72 min listen
Justin Garson, "What Biological Functions are and Why They Matter" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
Justin Garson, "What Biological Functions are and Why They Matter" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
ratings:
Length:
69 minutes
Released:
Oct 10, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Why do zebras have stripes? One way to answer that question is ask what function stripes play in the lives of zebras – for example, to deter disease-carrying flies from biting them. This notion of a function plays a central role in biology: biologists frequently refer to the functions of many traits of evolved organisms. But not everything a trait causes is its function – the stripes might disorient some harmless birds, but that isn’t their function. So what determines the function of a trait? And what sort of explanations are offered when biologists claim that a trait has a particular function? In What Biological Functions Are and Why They Matter (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Justin Garson defends his generalized selected effects theory of what functions are and what they do. Garson, who is an associate professor of philosophy at Hunter College/CUNY, argues that functions can result from differential retention as well as differential replication in a population, and that to refer to a trait’s function is to provide a condensed causal explanation. This accessible introduction to debates regarding functions in the philosophy of biology also considers how the generalized selected effects theory contributes to contemporary debates in philosophy of psychiatry and philosophy of mind.
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Released:
Oct 10, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Anthony Laden, “Reasoning: A Social Picture” (Oxford UP, 2012): According to a view familiar to philosophers, reasoning is a process that occurs within an individual mind and is aimed specifically at demonstrating on the basis of statement that we accept the correctness of some other statement. We reason, that is, by New Books in Philosophy