Article ID: CBB536738665

Biological Teleology, Reductionism, and Verbal Disputes (2021)

unapi

The extensive philosophical discussions and analyses in recent decades of function-talk in biology have done much to clarify what biologists mean when they ascribe functions to traits, but the basic metaphysical question—is there genuine teleology and design in the natural world, or only the appearance of this?—has persisted, as recent work both defending, and attacking, teleology from a Darwinian perspective, attest. I argue that in the context of standard contemporary evolutionary theory, this is for the most part a verbal, rather than a substantive dispute: the disputants are talking past one another. To justify this claim I develop a general framework within which reductionist views, such as the standard ‘etiological’ account of biofunctions, occupy an intermediate position between what I call full-blooded realism and full-blooded anti-realism, and suggest that whether such views count as ‘realist’ views has no objective, theory-neutral answer.

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Authors & Contributors
DiFrisco, James
Conley, Brandon A.
Wells, Aaron
Zammito, John H.
Wouters, Arno G.
Takacs, Peter
Concepts
Philosophy of biology
Biology
Functionalism
Teleology
Evolution
Philosophy
Time Periods
20th century
18th century
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