机制的生成阐释与干预主义阐释之争

A Controversy Between the Productive Elucidation of Mechanism and the Interventionist Elucidation of Mechanism

新机制运动试图通过恰当性分析给出一个具有统一内涵的“机制”概念。“机制”概念解释的两条进路诉诸于因果关系本质的哲学理论和科学解释来探讨机制。第一条进路是格列男关于机制的生成阐释,第二条进路是MDC关于机制的干预主义阐释。机制的生成阐释不能识别否定性因果关系,机制的干预主义阐释将因果性界定为因果相关性。因果性问题的还原论无助于阐释机制的本质。从自然必然性角度考察,“机制”概念能承担起某种诉诸实体的形而上学意蕴,因而机制能解释现象,机制的生成阐释与干预主义阐释具有互补性和融贯性。

The New Mechanism Movement attempts to provide a concept of“mechanism”with unified connotation through appropriateness analysis.The two approaches to explaining the concept of“mechanism”rely on the philosophical theories with causality as their essence and scientific explanations to explore mechanisms.The first approach is Glennan’s productive elucidation of mechanisms,and the second one is MDC’s interventionist elucidation of mechanisms.The productive elucidation of mechanisms cannot identify negative causation,while the interventionist elucidation of mechanism defines causality as causal relevance.The reductionist tradition of causality is not conducive to explaining the essence of mechanisms.From the perspective of natural necessity,the concept of“mechanism”can bear some metaphysical implication of appealing to entities,so mechanisms can explain phenomena,and thus the productive elucidation and interventionist elucidation of mechanisms are complementary and coherent.