Can Interventions Rescue Glennan’s Mechanistic Account of Causality?

Glennan ([2011]) appeals to interventions to solve the ontological and explanatory regresses that threaten his mechanistic account of causality (Glennan [1996], [2002]). I argue that Glennan's manoeuvre fails. The appeal to interventions is not able to address the ontological regress, and it blocks the explanatory regress only at the cost of making the account inapplicable to non-modular mechanisms. I offer a solution to the explanatory regress that makes use of dynamic Bayesian networks.Myargument is illustrated by a case study from systems biology, namely, the mechanism for the irreversibility of apoptosis. I conclude by pointing out the implications of my argument for Glennan's mechanistic account of causality and, more generally, for accounts of mechanistic explanation based on interventions.