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Weak Realism in the Etiological Theory of Functions

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Functions: selection and mechanisms

Part of the book series: Synthese Library ((SYLI,volume 363))

Abstract

The etiological theory of functions advocates a realist view of functions, through a construal of functional ascriptions as statements about evolutionary history. Basing functions on fitness and natural selection, it faces difficulties when it comes to discriminating between distinct Equal-fitness properties of one trait. I argue that evolutionary theory alone cannot justify a fine-grained determination of what is the function of the trait in those cases. Biologists have then to choose a specific method to establish the nature of the function; three methods (a counterfactual one, a comparative one and one oriented towards organismal organisation), each committed to specific explananda, are here studied, with examples. They may yield distinct functional ascriptions for the same trait, which introduces an element of explanatory dependence within the etiological account of functions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See comments in Beatty (1994) and Ariew (2003).

  2. 2.

    See Lewens (2004) on the shortcomings of an etiological theory for culture or artefacts.

  3. 3.

    For a suggestion about items being more or less functional, this being grounded on a theory of functions, see Wimsatt (2002) and this volume. One could say here that fitness does not change according to the environments because it can be seen as a dispositional property that correlates to each environment a proper number of offspring or probability distribution of offspring. But this does not solve the main problem, which is the quantitative nature of fitness compared to the qualitative nature of function.

  4. 4.

    Suppose you have the event of a white tiger running at 30 mph in the tundra. This is ontologically a single event; however, it can be picked up by many propositions (“white tiger running”, “white tiger running at 30 mph in Siberia”, etc.), each of those having a proper meaning. All those meanings correspond to “facts”.

  5. 5.

    This raises the huge issue of combining selective pressures, whereas this combination is not additive. Such question involves issues about the causal nature of natural selection (see Lewens 2009) which are not directly under focus here.

  6. 6.

    On this hierarchy and the relation between functions of parts and function of their whole, see Huneman (2007).

  7. 7.

    See Lewens (2004) for an analysis.

  8. 8.

    Wouters (2003) also considered those kinds of counterfactual analysis and connected them to the idea of design. However, we are addressing here a quite different question.

  9. 9.

    This meaning of design is akin to that of Kitcher (1993). Buller (2002) also stresses the commitments to an idea of design proper to etiological theory analyses. Finally, in another framework, Wouters (2003), in a systematic analysis of functional explanation, describes what he calls design analysis. All those conceptions are distinct, and I don’t undertake here a systematic comparison; see also Huneman (2007) on design as a necessary assumption of etiological theory.

  10. 10.

    For example, L.C. Rome (1998) studies the construction of muscles in order to test the symmorphosis hypothesis. The idea that “in fact muscles are tightly matched to their function” is plausible since there is a “large disadvantage associated with using the wrong muscle type for a given activity”. The experience reveals that optimal frequency of the power production by the muscle taken in isolation matches quite well with the actual frequency of the use of muscles. “Because of the large disadvantage associated with using the wrong muscle type for a given activity, it is likely that in fact muscles are tightly matched to their function. The tightness of this matching can be empirically determined by plotting optimal frequency of the isolated muscle power production versus the frequency at which the muscle is used in vivo”. However, some more investigations are needed, he recognises, to confirm that in fact selection optimised the setting of muscles.

  11. 11.

    I rather leave this second question aside in this case study.

  12. 12.

    The fact that the statistical pattern of CR is not so different, but has less significance, leads the author to consider it a graded form of the SBTD.

  13. 13.

    The bulk of this paper was written in 2005–2006, before Fodor’s papers were published. Under the suggestion of an anonymous referee who pointed out that the issues raised here are also debated in the discussion following Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini’s book publication, I situate here my views relative to Fodor’s.

  14. 14.

    Among other quotes, it’s “quite likely there aren’t laws of selection. That’s because who wins a t1 v. t2 competition is massively context sensitive”. (Fodor 2008)

  15. 15.

    See Sober’s (2010) specific answer to the point about laws.

  16. 16.

    Buller’s weak theory connects functional ascription to evolutionary history in general, not only selective history.

  17. 17.

    The first version of this chapter has been presented at a symposium on functional explanations at the ISHPSSB meeting in Guelph 2005; I thank the audience for the insightful questions there. I also thank Françoise Longy for her careful reading and suggestions and Marshall Abrams who also did language checking.

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  1. IHPST (CNRS/Université Paris I Sorbonne), Paris, France

    Philippe Huneman

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    Philippe Huneman

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Huneman, P. (2013). Weak Realism in the Etiological Theory of Functions. In: Huneman, P. (eds) Functions: selection and mechanisms. Synthese Library, vol 363. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5304-4_7

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