An Organizational Account of Biological Functions

Abstract

In this paper, we develop an organizational account that defines biological functions as causal relations subject to closure in living systems, interpreted as the most typical example of organizationally closed and differentiated self-maintaining systems. We argue that this account adequately grounds the teleological and normative dimensions of functions in the current organization of a system, insofar as it provides an explanation for the existence of the function bearer and, at the same time, identifies in a non-arbitrary way the norms that functions are supposed to obey. Accordingly, we suggest that the organizational account combines the etiological and dispositional perspectives in an integrated theoretical framework.

What makes biological organisation teleological?

“…Because of closure, the constitutive constraints maintain each other, such that the whole organisation can be said to collectively self-constrain, and therefore to self-determine: accordingly, we contend that closure provides a naturalised grounding for teleology. Moreover, by relying on previous studies (Mossio et al, 2009;Saborido, et al 2011), we suggest that the naturalisation of teleology opens the way to the naturalisation of two related biological dimensions, i.e. normativity and functionality: in particular, constraints subject to closure correspond to biological functions.…”

Autonomy and Enactivism: Towards a Theory of Sensorimotor Autonomous Agency

“…A naturalized account of norms (or normative functionality) in terms of the viability constraints of an autonomous organization has been developed at length in biology, mostly in opposition to evolutionary or adaptationist accounts of normative function (Barandiaran and Egbert 2013;Barandiaran and Moreno 2008;Christensen and Bickhard 2002;Mossio et al 2009). We have proposed that this account of normativity can be relatively easily transferred, by analogy, to mental life, through the notion of a self-sustaining network of habits and its coherentist dynamical demands.…”

Emergence, Closure and Inter-level Causation in Biological Systems

“…As it has been recently emphasised (Mossio & Moreno, 2010), dissipative systems realise a minimal form of self-maintenance, in the sense that they generate a single macroscopic structure acting as a constraint on its surroundings. Accordingly, dissipative systems make a unique contribution to their own maintenance, since they contribute to maintain the unique constraint involved in the self-maintaining loop between C and P surr .…”

“…One of them, which is particularly relevant here, is the generation of functions. As it has been recently argued (Mossio et al, 2009;Saborido et al, 2011), when subject to closure, constraints correspond to biological functions: performing a function, in this view, is equivalent to exerting a constraining action on an underlying process or reaction . 18 Third, closure is specifically defined with respect to the emergence base P surr constituted by a set of processes and changes occurring in conditions far from thermodynamic equilibrium.…”

“…In this view 1 , then, biological systems realise a distinctive causal regime in which a set of constituents produce and maintain each other through a network of mutual interactions, such that the whole system can be said to be collectively able to self-produce and self-maintain. In the literature, this regime is usually referred to as closure (see also Mossio & Moreno, 2010, for a recent analysis) 2 In spite of the increasing scientific and philosophical work on this notion, however, the status of closure as a distinctively biological causal regime has not yet been assessed, we hold, in adequate terms. Indeed, the very idea that closure would be 'distinctive' of the biological domain seems to require adopting a non-reductionist stance, according to which biological systems realise a regime of causation that is irreducible to those at work in other classes of natural (i.e.…”