Causal mediation mechanisms are well supported by available experimental evidence and provide a practicable way to reductive physicalism. According to the causal mediation account of mechanistic explanation, descriptions as diverse as ‘black-box’ phenomena, mechanistic sketches and schemas mixing physically interpreted and operationalized biological, psychological and social variables, and detailed descriptions of mechanisms refer to the same causal structure circumscribed within the spatiotemporal boundaries of a replicable experimental setup. The coreference of coarser- and finer-grained descriptions of causal structures opens new possibilities for testing the reductive physicalism conjecture. I discuss experimental designs supporting the causal mediation account and show how recent studies demonstrating the biological mediation of mind-mind causal processes can provide evidence for reductive physicalism.

因果中介机制得到了现有实验证据的充分支持，并为还原物理主义提供了一种可行的方法。根据机械解释的因果中介解释，诸如“黑箱”现象、机械草图和混合物理解释和操作化的生物、心理和社会变量的图式等各种描述，以及对机制的详细描述，都指的是同一因果结构。可复制实验装置的时空边界。对因果结构的粗粒度和细粒度描述的共指为检验还原物理主义猜想开辟了新的可能性。