Justin Garson, "What Biological Functions are and Why They Matter" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
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What is the central problem that biological functions aim to explain?
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Hello, and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdor, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa, and I'm co-host of the channel along with Robert Talese, Alexis McLeod, and Sarah Tyson. Together, we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books in a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with Justin Garson, who is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College, CUNY. His new book, What Biological Functions Are and Why They Matter, is just out from Cambridge University Press. Why do zebras have stripes? One way to answer that question is to ask what function stripes play in the lives of zebras.
For example, to deter disease-carrying flies from biting them. This notion of a function plays a central role in biology. Biologists frequently refer to the functions of many traits of evolved organisms, but not everything a trait causes is its function. The stripes, for example, might disorient some harmless birds, but that isn't their function. So what determines the function of a trait and what sorts of explanations are offered when biologists claim that a trait has a particular function? In his new book, Garson defends what he calls a generalized selected effects theory of what functions are and what they do. He argues that functions can result from differential retention as well as differential replication in a population.
And he says that calling a trait a function is to provide a condensed causal explanation. He provides an accessible introduction to debates regarding functions in the philosophy of biology, as well as applications of his theory to contemporary debates in philosophy of psychiatry and the philosophy of mind. Let's turn to the interview. Hello, Justin Garson. Welcome to New Books in Philosophy. Thank you so much. Thanks for inviting me. I'm looking forward to talking about your new book, What Biological Functions Are and Why They Matter. But before we get into the book itself,
it's
always nice to have a little bit of background about you, right? Can you say about, you know, who you are and how you got interested in philosophy and then how you came to write this book? Sure, absolutely.
Well, let's see, about how I got interested in philosophy. I was at, as an undergraduate, I was at a pretty conventional school for a while in the UNC system. And I enjoyed – I was interested in so many things, in philosophy and psychology and literature and anthropology. And I was terrified by the idea that I was soon going to have to declare a major. It just seemed like the worst thing that could happen. And so I ended up fleeing across the country.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the central problem that biological functions aim to explain?
0:00–12:38
2
How did Justin Garson become interested in philosophy and the study of biological functions?
12:38–24:39
3
What are the two main theories of biological function and how do they differ?
24:39–38:32
4
Why do zebra stripes matter for understanding biological function debates?
38:32–51:22
5
What puzzles arise when we try to identify a trait’s true function?
51:22–1:05:29
6
How does the generalized selected‑effects theory handle population‑level causation?
1:05:29–1:07:04
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from New Books in Philosophy
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