Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T12:10:24.623Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Role Functions, Mechanisms, and Hierarchy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Carl F. Craver
Carl F. Craver*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy Florida International University
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, Florida International University, 3000 Northeast 151 Street, North Miami, FL 33181–3000; craverc@fiu.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Many areas of science develop by discovering mechanisms and role functions. Cummins' (1975) analysis of role functions—according to which an item's role function is a capacity of that item that appears in an analytic explanation of the capacity of some containing system—captures one important sense of “function” in the biological sciences and elsewhere. Here I synthesize Cummins' account with recent work on mechanisms and causal/mechanical explanation. The synthesis produces an analysis of specifically mechanistic role functions, one that uses the characteristic active, spatial, temporal, and hierarchical organization of mechanisms to add precision and content to Cummins' original suggestion. This synthesis also shows why the discovery of role functions is a scientific achievement. Discovering a role function (i) contributes to the interlevel integration of multilevel mechanisms, and (ii) provides a unique, contextual variety of causal/mechanical explanation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , March 2001 , pp. 53 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

Thanks to Ron Amundson, Robert Cummins, Lindley Darden, Michael Devitt, Stuart Glennan, Peter Machamer, Karen Neander, Greg Morgan, Pierre Poirier, Gualtiero Piccinini, Wesley Salmon, Ken Schaffner, Steven Small, Wendy Stuart, Nathan Urban, Marcel Weber, William Wimsatt, and Kirsten Wood for comments on earlier drafts of this much reworked paper. Thanks also to the students in Darden's graduate seminar (Fall 1998) in the Philosophy of Biology for useful feedback on multiple drafts. Many of these friends and colleagues will not recognize this as the paper that they so generously read. Any mistakes are mine and mine alone. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number SBR-9817942. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation.

References

Allen, Colin, Bekoff, Mark, and Lauder, George V. (eds.) (1998), Nature's Purposes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Amundson, Ron (2000), “Against Normal Function”, Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences 31: 33–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amundson, Ron and Lauder, George V. (1994), “Function without Purpose: The Uses of Causal Role Function in Evolutionary Biology”, Biology and Philosophy 9: 443–469. Reprinted in Allen, Bekoff, and Lauder 1998, 335–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bechtel, William (1986), “Teleological Functional Analyses and the Hierarchical Organization of Nature”, in Rescher, N. (ed.), Teleology and Natural Science. Landham, MD: University Press of America, 26–48.Google Scholar
Bechtel, William and Richardson, Robert C. (1993), Discovering Complexity: Decomposition and Localization as Strategies in Scientific Research. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Churchland, Patricia S. and Sejnowski, Terrence (1992), The Computational Brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craver, Carl F. (1998), Neural Mechanisms: On the Structure, Function and Development of Theories in Neuroscience. Ph.D. Dissertation, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh.Google Scholar
Craver, Carl F. and Darden, Lindley (forthcoming), “Discovering Mechanisms in Neurobiology: The Case of Spatial Memory”, in Machamer, P., Grush, R., and McLaughlin, P. (eds.), Theory and Method in Neuroscience. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Cummins, Robert (1975), “Functional Analysis,” Journal of Philosophy 72: 741–765. Reprinted in Allen, Bekoff, and Lauder 1998, 169–196. Page references are to the reprint.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cummins, Robert (1983), “Analysis and Subsumption in the Behaviorism of Hull”, Philosophy of Science 50: 96–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darden, Lindley (1991), Theory Change in Science: Strategies from Mendelian Genetics. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Darden, Lindley (1996), “Generalizations in Biology”, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 27: 409–419.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Glennan, Stuart S. (1996), “Mechanisms and the Nature of Causation”, Erkenntnis 44: 49–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glennan, Stuart S. (1997), “Capacities, Universality, and Singularity”, Philosophy of Science 64: 605–626.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gould, Stephen J. (1981), The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.Google Scholar
Hardcastle, Valerie G. (1999), “Understanding Functions”, in Hardcastle, Valerie G. (ed.), Where Biology Meets Psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 27–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harvey, William ([1628] 1963), Movement of the Heart and Blood in Animals: An Anatomical Essay. Translated by K.J. Franklin. London: Dent.Google Scholar
Haugeland, John (1998), Having Thought: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hempel, Carl G. (1965), Aspects of Scientific Explanation. London: Collier Macmillan Publishers.Google Scholar
Hitchcock, Christopher (1995), “Discussion: Salmon on Explanatory Relevance”, Philosophy of Science 62: 304–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hitchcock, Christopher (1996), “The Mechanist and the Snail”, Philosophical Studies 84: 91–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kauffman, Stuart A. (1971), “Articulation of Parts Explanation in Biology and the Rational Search for Them”, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 8: 257–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lycan, William G. (1990), “The Continuity of Levels of Nature”, in Lycan, W. G. (ed.), Mind and Cognition: A Reader. Oxford: Bradford, 77–96.Google Scholar
Machamer, Peter K. (1977), “Teleology and Selective Processes”, R. G. Colodny (ed.), Logic, Laws, and Life, Vol. 6. Pittburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Machamer, Peter K., Darden, Lindley, and Craver, Carl F. (2000), “Thinking about Mechanisms”, Philosophy of Science 67: 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rescher, Nicholas (1955), “Axioms for the Part Relation”, Philosophical Studies 6: 8–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salmon, Wesley C. (1984), Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Salmon, Wesley C. (1997), “Causality and Explanation: A Reply to Two Critiques”, Philosophy of Science. 64: 461–477.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaffner, Kenneth (1993), Discovery and Explanation in Biology and Medicine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Simon, Herbert A. (1969), The Sciences of the Artificial. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
van Fraassen, Bas C. (1980), The Scientific Image. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walsh, Denis M. and Ariew, Andre (1996), “A Taxonomy of Functions”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26: 493–514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waters, Ken C. (1998), “Causal Regularities in the Biological World of Contingent Generalizations”, Biology and Philosophy 13: 5–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wimsatt, William (1974), “Complexity and Organization”, in Kenneth Schaffner and Robert S. Cohen (eds.), PSA 1972, 67–86.Google Scholar
Wimsatt, William (1986), “Forms of Aggregativity”, in Donagan, Alan, Perovich, Anthony N. Jr., and Wedin, Michael V. (eds.), Human Nature and Natural Knowledge. Dordrecht: Reidel, 259–291.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wimsatt, William (1997), “Aggregativity: Reductive Heuristics for Finding Emergence”, Philosophy of Science 64 (Proceedings): S372–S384.CrossRefGoogle Scholar