142 Paul Sheldon Davies
conservative, at least with respect to dubious concepts, and develop an orientation that is
progressive, an orientation designed to contribute positively to the growth of human
knowledge. The directives in this chapter are offered as a small fi rst step.
Acknowledgments
The general theoretical framework of this chapter was developed during the 2003–2004
academic year, while I was happily on leave from teaching, thanks to the generous support
provided by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. The particular occa-
sion for this chapter arose when I was invited by Ulrich Krohs and Peter Kroes to partici-
pate in the 15th Altenberg Workshop in Theoretical Biology, hosted by the Konrad Lorenz
Institute in Altenberg, Austria. The conference was intellectually stimulating as well as
socially and aesthetically pleasing, and for that I am most grateful to Ulrich, Peter, and
the entire KLI staff. I am further grateful to Ulrich and Peter for helpful comments on my
conference presentation. I owe a particular debt to Peter McLaughlin for constructive
criticisms and suggestions that resulted in the exegetical digression on Blumenbach and
Paley. Peter sent me a copy of his excellent book Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological
Explanation and made a concerted effort to save me from any number of inaccuracies
and interpretive blunders. Errors that remain are entirely the fault of my obstinacy, over
which my less obstinate capacities appear to have little control.
Notes
- See Cummins (1975; 1983) and Amundson and Lauder (1994). I explicate and defend the theory of systemic
functions in Davies (2001). - Some early formulations include Ayala (1970), Enç (1979), and Brandon (1981; 1990). Later versions include
Millikan (1984; 1989), Matthen (1988), Neander (1991), Griffi ths (1993), Kitcher (1993), Papineau (1993),
Godfrey-Smith (1994), Price (1995), Allen and Bekoff (1995), Walsh and Ariew (1996), Buller (1998), Preston
(1998), Post (2006), etc. And several philosophers have helped themselves to normative functions in theorizing
about language, knowledge, mind, and morals. See, for example, Millikan (1984), Lycan (1988), McGinn (1989),
Post (1991), Papineau (1993), and Dretske (1995). A recent anthology (MacDonald and Papineau 2006) contains
defenses and criticisms of teleosemantics, an approach to mental content that rests upon proper functions. It may
be worth noting that Plantinga (1993) appeals to proper functions in defense of a theologically based epistemol-
ogy. That should give pause to defenders of normative functions who insist that they are naturalists. - Defending this larger thesis is the aim of Davies (2009).
- Chisholm (1964) defends the startling thesis that free actions are the effects of agents capable of initiating
sequences of effi cient causation, including sequences that lead to the full range of human behavior, where these
agents are not themselves subject to any effi cient causes. - Toby Appel’s (1987) book is a marvelous history of the development of biology in the works of Cuvier and
Geoffroy St. Hilaire in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century France. - See McLaughlin (1990), 1.
- Look (2006) clarifi es some of the diffi culties in interpreting Blumenbach’s theory of a formative drive.
- On this view of development and evolution, see the essays in Oyama, Griffi ths, and Gray (2001) and the
splendid exposition in Jablonka and Lamb (2005).