A non-reductive account of function statements in the Life Sciences.

Abstract

The problem of function statements in the Life Sciences may be stated as follows. Life Scientists make frequent and important use of statements of the form 'X is the (a) function of Y', in explaining phenomena intimately connected with living organisms. The use of such statements, according to recent philosophical discussions (i) suffers the defects of presupposing or committing the user to the existence of vital forces, purposive activity outside the realm of human action, or a special (and inexplicable) kind of ';causal' nexus, i.e. final causality, or (ii) constitutes the basis for the irreducibility of the LIFE sciences to physics (for example). Because scientists find such statements so useful they (and philosophers) are not willing to throw these statements out altogether. Instead the philosopher embarks on a program to 'save' such statements by showing that upon analysis function statements do not really suffer the above-mentioned defects. This analysis of function statements into statements of efficient causality shows them to be causal in a way which (i) does not commit one to vital forces, purposive activity outside the realm of human activity, or final causality, and (ii) does not provide ammunition for those who would resist the reduction of Biology to Physics. First I consider attempts which have been made in the philosophical literature to analyze function statements into regular causal statements. I provide in the course of these considerations a positive account of the legitimate use of function statements in the life sciences which is non-reductive yet does not involve any of the defects which motivate the standard philosophical analyses. This positive account sees function statements as compacted explanations which among other distinguishing uses and characteristics focus on a special class of consequences.