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Umeå Studies in the Humanities 138
Analyzing Functions
An essay on a fundamental notion in biologyPeter Melander |
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Price: SEK 108 + postage.
 beställ! SWEDISH SCIENCE PRESS Box 118 SE-751 04 Uppsala SWEDEN Telefon: +46 (0)18-36 55 66 Fax: +46 (0)18-36 52 77 ISSN 0345-0155 ISBN 91-7191-295-9 |
This study is about the notion of function as it figures in contemporary biology. The biological notion of function is of interest to the philosophy of science for two reasons. The first is that it is difficult to see how the notion of function can fulfill an explanatory role without violating certain widely held assumptions about causation, such as there being no causal influences from the future to the past (the Explanation Problem). The second is that, because of the connection between the notion of function and teleology (the doctrine that natural phenonema can be explained by reference to goals and purposes), it is difficult to fit biological functions into the world-view of naturalism, which maintains that physics is ontologically basic (the Naturalism Problem).
In view of these problems, philosophers and philosophically minded biologists have produced various accounts, or “analyses,” of the notion of function in order to clarify its explanatory role and determine its status vis-à-vis naturalism. The aim of this dissertation is to evaluate a number of such analyses and put forward and defend an analysis that is capable of resolving the Explanation and Naturalism problems. In chapters 2—5, I consider in turn four different types of analysis that philosophers have put forward in recent years (the deductive-nomological analyses of Ernest Nagel and Carl Hempel, the etiological analyses of Larry Wright and his followers, the intrasystemic role analyses of Robert Cummins and his followers, and Mark Bedau’s value-centered analysis). I argue that they all face serious problems and therefore are unsatisfactory. In particular, I argue that they have problems in accounting for the apparent normativity of function ascriptions and the distinction between failing to carry out a certain function and not having that function at all. In the final chapter, I argue that there are two different notions of function in use in contemporary biology. I give definitions of these two kinds of functionm to be termed “weak” and “strong” functions, in terms of the notions of adaptiveness and adaptation. I show that this analysis solves the Explanation and Naturalism problems and avoids the problems facing the other analyses. I also stress that on this analysis the notion of biological function is closely linked to the theory of evolution by natural selection in that the notions of weak and strong function are definable in terms of notions that are central to that theory.
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