Beate Krickel
2018
The Mechanical World
The aim of this book is to develop a metaphysical account of mechanisms. So far, the new mechanistic literature has mainly focused on epistemic issues such as scientific explanation, scientific discovery, and causal modelling. This book takes a difference stance: I will investigate in which sense mechanisms are things in the world; what our ontology has to look like in order for mechanisms to exist, and its implications for causation, levels, and part–whole relations; and how metaphysics and scientific explanation relate to each other. I will discuss whether the metaphysics of mechanisms is reductionist, and whether it leaves room for the causal efficacy of higher-level phenomena. Finally, I hope to provide a starting point for new projects on issues in the philosophy of mind, such as non-reductive physicalism as a solution to the mind–body problem.
"The Mechanical World is an intellectually challenging book offering a particularly clear and rigorous discussion of some very important issues in contemporary philosophy of science. I am convinced philosophers and philosophically minded scientists will greatly enjoy and appreciate it." (Tudor Baetu in History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences)
"[E]ine ausgesprochen hilfreiche Lektüre, die nicht nur professionellen Philosophen, sondern auch Studierenden eine umfassende und zugleich zugängliche Einführung in die mechanistische Debatte und ihre metaphysischen Annahmen bietet." (Jens Harbecke in Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 2021)
weitere Rezension: Stuart Glennan in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
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