Towards the Methodological Turn in the Philosophy of Science - Mechanism and Causality in Biology and Economics - page 5

p. S344). He thus avoids the notion of laws that was employed in his early studies
(e.g., Glennan 1996 ). In contrast, MDC think such causal language is too vague to
characterize the actual specific activities within a mechanism, such as pulling,
scraping, or binding. In their dualist account, mechanisms are constituted of entities
and activities: “Mechanisms are entities and activities organized such that they are
productive of regular changes from start or set-up to finish or termination
conditions” (Machamer et al. 2000 , p. 3). Other definitions of mechanisms include
one by Bechtel and Abrahamsen ( 2005 ) who stress mechanisms as structures . They
argue that “[a] mechanism is a structure performing a function in virtue of its
component parts, component operations, and their organization. The orchestrated
functioning of the mechanism is responsible for one or more phenomena” (Bechtel
and Abrahamsen 2005 , p. 423). Some philosophers think the differences between
these accounts are highly significant, whereas others think they are minor.
Notice that, prior to the emergence of the mechanist approach in philosophy of
biology, mechanisms have been investigated by philosophers of social sciences
such as Mario Bunge ( 2004 ) and Jon Elster ( 1983 , 1998 , 2007 ) and been advocated
by economic sociologists Peter Hedstr¨m and Richard Swedberg ( 1998 ). Like
MDC, the advocates of social mechanisms share Francis Crick's view that
biologists prefer to think in terms of mechanisms rather than laws (Hedstr¨m and
Swedberg 1998 , p. 3). But it should be noted that, as successfully argued by Carl
Craver and Marie Kaiser in their chapter, mechanist philosophers do not deny the
epistemic virtue of regularities, as they help scientists search for mechanisms, even
as mechanisms in turn help us to understand how regularities and generalizations
provide the basis for scientific activities such as explanations, predictions, and
control.
A general notion of social mechanisms is aptly characterized by Thomas
Schelling, a Nobel Laureate in economics, who defines social mechanisms in
contrast with laws, theories, correlations, and black boxes, conceiving them as
plausible hypotheses that explain social phenomena, where the explanation is
offered in terms of interactions between individuals or between individuals and
social aggregates (Schelling 1998 ). Similarly, Elster ( 1998 ) contrasts mechanisms
with black boxes (which could provide no explanations) and laws (which provide
only deterministic explanations). He defines social mechanisms as “frequently
occurring and easily recognizable causal patterns that are triggered under generally
unknown conditions or with intermediate consequences” (Elster 1998 , p. 45) and
regards them intermediates between laws and descriptions (ibid.). Elster's mecha-
nism-based explanations would consist of the form “if conditions C 1 , C 2 , C n

obtain, then sometimes E ” (Elster 1998 , p. 48). At present, the investigations of
social mechanisms seem to converge on the accounts developed by philosophers of
biology by reevaluating social mechanisms in terms of mechanist philosophy of
science (e.g., Hedstr¨m and Ylikoski 2010 ), implying an attempt to reconcile social
mechanisms in a broader conception of scientific mechanisms.

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