Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/30080
Title: | Biological Teleology, Reductionism, and Verbal Disputes | Contributor(s): | Boucher, Sandy C (author)![]() |
Publication Date: | 2021-12 | Early Online Version: | 2021-01-03 | DOI: | 10.1007/s10699-020-09728-3 | Handle Link: | https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/30080 | Abstract: | 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. | Publication Type: | Journal Article | Source of Publication: | Foundations of Science, 26(4), p. 859-880 | Publisher: | Springer Netherlands | Place of Publication: | Netherlands | ISSN: | 1572-8471 1233-1821 |
Fields of Research (FoR) 2008: | 220309 Metaphysics 220206 History and Philosophy of Science (incl. Non-historical Philosophy of Science) |
Fields of Research (FoR) 2020: | 500204 History and philosophy of science 500309 Metaphysics 500317 Philosophy of science (excl. history and philosophy of specific fields) |
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2008: | 970122 Expanding Knowledge in Philosophy and Religious Studies | Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2020: | 280119 Expanding knowledge in philosophy and religious studies | Peer Reviewed: | Yes | HERDC Category Description: | C1 Refereed Article in a Scholarly Journal |
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Appears in Collections: | Journal Article School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences |
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