Roloff, J (2025) The Indispensability of Relational, Adapted, and Derived Proper Functions. [Preprint]
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Abstract
Since the early debates on teleosemantics, there have been people objecting that teleosemantics cannot account for evolutionarily novel contents such as “democracy” (e.g., Peacocke 1992). Most recently, this objection was brought up by Garson (2019) and in a more moderate form by Garson & Papineau (2019). The underlying criticism is that the traditional selected effects theory of functions on which teleosemantics is built is unable to ascribe new functions to the products of ontogenetic processes and thus unable to ascribe functions to new traits that appear during the lifetime of an individual organism.
I will argue that this underlying thought rests on rather common misunderstandings of Millikan’s theory of proper functions, especially her notions of relational, adapted, and derived proper functions (Millikan 1984: Ch. 2). The notions of relational, adapted, and derived proper functions not only help us solve the problem of novel contents and can ascribe functions to the products of ontogenetic selection mechanisms but are indispensable parts of every selected effects theory.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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| Keywords: | Selected Effects Theories, Biological Functions, Novel Contents, Teleosemantics, Representation, Millikan | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology > Function/Teleology Specific Sciences > Neuroscience > Cognitive Neuroscience Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Concepts and Representations |
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| Depositing User: | J Roloff | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 19 Jan 2025 13:55 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 19 Jan 2025 13:55 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 24574 | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology > Function/Teleology Specific Sciences > Neuroscience > Cognitive Neuroscience Specific Sciences > Cognitive Science > Concepts and Representations |
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| Date: | 2025 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/24574 |
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