ABSTRACT
Polger and Shapiro argue that their Official Recipe, a criterion for judging when the phenomenon of multiple realization (MR) exists, renders MR less widespread than its proponents have imagined. The author argues that, although Polger and Shapiro’s criterion is a useful contribution, they arrive at their conclusion too hastily. Contrary to Polger and Shapiro, the phenomenon of MR in the biological world, in terms of their criterion, is in fact not as scarce as they suggest. To show this, the author first develops a multiple mechanistic realization thesis (MMRT) based on Polger and Shapiro’s criterion and on a compositional conception of realization. Then, two examples are examined to show that cases of MR are not hard to find in the biological world. After this, the implications of MMRT for the reductionism versus antireductionism debate in the philosophy of biology are considered.
