The indispensability of relational, adapted, and derived proper functions

Bibliographic Data

ID10810785
AuthorsJuliane Roloff (0009-0006-7361-761X, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume205
Issue2
Publication date2025-02-05
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSynthese (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0039-7857 • E-ISSN: 1573-0964
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s11229-025-04921-y
OpenAlexW4407174055
LanguageEN
References cited22

Since the early debates on teleosemantics, there have been people objecting that teleosemantics cannot account for evolutionarily novel contents such as “democracy” (e.g., Peacocke in A Study of Concepts, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1992). Most recently, this objection was brought up by Garson (What Biological Functions Are and Why They Matter, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108560764 ) and in a more moderate form by Garson and Papineau (Biol Philos 34(3):36, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-019-9689-8 ). The underlying criticism is that the traditional selected effects theory of functions on which teleosemantics is built is unable to ascribe new functions to the products of ontogenetic processes and thus unable to ascribe functions to new traits that appear during the lifetime of an individual organism. I will argue that this underlying thought rests on rather common misunderstandings of Millikan’s theory of proper functions, especially her notions of relational, adapted, and derived proper functions (Millikan in Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1984: Ch. 2). The notions of relational, adapted, and derived proper functions not only help us solve the problem of novel contents and can ascribe functions to the products of ontogenetic selection mechanisms but are indispensable parts of every selected effects theory

Epistemology · Metaphysics · Philosophy of language · Philosophy of science · Computer Science · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science

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