Mechanism, interventionism, and causation in structuralism

Abstract

Recently, Jiang (2024; 2025a) has proposed a novel processual structuralist framework that integrates structuralism (ontic structural realism) with processualism for the metaphysics of biology. In this paper, I further develop the account and shows how it sheds new light on key debates within structuralism and the metaphysics of causation, advancing current discussions in these areas. In particular, I focus on two further implications of this framework: First, drawing inspiration from certain new mechanists (e.g., Illari and Williamson 2013; Krickel 2018), I argue that the framework naturally gives rise to an activity-based account of causation within structuralism, thereby addressing a gap in the literature on structuralism and causation in the special sciences. Although some scholars have explored the relationship between structuralism and causation, particularly in the Special Topical Collection of Synthese (Hüttemann 2017), few have specifically addressed how structuralism might accommodate causation within the special sciences. Here, I show how this novel structuralist account of causation advances beyond previous attempts, such as those by Ladyman and Ross (2007) and French (2014). Furthermore, I argue that this activity-based account of causation offers a novel metaphysical foundation for the interventionist account, filling in another previously underexplored limitation in the existing literature. Interventionism, while widely adopted in the philosophy of science, has often been criticized for its lack of explicit metaphysical grounding (e.g., Kuorikoski 2014). By grounding causation in the activities and processes characterized within a structuralist framework, the account offers the ontological basis that interventionism requires. In doing so, it contributes to the broader philosophical task of furnishing a robust metaphysical framework for interventionism.