Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

190
Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005)
Marcel Weber
there exists a form of biological explanation that is essentially holistic, namely a particular
species of functional explanation. This type of explanation is characterizable by the socalled
dispositional account of functions originally due to Robert Cummins (1975). I
have previously shown that this account can be supplemented with a coherence condition
in order to avoid a certain kind of relativity to the investigator’s interest (Weber
2005, p. 35-39). I will present a modified version of this account in Sections 2 and 3. In
Section 4, I will briefly discuss the general conception of holism due to Michael Esfeld
(1998, 2001). Finally, in Section 5 I try to defend the claim that dispositional functions
under the coherence constraint are holistic properties in Esfeld’s sense, strongly analogous
to a system of beliefs as construed by semantic holists. A comparison to an etiological
account of functions that is also claimed to be holistic (McLaughlin 2001) and a
brief examination of the implications for a general conception of holism such as Esfeld's
conclude this essay.
2. The Dispositional Account of Functions
After Cummins (1975), functions may be defined in the following manner:
X's function in system S is φ exactly if X's capacity to φ is part of an adequate analytic account of
S's capacity to ψ
To illustrate this account, we may use a classical example of a biological function:
The heart's function in the circulatory system is to pump blood exactly if the heart's capacity to
pump blood is part of an adequate analytic account of the circulatory system's capacity to deliver
nutrients and oxygen to the body's cells.
What is crucial with this account is that function ascriptions according to this definition
do not explain the presence of the function bearer in the system. In other words, the identification
of something as a function entails nothing about why this thing is part of the
system. In contrast, the etiological account of functions (Wright 1973) holds that this is
precisely what a functional ascription explains. I shall come back to a variant of the etiological
account in the final section. Here, my main concern is the dispositional account.
According to the dispositional account, a function ascription explains how the function
bearer's activities contribute to some systems capacity or disposition (hence the
name). It is in relation to such a systems capacity that some components of a system
acquire their status as functions:
When a capacity of a containing system is appropriately explained by analyzing it into a number of
other capacities whose programmed exercise yields a manifestation of the analyzed capacity, the
analyzing capacities emerge as functions (Robert Cummins 1975, p. 765).
Thus, according to Cummins, functions are relational with respect to some capacity (ψ in
the definition given above) of the containing system. This raises the obvious question
how this capacity of the containing system is identified. Why see the heart's function in
contributing to blood circulation and not to the body's carbon dioxide production or