What Functions Explain: Functional Explanation and Self-Reproducing Systems (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Biology)

McLaughlin, Peter

ISBN 10: 0521038855 / ISBN 13: 9780521038850

Published by Cambridge University Press, 2007

About this Item

Seller Inventory # I-9780521038850

Bibliographic Details

• Title: What Functions Explain: Functional Explanation and Self-Reproducing Systems (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Biology)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521038855
• ISBN 13: 9780521038850
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

This book offers an examination of functional explanation as it is used in biology and the social sciences, and focuses on the kinds of philosophical presuppositions that such explanations carry with them. McLaughlin gives a critical review of the debate on functional explanation in the philosophy of science that has occurred over the past fifty years. He discusses the history of the philosophical question of teleology, and provides a comprehensive review of the postwar literature on functional explanation. The book provides a sophisticated and detailed Aristotelian analysis of our concept of natural functions, and offers a positive contribution to the ongoing debate on the topic.

Book Description

This book offers an examination of functional explanation as it is used in biology and the social sciences, and focuses on the kinds of philosophical presuppositions that such explanations carry with them. It tackles such questions as: Why are some things explained functionally while others are not? What do the functional explanations tell us about how these objects are conceptualized? What do we commit ourselves to when we give and take functional explanations in the life sciences and the social sciences?