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What Is a Mechanism? A Counterfactual Account
Abstract
This paper presents a counterfactual account of what a mechanism is. Mechanisms consist of parts, the behavior of which conforms to generalizations that are invariant under interventions, and which are modular in the sense that it is possible in principle to change the behavior of one part independently of the others. Each of these features can be captured by the truth of certain counterfactuals.
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Citations
Cited by
Activities and Causation: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Mechanisms
Machamer, P. (2004) · International Studies in the Philosophy of Science · doi:10.1080/02698590412331289242 · Cited by 237
Theory and Contrastive Explanation in Ethnography
Lichterman, P., & Reed, I. A. (2015) · Sociological Methods & Research · doi:10.1177/0049124114554458 · Cited by 71
Singular and general causal relations: A mechanist perspective
Glennan, S. (2011) · Causality in the Sciences · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199574131.003.0037 · Cited by 54
Analogue Computation and Representation
Maley, C. J. (2023) · The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science · doi:10.1086/715031 · Cited by 52
Metadata
- Authors
- Woodward, J.
- Venue
- Philosophy of Science
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2002-09
- Volume
- 69
- Issue
- S3
- Pages
- S366-S377
- ISSN
- 0031-8248 (ISSN-L)
- 1539-767X
- OpenAlex
- W2123491583
- Cited by
- 355
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 84.89
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: What Is a Mechanism? A Counterfactual Account. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/341859
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- Woodward, J. (2002). What Is a Mechanism? A Counterfactual Account. Philosophy of Science. https://doi.org/10.1086/341859
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
