Books by Beate Krickel
Springer, 2018
The aim of this book is to develop a metaphysical account of mechanisms. So far, the new mechanis... more The aim of this book is to develop a metaphysical account of mechanisms. So far, the new mechanistic literature has mainly focused on epistemic issues such as scientific explanation, scientific discovery, and causal modelling. This book takes a difference stance: I will investigate in which sense mechanisms are things in the world; what our ontology has to look like in order for mechanisms to exist, and its implications for causation, levels, and part–whole relations; and how metaphysics and scientific explanation relate to each other. I will discuss whether the metaphysics of mechanisms is reductionist, and whether it leaves room for the causal efficacy of higher-level phenomena. Finally, I hope to provide a starting point for new projects on issues in the philosophy of mind, such as non-reductive physicalism as a solution to the mind–body problem.
Book Chapters by Beate Krickel
Situated Cognition Research, 2023
In this short commentary, I will first show why Kiverstein & Kirchhoff's (this volume) analysis o... more In this short commentary, I will first show why Kiverstein & Kirchhoff's (this volume) analysis of the CC-fallacy is inadequate in an important way and show why their strategy for avoiding the CC-fallacy based on diachronic constitution is problematic. Second, I will reply to their criticism of the mechanistic account of constitution.
Situated Cognition Research , 2023
The disagreement between defenders and opponents of extended cognition is often framed in terms o... more The disagreement between defenders and opponents of extended cognition is often framed in terms of constitution. The underlying principle of this discussion is what I will call the co-location principle: cognition is located where its constituents are located. The crucial question is under which conditions something is to be counted as a constituent of cognition. I will formulate three criteria of adequacy that an account of constitution must satisfy to be applicable to the dispute on extended cognition. I will evaluate different accounts of constitution as to whether they satisfy the criteria of adequacy. Three different accounts of constitution can be identified in the literature on extended cognition, which I will call property-based constitution, diachronic constitution, and mechanistic constitution. I will show that none of the accounts satisfies all three criteria. Thus, the search for the mark of constitution does not seem to be a promising strategy for defending extended cognition. I will briefly sketch a new strategy of how to deal with this situation.
The Mechanical World, 2018
The contemporary philosophical literature contains different views on what mechanisms are. All ap... more The contemporary philosophical literature contains different views on what mechanisms are. All approaches agree on certain central assumptions; but they differ in various respects, some of which are crucial when it comes to analyzing the metaphysical commitments of the new mechanistic approach. Roughly, the different approaches to mechanisms can be divided into three categories. First, there are Early Approaches to mechanisms and mechanistic explanation, which differ crucially from the new debate in terms of terminology, concepts, and metaphysical implications, despite having also motivated the new mechanistic thinking (see, for example, Glennan 2002 and Campaner 2013 for a comparison). Wesley Salmon (1984a), Phil Dowe (1999), and Peter Railton (1978) are the main figures here. The second category I label Complex System Approaches to mechanisms. Its main defenders are Stuart Glennan (1996, 2002, 2010b), Nancy Cartwright (1999), William Bechtel and Robert C. Richardson (1993), and Bechtel and Adele Abrahamsen (2005). The central assumption of these approaches is that a mechanism is some kind of a physical object or structure, as exemplified by everyday entities such as hearts, cells, clocks, and toilets. The third category I call Acting Entities Approaches to mechanisms. According to these approaches, mechanisms are not objects but process-like in the sense that they consist of actual manifestations of activities by various entities that causally interact. Most prominently, Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden, and Carl Craver (2000), and Craver (2007a) defend this version of the mechanistic approach. Phyllis M. Illari and Jon Williamson (2012) can also be identified as defenders of this view. In this chapter I present the three types of approaches, focusing on one exemplar of each category without dwelling on the details of the various different approaches that are grouped together. Indeed, the reader should keep in mind that the assignment of each approach to one of the categories is intended to simplify matters for our presentation, and thus glosses over important differences. My main goal is to highlight the metaphysical differences between the most prominent versions of the complex system approach and the acting entity approach, and evaluate their adequacy with regard to the overall goals of the new mechanistic approach.
The Mechanical World, 2018
What kinds of things are we committed to if AE-mechanisms exist? Defenders of the AE-approach to ... more What kinds of things are we committed to if AE-mechanisms exist? Defenders of the AE-approach to mechanisms argue that mechanisms are organized entities and activities. This entity–activity dualism is understood as a metaphysical claim: the fundamental units of mechanisms are entities and activities that cannot be reduced to anything more fundamental. In this chapter I investigate this claim. In the first section, I analyze the notion of an entity. In the second section, I illuminate the notion of an activity. To combine the results from these two sections, and in order to accommodate the criticisms of entity–activity dualism that I bring forward, in the third section I introduce the notion of an entity-involving occurrent. In the fourth section, I elaborate on one central motivation for introducing the notion of an activity: activities are supposed to be essentially causal, and thus are the kinds of things that bring causation into the world. How this is supposed to happen is, so far, not well understood. I illuminate this idea and introduce a new account of causation: activity causation.
The Mechanical World, 2018
The Acting Entity-characterization of mechanisms, defended in the last chapter, is rather broad. ... more The Acting Entity-characterization of mechanisms, defended in the last chapter, is rather broad. It allows for almost all causal goings-on to be mechanisms. Let us call the AE-characterization of mechanisms as formulated in the previous chapter the minimal notion of a mechanism (Glennan 2017). In the following sections I introduce a taxonomy of mechanisms that goes beyond the minimal notion. First, I introduce the notion of a functional mechanism: one can distinguish between those mechanisms that fulfill a (biological) function, and those that do not (Garson 2013; Piccinini 2015; Maley and Piccinini 2017). Indeed, combining the notion of a mechanism with that of a function seems to be promising with regard to making sense of the normativity of mechanism-talk: a mechanism that has a certain function is supposed to fulfill that function and might fail to fulfill it. In what follows, I discuss different suggestions for how to characterize functional mechanisms. It will turn out that neither of these notions successfully accounts for the normativity of mechanism-talk unless the second and third sub-types of mechanisms are taken into account. I will call the second type regular mechanism; the third type I will call reversely regular mechanism (Krickel 2018). Both notions rest on the idea that one can distinguish between one-off mechanisms and mechanisms that establish some kind of regularity (Andersen 2012). Regular mechanisms, as I will show, have to be understood as mechanisms that bring about a particular phenomenon more often than they bring about any other phenomenon. Reversely regular mechanisms are mechanisms that bring about a particular phenomenon that is more often brought about by that mechanism than by any other mechanism. I will show how these two notions of regularity together are necessary and sufficient for grounding type-level mechanistic explanations (see also Krickel 2018), and when combined with the functional notion of a mechanism, can solve the problem of accidental goal contributions, which afflicts the most promising account of functions as discussed in the next section.
The Mechanical World, 2018
What distinguishes those EIOs that are components of a particular mechanism from those EIOs that ... more What distinguishes those EIOs that are components of a particular mechanism from those EIOs that are not? What, for example, distinguishes the hippocampus’s generation of spatial maps, which is a component in the mechanism for spatial memory, from the blood circulating through the brain, which is not taken to be a component in that mechanism? The basic idea is that those and only those EIOs are components of a given mechanism that make a difference to the phenomenon that the mechanism is responsible for. The criteria for difference-making differ for etiological and constitutive mechanisms. In the case of etiological mechanisms, components are causally relevant; in case of constitutive mechanisms, components are constitutively relevant. According to the most prominent approaches to causal and constitutive relevance (Woodward 2003; Craver 2007a), both notions are explicated in terms of interventionism. I will present and discuss both notions in what follows.
The Mechanical World, 2018
The notion of a phenomenon plays a crucial role in the new mechanistic thinking. But what are mec... more The notion of a phenomenon plays a crucial role in the new mechanistic thinking. But what are mechanistic phenomena? In this chapter, I discuss and reject a view that is common in the new mechanistic literature: the view that constitutive mechanistic phenomena are capacities. My argument, roughly, is that this view is incompatible with the metaphysics of EA-mechanisms as described in the previous chapters. An alternative view that can be found in the new mechanistic literature, and that is prima facie compatible with the metaphysics of EA-mechanisms, is the view that constitutive mechanistic phenomena are behaving systems. I will present two interpretations of this claim: according to what I will call the functionalist view, constitutive mechanistic phenomena are behaviors of mechanisms characterized by input–output relations. According to what I will call the behaving entity view, constitutive mechanistic phenomena are higher-level entities that contain mechanisms that are engaged in an occurrent (as defined in Chap. 4). I will argue that the functionalist view is flawed since it conflicts with the general aims of the new mechanists, such as defending the autonomy of the special sciences (see Introduction), and defending a specific notion of levels of nature (see Chap. 5). I will show that the behaving entity view is compatible with these general goals. Hence, I will conclude, constitutive mechanistic phenomena, like etiological mechanistic phenomena, are EIOs.
The Mechanical World, 2018
In Chap. 2 we learned that there are etiological mechanisms that are responsible for phenomena b... more In Chap. 2 we learned that there are etiological mechanisms that are responsible for phenomena by causing them and that there are constitutive mechanisms that bring about phenomena by constituting them. Still, many questions remain unanswered. First, as argued in Chap. 5, the interventionist approach to constitutive relevance is confronted with several problems and I have not yet explained how we can solve these. Second, as argued in Chap. 4, the notion of activity causation and that of a mechanistic level crucially depend on a clear understanding of mechanistic constitution. So far, I have not said much about what mechanistic constitution is. Besides these open questions, the attentive reader might have wondered: Isn’t there a tension in the reasoning so far? How can etiological mechanisms activity-cause their phenomena, while at the same time their components are causally relevant for the phenomenon? It is common sense among philosophers of causation that production theories such as activity causation, and difference-making accounts such as interventionist causal relevance, have different implications with regard to what counts as a cause and what does not. But how, then, can EA-mechanisms at the same time activity-cause their phenomena and be causally relevant (in the interventionist sense) for them? Indeed, a similar tension seems to arise for constitutive mechanisms as well. On the assumption that mechanistic constitution is a substantial metaphysical notion, whereas constitutive relevance is not, one might wonder how a constitutive mechanism can be constitutively relevant (in the interventionist sense) for a phenomenon and at the same time constitute it (in a to-be-specified metaphysical sense). In this chapter I provide answers to the open questions, and I show how the apparent tension can be resolved. First, I address the causal duality inherent not only in my reasoning but in the new mechanistic thinking in general. Second, in the remaining sections, I discuss the notions of constitutive relevance and mechanistic constitution. I start with a summary of what we have learned about constitutive mechanisms so far. Then I provide a solution to the problems afflicting the interventionist approach to constitutive relevance as discussed in Chap. 5. I will argue that constitutive relevance indeed can be spelled out in terms of causal relevance, which allows for a solution of the problems. Still, I will show how we can maintain the central assumption that causal and constitutive relevance are mutually exclusive relations in the sense that if X is causally relevant for Y, it cannot be constitutively relevant for Y, and vice versa. I will show how this idea not only can solve the problems discussed in Chap. 5, but can also make sense of a non-mysterious notion of interlevel causation. Finally, I will explain what I take mechanistic constitution to be—the metaphysical counterpart of constitutive relevance.
Papers by Beate Krickel
Minds and machines, Jun 2, 2024
Studies in brain and mind, Dec 31, 2022
Studies in brain and mind, Dec 31, 2022
Studies in brain and mind, 2018
Studies in brain and mind, 2018
Studies in brain and mind, 2018
The contemporary philosophical literature contains different views on what mechanisms are. All ap... more The contemporary philosophical literature contains different views on what mechanisms are. All approaches agree on certain central assumptions; but they differ in various respects, some of which are crucial when it comes to analyzing the metaphysical commitments of the new mechanistic approach. Roughly, the different approaches to mechanisms can be divided into three categories. First, there are Early Approaches to mechanisms and mechanistic explanation, which differ crucially from the new debate in terms of terminology, concepts, and metaphysical implications, despite having also motivated the new mechanistic thinking (see, for example, Glennan 2002 and Campaner 2013 for a comparison). Wesley Salmon (1984a), Phil Dowe (1999), and Peter Railton (1978) are the main figures here. The second category I label Complex System Approaches to mechanisms. Its main defenders are Stuart Glennan (1996, 2002, 2010b), Nancy Cartwright (1999), William Bechtel and Robert C. Richardson (1993), and Bechtel and Adele Abrahamsen (2005). The central assumption of these approaches is that a mechanism is some kind of a physical object or structure, as exemplified by everyday entities such as hearts, cells, clocks, and toilets. The third category I call Acting Entities Approaches to mechanisms. According to these approaches, mechanisms are not objects but process-like in the sense that they consist of actual manifestations of activities by various entities that causally interact. Most prominently, Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden, and Carl Craver (2000), and Craver (2007a) defend this version of the mechanistic approach. Phyllis M. Illari and Jon Williamson (2012) can also be identified as defenders of this view. In this chapter I present the three types of approaches, focusing on one exemplar of each category without dwelling on the details of the various different approaches that are grouped together. Indeed, the reader should keep in mind that the assignment of each approach to one of the categories is intended to simplify matters for our presentation, and thus glosses over important differences. My main goal is to highlight the metaphysical differences between the most prominent versions of the complex system approach and the acting entity approach, and evaluate their adequacy with regard to the overall goals of the new mechanistic approach.
Studies in brain and mind, 2018
What kinds of things are we committed to if AE-mechanisms exist? Defenders of the AE-approach to ... more What kinds of things are we committed to if AE-mechanisms exist? Defenders of the AE-approach to mechanisms argue that mechanisms are organized entities and activities. This entity–activity dualism is understood as a metaphysical claim: the fundamental units of mechanisms are entities and activities that cannot be reduced to anything more fundamental. In this chapter I investigate this claim. In the first section, I analyze the notion of an entity. In the second section, I illuminate the notion of an activity. To combine the results from these two sections, and in order to accommodate the criticisms of entity–activity dualism that I bring forward, in the third section I introduce the notion of an entity-involving occurrent. In the fourth section, I elaborate on one central motivation for introducing the notion of an activity: activities are supposed to be essentially causal, and thus are the kinds of things that bring causation into the world. How this is supposed to happen is, so far, not well understood. I illuminate this idea and introduce a new account of causation: activity causation.
Synthese
The relationship between topological explanation and mechanistic explanation is unclear. Most phi... more The relationship between topological explanation and mechanistic explanation is unclear. Most philosophers agree that at least some topological explanations are mechanistic explanations. The crucial question is how to make sense of this claim. Zednik (Philos Psychol 32(1):23–51, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2018.1512090) argues that topological explanations are mechanistic if they (i) describe mechanism sketches that (ii) pick out organizational properties of mechanisms. While we agree with Zednik’s conclusion, we critically discuss Zednik’s account and show that it fails as a general account of how and when topological explanations are mechanistic. First, if topological explanations were just mechanism sketches, this implies that they could be enriched by replacing topological terms with mechanistic detail. This, however, conflicts how topological explanations are used in scientific practice. Second, Zednik’s account fails to show how topological properties can be organiz...
Studies in Brain and Mind, 2018
The Acting Entity-characterization of mechanisms, defended in the last chapter, is rather broad. ... more The Acting Entity-characterization of mechanisms, defended in the last chapter, is rather broad. It allows for almost all causal goings-on to be mechanisms. Let us call the AE-characterization of mechanisms as formulated in the previous chapter the minimal notion of a mechanism (Glennan 2017). In the following sections I introduce a taxonomy of mechanisms that goes beyond the minimal notion. First, I introduce the notion of a functional mechanism: one can distinguish between those mechanisms that fulfill a (biological) function, and those that do not (Garson 2013; Piccinini 2015; Maley and Piccinini 2017). Indeed, combining the notion of a mechanism with that of a function seems to be promising with regard to making sense of the normativity of mechanism-talk: a mechanism that has a certain function is supposed to fulfill that function and might fail to fulfill it. In what follows, I discuss different suggestions for how to characterize functional mechanisms. It will turn out that neither of these notions successfully accounts for the normativity of mechanism-talk unless the second and third sub-types of mechanisms are taken into account. I will call the second type regular mechanism; the third type I will call reversely regular mechanism (Krickel 2018). Both notions rest on the idea that one can distinguish between one-off mechanisms and mechanisms that establish some kind of regularity (Andersen 2012). Regular mechanisms, as I will show, have to be understood as mechanisms that bring about a particular phenomenon more often than they bring about any other phenomenon. Reversely regular mechanisms are mechanisms that bring about a particular phenomenon that is more often brought about by that mechanism than by any other mechanism. I will show how these two notions of regularity together are necessary and sufficient for grounding type-level mechanistic explanations (see also Krickel 2018), and when combined with the functional notion of a mechanism, can solve the problem of accidental goal contributions, which afflicts the most promising account of functions as discussed in the next section.
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Books by Beate Krickel
Book Chapters by Beate Krickel
Papers by Beate Krickel
In this talk, I show that there are at least two notions of mechanistic constitution underlying these intuitions. One requires a relation between simultaneous changes in the phenomenon and the component (the wheel's turning changes simultaneously with the car's moving); the other requires succeeding changes (the engine's running changes before the car's moving changes). I will present two accounts of constitutive relevance that seem to capture this difference (Krickel forthcoming; Baumgartner, Casini, Krickel manuscript).