Being For 177
sentence) appeals to the process of transformation for which yeast is the catalyst. The
recognition of a functional feature therefore possibly involves the capacity to understand
a logic of change.^14 Grasping for-ness is more complex than grasping causality because
for-ness requires a more elaborate discrimination of time stages, states of affairs, and dis-
crete objects; it has to take into account a relation with more terms.
Probably the relation of for-ness is recognized on the grounds of causal cognition
because each mechanical phase that is part of the sequence at stake can be causally under-
stood. However, causal cognition is not enough to make sense of the whole sequence. The
reason for this is trivial but effective: the reduction of a functional pattern that is also
rudimentary (such as the screwing dynamics of a simple screw) into a succession of causal
relations is overwhelmingly complicated. Yet some might object that this reduction would
be feasible in principle. Indeed in principle the structure of for-ness could be described in
terms of causal relations and it could be logically fragmented into simpler relations.
Undoubtedly such a description would appear more factual from a scientifi c point of view.
However, this description would not account for the phenomenal picture that we realize
with the perception of for-ness, which is implemented at a different and plausibly higher
cognitive level. When we perceive the functional feature of a certain item, when we per-
ceive that it is for something, we do not see a number of joint causal relations. At a glance
we see them unifi ed into a pattern that amounts to for-ness, even though we can logically
(but not psychologically) distinguish the three stages. For instance, recognizing that a
corkscrew is for drawing corks from bottles (or, that its function is to draw corks from
bottles) provides a subject with a different knowledge than the knowledge that a corkscrew
causes the removal of a cork from a bottle. The pattern that we recognize presupposes a
procedural step—the transformation process—that can be grasped by the human mind only
at a level that is different to the one in which individual causal links are cognitively pro-
cessed. Therefore the difference between recognizing the causal chains that can be con-
stitutive of a functional device and recognizing the functional feature of this device is not
only a matter of complexity. It is also a matter of different cognitive levels: the functional
one is higher than the causal one, even though the ratio between the functional image that
we grasp and the perception of the individual causal links and chains still has to be made
explicit.
I think of the functional scheme as a device that operates in a similar way to the one
that makes us perceive the immediate succession of the elements of the frames of a cartoon
as if they were moving. In fact the elements represented in the cartoon do not actually
move, but we perceive them as moving. We can describe each of the elements of the pic-
tures in a cartoon as still if we analyze them one by one. However, if the pictures are pro-
jected immediately one after the other, the human eye is not able to register the interruption
between two photograms and thus the eye sees a unifi ed fl ow. If we perceive and describe
each of the pictures individually, we can of course redescribe them, but we lose the per-
ception of the motion of the elements that are contained in them. Therefore I hypothesize