Jennifer Jhun, Markets and Demarcation

Markets and Demarcation

Jennifer Jhun,
Philosophy, Duke University

How does one delineate a system of interest? Here I consider categories such as market, which pick out systems that we might wish to intervene on. I propose that kinds of this sort have a distinctive epistemic role to play that has been underappreciated in the extant literature. They partake in demarcating systems of interest, enabling us to effectively draw boundaries around relevant domains of inquiry. Insofar as this role is concerned, such categories must be treated as functional kinds. So the membership condition for a member is whether or not it fits a particular functional profile, articulated in terms of the counterfactual features it would exhibit under changes. Moreover, I suggest that this activity is presupposed by, but in important ways conceptually distinct from, mechanistic reasoning (as conceived by New Mechanists).

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