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16557 | Salmon's mechanisms are processes and interactions, involving marks, or conserved quantities |
Full Idea: For Salmon mechanisms are composed of processes and interactions. The interactions are identified in terms of transmitted marks and statistical relations, or (more recently) exchanges of conserved quantities. | |||
From: report of Wesley Salmon (Causality and Explanation [1998], 3.1) by Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C - Thinking About Mechanisms 3.1 | |||
A reaction: They say that Salmon has too little to say about the activities that constitute a mechanism. A 'mark' doesn't sound too promising, but I quite like the exchange of conserved quantities, which gets into the guts of what is going on. |