Abstract
The notion of function is not all there is to teleology, although it is sometimes treated as though it were. Function is not even the central, or paradigm, teleological concept. But it is interesting and important; and it is still not as well understood as it should be, considering the amount of serious scholarship devoted to it during the last decade or two. Let us hope this justifies my excursion into these murky waters.
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References
Richard Sorabji, ‘Function’, Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1964), 290.
Morton Beckner, The Biological Way of Thought (New York, 1959), Ch. 6.
Beckner gives an alternative formulation in which we can speak of activities as having functions, instead of things. I have abbreviated it here for convenience and clarity. The logical points are the same.
John Canfield, Teleological Explanations in Biology’, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 14 (1964).
Morton Beckner, ‘Function and Teleology’, Journal of the History of Biology 2 (1969), reprinted above pp. 197–212.
As before, Beckner gives an alternative formulation so that we can speak either of a thing or of an activity having a function. My treatment will be limited to things, but again the logical points are the same.
Beckner seems to suggest (p. 207, top) that F must be an activity of the whole system 5, which, of course, would conflict with part of 3. But his illustration, reproduced below, suggests the phrasing I have used here.
Carl Hempel, ‘The Logic of Functional Analyses’, in L. Gross (ed.), Symposium on Sociological Theory (New York, 1959).
Hugh Lehman, ‘Functional Explanations in Biology’, Philosophy of Science 32 (1965).
Sorabji, op cit.
Francisco J. Ayala, ‘Teleological Explanation in Evolutionary Biology’, Philosophy of Science 37 (1970).
Michael E. Ruse, ‘Function Statements in Biology’, Philosophy of Science 38 (1971).
This is not to abandon, or even modify, the previous distinction between functions and goals: the point can be made in this form only given the distinction. Nevertheless, support is provided for the analysis I am presenting here by the fact that the ‘in order to’ of goal-directedness can be afforded a parallel treatment. For that parallel treatment see my paper ‘Explanation and Teleology’, in the June 1972 issue of Philosophy of Science.
Canfield, op. cit., p. 295.
It is sometimes urged that this sort of thing is all a teleological explanation is asserting; this is all ‘why?’ asks in these contexts.
I take the other forms to be essentially equivalent and subject, mutatis mutandis, to the same explication.
Of course, it follows that the notion of a reason offered in one of the alternative formulations is the standard conversational one as well: the reason it exploded was that is got too hot.
The qualification ‘causal’ here serves merely to indicate that this is not the purely inferential sense of ‘consequence’. I am not talking about the result or consequence of an argument — e.g., necessary conditions for the truth of a set of premises. The precise construction of ‘consequence’ appropriate here will become clear below.
It is worth recalling here that ‘is there’ can only sometimes, but not usually, be rendered ‘exists (at all)’. So, contrary to many accounts, what is being explained, and what Z is the result of, can very often not be characterized as ‘that X exists’ simpliciter.
It is often claimed that the asymmetry is temporal, but there are many difficulties with this view. Douglas Gasking, in ‘Causation and Recipes’, Mind (Oct., 1955), attempts to account for it in terms of manipulability with some success. But manipulability is even less generally applicable than time order, so, as far as I know, the problem remains.
The following considerations are intended primarily as support for the entire analysis considered whole. Since (a) has already been examined extensively, however, I have biased the argument slightly to emphasize (b).
The primary discussions of this sort I have in mind are those in Charles Taylor’s Explanation of Behavior and the literature to which it has given rise.
Of course the advantage is not always stated explicitly; ‘I chose American because of its five-across seating’. But for it to be selection of the sort described here, as opposed to mere discrimination, something like an advantage must be at least implicit.
This is a version of the old problem about the tension between rationality and freedom.
This formulation is at best very clumsy and misleading. The matter is much more complicated than this and cannot easily be put in a form suitable for this context. The point is adequately made merely by drawing attention to the fact that conscious and natural selection both provide consequence-etiologies.
Sorabji, op. cit., p. 290.
Including the conveyor-belt case in this manner was clearly a mistake: it is better viewed as a derivative case with no close parallel among natural functions. As it stands it violates (F): it does not have a consequence-etiology, the ripple did not get there because of what it does. It can be included, as a derivative, only by taking advantage of the rich causal possibilities of an intentional context. If we can justify not eliminating the ripple by appeal to its virtue as a sorting device, then with the same utilities, there are circumstances (of availability, relative cost and so forth) in which I could justify including the ripple in the original design. So I can say that, ceteris paribus, the ripple would have come to be there because of what it does, if it had not gotten there fortuitously. We might call this a subjunctive consequence-etiology; but in any case it is a peculiar relative, not a paradigm.
Again, it is worth pointing out that ‘partly’ here does not indicate that ‘because’, when not so qualified, represents a sufficient condition relationship. It merely serves to indicate that more than one thing plays an explanatorily relevant role in this particular case. More than one thing must be mentioned to answer adequately the functional ‘why?’ question in this context. But that answer, as usual, need not provide a sufficient condition for the occurrence of X.
See for example p. 101 ff of J. Hosper, An Introduction to Analytical Philosophy, Prentice Hall, New York, 1953.
Neither of James’ ‘definitions’ of ‘going round’ represent anything anybody ever meant by ‘A is going round B’. The missing feature — represented above by ‘E’ — which is usually present and not explicitly referred to is a commonly accepted fixed reference frame to which one of the parties is relatively firmly attached. Without this the issue simply is formally irresolvable.
The kinds of advantage relevant here are much more narrowly circumscribed than is commonly thought. E.g., tidiness of the analysis is not a relevant advantage. On the other hand it would be relevant to argue that, e.g., calling something an ‘F’ which does not have property E is systematically misleading. But even here we have some choices: we could simply insist that ‘F’ is not applicable in such cases, or we could say we have to clearly distinguish kinds of F.
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© 1976 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Wright, L. (1976). Functions. In: Topics in the Philosophy of Biology. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 27. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1829-6_10
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