The emphasis on the organization of entities and their activities and interactions has been labeled one of the most distinct contributions of mechanistic philosophy. In this paper I discuss the manner in which the organization of entities and their activities and interactions participates in bringing about phenomena. I present a well-known example from molecular biology-the functioning of the genetic switch in phage lambda-and discuss Marco J. Nathan's notion of causation by concentration. Nathan introduces causation by concentration to account for the irreducible causal role that the concentration ratio between two kinds of proteins possesses in the genetic switch mechanism in phage lambda. I discuss what the irreducibility of this causal role amounts to and provide a mechanistic interpretation of Nathan's causation by concentration; that is, I explain this irreducible causal role as one organizational feature of this mechanism. The paper concludes that biological mechanisms need a causal pluralist framework [similar to Glennan's account in (2009), (2010) and (2017) but slightly modified] where organizational features such as the concentration ratio have a causally relevant role, yet all the causally productive relations occur at the level of entities or individuals.

中文翻译：

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生物机制中因果关系的形而上学：以λ噬菌体基因开关为例

强调实体的组织及其活动和相互作用已被标记为机械哲学最独特的贡献之一。在本文中，我讨论了实体的组织及其活动和相互作用参与产生现象的方式。我提出了一个来自分子生物学的著名例子——噬菌体 lambda 中基因开关的功能——并讨论了 Marco J. Nathan 的浓度因果关系的概念。Nathan通过浓度引入因果关系来解释两种蛋白质之间的浓度比在噬菌体λ的遗传转换机制中所具有的不可还原的因果作用。我讨论了这种因果作用的不可还原性，并提供了对内森通过专注的因果关系的机械解释；也就是说，我将这种不可简化的因果作用解释为该机制的一个组织特征。该论文的结论是，生物学机制需要一个因果多元主义框架[类似于 Glennan 在 (2009)、(2010) 和 (2017) 中的解释，但略有修改] 其中组织特征如集中度具有因果关系的作用，但所有的因果关系生产关系发生在实体或个人的层面。