Elementos que dificultan la adopción del acceso abierto

In this section, I shall propose some changes to the horizontal surgicality account both to tackle the conceptual limitations described above and to offer a philosophical proposal with as few formalisations as possible. To begin with, the parthood problem can be easily addressed by removing the first requirement for constitutive relevance, namely that the instances of X’s Φ-ing are spatiotemporal parts of instances of S’s Ψ-ing, and by talking about constitutive relevant entities.

Furthermore, to make explicit that we are considering both actualised and dispositional phenomena, it is possible to modify the formalisation proposed by Baumgartner, Casini and Krickel in their various account by using ‘X’s Φ-able’ to refer to the entity X characterised by either an actualised or dispositional causal capacity Φ, and ‘S’s Ψ-able’ to symbolise the potential or actualised phenomenon Ψ characterising S.

When the phenomena-to-be-explained are dispositional, a new problem arises. Let us imagine that we have the orchestra ready to play Ravel’s Boléro, with the trumpet player and his substitute. In a first scenario, illustrated in Figure 33(a), we intervene on the trumpet player X1’s Φ1-able by tying his arms, and we do not realise that there is a second

trumpet player X2’s Φ1-able ready to transform his potential behaviour Φ1 into an actual

behaviour when needed. In such a situation, we might conclude that our intervention does change simultaneously both the potential behaviour of the trumpet player X1’s Φ1-able

and the potential behaviour of the orchestra S’s Ψ-able (in other words, the trumpet player and the orchestra would lose their casual capacity). In a second scenario, described in Figure 33(b) we are aware of the presence of the second trumpet player X2’s Φ1-able. We

intervene on the potential behaviour of the first trumpet player X1’s Φ1-able but we realise

that this intervention does not change simultaneously also the causal capacity of the orchestra because the substitute X2’s Φ1-able can transform his potential behaviour Φ1

into an actual behaviour when needed (when the orchestra starts performing Ravel’s Boléro). In this second case, the intervention looks like a bottom-up intervention. In the former scenario, we would arrive at the right conclusion (X1’s Φ1-able is

constitutive of S’s Ψ-able) ignoring the presence of X2’s Φ1-able. In the second scenario,

we would conclude that X1’s Φ1-able is not constitutive of S’s Ψ-able. In both cases,

however, the situation would be very different if we intervened once the behaviour Ψ was actualised. Indeed, regardless of whether we are aware of the presence of X2’s Φ1-able or

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not, an intervention on the acting mechanism S’s Ψ-able would change simultaneously both the actualised X1’s Φ1-able and S’s Ψ-able, as illustrated in Figure 32 above, while

the ‘activation’ of X2’s Φ1-able would take time. In other words, when the phenomenon-

to-be-explained is dispositional, the problem of multiple realizations can put our conclusion about the constitutive relevance of an entity on the wrong track. When the phenomenon-to-be-explained is actualised, instead, we do not have to worry about the problem of multiple realizations.

Figure 33. An extended horizontal surgicality account. In (a) the S is just a dispositional behaviour and we do not see X2’s Φ1-able. When we

intervene on X1’s Φ1-able, consequently, we think that we change

simultaneously also the potential behaviour Ψ of the orchestra S. In (b), we know that there is X2’s Φ1-able, consequently we realise that our

intervention on X1’s Φ1-able is just a bottom-up intervention because

the potential behaviour Ψ of the orchestra S is not changed.

Consequently, this issue can be solved by changing the second requirement in the following way: if the behaviour Ψ of S were actualised, there would exist a (possible)

horizontally surgical intervention I on X’s Φ-able with respect to S’s Ψ-able that would cause changes in both X’s Φ-able and S’s Ψ-able.

This solution allows researchers to clearly determine if an entity is constitutive of a mechanism when the mechanism is exhibiting the phenomenon-to-be-explained, while it can be used as a thought experiment with mechanisms characterised by dispositional behaviours. Overall, the changes I have proposed so far lead to the following extended horizontal surgicality account:

I is a horizontally surgical intervention variable on X’s Φ-able with respect to S’s Ψ-able iff:

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2) If I causes changes in both X’s Φ-able and S’s Ψ-able, these changes occur simultaneously;

3) I is a direct cause of at most one behaviour on every level lower than S’s Ψ-able. X’s Φ-able is constitutive of S’s Ψ-able iff:

1) X is an entity with the dispositional or actualised behaviour Φ;

2) If the behaviour Ψ of S were actualised, there would exist a (possible) horizontally surgical intervention I on X’s Φ-able with respect to S’s Ψ-able that would cause changes in both X’s Φ-able and S’s Ψ-able.