Elementos que favorecen la adopción de libre acceso

Very recently, Baumgartner, Casini and Krickel have developed together another proposal that combines some of their previous ideas and tackles some of the problems I have discussed above. Starting from Baumgartner and Casini’s account, the authors recognise that only when an intervention causes simultaneous changes both in the phenomenon-to-be-explained and in one of its parts, such changes can be considered as revealing of constitution22_.

In the horizontal surgicality approach proposed by Baumgartner, Casini and Krickel, this observation is associated with the assumption that it is possible to find constitutive parts of a phenomenon on every possible lower level without gaps between levels. By considering the example of the orchestra playing Ravel’s Boléro, such an assumption would require that an intervention on the orchestra changes not only the behaviour of one of its players, but also one of the constitutive parts of the player (such as his respiratory system), and other constitutive parts in lower levels (such as the pulmonary circulation). Together, such ideas are used to develop the principle of universal constitution (Baumgartner et al., 2018, p. 5), that can be spelt out in this way:

22 _{Simultaneously changes in parts and phenomena are claimed by the authors to be non-causal because}

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Universal constitution. Every (change in a) state of any (non-fundamental)

phenomenon S’s Ψ-ing is necessarily and simultaneously realised by (a change in) the state of at least one constituent X’s Φ-ing of S’s Ψ-ing on every lower level, such that S’s Ψ-ing ≠ X’s Φ-ing.

The requirement of simultaneous changes rules out the possibility of recognising sterile effects as constitutive parts since producing such effects would require time. Furthermore, producing simultaneous changes in the phenomenon-to-be-explained and one of its parts through an intervention would entail either that the intervention can change both the phenomenon and the part along a single causal path (I→ S’s Ψ-ing → X’s Φ-ing), or that the intervention changes them through two different causal pathways, and it is consequently a common cause of the phenomenon-to-be-explained and one of its parts (S’s Ψ-ing  I → X’s Φ-ing). Since the possibility of a single causal path is ruled out by the fact that there cannot be causal relationships between a phenomenon and its constitutive parts, the only possible explanation of simultaneous changes is that the responsible interventions are fat-handed (Baumgartner et al., 2018, p. 5).

Baumgartner, Casini and Krickel add a further requirement for constitutive relevance: every fat-handed intervention is a direct cause of at most one behaviour on every level lower than S’s Ψ-ing. In other words, it is impossible that an intervention on S’s Ψ-ing changes simultaneously both X1’s Φ1-ing and X2’s Φ2-ing, or X1’s Φ1-ing and X1’s Φ2-

ing that can be found at the same level (for this reason, interventions are called surgical). This requirement rules out the possibility that the intervention is just a common cause changing the phenomenon-to-be-explained and an acting part that is not constitutively relevant. Indeed, every time we intervene on a constitutive mechanism we necessarily change both the phenomenon and the behaviour of a constitutive acting part of the mechanism. Therefore, if the intervention does not change only the acting part under study X1’s Φ1-ing, but also X1’s Φ2-ing or another acting entity at the same level, X2, we

can establish that X1’s Φ1-ingis not constitutive of the phenomenon.

Together, such requirements form the ‘horizontal surgicality account’, according to which I is a horizontally surgical intervention variable on a part X’s Φ-ing with respect to S’s Ψ-ing iff:

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

3) I is a direct cause of at most one behaviour on every level lower than S’s Ψ-ing. The authors, finally, claim that X’s Φ-ing is a constitutive part of S’s Ψ-ing iff23:

1) The instances of X’s Φ-ing are spatiotemporal parts of instances of S’s Ψ-ing;

2) There exists a (possible) horizontally surgical intervention I on X’s Φ-ing with respect to S’s Ψ-ing that causes changes in both X’s Φ-ing and S’s Ψ-ing.

7.3.3.1 A solution to the problem of multiple realizations

Even if the authors did not discuss this aspect, the recognition that constitutive relations, unlike causal relations, do not require time, is the key point that helps us to solve the problem of multiple realizations. Let us consider again the example of the orchestra playing Ravel’s Boléro. If during the concert we change the trumpet player’s behaviour by tying his arms, we will change simultaneously (even if just for a very short time) the behaviour of the orchestra. After a very short moment, the substitute will start playing to replace the behaviour of the tied trumpet player, and the orchestra’s behaviour will return to the condition it had before the intervention. In such a situation, the causal relationship between the behaviour of the first trumpet player and the substitute will take time. Figure 32 helps to clarify this point: if we use Krickel’s style of representing constitutive mechanisms, it is possible todistinguish between different temporal intervals (t1 and t2)

and between different spatiotemporal parts of the phenomenon. We can identify the spatiotemporal part X1 characterised by the behaviour Φ1, and the spatiotemporal part X2

characterised by the behaviour Φ1 that could replace X1’s Φ1-ing. Let us imagine we

intervene on X1’s Φ1-ing at t1 with respect toS’s Ψ-ing, immediately X1 and S will change

their behaviours Φ1 and Ψ. After that, at t2, X2 will change (activate) its behaviour Φ1 to

replace the (identical) behaviour of X1 at t1.

What follows is that, if we require that the intervention I causes simultaneous changes in the phenomenon-to-be-explained and the constitutive part, we will be able to identify constitutive parts even in cases of multiple realizations.

23 _{Baumgartner, Casini and Krickel formalised their proposal differently, for further detail see Baumgartner,}

179 Figure 32. A case of multiple realization. If we consider the mechanism

S, we can distinguish between the spatiotemporal part X1 that

simultaneously changes behaviour due to the intervention I at t1, and the

spatiotemporal part X2 whose activity Φ1 is caused by X1’sΦ1-ingat t2.

7.3.3.2 Two limitations: parthood and dispositional phenomena

There are two conceptual limitations in the account proposed by Baumgartner, Casini and Krickel.

The first limitation that can be found is that, like in their previous proposals, the horizontal surgicality account requires that the constitutively relevant entities of the mechanism are

physical parts of the mechanism. There are at least two scenarios, however, in which this

requirement cannot be met even if the entities under study are constitutive of the phenomenon-to-be-explained.

In the first scenario there are clear physical entities that can be considered parts of the mechanism exhibiting the phenomenon-to-be-explained, but some constitutive entities are external to the mechanism. An example is the action potential mechanism exhibiting the phenomenon of muscle contraction, that comprises also an external neuronal signal (see Kaiser & Krickel, 2016). This situation is not new in the philosophical debate: Craver himself recognised that mechanisms “frequently transgress compartmental [physical] boundaries” (Craver, 2007, p. 141). In such cases, in order to claim that these external entities are parts of the mechanism, we have to modify the ways in which the physical or spatial boundaries of the constitutive mechanism are drawn.

The second scenario is more complex and involves a phenomenon exhibited by a mechanism that is not a physical object. Above it has been suggested that clear examples of social constitutive mechanisms can be found in the discussions on social organisations,

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in general defined as the articulations “of different parts which perform various functions” (Ogburn & Nimkoff, 1964, p. 9). Such articulations are not necessarily physical objects: in several situations social organisations are abstract concepts that can be understood only by determining which entities should be considered as components.

An example often used to clarify this observation is the social organisation that we call ‘family’. Although there are some rules to establish whether someone is a family member (we can examine whether the persons are linked by blood, marriage or adoption), the idea about what individuals constitute a family varies across the world. There are societies in which the concept of family is nuclear: only parents and children are members of a family. Other societies extend the boundaries and consider also other relatives as members of the family. Since a family is not a physical object, the boundaries are invisible and contextual: if a person is asked to mention the individuals who are parts of her family, the answer will depend on the concept of family she has. The direct consequence of this observation is that, in some cases, researchers are required to establish by definition (analytically) the boundaries of the mechanism, and their decisions are likely to be influenced by cultural and subjective considerations (this point will be discussed in detail in section 7.6). In such situations, it is impossible to establish definitively whether an entity is or is not a mechanism’s part.

Overall, hence, the parthood condition can cause conceptual and methodological problems when used for constitutive relevance because:

1) When the mechanism at the macro level is a physical mechanism, it could happen that external entities, not belonging to that physical mechanism, exhibit activities constitutive of the phenomenon-to-be-explained, as for the action potential mechanism.

2) In the social sciences it is likely to find situations in which the mechanism exhibiting the phenomenon at the macro level is not a physical object with well- defined boundaries, but an intangible mechanism whose boundaries are determined analytically (by definition), like in the case of the family.

There is a further limitation of the horizontal surgicality account: like in the previous proposals, this account does not allow for constitutive mechanisms with a dispositional behaviour (a detailed discussion has been provided in section 7.3.2.4).

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