The Metaphysics of Causation in Biological Mechanisms: A Case of the Genetic Switch in Lambda Phage
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The Metaphysics of Causation in Biological Mechanisms: A Case of the Genetic Switch in Lambda Phage Zvonimir Anić1 Received: 12 June 2019 / Accepted: 12 October 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The emphasis on the organization of entities and their activities and interactions has been labeled one of the most distinct contributions of mechanistic philosophy. In this paper I discuss the manner in which the organization of entities and their activities and interactions participates in bringing about phenomena. I present a wellknown example from molecular biology—the functioning of the genetic switch in phage lambda—and discuss Marco J. Nathan’s notion of causation by concentration. Nathan introduces causation by concentration to account for the irreducible causal role that the concentration ratio between two kinds of proteins possesses in the genetic switch mechanism in phage lambda. I discuss what the irreducibility of this causal role amounts to and provide a mechanistic interpretation of Nathan’s causation by concentration; that is, I explain this irreducible causal role as one organizational feature of this mechanism. The paper concludes that biological mechanisms need a causal pluralist framework [similar to Glennan’s account in (2009), (2010) and (2017) but slightly modified] where organizational features such as the concentration ratio have a causally relevant role, yet all the causally productive relations occur at the level of entities or individuals. Keywords Mechanisms · Molecular biology · Causation · Causal pluralism · Lambda phage
1 Introduction Many philosophers of science agree nowadays that, in most cases, offering an explanation in some specific science, such as molecular biology or neurobiology, is a matter of elucidating an underlying mechanism. Although accounts of mechanisms and mechanistic explanation in the literature have their differences, they all agree that mechanisms are either causally responsible or constitutive of * Zvonimir Anić [email protected] 1
Institute of Philosophy, Ulica grada Vukovara 54, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
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phenomena. Thus, mechanisms are usually understood as structures comprised of different kinds of entities (i.e. parts) that are organized in such a way that their overall activities and interactions bring about some phenomenon or the phenomenon is constituted by a mechanism. When the resurgence of mechanistic philosophy first began, at the turn of the century, these accounts differed significantly with regard to the metaphysics of the causal relations between the mechanism’s parts. A quick survey of the literature reveals four general approaches to causal relations between the mechanism’s parts: (i) the activity approach by Machamer, Darden and Craver (hereinafter, MDC), defended in their famous and influential paper (2000) and influenced by the work of Anscombe (1993); (ii) Salmon’s causal process view (1984) or its refined version of causation as an exchange of conserved quantities in, for example, Dowe (1992; 1995; 200
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