New mechanists speak variously of the mechanism as producing, underlying, or maintaining the phenomenon (Craver and Darden 2013). The language of production is best applied to mechanisms conceived as a causal sequence terminating in some end-product: as when a virus produces symptoms via a disease mechanism or an enzyme phosphorylates a substrate. In such cases, the phenomenon might be an object (the production of a protein), a state of affairs (being phosphorylated), or an activity or event (such as digestion). For many physiological mechanisms, in contrast, it is more appropriate to say that the mechanism underlies the phenomenon. The mechanism of the action potential or of working memory, for example, underlies the phenomenon, here characteristically understood as a capacity or behavior of the mechanism as a whole. Finally, a mechanism might maintain a phenomenon, as when homeostatic mechanisms hold body temperature within tightly circumscribed boundaries. In such cases, the phenomenon is a state of affairs, or perhaps a range of states of affairs, that is held in place by the mechanism. These ways of talking can in many cases be inter-translated (e.g., the product is produced, the production has an underlying mechanism, and the state of affairs is maintained by an underlying mechanism). Yet clearly confusion can arise from mixing these ways of talking. 