This is a response to Christie, Brusse, et al., ‘Are biological traits explained by their “selected effect” functions?’ The interest of their paper is that it draws our attention to those cases in which changes in a population that are brought about by natural selection in turn bring about changes in the environment that alter the selectionist pressures that were responsible for the original changes. Much of the paper, however, is an argument that the notion of a ‘proper function’ introduced (...) in my Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories (LTOBC), exhibits deep misunderstandings about the actual workings of natural selection. Very little that they say about ‘proper functions’ and related notions from LTOBC is correct, however. I will not list the errors but I will try to make my uses of ‘proper function’ and certain related terms clearer. (shrink)

No categories

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark   2 citations  

Biosemiotics and code biology are two promising approaches to understanding biological phenomena as meaningful. Biosemiotics proposes that a defining characteristic of life is code-duality, while code biology asserts that the nature of life lies in its code. However, they separated due to differences in their understanding of cellular-level interpretation, as well as related epistemological and methodological concerns. The split between the two was a great loss for biosemiotics. Meanwhile, code biology faces a conceptual dilemma when explaining the source of the (...) normativity of organic codes without biosemiotics. The critiques of biosemiotics made by code biologists are reasonable and deserve serious concern. Based on Terrence Deacon’s thought experiment of autogenesis and his explanation of interpretation, the paper proposes the conception of operational interpretation to reconcile biosemiotics with code biology. (shrink)

Direct download(2 more)   Export citation   Bookmark  

Philosophers have proposed many accounts of biological function. A coarse-grained distinction can be made between backward-looking views, which emphasise historical contributions to fitness, and forward-looking views, which emphasise the current contribution to fitness or role of a biological component within some larger system. These two views are often framed as being incompatible and conflicting with one another. The emerging field of synthetic biology, which involves applying engineering principles to the design and construction of biological systems, complicates things further by adding (...) intentional design as a source of function. In the current study we explored how biology experts and novices think about function in the context of single-celled, multi-celled, and synthetic organisms. We also explored the extent to which each group were function pluralists, and if they were function pluralists, which accounts of function tended to be endorsed together. The results showed a surprising degree of similarity between experts and novices in most contexts, although certain differences were apparent. Most surprisingly, we found evidence not only of function pluralism in both groups, but pluralism between backward-looking and forward-looking accounts. We discuss these findings in the context of the philosophical debate on function and consider the practical implications for public acceptance of synthetic biology. First, we argue that philosophers of biology should re-examine the purported incompatibility between accounts of function. Second, we argue that due to the introduction of an intentional aetiology in synthetic biology, there may be an inherent conflict between the views of experts and novices when thinking about synthetic biology. (shrink)

Direct download(3 more)   Export citation   Bookmark