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Revisiting recent etiological theories of functions

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Abstract

Arguably, the most widely endorsed account of normative functions in philosophy of biology is an etiological theory that holds that the function of current traits is fixed by the past selection history of other traits of that type. The earlier formulations of this “selected-effects” theory had trouble accommodating vestigial traits. In order to remedy these difficulties, the influential recent selection or modern history selected-effects theory was introduced. This paper expands upon and strengthens the argument that this theory has trouble stemming from recent “no variation” cases. In addition, several influential arguments for the necessity of including a selection requirement in a theory of normative biological functions are contested. It is suggested that accounting for biological functions in certain areas of biology (such as physiology and the neurosciences) does not require adverting to selection.

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Notes

  1. For ease of exposition, I will henceforward just say “functions” to refer to normative functions.

  2. This comes closest to Godfrey-Smith (1994)’s formulation of the recent selection theory. Griffiths (1993)’s formulation instead refers to selection during the “last evolutionarily significant time period”.

  3. Haplotypes in this context appear to refer to combinations of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP’s), which are relatively common single nucleotide differences between different alleles of a gene.

  4. Kraemer (2012) discusses some of the evidence in favor of this suggestion.

  5. Schwartz (1999) makes a similar point.

  6. My calculation should be taken with a grain of salt because it does not include multiple nucleotide mutations, which though they are much less common than single nucleotide mutations, still occur. I also did not factor in the possibility of mutations along the regulatory regions of the PTC gene, which might also potentially impact PTC tasting.

  7. Robert Brandon and an anonymous reviewer brought this potential response to my attention.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Robert Brandon, the late Fred Dretske, and especially Karen Neander for helpful comments on previous versions of this paper. I also benefitted from suggestions made by an anonymous reviewer and by the editor of this journal, Kim Sterelny.

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  1. Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road- SO 283, Boca Raton, FL, 33431, USA

    Daniel M. Kraemer

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Correspondence to Daniel M. Kraemer.

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Kraemer, D.M. Revisiting recent etiological theories of functions. Biol Philos 29, 747–759 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-014-9430-6

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