary for understanding human agency: that between inclinational and committal agency, and venture a hypothesis about how the normative perspective underlying committal agency might be mechanistically realized. (shrink)