ABSTRACT
The phenomenon that a mechanism serves is not somehow incidental to that mechanism, but constitutive of it: mechanisms are identified, and individuated, by the phenomena they produce. This chapter provides a survey of what various philosophers have had to say about a mechanism's function. It discusses some benefits of recognizing a distinct, functional sense of mechanism. Several philosophers have recognized an intimate connection between mechanisms and functions, where "function" has the connotation of teleology, design, or purpose. There are different concepts of mechanism at play in biology and in philosophy, and the author's goal is not to argue for the unique correctness or superiority of a single one. Glennan's "minimal mechanisms", which are the notion of mechanism serving as a way of understanding causation and constitution quite generally, even outside of biology and engineering. The "functional" sense, which are mechanisms defined in terms of the functions they serve, where function is thought of in a suitably rich teleological sense.
