Barandiaran, Xabier (2025) Organizational accounts of malfunction. The dual-order approach and the normative field alternative. [Preprint]
![]() |
Text
Barandiaran_-_Organization_malfunction_-_BIOTHEORY-revised-FINAL-preprint-formatted.pdf Download (506kB) |
Abstract
The notion of malfunction is critical to biological explanation. It provides a test-bed for the normative character of functional attribution. Theories of biological functioning must permit traits to operate but, at the same time, be judged as malfunctioning (in some naturalized, non-arbitrary sense). Whereas malfunctioning has attracted most attention and discussion in evolutionary etiological approaches, systemic and organizational ones have been less discussed. The most influential of the organizational approaches (by Saborido, Moreno and Mossio) takes a dual-order approach to malfunctions, as a set of functions that fit first-order constitutive norms but fail to obey second-order regulatory ones. We argue that this conception is unnecessarily complicated (malfunctions do not need to arise as a result of two conflicting orders of norms) and too narrow (it excludes canonical cases of malfunctioning). We provide an alternative organizational account grounded on viability theory. The dynamics of the traits that constitute an organism define the normative field of its viability space: sugar must be replaced at certain rate, blood must be pumped at a certain pace, etc. A trait operates normatively when its effects on the viability space correlate positively with the normative field. Three senses of dysfunctionality might be distinguished: subfunctional operations are those that positively correlate with the normative field but quantitatively fail to match the required speed; malfunctional operations are those that do not positively correlate with the normative field; and, nonfunctional traits either don’t operate at all or operate with null effect on the normative field.
Export/Citation: | EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL |
Social Networking: |
Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Creators: |
|
||||||
Keywords: | Normative function, natural norms, dysfunction, malfunction, normative field, autonomous organization. | ||||||
Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology Specific Sciences > Biology > Function/Teleology |
||||||
Depositing User: | Dr. Xabier E. Barandiaran | ||||||
Date Deposited: | 31 Mar 2025 13:28 | ||||||
Last Modified: | 31 Mar 2025 13:28 | ||||||
Item ID: | 24977 | ||||||
Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Biology Specific Sciences > Biology > Function/Teleology |
||||||
Date: | 27 March 2025 | ||||||
URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/24977 |
Monthly Views for the past 3 years
Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years
Plum Analytics
Actions (login required)
![]() |
View Item |