What Is a Mechanism?

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Lauren Ross is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Irvine. She studies and writes about causal and non-causal explanations in philosophy of science, including distinctions among causal structures. Throughout her work, Lauren employs Jame's Woodward's interventionist approach to causation, which Jim and I discussed in episode 145. In this episode, we discuss Jim's lasting impact on the philosophy of causation, the current dominance of mechanistic explanation and its relation to causation, and various causal structures of explanation, including pathways, cascades, topology, and constraints.

• Lauren's website.
• Twitter: @ProfLaurenRoss
• Related papers
  • A call for more clarity around causality in neuroscience.
  • The explanatory nature of constraints: Law-based, mathematical, and causal.
  • Causal Concepts in Biology: How Pathways Differ from Mechanisms and Why It Matters.
  • Distinguishing topological and causal explanation.
  • Multiple Realizability from a Causal Perspective.
  • Cascade versus mechanism: The diversity of causal structure in science.

0:00 - Intro 2:46 - Lauren's background 10:14 - Jim Woodward legacy 15:37 - Golden era of causality 18:56 - Mechanistic explanation 28:51 - Pathways 31:41 - Cascades 36:25 - Topology 41:17 - Constraint 50:44 - Hierarchy of explanations 53:18 - Structure and function 57:49 - Brain and mind 1:01:28 - Reductionism 1:07:58 - Constraint again 1:14:38 - Multiple realizability