Biological functions, generics, and explanation.
Biological function ascriptions are often thought to present distinctive philosophical puzzles: they screen off a part’s purpose from merely accidental effects of its presence and they provide a certain kind of explanation. I propose a naive, ahistorical account of functions to resolve these puzzles...
| Publicado en: | Synthese Vol. 206; no. 1; pp. 1 - 26 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Springer Nature
Jul2025
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=186608721&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 186608721 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00397857 4LI jtl: Synthese issn: 00397857 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jul2025 vid: 206 iid: 1 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 186608721 10.1007/s11229-025-05126-z ppf: 1 ppct: 25 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: T tig: atl: Biological functions, generics, and explanation. aug: au: Marré, Thomas affil: https://ror.org/047yk3s18 The Catholic University of America, School of Philosophy, Washington D.C, USA sug: keyword: Biological functions Explanation Generics Philosophy and Religious Studies Philosophy Purpose Selected effects ab: Biological function ascriptions are often thought to present distinctive philosophical puzzles: they screen off a part’s purpose from merely accidental effects of its presence and they provide a certain kind of explanation. I propose a naive, ahistorical account of functions to resolve these puzzles: the function of a part is what it does. We can help ourselves to this view if we understand function statements as generics. It is, I argue, then their generic form that is responsible for screening off the purpose of a given part from accidental effects. In other words, I take it that one of the problems that function ascriptions are thought to raise is in fact a problem arising from the thorny semantics of the wider class of sentences to which they belong. I then propose a deflationary conception of their explanatory power by distinguishing two often conflated questions: how did a given part come to have the function it has, and what does the function explain. In short, functions have historical explanations but they do not provide historical explanations. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Synthese is a copyright of Springer, 2025. All Rights Reserved. item: Synthese holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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