Biological Organization and Cross-Generation Functions

Abstract

The organizational account of biological functions interprets functions as contributions of a trait to the maintenance of the organization that, in turn, maintains the trait. As has been recently argued, however, the account seems unable to provide a unified grounding for both intra- and cross-generation functions, since the latter do not contribute to the maintenance of the same organization which produces them. To face this ‘ontological problem’, a splitting account has been proposed, according to which the two kinds of functions require distinct organizational definitions. In this article, we propose a solution for the ontological problem, by arguing that intra- and cross-generation functions can be said to contribute in the same way to the maintenance of the biological organization, characterized in terms of organizational self-maintenance. As a consequence, we suggest maintaining a unified organizational account of biological functions. 1 Introduction 2 Self-reproduction of Traits: Proposals and Criticism 2.1 Schlosser’s and McLaughlin’s accounts 2.2 Delancey’s ‘splitting account’ 3 Self-maintenance of Systems 3.1 Functions and organizational closure 3.2 Second order self-maintaining systems? 3.3 A solution to the ontological problem 4 Conclusions