Abstract
A new theory that naturalizes biological function is explained and compared with earlier etiological and causal role theories. Etiological (or selected effects) theories explain functions from how they are caused over their evolutionary history. Causal role theories analyze how functional mechanisms serve the current capacities of their containing system. The new proposal unifies the key notions of both kinds of theories, but goes beyond them by explaining how functions in an organism can exist as factors with autonomous causal efficacy. The goal-directedness and normativity of functions exist in this strict sense as well. The theory depends on an internal physiological or neural process that mimics an organism’s fitness, and modulates the organism’s variability accordingly. The structure of the internal process can be subdivided into subprocesses that monitor specific functions in an organism. The theory matches well with each intuition on a previously published list of intuited ideas about biological functions, including intuitions that have posed difficulties for other theories.
Highlights
Many of the parts and processes of biological organisms appear to have functions
In order to decide whether a trait or process is functional in the ontic-causal sense, one needs to determine whether it is represented in X, that is, whether it is monitored by X
This theory focuses on the present and investigates the causal role that functions have for the current capacities of an agent
Summary
Many of the parts and processes of biological organisms appear to have functions. For example, pumping bloodIn this article, I will analyze biological functions from a naturalistic perspective. I explain how fitness is defined here; second, how X can be understood; third, how X is thought to affect the organism; and, why X acts as an emergent ontic-causal factor that can produce the ontic-causal status of biological functions. In order to decide whether a trait or process is functional in the ontic-causal sense, one needs to determine whether it is represented in X, that is, whether it is monitored by X (and used for producing x and for modulating organismal variability).
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