Hatleback, EN;
Spring, JM;
(2019)
A refinement to the general mechanistic account.
European Journal for Philosophy of Science
, 9
(2)
, Article 19. 10.1007/s13194-018-0237-1.
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Abstract
Phyllis Illari and Jon Williamson propose a formulation for a general mechanistic account, the purpose of which is to capture the similarities across mechanistic accounts in the sciences. Illari and Williamson extract insight from mechanisms in astrophysics—which are notably different from the typical biological mechanisms discussed in the literature on mechanisms—to show how their general mechanistic account accommodates mechanisms across various sciences. We present argumentation that demonstrates why an amendment is necessary to the ontology (entities and activities) referred to by the general mechanistic account provided by Illari and Williamson. The amendment is required due to the variability of some components in computing mechanisms: the very same component serves as either entity or activity, both between levels and within the same level of the explanatory hierarchy. We argue that the proper ontological account of these mechanistic components involves disambiguation via explicitly indexing them as entities or activities.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | A refinement to the general mechanistic account |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s13194-018-0237-1 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-018-0237-1 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Keywords: | Arts & Humanities, History & Philosophy Of Science, History & Philosophy of Science, Mechanisms, Computing, General mechanistic account, Ontology of mechanisms, Philosophy of computer science, THINKING |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10092166 |
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