Neutral Functional Statement Schemata

Nissen, Lowell

doi:10.1086/288359

Cited by 3 publications

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“…They have tried to generate one specific and clear explication out of a general and unclear concept. It is a kind of trial and error procedure: a given explication is confronted with examples, taken from biology and sometimes from other sciences too (Nissen, 1971).…”

Section: Some General Remarks About Function Statementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Several authors tried to formally unpack this (e.g. Canfield, 1963;Kuipers, 1985;Nissen, 1971), but some of their proposals are problematic (Nissen, 1970;Baublys, 1975). It seems that most explications of 'contribute to' have difficulties with tackling the following problems: (1) the statement that X contributes to F does not have to mean that X is a necessary condition for F. Functional equivalents are sometimes available or imaginable; (2) some things we call functional sometimes never perform their functional activity.…”

Section: Some General Remarks About Function Statementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Towards a pluralistic concept of function function statements in biology

Pranger

1990

Acta Biotheor

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The meaning of function statements is not clear. Several authors have come up with different explications. By interviewing biologists I tried to get a picture of how they think about 'function'. Two explications of "Feature X of organism S has function F" came to the fore: (1) "X contributes to F and F contributes to survival/reproduction of S" and (2) "X does F and that contributes to the evolutionary development of X in S via natural selection". Most biologists also related function to adaptation. Gould and Vrba criticize the ordinary use of 'adaptation' in biology. They propose to use it only in the sense of features developed by natural selection for their current role and to use 'exaptation' for features enhancing fitness, but not developed for this by natural selection. This, however, leaves a terminological gap, because as a consequence only effects of adaptations are functions. Effects of exaptations and effects which are not beneficial, like the production of heart sounds, are placed on the same level. That is not in accordance with the practice of biology. That is why a distinction is made between general, adaptive and exaptive functions: function as a pluralistic concept.

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Section: Some General Remarks About Function Statementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Some General Remarks About Function Statementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a pluralistic concept of function function statements in biology

Pranger

1990

Acta Biotheor

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Allaerts¹

1999

Journal for General Philosophy of Science

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A Cybernetic Analysis of Goal-Directedness

Simon

1976

PSA. Proc. Bien. Meet. Philos. Sci. Assoc.

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The issue of the admissibility into scientific discourse of teleological terms such as ‘function', ‘goal-direction, ‘purpose’ and ‘goal’ has not received widespread attention in recent years. In a provocative book, On Purposeful Systems, Ackoff and Emery claim that “the lack of more recent debate seems…no more than scholarly collusion in agreeing not to raise embarrassing questions” ([11], p. 15). Most of those who have attended to teleological problems have attempted to show that these teleological terms are eliminable in favor of non-teleological terms. ‘Function’ has been analyzed in this manner by Nissen [12], Nagel [11], Canfield [6], Hempel [8] et al. ‘Goal-direction’ and ‘purpose’ have been given similar treatment by Braithwaite [4], Nagel [11], Sommerhoff [21][22], inter alia. Notable exceptions to these reductionist analyses occur in the works of C. Taylor [23] and Wright [27].

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Neutral Functional Statement Schemata

Cited by 3 publications

References 6 publications

Towards a pluralistic concept of function function statements in biology

Towards a pluralistic concept of function function statements in biology

Untitled

A Cybernetic Analysis of Goal-Directedness

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