9 - Having a Good
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 August 2009
Summary
The attribution of nonintentional functions to parts or aspects of organic or social systems has been seen to involve the benefit of the system in question. If we ascribe a function to an item X in a system S, we assume that S is an appropriate subject of benefit, that it has a good. If we ascribe the function of pumping the blood to the heart of an animal, we assume that the animal has a good. If we ascribe the function of increasing social cohesion to the Hopi rain dance, we assume that Hopi society has a good. Function bearers are parts of wholes that have a good. This is the third metaphysical commitment we make when we give or take functional explanations. The arguments of Chapter 7, which showed that there is a categorical difference between artifactual and natural functions, also depended essentially on the presupposition that the natural systems whose parts are ascribed functions can themselves have a good. Chapter 8 argued that function bearers acquire their functions by contributing to the self-reproduction of the systems of which they are parts. And we have been treating such systems as if they had a good and that their good lies in their self-reproduction, and I have vaguely connected this with the notion of identity: Something is good for a self-reproducing system if it conduces to its self-reproduction; or to have a good is to be a self-reproducing system.
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- What Functions ExplainFunctional Explanation and Self-Reproducing Systems, pp. 191 - 204Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000