A modal theory of function

Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 107, Issue 8, 2010, Pages 412-431

  Nanay, Bence ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ANTWERP   (Belgium)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79954988204     PISSN: 0022362X     EISSN: 19398549     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/jphil2010107834     Document Type: Review

References (35)

1. L. Wright, "Functions," Philosophical Review, LXXXII, 2 (1973): 139-68;
2. Paul E. Griffiths, "Functional Analysis and Proper Functions," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, XLIV, 3 (1993): 409-22.
3. Bas C. van Fraassen, The Scientific Image (New York: Oxford, 1980).
4. Peter Godfrey-Smith, "A Modern History Theory of Functions," Noûs, XXVIII, 3 (1994): 344-62, at p. 356
5. Ruth G. Millikan, Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories (Cambridge: MIT, 1984);
6. Karen Neander, "Functions as Selected Effects: The Conceptual Analyst's Defense," Philosophy of Science, LVIII, 2 (1991): 168-84;
7. Neander, "The Teleological Notion of 'Function'," Australasian Journal of Philosophy, LXIX, 4 (1991): 454-68;
8. Morton Beckner, The Biological Way of Thought (New York: Columbia, 1959), p. 112,
9. Tim Lewens, Organisms and Artifacts: Design in Nature and Elsewhere (Cambridge: MIT, 2004), p. 99.
10. Tyler Burge, "Individuation and Causation in Psychology," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, DCCVII, 4 (1989): 303-22.
11. Neander, "Types of Traits: Function, Structure, and Homology in the Classification of Traits," in Andre Ariew, Robert Cummins, and Mark Perlman, eds., Functions: New Essays in the Philosophy of Biology and Psychology (New York: Oxford, 2002), pp. 402-22, especially p. 403;
12. Paul Sheldon Davies, Norms of Nature: Naturalism and the Nature of Functions (Cambridge: MIT, 2001).
13. Cummins "Functional Analysis," this JOURNAL, LXXII, 11 (November 1975): 741-64,
14. "Neo-Teleology," in Ariew, Cummins, and Perlman, eds., op. cit., pp. 157-73.
15. (Ron Amundson and George V. Lauder, "Function without Purpose: The Uses of Causal Role Function in Evolutionary Biology," Biology and Philosophy, IX (1994): 443-69;
16. Lauder, "Homology, Form, and Function," in Brian K. Hall, ed., Homology: The Hierarchical Basis of Comparative Biology (San Diego: Academic Press, 1994), pp. 151-96
17. Griffiths and R. D. Gray, "Developmental Systems and Evolutionary Explanation," this JOURNAL, XCI, 6 ( June 1994): 277-304, especially pp. 298ff.
18. V. Louise Roth, "On Homology," Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, XXII (1984): 13-39, especially p. 17;
19. Günther P. Wagner, "Homology and the Mechanisms of Development," in Hall, ed., op. cit., pp. 273-99.
20. John Bigelow and Robert Pargetter, "Functions," this JOURNAL, LXXXIV, 4 (April 1987): 181-96.
21. Millikan, White Queen Psychology and Other Tales for Alice (Cambridge: MIT, 1993);
22. Denis M. Walsh, "Fitness and Function," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, XLVII, 4 (1996): 553-74.
23. David Lewis, Counterfactuals (Cambridge: Harvard, 1973).
24. Bence Nanay, "Population Thinking as Trope Nominalism," Synthese, forthcoming.
25. J. M. Deag and J. H. Crook, "Social Behaviour and 'Agonistic Buffering' in the wild Barbary Macaque Macaca sylvana L," Folia Primatologica, XV, 3/4 (1971): 183-200.
26. Curt Busse and William J. Hamilton III, "Infant Carrying by Male Chacma Baboons," Science, CCXII, 4500 ( June 12, 1981): 1281-83.
27. Wayne D. Christensen and Mark Bickhard, "The Process Dynamics of Normative Function," Monist, LXXXV, 1 ( January 2002): 3-28;
28. st Century," Monist, LXXXVII, 1 (January 2004): 72-95
29. Philip Kitcher, "Function and Design," Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XVIII, 1 (September 1993): 379-97, at p. 380.
30. George C. Williams, Adaptation and Natural Selection (Princeton: University Press, 1966), especially p. 209.
31. Collin Allen and Marc Bekoff, "Biological Function, Adaptation, and Natural Design," Philosophy of Science, LXII, 4 (1995): 609-22;
32. David J. Buller, "Function and Design Revisited," in Ariew, Cummins, and Perlman, eds., op. cit., pp. 222-43
33. Beth Preston, "Why Is a Wing Like a Spoon? A Pluralist Theory of Function," this JOURNAL, XCV, 5 (May 1998): 215-54.
34. Pieter E. Vermaas and Wybo Houkes, "Ascribing Functions to Technical Artefacts: A Challenge to Etiological Accounts of Functions," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, LIV, 2 (2003): 261-89;
35. Houkes and Vermaas, "Actions versus Functions: A Plea for an Alternative Metaphysics of Artifacts," Monist, LXXXVII, 1 ( January 2004): 52-71.