In Chapter 8 we examine Carl Craver’s well-known account of constitutive mechanisms, which takes the organised entities and activities that are the components of the mechanism to constitute the phenomenon to be explained. The main aim of the chapter is to criticise the adequacy of this view for illuminating mechanism as a concept-in-use in biological practice. We identify two main problems for the constitutive view: the problem of external components and the fact that some mechanisms can exist outside the entity the behaviour of which they underlie; we argue that both problems undermine the usefulness and appropriateness of viewing typical and paradigmatic cases of biological mechanisms in constitutive terms. The main claim of the chapter is that in order to understand the notion of mechanism as a concept-in-use, there is no need to posit a non-causal relation of constitution.

This telling fusion of humanitarianism, interventionism and imperialism can, however, also be found in altogether different parts of the world. Chapter 8 accordingly considers three key case studies of collective European great power intervention for the protection of Ottoman Christians, in the imperial context of the so-called ‘Eastern Question’. The first of these cases is the intervention in the Greek war of independence of 1821–30. The chapter argues that the European reaction was decisively conditioned by abolitionist ideas and was based on the very conception of humanitarian intervention that had crystallised in the fight against the slave trade. The intervention in Greece did mark a precedent in its novel linkage between abolitionist themes and those of the protection of minorities, with a distinct narrowing of the idea of international protection to the Christian population. This selective conception of intervention was then ready to be reactivated by the European powersagainst the Ottoman Empire – as testified to by the crises in Lebanon (1860–61) and the Balkans (1876–78). What is remarkable about these instances of intervention is the increasing degree to which practices of international governance emerged in the form of international commissions alongside rudimentary forms of international criminal prosecution and minority protection. Above all, however, this period witnessed the consolidation in international law of the doctrine of humanitarian intervention, with the decisive impetus coming from the fight against the slave trade on the one hand and the relief of Christian minorities on the other.

Part III discusses the striking triangular relationship between humanitarianism, interventionism, and colonialism and imperialism in various parts of the world. It asks to what extent the idea of humanitarian intervention solidified in international politics as a colonial and imperial practice. Indeed, Chapter 7 will show how closely the struggle against the slave trade was intertwined with the colonial and imperial penetration of Africa. In West Africa British anti-slavery measures, which for strategic reasons increasingly shifted from seaborne military operations to dry land, led to direct interference in the internal affairs of African principalities. A particularly prominent case was Lagos, which ended up being formally annexed by the United Kingdom. From the middle of the century onwards, the by now tried and tested intervention measures came to serve as an example for the suppression of the slave trade in East Africa, increasingly turning the idea of abolition into a decisive catalyst and trailblazer for European expansionism across the African continent. At two international conferences – first in Berlin (1884–85) and then in Brussels (1889–90) – the ‘civilised’ states signed treaties by which they gave themselves a mandate in international law and thereby an effective carte blanche for direct intervention, in the name of civilisation, in the internal affairs of African realms.

The chapter shows that more sophisticated difference-making theories of causation that draw on so-called causal models can accommodate mental causation too. Causal modelling theories invoke more complex relations of difference-making than the simple principle about causation that was used in previous chapters. These relations of difference-making are represented by causal models. Accommodating mental causation – either in the non-reductive physicalist case or in the dualist case – calls for some heterodoxy in model-building. If the heterodox models are allowed, however, they prove useful not merely for explaining mental causation, but also for capturing the distinction between higher–level causes that are explanatorily relevant and higher-level causes that are not. The chapter also discusses the interventionist theory, an especially prominent member of the causal modelling family, in relation to mental causation.

While it opposes states and state action, radical liberal natural law theory also provides vigorous support for any existing state’s adoption of an anti-militarist, anti-imperialist foreign policy. Anti-interventionism and anti-imperialism have been persistently, if not universally, valued in the liberal tradition. Chapter 8 brings a natural law perspective critically to bear on an alternative liberal view, an attempt to defend a chastened militarism as a liberal option.