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TELEOLOGY AND THE ASSUMPTION OF NATURALISM

Paul Sheldon Davies, Norms of Nature: Naturalism and the Nature of Function. A Bradford Book. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001. Pp. 234. US$35.00 HB. Peter McLaughlin, What Functions Explain: Functional Explanation and Self-Reproducing Systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. 259. US$55.00 HB. Del Ratzsch, Nature, Design, and Science: The Status of Design in Natural Science. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. Pp. 220. US$18.95 PB. By Matthew Ratcliffe Teleological language has attracted a lot of philosophical attention in recent years, most of which has been directed at uses of the term function in science (see e.g. Allen, Beckoff and Lauder (eds.) [1998] and Buller (ed.) [1999]). Statements such as the function of wings in ight or the function of bone is support are commonplace in the life sciences. Philosophical interest stems largely from a concern that many such assignments of function appear to incorporate properties that rest uncomfortably with a scientic world-view that is, we are told, currently unfolding. This view, commonly termed naturalism, places a metaphysical restriction on the kinds of entity and property that can be legitimately included in an account of the way the world really is. Central to naturalism is the assumption that normative properties and relations have no place in a scientic description of reality. In other words, parts of the world do various things but they are not supposed to do anything. The tension arises because many assignments of function are clearly normative. When a structure fails to perform its function, it seems to be not only doing y rather than x, but malfunctioning, implying that the function of a structure is the task that it is supposed to perform. The aim of many analyses is to illustrate that any apparent antagonism is illusory or, if this turns out not to be the case, to revise conceptions of function in order to preserve much or all of their utility whilst avoiding
Metascience 12: 312321, 2003. 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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any undesirable metaphysical implications. Hence analyses are motivated and structured by the assumption of naturalism, which constitutes their rationale and also partially constitutes their outcome. Despite the importance of naturalistic assumptions in shaping current philosophical approaches to teleology, the precise nature of these assumptions is not always clear. So the question is not just how can we solve the problems of teleology? but also what kinds of metaphysical commitments make teleology a problem and what reason do we have for retaining those commitments? This latter question is by no means an exclusively philosophical concern. As the third book under discussion will suggest, historical considerations might also play a central role, in explaining the presuppositions shaping philosophical and scientic inquiry.

NATURALISING FUNCTIONS

In Norms of Nature, Paul Sheldon Davies proposes an analysis of function that is shaped throughout by the assumption of naturalism, construed as a commitment not to a specic ontology but rather to the methods of inquiry employed by our best natural sciences (pp. 166167). The question of what these methods consist of and which are our best natural sciences is not discussed in any detail. However, it is clear throughout the book that this methodological commitment does also incorporate an ontological exclusion, in that naturalism will not allow normativity as a basic constituent of the natural world. Davies places an embargo on natural norms of performance. Unlike artefacts, whose normative roles are derived from our own intentions, entities in the natural world either do things or they dont do things, but they are never supposed to do anything. Furthermore, he claims that any attempt to naturalise the normativity of biological function, by wholly accounting for it in terms of non-normative properties, fails. Philosophers generally follow Wright (1973) in appealing to some kind of historical account in order to naturalise normative function. In brief, Wright argues that a function of structure A is an effect of A which explains why A exists. For example, hearts have the effect of pumping the blood and exist because natural selection favoured the perpetuation of that effect. Wrights account spawned a plethora of sophisticated analyses. All of these propose variants of the claim that the normativity of biological function can be grounded in evolutionary history. The proper function of a structure is the historical role that structures of that type were selected to perform and a structure malfunctions when it fails to perform its role in the appropriate circumstances (see e.g. essays by Millikan, Neander, Grifths, and Godfrey-Smith, in Allen, Beckoff, and Lauder, 1998).

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One of Davies central claims (Chapters 3 and 5) is that these historical analyses are misguided. There are two main reasons for this. First, they all in fact fail to supply a naturalisation of normative function. Historical accounts, Davies claims, do succeed in associating talk of normative functions with certain kinds of selection history. However, they brush over the question of why natural selection actually licenses such talk. It is one thing to show that scientists frequently employ normative descriptions of a certain class of biological phenomena, but establishing the defensibility of such talk requires more (p. 139). Davies claims that the only thing historical accounts have going in their favour is their alleged ability to accommodate normative function. If they fail to do this, they are rendered superuous, as all other instances and aspects of function assignment in biology can be assimilated into a different, more accommodating, and metaphysically inoffensive account. This is the dispositional or systemic capacity account, originally proposed by Cummins (1975). Davies modies Cummins original account of functions as causal contributions to system capacities, circumventing the charge that it is excessively liberal by restricting legitimate function assignments to the capacities of hierarchical systems with layers of embedded capacities (Chapter 4). He claims that the resulting account subsumes all instances of historical function and thus removes the need for an additional analysis (Chapter 3). Davies goes on to argue that assignment of dispositional functions plays an important role, both in guiding inquiry and in explaining the relationships between parts of hierarchically organised biological systems (Chapter 6). The price to be paid is the abandonment of normative or proper function. Given (1) the failure of historical accounts to naturalise normativity; (2) the absence of any other plausible naturalisation; and (3) the assumption that natural norms cannot be a basic feature of the natural world, Davies concludes that there are no natural norms. As he asserts, I believe we must accept that natural nonengineered traits do not possess the norms of performance that most theorists of function wish to attribute to them. We must accept this or else admit that we are not naturalists after all (p. 214). The latter option is, according to Davies, too high a price to pay. The presumption of naturalism is here to stay, so to let unnaturalised normativity loose on the biological world is unacceptable. Hence we get a unitary and revisionary account that denies the existence of malfunction in nature. But why do people persist in attributing malfunctions? Davies ventures a Humean explanation, according to which we are psychologically susceptible to the habit of construing certain nonnormative phenomena in normative terms, in so far as they arouse in us certain expectations: certain of our psychological capacities and limita-

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tions incline us to conceptualise the capacities of stable, self-perpetuating systems as especially functional. In particular, those capacities integral to the systems stability or self-perpetuation strike us as especially salient systemic functions (p. 153). Davies book is well argued throughout and makes clear that dispositional accounts can do a lot more work than has generally been supposed. The complaint that historical accounts fail to naturalise normativity is also plausible. However, whether one accepts Davies conclusions or not hinges on whether one is prepared to accept the price of his revision and give up on natural norms. For those who arent entrenched in the naturalism that Davies takes for granted, it may not be clear why this price should be paid. Where is the warrant for the metaphysical restriction that motivates the account? A further concern is that Davies Humean strategy can be applied to any phenomenon of dubious naturalistic credentials. If it accords with naturalism, then we allow it into the world. If it doesnt, we can always claim that it reects our own psychological habits rather than the way the world is. Applied across the board, this strategy would render naturalism an irrefutable metaphysical doctrine that the world can be forced to conform to; anything that doesnt accord with it could be attributed to our contingent psychological susceptibilities.

WHAT FUNCTIONAL EXPLANATIONS PRESUPPOSE

Peter McLaughlins What Functions Explain is also heavily inuenced by naturalism. However, his project is not to make biological functions conform to a naturalistic world-view but to examine function-talk and, more specically, functional explanation in all its contexts of use, clarify the kinds of metaphysical commitments it involves, and focus only on those commitments that appear problematic. Thus his inquiry incorporates a descriptive rather than revisionary metaphysics, the aim being to assess what the problems are rather than try to solve them: I shall not be asking what is the right metaphysics for turn-of-the-millennium philosophy and does it countenance functional explanation, but rather what are the operative metaphysical presuppositions of an explanatory appeal to functions (p. 6). Nevertheless, there is a sense in which McLaughlin too presupposes naturalism. His aim is to assess the metaphysical cost of various instances of functional explanation, the amount of metaphysics they incorporate. How we are supposed to assess this cost is not made explicit. However, throughout the book, it is apparent that McLaughlin measures it in terms of the extent to which various uses of function deviate from a naturalistic metaphysic (e.g. p. 212). So cost, it would seem,

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is cost to naturalism. But the metaphysical price of naturalism itself is not discussed and it is not clear whether McLaughlin assumes that naturalism is itself metaphysically inexpensive or whether it is simply taken for granted as the backdrop relative to which metaphysical expenditure is to be gauged. Hence, even though McLaughlin is critical of naturalism at various points (e.g. pp. 1012), it again plays an essential presuppositional role in structuring analysis and rendering only certain phenomena problematic, leaving a host of metaphysical questions concerning what naturalism itself amounts to unaddressed in the process. McLaughlin discusses various instances of functional explanation in biology, the social sciences and everyday life. He concludes that artefact functions are inexpensive, given that they are parasitic on human intentions and so dont raise any problems additional to the metaphysical problems raised by intentions (p. 142). Similarly, dispositional functions, as described by Cummins, are metaphysically uninteresting, in that they involve nothing more than an appeal to physical causation (p. 136). However, certain instances of function attribution in biology are, McLaughlin claims, more problematic. He argues (Chapter 5) that historical approaches to biological functions are inadequate, for two primary reasons. First of all, if ever spontaneously generated organisms were found, we would still want to assign functions, suggesting that our intuitive sense of biological function cannot be captured by historical selection processes. Second, McLaughlin argues that historical accounts tend to fall back on some notion of the good, which, even when explicitly rejected, is tacitly slipped in. Without this, these accounts are prone to excessive generality. As an alternative to historical analyses, McLaughlin (Chapter 8) proposes that certain kinds of biological feedback processes license attribution of function, even in the absence of evolutionary histories. This, he claims, raises the possibility that we are committed, in such instances, to holistic causal relations, which would be in conict with a reductive naturalism. In Chapters 9 and 10, venturing a broadly Aristotelian account, he argues that we are also committed to some notion of the good of the organism, whose essential or characteristic activity is self-reproduction, meaning self-sustenance rather than producing others of its kind. That which is good for the organism is that which contributes to its self-sustenance (e.g. p. 203). Functions are contributions to the good of organisms. They are assigned in cases where a part of an organism depends on the whole for its own continuation and also contributes to the self-sustenance of its organism (p. 209).

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The task this book sets itself is an important one. Many recent analyses of function take an understanding of the problem/s in question for granted. Hence it is helpful to take a step back and inquire just what the problems are and whether current debates have passed some of them by. In addition, the book is refreshing in providing a broader discussion of functions than most, rather than focusing exclusively on certain current uses in biology. It is also interesting to see credit given throughout to Hempel and Nagel, over Wright and Cummins, for setting the general parameters of current philosophical debate about functions. However, the central argument of the book seems to me to be awed. McLaughlin (Chapter 7) argues for a disanalogy between organisms and artefacts, which, he claims, is ultimately the source of a commitment to the good of organisms. Artefacts, McLaughlin suggests, possess only an external teleology, meaning that the function or purpose of an artefact and the functions of its various parts depend upon the intentions of a user or designer. Organisms, however, also have internal teleology. Whereas the functions of parts of an artefact depend on the function of the whole artefact, which itself depends on outside intentions, parts of organisms have functions whereas the organism itself does not. An organism, in contrast to an artefact, is an end in itself, to whose good various parts contribute (p. 149). This then licenses McLaughlins account of holistic, self-reproducing systems such as organisms, to whose good functions contribute. As a piece of descriptive metaphysics, this distinction between internal and external teleologies is implausible. It is simply not the case that organisms arent themselves assigned functions. For example, one might refer to the function that an organism has in the context of some symbiotic relationship with another organism, such as the function that various bacteria have in aiding ruminant digestion. One might also assign functions to various organisms when viewing them as constituents of complex ecosystems, or construe an organism as a collective of adaptations whose function is to perpetuate the genes. So the sustenance (self-reproduction) of the organism is not always taken as a basic good that cannot itself be assigned a function. Conversely, one might also regard an artefacts self-regulation as basic in some contexts and ponder how various parts contribute functionally to the good of the whole. In fact, such a stance seems to be commonplace when one is dealing with highly complex artefacts. Hence McLaughlins distinction between internal and external teleologies breaks down. Indeed, the context-dependence of any distinction between internal and external teleologies seems to better accord with a Cummins-style dispositional account. When analysing a system into its component func-

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tions, our interests play a preliminary role in singling out the system in question, whose capacities are to be accounted for. We might select an organism, an artefact, an ecosystem, a collective of genes or myriad other systems. In selecting a system, we take that system as basic, as our object of analysis. However, that system could also be a functional constituent of another object of analysis, in a different context of inquiry. Thus the idea that the organism, or anything else, constitutes an absolute ontological terminus for biological functional explanation is implausible.
AN UNWARRANTED EMBARGO ?

Davies and McLaughlin agree that the biggest metaphysical concern with natural teleology is the possibility that it commits us to irreducible intentional design. Davies takes it as given that this would be unacceptable and, in concluding that biological normativity cannot be naturalised and so involves just such a commitment, proposes a revisionist account in order to avoid it. McLaughlin (Chapter 7) also indicates that agent intentions would be the most problematic metaphysical implication that functional explanation might turn out to involve, even though he ultimately argues that this is a price we do not in fact have to pay. Hence, if naturalism is the backdrop relative to which metaphysical costs are to be measured, agent intention demands the highest price. In other words, it is utterly antithetical to the assumption of naturalism. Whats more, McLaughlin seems to depart from his purely descriptive agenda to indicate that biological function might serve as a vehicle for the naturalisation of human intentionality (p. 179), again suggesting that intentionality of any kind is the last thing we want in our metaphysics. Yet why is there an embargo against intentionality? What is it that warrants the assumption of naturalism? And what precisely does this assumption amount to? In contrast to Davies and McLaughlin, Del Ratzsch, in Nature, Design, and Science, is not concerned with whether functions ultimately entail intentions but with the question of why explaining certain features of the natural world in terms of irreducible intentions should be viewed as a bad thing. More specically, he addresses the scientic and philosophical respectability of Intelligent Design Theory and asks why, if at all, explanations invoking supernatural design should be avoided in science. What is the nature of the current embargo against supernatural design in science, and is that embargo defensible? The book is instructive, not just in assessing the scientic credentials of Intelligent Design Theory but also in questioning whether and how the commitment to naturalism is justiable. In Part II of the book, Ratzsch makes the point that recent

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work in the history and philosophy of science illustrates that the ideal of a full-blown empirical, rigorously iron-clad, theoretically rich science is an impossible one (p. 82). All science incorporates non-empirical presuppositions, including values, which shape the nature of inquiry in various ways (pp. 8485). Hence any prohibition against intelligent design cannot rest on the nave claim that science only deals with what can be observed. In addition, various demarcation criteria that might be invoked to limit the scope of science turn out to be unworkable (Chapter 9). Against the objection that intelligent design explanations are untestable, Ratzsch raises the interesting point that science involves all sorts of metaphysics commitments that are not, in any sense, testable but play an indispensable role in both methods and theories. So, even if supernatural design were to turn out to be untestable (which should not be assumed), it is still arguably no more vacuous than many of the generally accepted presuppositions of contemporary science, such as the uniformity of nature for instance, which is metaphysically rooted, nonnegotiable, normative, systematically protected, immune to empirical challenge, untestable, nonpredictive, and unlimitedly exible (p. 138). Supernatural design, Ratzsch argues, could play a role at one or more of several different levels of scientic inquiry and since principles have different functions at different levels in scientic hierarchies, what counts as paying off can vary at those different levels (p. 137). He argues that it is by no means clear why integration of Intelligent Design into some aspect of the scientic enterprise should not bear fruit. For example, it may well be able to illuminate our understanding of specic phenomena such as the Big Bang (p. 134), or serve as a more general regulative principle of inquiry (p. 142). Hence any absolute prohibition against Intelligent Design in science is unwarranted. An interesting aspect of Ratzschs discussion concerns the way in which a variety of presuppositions play a role in structuring and guiding scientic inquiry. Naturalism, it seems, serves not just as a methodological backdrop but as a principle with which to determine the kinds of things that science is prepared to admit into the world. Though this principle is taken for granted in much of scientic and philosophical inquiry, Ratzsch argues that it is by no means inexible, as all scientic presuppositions are uid and dynamic, rather than eternally xed standards; the lesson of history is that prohibitions like theories are provisional and tentative (p. 125). However, Ratzsch points out, if asserted dogmatically as a ground for ruling out various phenomena, naturalism risks becoming a hyperexible principle (p. 115), a metaphysical straitjacket into which the world is forced.

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Ratzschs discussion in Part II raises some interesting questions concerning Part I of the book, where he ventures a sophisticated account of the various empirical scenarios that might license design explanations, in order to illustrate that supernatural design, in its various forms, is in principle identiable. Central to Ratzschs account of the recognition of design is the notion of a mind-correlative pattern:
Under certain conditions, something clicks into place between the shape of our cognition and the focus of our experience. Something ts. There is on some level some kind of match . . . [S]omething meshes between mind and phenomenon (whether natural or articial), and that meshing is the core of the correlating-to-mind of pattern. (p. 14)

These worldly patterns, which one is struck by, are the starting point for any inference to design, supernatural or otherwise, and Ratzsch proposes a conceptually complex account of different kinds of supernatural design and various criteria that can be employed for their recognition (see Chapters 1 to 6). However, interpreting this rst part of the book in the light of Ratzschs later discussion of scientic presuppositions, one might doubt whether mind-correlation can be understood wholly in terms of objective properties of things in the world, which determine whether or not they accord with our cognition in a particular way. Perhaps, instead, the perception of mind-correlation requires the adoption of a specic interpretive stance or organising principle, which shapes the kinds of patterns the world is divided into. If naturalism serves as a lens for interpreting the natural world, determining the kinds of patterns we are prepared to admit as part of it, it is arguable that very different patterns might reveal themselves from a different standpoint. Thus it seems plausible to suggest that, if supernatural design were indeed to play an analogous presuppositional role in structuring methodological and metaphysical perspectives, many worldly phenomena would be interpreted differently and organised into very different patterns. Naturalistic presuppositions might organise the world into patterns that arent mind-correlative in a way that points to design, whilst a very different interpretive stance might nd mind-correlation. Hence the question of intelligent design cannot be resolved through a wholly empirical inquiry, as a naturalistic perspective might well assimilate various phenomena that could be differently interpreted so as to accord equally well with the presupposition of supernatural design. The question then arises as to whether and why one of these stances commands greater epistemological respect. If naturalism is defensible, then this question must be answered in its favour. Yet the warrant for

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naturalistic assumptions, or even what such assumptions amount to, is seldom sufciently claried by those who adopt them. Department of Philosophy University of Durham Durham DH1 3HP UK

REFERENCES

Allen, C., Bekoff, M. and Lauder G. (eds.). Natures Purposes: Analyses of Function and Design in Biology (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998). Buller, D.J. (ed.). Function, Selection and Design (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999). Cummins, R. Functional Analysis, Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975), pp. 741765. Wright, L. Functions, Philosophical Review 82 (1973), pp. 139168.