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Tropes as Mechanisms

Author

Summary, in English

This paper is an attempt to further our understanding of mechanisms conceived of as ontologically separable from laws. What opportunities are there for a mechanistic perspective to be independent of, or even more fundamental than, a law perspective? Advocates of the mechanistic view often play with the possibility of internal and external reliability, or with the paralleling possibilities of enforcing, counteracting, redirecting, etc., the mechanisms' power to produce To further this discussion I adopt a trope ontology. It is independent of the notion of law, and can easily be adapted to account for such characteristics of mechanisms. The idea of tropes as mechanisms is worked out in some detail. According to the resulting picture, there is still an opportunity to link mechanisms and laws. But while the predominant law view conceives of mechanistic approaches as special kinds of law accounts, this study indicates that the converse may be true. Law accounts are special cases of mechanistic accounts, and they work only in those worlds where the mechanisms are of the right kind.

Publishing year

2005

Language

English

Pages

371-393

Publication/Series

Foundations of Science

Volume

10

Issue

4

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Springer

Topic

  • Philosophy

Keywords

  • Universals
  • mechanism
  • Laws of nature
  • Elster
  • causation

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1233-1821