Skip to content
University of Maryland LibrariesDigital Repository at the University of Maryland
    • Login
    View Item 
    •   DRUM
    • Theses and Dissertations from UMD
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   DRUM
    • Theses and Dissertations from UMD
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Mechanism and Chance: Toward an Account of Stochastic Mechanism for the Life Sciences

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    DesAutels_umd_0117E_15463.pdf (1.582Mb)
    No. of downloads: 362

    Date
    2014
    Author
    DesAutels, Lane Thomas
    Advisor
    Darden, Lindley
    DRUM DOI
    https://doi.org/10.13016/M2259D
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    In this dissertation, my aim is to develop some important new resources for explaining probabilistic phenomena in the life sciences. In short, I undertake to articulate and defend a novel account of stochastic mechanism for grounding probabilistic generalizations in the life sciences. To do this, I first offer some brief remarks on the concept of mechanism in the history of philosophical thought. I then lay out some examples of probabilistic phenomena in biology for which an account of stochastic mechanism seems explanatorily necessary and useful: synaptic transmission in the brain, protein synthesis, DNA replication, evolution by natural selection, and Mendelian inheritance. Next, I carefully examine the concept of regularity as it applies to mechanisms--building on a recent taxonomy of the ways mechanisms may (or may not) be thought to behave regularly. I then employ this taxonomy to sort out a recent debate in the philosophy of biology: is natural selection regular enough to count as a mechanism? I argue that, by paying attention to the forgoing taxonomy, natural selection can be seen to meet the regularity requirement just fine. I then turn my attention to the question of how we should understand the chance we ascribe to stochastic mechanisms. To do this, I form a list of desiderata that any account of stochastic mechanism must meet. I then explore how mechanisms fit with several of the going philosophical accounts of chance: subjectivism, frequentism (both actual and hypothetical), Lewisian best-systems, and propensity. I argue that neither subjectivism, frequentism, nor best-system-style accounts of chance will meet all of the proposed desiderata, but some version of propensity theory can. Borrowing from recent propensity accounts of biological fitness and drift, I then go on to explore the prospects for developing a propensity interpretation of stochastic mechanism (PrISM) according to which propensities are (i) metaphysically analyzable and operationally quantifiable via a function of probability-weighted ways a mechanism might fire and (ii) not causally efficacious but nonetheless explanatorily useful. By appealing to recent analyses of deterministic and emergent chance, I argue further that this analysis need not be vulnerable to the threat of metaphysical determinism.
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/1903/15748
    Collections
    • Philosophy Theses and Dissertations
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations

    DRUM is brought to you by the University of Maryland Libraries
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7011 (301)314-1328.
    Please send us your comments.
    Web Accessibility
     

     

    Browse

    All of DRUMCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    My Account

    LoginRegister
    Pages
    About DRUMAbout Download Statistics

    DRUM is brought to you by the University of Maryland Libraries
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7011 (301)314-1328.
    Please send us your comments.
    Web Accessibility