Biological organization and cross-generation functions - HAL-SHS - Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société
Article Dans Une Revue British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Année : 2011

Biological organization and cross-generation functions

Résumé

The organizational account of biological functions interprets functions as contributions of a trait to the maintenance of the organization that, in turn, maintains the trait. As has been recently argued, however, the account seems unable to provide a unified grounding for both intra- and cross-generation functions, since the latter do not contribute to the maintenance of the same organization which produces them. To face this 'ontological problem', a splitting account has been proposed, according to which the two kinds of functions require distinct organizational definitions. In this article, we propose a solution for the ontological problem, by arguing that intra- and cross-generation functions can be said to contribute in the same way to the maintenance of the biological organization, characterized in terms of organizational self-maintenance. As a consequence, we suggest maintaining a unified organizational account of biological functions.
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halshs-00792437 , version 1 (30-03-2015)

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Cristian Saborido, Matteo Mossio, Alvaro Moreno Bergareche. Biological organization and cross-generation functions. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2011, 62 (3), pp.583-606. ⟨10.1093/bjps/axq034⟩. ⟨halshs-00792437⟩
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