This paper explores some issues concerning how we should think about interventions (in the sense of unconfounded manipulations) of "upper-level" variables in contexts in which these supervene on but are not identical with lower-level realizers. It is argued that we should reject the demand that interventions on upper-level variables must leave their lower-level realizers unchanged– a requirement that within an interventionist framework would imply that upper-level variables are causally inert. Instead an intervention on an upper-level variable at the same time changes its lower-level realizer in a way that is consistent with the change in the upper- level variable. The lower-level realizer should not be regarded as a potential "confounder" of upper-level causal relations, as in "exclusionist" arguments. Several proposals for making this precise are considered and several pro-exclusionist arguments are criticized.

本文探讨了一些问题，这些问题涉及我们应该如何考虑对“上层”变量的干预（在无混淆的操作的意义上），在这些变量与下层实现者相辅相成但又不相同的情况下。有人认为，我们应该拒绝对上层变量的干预必须保持其下层实现者不变的要求——在干预主义框架内，这一要求意味着上层变量是因果惰性的。相反，对上层变量的干预同时改变了它的下层实现者，其方式与上层变量的变化一致。下层实现者不应被视为上层因果关系的潜在“混杂者”，就像在“排他主义”论点中那样。