Abstract
In a recent article in this journal, Zachary Ardern criticizes our view that the most promising candidate for a naturalized criterion of disease is the "selected effects" account of biological function and dysfunction. Here we reply to Ardern’s criticisms and, more generally, clarify the relationship between adaptation and dysfunction in the evolution of health and disease.
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Notes
Neander argues that only in the first case should we say that a trait is "dysfunctional" (Neander 1995). One might say that a trait that fails to perform its function because of external conditions is "dysfunctioning" but not in itself "dysfunctional." On our reading, Millikan is concerned with both kinds of failure since she says that a trait can only perform its proper function when it operates in "Normal" conditions (e.g., 1984, pp. 33–34). We do not think this distinction is significant in our dispute with Ardern and will use "dysfunction" indifferently to refer to both kinds of failure to perform function.
We thank Joshua Christie for this reference.
Millikan uses capitalized "Normal" to refer to the class of environments in which the trait successfully performed its adaptive function in the evolutionary past.
These trade-offs are regarded in evolutionary medicine as an important evolutionary cause of disease.
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Funding
Supported by ARC Discovery Projects # DP130101774, FL170100160. This publication was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation (60811). The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. John Matthewson's work on this article was supported by the Marsden Fund Fast-Start Grant 18-MAU-63.
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Griffiths, P.E., Matthewson, J. Diseases are Not Adaptations and Neither are Their Causes. Biol Theory 15, 136–142 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-020-00350-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-020-00350-x