Two Concepts of Mechanism:

Componential Causal System and Abstract Form of Interaction

Jaakko Kuorikoski*
Penultimate draft, please do not cite this version
Forthcoming in International Studies in the Philosophy of Science

Although there has been much recent discussion on mechanisms in the philosophy of
science and social theory, no shared understanding of the crucial concept itself has
emerged. In this paper, a distinction between two core concepts of mechanism is made on
the basis that the concepts correspond to two different research strategies: the concept of
mechanism as a componential causal system is associated with the heuristic of functional
decomposition and spatial localization and the concept of mechanism as an abstract form
of interaction is associated with the strategy of abstraction and simple models. The
causal facts assumed and the theoretical consequences entailed by an explanation with a
given mechanism differ according to which concept of mechanism is in use. Research
strategies associated with mechanism concepts also involve characteristic biases that
should be taken into account when using them, especially in new areas of application.

1. Introduction

The concept of mechanism has recently played a central role in philosophy of science and
social theory. Within philosophy of science, the concept of mechanism has been used and
explored in the theory of causation, the theory of explanation and in the slightly less*

Jaakko Kuorikoski works in the Trends and Tensions in Intellectual Integration project at the
Department of Social and Moral Philosophy, University of Helsinki. E-mail: jaakko.kuorikoski@helsinki.fi

known literature on research heuristics. Among other things, it has been suggested that
mechanisms could provide a plausible metaphysics for causation and that they would thus
answer Humes challenge of providing the secret connexion between cause and effect
(e.g. Glennan 1996). Theories of mechanistic explanation and research strategies aim to
rectify law-centred views which are not applicable to the special sciences dealing with
multi-levelled causal complexity (e.g. Bechtel 2006; Bechtel and Richardson 1993;
Craver 2007). Examples of mechanisms in this literature are mostly taken from the life
sciences and engineering and often resemble something truly akin to machines.

The mechanisms that mechanistically orientated social theorists are talking about bear
little resemblance to the mechanisms discussed in current philosophy of science literature
(see essays in Hedstrm and Swedberg 1998). In the social sciences, mechanisms are
something that are thought to be suitably middle range for providing building blocks
for social theorizing, since they sound more plausible than strict covering laws and more
down to earth than grand social theory. They are supposed to be useful because they are
seen to straddle, on the one hand, the unconditional necessity of laws and context-bound
local contingencies and, on the other hand, inapplicable high theory and variable-centred
banal empiricism. The economic way of theorizing is often seen as a paradigmatically
mechanism-orientated enterprise. Some theorists even define the very concept of social
mechanism in terms of individual rational choice and equilibrium (e.g. Cowen, 1998),
although it is debatable whether much of such talk has drifted beyond the idea of causal
mechanisms altogether. At the very least, according to most theorists, social mechanisms
ought to be constructed on the basis of individual behaviour.

In this article, I claim that there is indeed a fundamental difference in the concepts of
mechanism commonly used in these discussions, and that the crucial difference has to do
with the way in which theorizing with mechanism concepts proceeds. More specifically,
there are two concepts of mechanism corresponding to two particular sets of research
strategies or heuristics. First there is the concept of mechanism as a componential causal
system, which is accompanied with the heuristics of decomposition and localization.
Second, there is the concept of mechanism as an abstract form of interaction,
accompanied by the strategy of abstraction and simple models. The difference between
these two concepts has to do with the amount of abstraction in the identity conditions of a
mechanism kind and with the kind of causal complexity in the systems to which these
concepts are applied, especially whether the causal properties that define the mechanism
kind are monadic or relational. The first concept is associated with an analytic research
strategy of finding out more about the properties of the parts, and the latter concept with a
synthetic strategy of moving from the known properties of the parts to the property of the
whole. The two concepts occupy only a limited region of the whole possibility space
spanned by these considerations, but it is no accident that the rest of the space is
relatively devoid of life.

Although mechanistic theorizing is virtuous in many of the ways pointed out above, the
use of these mechanism concepts is also prone to specific kinds of characteristic fallacies
and biases. Making the distinction between these concepts is therefore important not only
in clarifying their explanatory roles and the differences in the causal facts presupposed to

obtain in their use, but also in helping us to anticipate what can go wrong when applying
and reasoning with these concepts. However, the distinction does not map directly to any
distinction between the human and the natural sciences. As will be argued below, both
kinds of mechanism concepts can be and are used in both the human and natural sciences.

2. What is a mechanism?

It should be acknowledged from the very beginning that it is probably futile to try to
come up with a definition or analysis of the concept of mechanism that would at the same
time satisfy all theoretical needs, save all intuitions and fit actual research practice. Since
the use of the word mechanism is varied and often somewhat loose, both in philosophy
and in the special sciences themselves, there probably is no single correct way of
developing a taxonomy of the different concepts of mechanism either. The value of any
classification of concepts lies in the clarity it brings to the practices in which the concepts
are in active use. I believe the distinction made here passes this test of adequacy. The
following definition or characterisation of mechanisms in general by William Bechtel and
Adele Abrahamsen is a good trade-off between informational content and scope of
applicability and will thus serve as a starting point:

(M) A mechanism is a structure performing a function in virtue of its component

parts, component operations, and their organization. The orchestrated functioning

of the mechanism is responsible for one or more phenomena. (Bechtel and

Abrahamsen 2005, 423)

M is designed to capture a number of characteristic properties of mechanisms:

mechanisms are identified through their causal role or function in some larger system or
context; mechanisms are complex entities consisting of parts enjoying at least some
amount of ontological and causal independence; mechanisms do what they do by virtue
of what their parts do and how the parts interact and, finally, the interaction of the parts is
in some sense regular and orderly. Along with Bechtel and Abrahamsen, mechanisms are
here taken to be concrete particulars, that is, real things in the world, but explaining with
and reasoning about mechanisms to be cognitive activities and thus requiring
representations of mechanisms (ibid., 424-425). This essay is about concepts of
mechanisms, but when these concepts are applied correctly, they pick out things in the
world with the appropriate causal properties. What M says about mechanisms as mindindependent causal entities can easily be translated into requirements concerning models
or theories of mechanisms. Correspondingly, although practising social scientists and
theorists usually speak of mechanisms as parts of a theory or a model (see essays in
Hedstrm and Swedberg 1998) and philosophers as mind-independent parts of the ontic
furniture of the world, in practice this difference in parlance does not amount to much.

With M at hand, it is relatively easy to account for the usual perceived virtues of
mechanistic theories and explanations. Mechanisms need not produce universal covering
laws, because the manifestations of their operation can be frustrated or blocked by

contingent causes internal or external to the mechanism. Thus the observable

consequences of mechanisms at work can have exceptions, yet their behaviour usually
exhibits some amount of regularity due to the specific organization of the components.
Mechanisms are not totally bound to specific contexts either, since they are made of
components with causal properties having at least some amount of external validity. Thus
knowledge of mechanisms can facilitate prediction and generalization. Referring to
underlying mechanisms can be explanatory even though they do not need to be described
in terms of an over-arching high theory, and theories of mechanisms provide deeper
understanding, more answers to why- and how-questions, than mere enumeration of
empirical facts and establishment of correlations. Theories or models of mechanisms
accomplish this by opening black boxes, that is, by explaining some macro behaviour in
terms of the behaviour and organization of its micro constituents. Mechanisms can thus
explain constitutively higher level properties and dispositions of the embedding system
by the lower level causal powers of its parts. Mechanisms can also explain causally or
etiologically by mediating between temporally ordered local changes in the system (see
e.g. Craver 2007, chpt. 4).

Hedstrm and Swedberg point out that the essence of mechanism (as an ism) is not to
be found in any definition of the key theoretical term, but in a particular style of
theorizing (Hedstrm and Swedberg 1998, 25). In fact, M has not been developed
through the usual philosophical process of testing subsequent conceptual analyses against
pre-theoretical intuitions of what are and what are not really mechanisms. Neither is it
designed with a view of mechanisms as a fundamental ontological category needed for a

plausible metaphysics of causation. Instead, it is the byproduct of a philosophical

reconstruction of a particular family of research strategies or heuristics. The important
work done in scientific practice with the concept of mechanism defined in M is in
directing theorizing, modelling and empirical research. Differences in the concept of
mechanism used, differences in the identity conditions for what it is to be a mechanism of
a certain kind, entail differences in what kinds of further questions are asked and what
avenues of further research are pursued when a certain kind of mechanism is perceived to
be operating within some domain of phenomena. It is in terms of this crucial heuristic
role of the concept that the important distinction discussed below emerges.

3. Mechanisms as componential causal systems

M is a result of philosophical interest in research strategies used in the study of complex

systems in the life sciences, such as molecular biology and neuroscience. According to
Bechtel and Robert Richardson (1993), the study of these kinds of complex causal
systems often proceeds according to the heuristics of decomposition and localization
(DL). The word heuristic here does not refer to a more or less automatic psychological
mechanism, but to an informal method or rule of thumb for how to carry out research in
some loosely defined context. The ultimate goal of the use of DL heuristics is to provide
mechanistic (constitutive) explanations of system- or macro-level properties. The DL
procedure goes roughly as follows. First, the different phenomena that the system of
interest exhibits are identified. Then the phenomenon of interest is functionally

decomposed in the sense of being analyzed into a set of possible component operations
that would be sufficient to produce the phenomenon. One can think of this step as
thinking of a preliminary set of simple functions that taken together would constitute a
more complex input-output relation (the system-level phenomenon). The system is also
structurally decomposed or analyzed into a set of component parts. The final step is to try
to localize the component operations by mapping the operations onto appropriate
structural component parts. The primary meaning of localization here is the pairing of
operations and parts, not (necessarily) that of locating something in physical space. The
idea is thus first to ask what kinds of more basic properties or behaviours could, taken
together, possibly result in the explanandum behaviour and then try to find out whether
the system is in fact made of such entities that can do the jobs required. If this cannot be
done, the fault may lie in the manner of functional or structural decomposition and these
may then have to be rethought. In the end, even the identification of the target
phenomenon or system may have to be revised. The identification and decomposition
procedures will in the beginning be guided by earlier theories and common sense, but
empirical evidence can always suggest that a thorough reworking of the basic ontology
and the form of the possible explananda may be in order. (Bechtel and Richardson 1993)

Although M is derived from research on the use of decomposition and localization

heuristics, it does not by itself entail it. The claim made here is that M is compatible with
(at least) two, more substantial, concepts of what mechanisms are and that these concepts
entail different research heuristics, namely, DL and what I call the strategy of abstraction
and simple models.

In order to get from M to DL, we need to add a few extra ingredients to the mechanism
recipe. Function localization makes sense only if the component parts of the system have
different causal properties that are to a large extent constituted and thus explainable by
their intrinsic causal make-up. Function localization thus requires that the system is
nearly decomposable with respect to the (kinds of) causal properties figuring in the
functional decomposition in the following sense (cf. Simon 1962)1: the intrinsically
explainable causal powers of the component parts are more important for the explanation
of the macro behaviour of the system than the relational causal powers of the components
constituted by their environment and interaction. The parts of the whole should therefore
exhibit sufficient causal variety to be able to account for the different causal roles
required to produce the explanandum phenomenon. This variety should in principle be
apparent even before the functional decomposition of the macro behaviour into
component functions. The concept of mechanism appropriate for the use of DL is
therefore that of a set of component parts fulfilling different causal roles within a nearly
decomposable system. These different causal roles together produce or realize some
causal property of the system. Let us call such mechanisms componential causal systems
(CCS). Whatever regularity and external validity the behaviour of the system may have is
due to the intrinsic causal powers of the component parts and to the stability of their
organization. Most of the recent philosophy of science literature on mechanisms seems to
concern primarily mechanisms in this particular sense (e.g. Bechtel 2006; Craver 2007;
Glennan 1996; 2005 and especially Machamer et al. 2000).

When macro behaviour has been decomposed into localizable component behaviours, the
inner mechanisms of the components responsible for their behaviour can in turn be
mechanistically explained by opening the component black box by repeating the
decomposition and localization routine. The inner workings of the cell were worked out
by structurally decomposing the cell into cell organelles and pairing them with cellular
operations. For example, cellular energetics was localized in the mitochondria (the initial
localization hypothesis was partly argued for on the basis that the organelles showed
evidence of the relevant component operations even when isolated from an intact
embedding cell). The organelles were then structurally decomposed and the
subcomponents paired with subsequent component operations: the mitochondrion was
itself structurally decomposed and the major biochemical metabolic operations
subsequently localized within this structure, thus forming a link between cytology and
biochemistry. (Bechtel 2006, 190-222) Mechanistic research programmes thus tend to
move progressively from a higher level of mechanism (Craver 2007; Glennan 2005) to a
lower one and are in this sense reductionist. Levels of mechanisms are a type of
ontological level (cf. Mayntz 2004) or level in nature in that they should be thought of as
features of the world, not of our conceptualisation of it.2 The relation between a higher
and a lower level of mechanism is compositional: the lower level components of a
mechanism are its proper parts (and thus usually strictly smaller than the mechanism).
Parts are components only in relation to a specific behaviour that the embedding
mechanism exhibits and levels of mechanisms are thus local and system specific, not
global. Thus levels of mechanism do not order plain objects, but objects together with
their causal properties in relation to another (higher level) causal property. (Craver 2007,

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188-195) Consequently, the identity conditions of a given mechanism kind are often
thought to include the material basis realizing the causal functions of the component
parts. In Mario Bunge words (2004, 195), CCS-mechanisms are seen as stuff-dependent
and system-specific. Notice that this claim about the identity conditions of these
mechanism kinds is a hypothesis about a systematic connection between the types of
causal systems being studied and the amount of causal content put into concepts used in
reasoning about those systems, not a claim about any kind of necessary conceptual truth
or metaphysical thesis.

Decomposition and localization are most easily understood when the causal macro
properties of the system depend on the intrinsic and varied causal properties of spatially
bounded parts and their respective spatial organization and the causal flows between
them. In such a case, the components can meaningfully be individually investigated as
individual input-output systems even when isolated from the larger system in which they
are embedded. Paradigmatic examples of such decomposable mechanisms are pieces of
machinery and complex organisms with their functionally differentiated organs, cases in
which the spatial organisation of component parts is stable. When referring to
componential causal systems, the word mechanism is not a totally dead metaphor in that
individual parts serving different functions imply a design as in a mechanical contrivance
built for a specific purpose (cf. Harr 1972, 118; Ruse 2005).

However, there are also theories and explanations in the social sciences that rely on a
concept of mechanism as a componential causal system, but in the social sciences the

11

relevant form of localization of component functions is usually that of mapping

component operations onto specific social institutions. As examples of componential
social mechanisms, consider the different mechanisms through which central banks
influence the money supply: open-market operations, different interest rate instruments
(such as the discount rate for discount window borrowing) and the direct control of
reserve requirements. The central bank can buy or sell government securities to and from
commercial banks in open financial markets and thus influence banks reserves, which in
turn affect the amount of money in the economy. The central bank can also set the rate at
which banks can obtain additional reserves by directly borrowing from the central bank,
usually at a slightly higher rate than the short-term market rates. The central bank can
also directly change the ratio of reserves to granted loans that the commercial banks are
obliged to live by. Each one of these mechanisms can be localized to ostensibly different
parts of the financial system (open money markets, auctions and regulative legislation)
and a common part of the banking sector, namely the reserves. These institutional parts
are real components in the sense that they each possess stable clusters of properties, they
can be epistemically accessed by multiple independent means and they can be causally
intervened on in a relatively independent manner (cf. Craver 2007, 131). Together these
parts constitute the system-level property of the central banks influence on the money
supply. The important thing here is the mapping between the component operations and
parts, not where the parts are spatially located. Fittingly enough, the standard text-book
account of the bank-mediated money-multiplying mechanism between new money
issued by the government and the effective increase in liquidity in the economy, is also
one of Nancy Cartwrights examples of socioeconomic machines (1995).

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Many instances of the old structural functionalist sociology can also be seen as
employing a CCS view of society as a complex system and the associated functional
localization heuristic. In this case, causal functions contributing to or necessary for the
well-being of the society are localized to different social institutions and practices. The
focus is on the properties of a part (an institution) from the viewpoint of a hypothesized
need of the system (society). The organismic analogies of physiologists such as Walter
Cannon and Lawrence Henderson, according to whom governmental institutions could be
seen as organs keeping society in a societal homeostasis, were influential on later
functionalist thinking, such as the work of Talcott Parsons (Cross and Albury 1987).
This anatomical-physiological view was also expressed by people with markedly
different social views, such as Carl Menger and Friedrich Hayek, who both claimed in a
similar vein that social institutions should be seen as organs of an encompassing social
organism (Vromen 1995: 174-176). Analogies drawn with machines and organisms
immediately suggest the idea of an interconnected system of causally and ontologically
separable components with differing causal roles or functions.

What it means to explain something with a mechanism of a certain kind depends on the
identity conditions of the mechanism kind in question. As was suggested above, since the
CCS conception is associated with a progress of inquiry geared towards descending
levels of mechanisms, the identity conditions of CCS mechanisms are tied to the causal
nature of the components. The most straightforward and extreme case of a CCS
mechanism being the same as some other mechanism is when the constituent parts of

13

the mechanisms in the different contexts are themselves identically constituted. With
such strict identity conditions, the identity of a mechanism is truly stuff-dependent. Most
cases of ontological unity in physics are extreme cases of such identity in that there really
is only one relevant level of mechanism in which the unity resides (e.g. light and radiowaves are simply different kinds of behaviour of a qualitatively identical electromagnetic
field). Everything that is known about the isolated or shielded functioning of the
mechanism in the old context can now be transported to the new context. These include
things such as what happens if one removes, alters or re-configures the components,
introduces previously known interfering factors within the mechanism or alters the causal
inputs within their previously observed ranges. Whether what happens to the mechanism
under previously unobserved boundary conditions can be predicted depends on how well
the properties of the components are known.

However, in most cases, theoretically interesting applications of CCS concepts do not

literally concern such strict identity. The identity conditions for a CCS mechanism can be
loosened to include only the localizability of the component operations and the specific
organization of the parts realizing them. This, usually necessary, loosening of the identity
conditions opens the door to possible fallacies in reasoning with the concept in question.

4. Mechanisms as abstract forms of interaction

What about the mechanism of evolution by natural selection? Evolution by natural

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selection is usually functionally decomposed into variation, inheritance and selection.

None of these component operations can be straightforwardly localized into
subpopulations or parts of the ecosystem there are no natural bureaus of mutation or
quality control. When the functional decomposition is taken further, properties such as
fitness and the predation coefficient appear which seem to be candidates for localization
into the obvious component parts, namely, individual organisms. However, fitness is a
paradigm case for a relational concept that is often mistaken for an intrinsic property of a
single organism (Wimsatt 1980). In the case of the mechanism of selection, the causal
properties relevant for any sensible functional decomposition of the original mechanism
are essentially relational and cannot be neatly paired with what would seem to be its
constituent parts.

In many cases, the causal powers of the constituent parts of a complex system (defined
according to some pre-theoretical ontology) are already known and do not exhibit such
variety that could account for the causal roles required for the constitution of some
macro-property of interest (according to some preliminary functional decomposition). In
some branches of the social sciences, especially in mainstream economics, there seems to
be an overwhelming consensus on what the causal constituents of the macro behaviours
of interest are and even apparent certainty about their causal properties and behaviour;
the relevant or legitimate causal constituents are individuals, households or firms and
their only causally relevant behaviour is utility maximization. In contrast, the macro
behaviour of interest is dependent on the cumulative interactions and interdependencies
of the parts. For example, in a less than fully competitive market situation, the behaviour

15

of every single agent is in principle dependent on the actions of every other agent in the
system. However, for DL to be informative and tractable, the relevant properties of the
component parts should be analyzable in isolation of the embedding system. Although
component operations such as buying and selling seem to be straightforwardly
attributable to agents doing the buying and selling, the relevant properties (preferences,
strategies, aggregate demand and supply) of the agents are in reality essentially relational.
Therefore, in cases of non-decomposable systems (with respect to the causal properties
relevant for the functional decomposition), opening the black box responsible for some
observed behaviour cannot be a matter of pairing component operations with different
component parts (such as different groups of people) with varied intrinsic causal powers.
Decomposing the individual behavioural dispositions of constituent parts (such as
individual agents) into some set of lower level component operations (such as
psychological mechanisms) is also unhelpful for understanding the original macro
phenomenon, since the intrinsic causal properties of the parts are not of primary interest.
Many social systems have, from the social scientists point of view, a flat hierarchy
(Simon 1962) in that they are not made of a large variety of separate components with
intrinsically different causal properties. This means that going further down the levels of
mechanisms by examining the way the component parts are themselves causally
constituted may not be very informative about the behaviour of the system as a whole.

If pairing component operations with component parts appears to be a non-starter, some

other way of making sense of the realization of the component operations has to be
utilized. Abstraction is the procedure of intentionally omitting from the description of a

16

system some of its details and causal factors known to be relevant (Jones 2005). 3 In
contrast to reduction achieved by going down the levels of mechanisms, conceptual
abstraction takes place on a single level of mechanism: the level of abstraction is not
(necessarily) increased or decreased when the focus is shifted from a mechanism to its
constituent parts or vice versa. Generalization and understanding can be achieved by
mentally or virtually stripping from a particular causal system some of its causal
properties. Similarly, more abstract, and thus more general and tractable, mechanism
concepts can be generated from a more concrete description of a mechanism type by
omitting one or more of its characteristic causal properties. Renate Mayntz (2004) uses
the following sequence of mechanism concepts as an example of such a conceptual
hierarchy: positively path dependent technological innovation, increasing returns and
positive feedback. Each concept in the series has a wider scope of application and is
consequently less informative (implies less about the system to which the concept is
applied to) than the previous one. These mechanism kinds cannot be related as levels of
mechanisms: increasing returns is not a concrete component part of positive feedback or
vice versa. Each mechanism kind can also be realized by any number of different causal
bases. The identity of a mechanism is therefore not dependent on the nature of the causal
material, but on the form of the interaction between the constituent parts and the degree
of abstraction of the description of that interaction. Let us call such a mechanism concept
an abstract form of interaction (AFI). Some examples of such interaction forms are
different market forms, selection, crowding out, diffusion, non-intended segregation (as
in Thomas Schellings checkerboard-model), vacancy chains and self-fulfilling
prophecies.

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Notice that although the condition of near decomposability of the embedding system has
been dropped, AFI mechanisms are still compatible with M: they are structures
performing functions by virtue of their component parts, component operations, and their
organization, and the orchestrated functioning of these mechanisms is responsible for one
or more macro phenomena. The important difference with CCS mechanisms is that the
component operations cannot be straightforwardly mapped onto the intrinsic causal
properties of the component parts and that the full causal make-up of the parts is not
therefore included in the identity conditions of the mechanism concept. Notice also that
although abstraction itself takes place on a single level of mechanism, mechanistic
explanation with an AFI mechanism still explains macro-level properties in terms of the
behaviour of its micro-parts. Explanation through the use of an AFI-mechanism involves
going down levels of mechanisms and is in this sense reductionistic in the same way as
explanation with a CCS mechanism. 4 It is also important to keep in mind that AFI is a
label for a concept of mechanism; mechanisms themselves are always concrete things
existing in space and time and therefore cannot be abstract in any meaningful sense.

Since the identity of an AFI mechanism is dependent on its place in the hierarchy of
abstraction, and since especially in the rational choice orientated social sciences this
abstract definition usually has something to do with expectations and preferences,
regardless of whether they are actually causally realized by intentional action, it is
commonplace to speak of the mechanism as the logic of action or the logic of the
situation (cf. Popper 1957, 149). One does not often hear about the logic of the cell or

18

that of the combustion engine. Since the form of interaction is not in itself dependent on
the way the causally relevant properties of the component parts are constituted (i.e. on the
explanation of the relevant behavioural dispositions of the components), the same sample
models and hence the same mechanism schemata can be utilized in many different
kinds of contexts or domains. AFI mechanisms are usually thought of as not being stuff
dependent or system specific. Consider Harold Hotellings Main street duopoly
argument (Hotelling 1929). This simple model depicts two vendors on a street and seeks
to ascertain the optimal place for a vendor given that customers are distributed uniformly
along the street and that they always choose to deal with the nearest vendor. The answer
is that both vendors will be located in the middle (which incidentally happens to be the
socially worst outcome in terms of the average distance the customers need to travel).
The model has in different hands mutated from ice cream dealers on a beach to political
parties fighting for voters on a political left-right axis. Here the common abstract
interaction form, the common mechanism, is just a one-dimensional metric space that is
inhabited by two quasi-intentional agents strategically optimizing their share of the space.

Exactly what formal features of interaction are entailed by a given mechanism attribution
is by no means a settled matter. A good example of a mechanism concept that is used in
slightly different senses in different contexts is the market. Just think of what different
kinds of things describing some social constellation as a market can be expected to
entail. In different contexts, significant differences can be found in the explicitness and
efficiency of a common currency, property rights and the enforcement of contracts. Then
there are the various different market forms distinguished by specific trading procedures

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or imbalances in market power. Using the same word to refer to mechanism concepts of
differing levels of abstraction in different contexts is a common source of confusion.

If the complex system cannot be decomposed into chunks in such a way that the relevant
causal properties of the parts could be investigated in comfortable isolation, something
other than DL is evidently needed. Process tracing (as in Steel 2004) may not be a viable
empirical strategy either, since detailed investigation of individual interactions and causal
flows between constituent parts may obscure the bigger picture of the pattern of
interactions. AFI mechanisms often (but not always) concern the aggregation of simple
behaviours of some micro-units into a novel macro- or population-level phenomenon. 5
However, the number of different kinds of units is usually limited and the localization of
component operations to unit-kinds is not possible. 6 Functional localization to units or
groups of units is problematic precisely because the interaction is more important for the
macro behaviour of the population than the intrinsically explainable causal properties of
the units. Consider the well-known difficulties in trying to study empirically market
supply and demand separately, pointed out in a clear manner already by Trygve
Haavelmo (1944), among others. Similarly, natural selection is not, and should not be
studied as, a componential mechanism embedded in a decomposable complex system
(Skipper & Millstein 2005). Conceptualizing fitness as an intrinsic property of an
organism or competitiveness as an intrinsic property of a firm are typical examples of
conceptual errors resulting from attempts to conceive the mechanisms of the market or
selection as componential causal systems.

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If the system cannot be literally decomposed into functionally distinct components, then
one has to live with the functional or operational decomposition. However, the resultant
macro behaviour of multiple overlapping interaction forms is usually not transparent and
it is of dubious epistemic value to substitute an ill-understood model of the world for the
ill-understood world itself. This is why it makes sense to study simple constituent
submodels of different kinds of interaction forms, different AFI mechanisms, separately
and only when the behaviour of these simple models is well understood, should these be
combined to form models of greater empirical congruence. The models should be of
sufficient degree of abstraction in order for the relation between the causal properties
together with interaction of the micro-constituents and the macro-behaviour to remain
tractable. (Boyd & Richerson 1987) Thus we arrive at the family of research heuristics
characteristic of investigating AFI mechanisms: abstraction and simple-models strategy,
the staple of most model-based social science and much of model-based biology (see
especially Levins 1966).

What can be concluded from the hypothesis that a certain AFI-mechanism is operating in
some domain of phenomena? First, familiar patterns of inference derivable from the
essence (i.e. from the interaction form) of the mechanism can now be used in the new
domain. If some social constellation can be meaningfully seen as a competitive market,
the usual microeconomic conclusions concerning the pattern of social exchange and
allocation of whatever it is that counts as commodities can be expected to apply. If
some relation structurally resembles a principal-agent relationship, one begins to look for
signs of adverse selection and moral hazard. However, it is often tempting to assume that

21

if two systems exemplify a similar AFI-mechanism, the causal constituents of those

systems should also share other causal properties not directly related to the mechanism in
question. This opens the door for characteristic fallacies in reasoning with AFI
mechanisms.

5. Characteristic biases of mechanistic theorizing

Research heuristics or strategies are not logically bullet-proof inference schemas or

algorithms that guarantee a successful result. Instead, they are purpose relative
approaches or sets of tentative instructions that have proven to be useful in some limited
problem area, most of the time. Heuristics can lead to wrong results or dead ends, but
when they do, they usually do it in a way that can be anticipated beforehand. Heuristics
have characteristic biases that one should be aware of when using them. As both concepts
of mechanism correspond to a particular research heuristic and heuristics always bring
with them a set of characteristic biases, we may expect that modelling and reasoning with
CCS and AFI mechanism concepts are prone to different kinds of characteristic mistakes.

Biases inherent in the application of mechanism concepts and associated research

strategies are typical biases of reductionistic research strategies, which have been
explored in depth by William Wimsatt (1980; 2006; 2007). Here it should be noted that
reductionism is not an evaluative term. Even though reductionist research heuristics have
characteristic biases, they are often the best or only means of scientific progress one

22

just needs to be careful when using them. Most importantly, we often learn the most
valuable lessons when we realise why some reductionistic heuristic fails in a given case.

Some reductionistic biases are associated with both mechanism concepts. For example,
any mechanism attribution requires that a boundary between a system and its
environment has to be drawn. However, the original system-level explanandum may in
the end turn out to be a relational property and looking exclusively within the system for
the explanatory mechanism may thus be futile. Use of either of the mechanism concepts
can also lead one to forget that the way the system/environment boundary is drawn is
itself only a tentative theoretical hypothesis and interactions not respecting this boundary
may be easily missed. However, there are also biases that are specific to the two distinct
mechanism concepts.

5.1. Biases characteristic to the CCS concept

Since the characteristic property of CCS mechanisms is the near decomposability of the
embedding system and the associated possibility of the localisation of component
functions, characteristic biases of CCS mechanism concepts usually result in what
Wimsatt calls functional localisation fallacies. Sticking too closely to the pre-theoretical
ontology of the whole and its component parts may hinder the formulation and study of
properties and interaction at some other level of organization. For example, too eager an
application of DL can lead to treating relational properties as if they were monadic or

23

intrinsic - a necessary condition for the localization of component operations into

component parts. An important example of such a localization fallacy in the social
sciences is the assumption (often taken as the default) that the suboptimal performance of
an organisation is due to the intrinsic properties of a particular member or class of
members. For example, corruption leads to suboptimal behaviour at the system level (e.g.
bad governance) and is often fought against by trying to change the properties of the
malfunctioning parts (corrupt officials). This can be done, for example, by increasing
their pay checks, by increasing the potential cost of getting caught or by replacing
officials with new ones. However, in many cases, corruption is structurally embedded in
the system in ways that force the holders of the positions to succumb to corruption no
matter what their intrinsic properties are. (Epstein 2008)

The reverse form of the function localization fallacy is the reification of a component
operation that is dependent on the causal contribution of some component part as an
intrinsic functional property of that component part. The fact that some aspect of
systems macro behaviour may be present or absent whenever some component part is in
operation or not, does not yet mean that that aspect or component operation can be
localized as a property of that component part. Prominent examples of this fallacy are the
attribution of cognitive functions to brain areas solely on the basis of observed effects of
brain lesions and the attribution of functions for DNA sequences on the basis of a
correlation between mutations and phenotypic abnormalities. The tendency of treating
apparent component parts as nearly decomposable and ignoring their interaction leads
easily to mistaken attributions of truly systemic properties to component parts.

24

Similar mistakes can also be made from the bottom up by assuming that the properties
of isolated structural parts are context-insensitive or lack significant interaction effects
and can thus be straightforwardly combined to explain or predict a system-level
phenomenon (so called atomistic fallacy). Frequency dependence of causal effects is
probably the simplest case: increasing the wealth of an individual is a reasonably
effective strategy of increasing his or her subjective well-being or happiness, but
simultaneously increasing the wealth of a group of people may not have a similar
aggregate effect, since the feeling of happiness is usually dependent on ones relative
position to ones peers. Satisfaction with the pre-theoretical ontology and a simple
mapping between the functions and the structural parts might also mean that once a
function has successfully been attributed to a part, the search for other possible functions
for that particular part or possible back-up mechanisms for that particular function are
ignored. (Wimsatt 2007, Appendix B)

5.2. Biases characteristic of the AFI concept

The first characteristic problem with AFI concepts is that it is often the case that the
mechanism concept cannot be legitimately used in the domain in question with the same
level of abstraction as in some other, more familiar, setting and that its use may not
therefore allow similar inferences in the different contexts. The uses of the concept of
market mechanism in different strands of economics-inspired social science, such as the

25

political market for votes and favours (e.g. Downs 1957), the markets for religious
services (e.g. Young 1997) and the different markets in science (e.g. Mirowski and Sent
2002), offer a plethora of examples of this danger. Although there might be some
common core of the concept of market discernible in these diverse fields, free exchange
of commodities between vendors and customers mediated by some form of currency,
one usually cannot derive and explain any macro explananda from this common core
alone. In very few of these markets can anything like a pareto-efficient market
equilibrium be expected to obtain and therefore the quick inference from the same
mechanism, in this case only the most abstract and austere meaning of the market, to
the same effects would be erroneous. Instead, the important explanatory factors most
often are institutional or psychological factors that differ from case to case (Lehtinen and
Kuorikoski 2007).

In contrast to CCS mechanisms, the identity conditions of which usually include causal
details of their constituent parts, the use of an AFI mechanism concept only facilitates
inferences from the interaction form of the constituents, not from any other causal
properties of the constituents. It is a common fallacy to infer from the use of a certain
AFI concept that the constituents of the system so described have other causal features
common with some other similar, often exemplary or paradigmatic, AFI mechanism. This
fallacy simply stretches an analogy or metaphor too far. For example, although ideas,
customs or fads can perhaps be seen as subject to a form of cultural selection analogous
to natural selection, it cannot be inferred from this alone that these memes have any
relevant causal properties in common with genes (evolutionary economists certainly are

26

not immune to this fallacy, see Vromen 1995). Similarly, if the assumption of optimizing
behaviour is in some context argued for on the basis of some selection mechanism (only
profit maximizing firms stay in the market), then one should not expect any such
responses from the system that would require that the constituent parts actually optimized
intentionally.

The third danger or bias inherent in the use of AFI-mechanism concepts is that since the
mechanism schema necessarily abstracts from the causal details of the investigated
system, the attribution of a particular concept to the system may obscure the fact that the
system may have other important causal properties besides the behaviour resulting from
the particular mechanism. Describing some system as a particular AFI-mechanism
always, but often implicitly, shifts the explanatory focus and may thus cause myopic
research practice. This worry is particularly pertinent in the case of attempted unification
via a set of similar mechanism schemas, since such unification also means that the
questions asked in the unified or conquered field change. One instance of such an attempt
at unification is the use of economic models of rational choice in the social sciences,
which is often explicitly argued for on the basis of some intrinsic virtues of unification
and mechanistic explanation (e.g. Lazear 2000, Mki 2001). Not surprisingly, rational
choice based political science has been accused of shifting the focus of research from
historical and process-specific issues to less important and highly generic and abstract
systemic properties of voting systems (Green and Shapiro 1994).

27

6. Conclusions

From the core concept of mechanism, more or less captured in M, there is an interesting
further distinction to be made corresponding to two distinct ways of investigating and
theorizing about causal systems. If the system in which the putative mechanism is
embedded is nearly decomposable into distinct components with intrinsically constituted
and diverse causal properties, one can try to localize and map the sub-operations of some
macro behaviour of the system onto a set of these causal components. This set of causal
components is then the mechanism responsible for the behaviour in question.
Paradigmatic examples of such causal componential system can be found in machines
and organisms, but an analogous conception can also be discerned in some social science
contexts as well. In the latter case, the relevant localization is not straightforwardly
spatial but instead a localization of a component operation into a specific social
institution.

If the causal properties relevant for some macro behaviour cannot be localized neatly
onto the constituents of the system (defined according to some reasonable ontology), but
instead the most relevant causal properties are relational and emerge from the interaction
of the constituents, then the best bet is to ignore some causal detail by abstraction and
then try to model some of the component operations in a tractable manner. In this case
the deeper causal nature of the constituents is not as important as the abstract form of the
interaction between them. This is why it is the latter that is often thought of as

28

constituting the identity of the mechanism responsible for the macro behaviour in
question.

The general conception of what a mechanism is dictates what it is to be a mechanism of a

certain kind. Since CCS mechanisms are associated with heuristics geared towards
opening localized component black-boxes, the identity conditions of CCS mechanisms
are dependent on the causal nature of the constituent parts. Correspondingly, since all
lower-level causal details are not that interesting with respect to behaviour realized by
AFI mechanisms, the identity conditions of AFI mechanisms usually only include the
form of the causal interaction, not the exact causal nature of the interactors. This is a
claim about a tendency to conceptualize certain kinds of systems in a certain way, not a
conceptual a priori necessity or a metaphysical thesis about the fundamental ontology of
mechanisms. As a consequence of this, the distinction presented here is not always clearcut and nothing prevents combining these concepts in a model, theory or research
programme. For example, the open market operation mechanism of interest rate control
includes an AFI mechanism, namely, the financial market.

What one takes to be the identity conditions of a mechanism of a certain kind dictates the
way one explains, investigates and reasons about the systems to which the mechanism
concept is applied. Thus the distinction made here will clarify and make sense of some of
the differences and peculiarities in mechanistic research programmes in different
scientific fields and domains of application. Most importantly, since the two concepts
correspond roughly to two different sets of research strategies or heuristics, the

29

identification of a mechanism concept used in some setting as a CCS or an AFI type of

concept should point to the possibility of characteristic errors resulting from the biases of
the associated research heuristics.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the workshop Mechanisms in the
Sciences: Concepts, Discovery, Explanation, University of Helsinki, August 2007. I
would like to thank all the discussants and the members of the Philosophy of Science
Group for their comments. Special acknowledgements go to Peter Hedstrm, Daniel Steel
and Petri Ylikoski for their detailed and insightful comments. I also owe thanks to the
three anonymous referees of this journal for their valuable suggestions and to the Finnish
Cultural Foundation for generously supporting this research.

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1

This is one sense of near decomposability in Simons classic article. I am not going deeper into exegetics
here in trying to question whether there is a singular concept of near decomposability behind the different
definitions and uses in the article (such as the near decomposability of a flow matrix or the independence of
long term aggregate dynamics with respect to short term component dynamics).
2
Craver uses the term levels of mechanism to distinguish it from other kinds of ontological levels, such as
mereological levels or levels of aggregation. Renate Mayntz uses the more ambiguous term of ontological
level in order to draw a contrast to levels of abstraction, which order representations, not things in the
world.
3
With abstraction, I refer to both vertical and horizontal isolation, as discussed by Uskali Mki (1992).
Horizontal isolation means completely omitting or excluding some causal factors or features from a model
and vertical isolation means simplifying but still retaining some causal feature by stripping away
particularities (e.g. moving from a parametric to an unspecified functional form). Although Mki
characterizes the latter as vertical, both forms of theoretical isolation remain within the original level of
mechanism.
4
AFI concepts can, and often do, contain references to causal factors in multiple levels of mechanisms.
Many mechanism types in the social sciences refer simultaneously to groups, agents, preferences etc. The
constellations of causal properties picked out by AFI concepts are thus examples of entities that Wimsatt
describes as being in between levels (Wimsatt 2007, 217). The use of AFI-concept is also not necessarily
linked to methodological individualism; AFI-concepts could be applied to the interaction of social units of
meso- or macro-level. However, it should be stressed that these kinds of spatial metaphors can be
extremely misleading: mechanisms themselves do not reside in any particular level of reality (see also
Craver 2007, chapter 5). Mechanisms are constellations of causally interacting objects and are thus always
simply located in (the one and only) space-time.
5
Although many seem to treat it as such, aggregation in itself can hardly be seen as a type of mechanism.

35

As an anonymous referee correctly pointed out, sometimes heterogeneity can itself be a causally relevant
property (selection is a good example). However, in most cases what is relevant is the heterogeneity itself
(a relational or system-level property), not which particular units have which particular properties.

36