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The Functional Sense of Mechanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Justin Garson
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Abstract

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.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 80 , Issue 3 , July 2013 , pp. 317 - 333
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I am grateful to Carl Craver, Lindley Darden, Blaine Ford, Joyce Havstad, Lenny Moss, Karen Neander, Stuart Newman, Anya Plutynski, and Eric Saidel, for comments and criticism of an earlier draft. I am also grateful to audience members at ISHPSSB 2011, PSA 2012, and a symposium at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, as well as participants of the D.C. History and Philosophy of Biology Reading Group, where some of this material was presented.

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