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A Comment on Ruse's Analysis of Function Statements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Larry Wright
Larry Wright*
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside
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Extract

Michael Ruse has offered an interesting and insightful analysis of function statements in biology. The analysis he gives of statements of the form ‘The function of x in z is to do y‘ is :

  1. (i) z does y by using x.

  2. (ii) y is an adaptation ([4], p. 91).

The first thing to notice about this formulation is the peculiarity of step (ii). There are many cases in which we would naturally say that x was the adaptation, instead of y; or perhaps we might say that everything asserted in step (i) constituted the adaptation. For example, the function of the duck's webbed feet is to enable it to swim. But we would commonly and naturally say that the adaptation was the webbing, not the swimming. It seems to me that Ruse's insistence on the formulation in (ii) points to the major difficulty of his analysis : and understanding what drives him to this unnatural formulation suggests the way out of those difficulties.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , December 1972 , pp. 512 - 514
Copyright
Copyright © 1972 by The Philosophy of Science Association

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References

REFERENCES

[1] Ayala, F. “Teleological Explanations in Evolutionary Biology.” Philosophy of Science 37 (1970): 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[2] Canfield, J. “Teleological Explanation in Biology.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 14:285–295.10.1093/bjps/XIV.56.285CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[3] Frankfurt, H. and Poole, B. “Functional Analyses in Biology.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 17 (1967): 69–72.Google Scholar
[4] Ruse, M. “Functional Statements in Biology.” Philosophy of Science 38 (1971): 87–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[5] Wright, L. “Functions.” (Forthcoming in The Philosophical Review, April, 1973.)10.2307/2183766CrossRefGoogle Scholar