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Malfunctions and teleology

On the (dim) chances of statistical accounts of functions

  • Original Paper in Philosophy of Biology
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Abstract

The core idea of statistical accounts of biological functions is that to function normally is to provide a statistically typical contribution to some goal state of the organism. In this way, statistical accounts purport to naturalize the teleological notion of function in terms of statistical facts. Boorse’s (Philosophy of Science, 44(4), 542–573, 1977) original biostatistical account was criticized for failing to distinguish functions from malfunctions. Recently, many have attempted to circumvent the criticism (Boorse, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 39, 683–724, 2014; Kraemer, Biology and Philosophy, 28, 423–438, 2013; Garson and Piccinini, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 65, 1–20, 2014; Hausman, Philosophy of Science, 79(4), 519–541, 2012, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 39, 634–647, 2014). Here, I review such attempts and find them inadequate. The reason, ultimately, is that functional attribution depends on how traits would behave in relevant situations, a condition that resists statistical characterizations in terms of how they typically behave. This, I conclude, undermines the attempt to naturalize functions in statistical terms.

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Notes

  1. BST incurs an analogous problem when trying to categorize malfunction in the case of ‘healthy populations’, where the reference class happens to contain only individuals where the functional trait is non-impaired (Schwartz 2007, 376). The two cases are symmetric: in the case of epidemics, BST seems committed to regard the bulk of the distribution as functional; in the case of healthy populations, BST seems committed to regard the tails of the distribution as dysfunctional. Since the source of the two problems is the same, namely the dependence of functional attribution on the actual members of the reference class, I shall focus only on the case of epidemics.

  2. I shall not discuss two other recent proposals, namely Schwartz’s (2007) and Schroeder’s (2013). The former introduces an ætiological element, namely an evaluation of ‘negative consequences’ (2007, §6), such that the resulting account does not qualify as ‘statistical’, in the traditional sense introduced above. The latter is not so much concerned with defining ‘normal functioning’ as with establishing that comparative judgments on normal functioning are more basic than non-comparative ones. So, for instance, the proposal is not concerned with addressing ‘the heart of Kingma’s worry’ (2013, 144, fn. 19), which as we shall see is a key objection to the adequacy of statistical accounts of normal functioning.

  3. I take it that Hausman’s proposal, irrespective of its merits, has this implication (see Section 5).

  4. My argument, notice, depends on reading Specificity as saying that there must be no \(S^{\prime }\), \(S^{\prime }\subset S\), such that P(X is in S|X’s doing Y contributes to survival or inclusive fitness) is strictly smaller than P(X is in \(S^{\prime } | X\)’s doing Y contributes to survival or inclusive fitness). This is not what Specificity literally says. Yet, if my reading were disallowed, whether an S including poisonings is close enough to 1, such that a restriction to an \(S^{\prime }\) excluding poisonings is irrelevant, would become an a priori matter. This would deprive Set of empirical content, and thus jeopardize the chance of BST* of even being a contender for the naturalization of functions in statistical terms.

  5. For an argument to the effect that comparative criteria are superior to non-comparative ones, see Schroeder (2013), which Hausman endorses (2012, 534, fn. 13).

  6. However, Hausman rejects the ætiological account of functions (see, e.g., 2012, 522, fn. 4).

References

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Correspondence to Lorenzo Casini.

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Casini, L. Malfunctions and teleology. Euro Jnl Phil Sci 7, 319–335 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-016-0163-z

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