We are pleased to announce that Applied Ontology Volume 6, Number 2 / 2011 is
now online at http://iospress.metapress.com/content/u015875jv78t/ (01)
Applied Ontology is now included in Thomson's ISI Science Citation Index and
every major citation service. (02)
Members of IAOA can access the issue by logging in on www.iaoa.org. (03)
Special issue on The Ontology of Functions
Guest editors: Stefano Borgo, Riichiro Mizoguchi and Barry Smith (04)
Guest-editorial
On the ontology of functions
Stefano Borgo, Riichiro Mizoguchi and Barry Smith (05)
Regular articles (06)
Re-organizing organizational accounts of function
Marc Artiga
Abstract. In this paper I discuss a recent theory on functions called
Organizational Account. This theory seeks to provide a new definition of
function that overcomes the distinction between etiological and dispositional
accounts and that could be used in biology as well as in technology. I present
a definition of function that I think captures the intuitions of Organizational
Accounts and consider several objections. (07)
Functions and fixed types: Biological and other functions in the
post-adaptationist era
Ulrich Krohs
Abstract. Among naturalistic theories of biological functions, only those that
do not reduce functions to actual causal roles allow for a distinction of
function and dysfunction. Most prominent among those theories are etiological
theories of function, which refer to adaptive evolutionary processes as the
source of normativity. Standard criticism of this approach refers to the
inadequacy of the result that novel traits could not have any function, and to
'swampman'-arguments. I criticize etiological theories of biological functions
for the novel reason that it is inadequate in any other theoretical framework
than gene deterministic adaptationism, and that present day biology is not
adequately described as being uniformly adaptationistic. An alternative theory
of normative functions, which refers to the typeñtoken relation as the source
of normativity, grasps more adequately function ascriptions within current
biological frameworks. The theory naturalizes the typeñtoken relation in terms
of type fixation by concrete instances and thus refers only to tokenñtoken
interactions. I further develop how this approach unifies biological and
artifactual functions and show how it accounts for function ascriptions in
cases where ontogenetic processes have an impact on the type of the developing
biological entity, and where decisions in the construction site and
modifications rather than construction plans are determining types of artifact
components. (08)
If engineering function is a family resemblance concept: Assessing three
formalization strategies
Massimiliano Carrara, Pawel Garbacz and Pieter E. Vermaas
Abstract. In this paper we argue that the challenge of the formalization of
functions not merely consists of analyzing and formalizing yet another concept;
the challenge may also consist of formalizing a concept that is to be taken as
a family resemblance concept in the Wittgensteinian sense. We focus on
engineering for giving this argument and indicate briefly how the argument can
also be given for biological functions. We demonstrate that in engineering
there are a number of different meanings attached to the term ìfunctionî, and
observe that engineers moreover seem to hold that having all these meanings is
useful in their field. This observation make plausible that function indeed is
to be taken as a family resemblance concept. Then we describe three strategies
for the formalization of functions ñ the revisionary, the overarching and the
descriptive strategies ñ and relate them to a number of the current proposals
for this formalization. Assessing the strategies with the meta-ontological
goals for formalizations of adequacy and minimality, we argue that if function
indeed is to be taken as a family resemblance concept, then the descriptive
strategy is to be preferred. (09)
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