Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

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200 Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005) Marcel Weber It is an interesting question whether the successful application of Esfeld's conception of holism to an organism's functional organization – should it actually turn out to be successful – shows that this holism is trivial after all. As we have seen, Esfeld himself uses the example of functional properties in order to show that his conception is nontrivial, because it excludes cases like functional properties. However, as already indicated, Esfeld uses the terms "function" and "functional" in a much broader sense than I do in this work, namely as immediate causal role. Such causal roles are not holistic in any interesting sense; they are merely relational. But on the present account, we have whole systems of causal roles each of which become constituents of a functional organization only by contributing in a suitable manner to the self-reproduction of the whole system. Finally, it is appropriate to ask if this somewhat formal result has any kind of prima facie plausibility. Why should organisms have holistic properties? I think there is a robust intuition that supports the view developed in this paper: While the parts of an organism have all of their causal dispositions independently of the other parts, it is necessary to determine how the parts play together to ensure the self-reproduction of the system in order to single out some of these causal dispositions as biological functions. So far, this is an epistemic claim, but it has ontological reasons, namely that not every system is capable of self-reproduction (while any system can be analyzed into its capacities). Only living things are, and many great thinkers have shared the intuition that, in some sense, living things are holistic system. In this paper, I have tried to provide reasons for this intuition. I have suggested that the holism of living systems can be construed as a form of holism that resembles the holism claimed for systems of beliefs and some other systems and that satisfies the conditions of Esfeld's general conception. We are dealing with a non-trivial holistic claim because the claim is not merely that functions are relational or that the whole system has properties that its parts in isolation lack. What we have is rather a situation where the parts of a system have some of their characteristic properties – namely, their biological functions – only because they form a coherent system with other components that have biological functions. References Clements F.E. (1936) Nature and Structure of the Climax. The Journal of Ecology, 24, pp. 252- 284. Cummins R. (1975) Functional Analysis. Journal of Philosophy, 72, pp. 741-765. Cummins R. (1983) The Nature of Psychological Explanation, MIT Press, Cambridge. Esfeld M. (1998) Holism and Analytic Philosophy. Mind, 107, pp. 365-380. Esfeld, M. (2001) Holism in the Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Physics. Kluwer, Dordrecht. Goldschmidt R. (1946) Position Effect and the Theory of the Corpuscular Gene. Experientia, 2:, pp. 197-232.
Holism, Coherence and the Dispositional Concept of Functions Hoyningen-Huene P. (1994) Zu Emergenz, Mikro- und Makrodetermination. In: Lübbe W. (ed.) Kausalität und Zurechnung. Über Verantwortung in komplexen kulturellen Prozessen. de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 165-195. Hull D.L. (1976) Are Species Really Individuals? Systematic Zoology, 25, pp. 174-191. Kim J. (1992) "Downward Causation" in Emergentism and Nonreductive Physicalism. In: Beckermann A., Flohr H., Kim J. (ed.) Emergence or Reduction? Essays on the Prospects of Nonreductive Physicalism. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 119-138. Kim J. (1999) Making Sense of Emergence, Philosophical Studies, 95, pp. 3-36. Lehrer K. (1990) Theory of Knowledge, Westview, Boulder San Francisco. McLaughlin P. (2001) What Functions Explain: Functional Explanation and Self-Reproducing Systems. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Millikan R.G. (1984) Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism. MIT Press, Cambridge. Quine W.V.O. (1953) Two Dogmas of Empiricism. In: From a Logical Point of View. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, pp. 20-46. Smuts J.C. (1926) Holism and Evolution. Macmillan, London. Sober E. (1980) Holism, Individualism and the Units of Selection. In: Asquith P., Giere R. (ed.) PSA 1980, East Lansing, Michigan, Philosophy of Science Association, pp. 93-121. Stephan A. (2005) Emergenz. Mentis, Paderborn. Weber M. (1999) Hans Drieschs Argumente für den Vitalismus. Philosophia naturalis, 36, pp. 265-295. Weber M. (2005) Philosophy of Experimental Biology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Weber M., Esfeld M. (2003) Holism in the Sciences. In: Hadorn G.H. (ed.) Unity of Knowledge in Transdisciplinary Research for Sustainability. Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, EOLLS Publishers, Oxford. Wright L. (1973) Functions. Philosophical Review, 82, pp. 139-168. Address for correspondence: Prof. Dr. Marcel Weber Programm für Wissenschaftsforschung Universität Basel Missionsstr. 21 CH - 4003 Basel, Suisse marcel.weber@unibas.ch Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005) 201
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