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(Jacob Rumans) #1

Changing the Mission of Theories of Teleology 27


Many others have weighed in on the broad or narrow scope of the content of the bacte-
ria’s representations. But my point is that the question isn’t really about function and
content, it is about context. If we want to explain why the bacteria die, focusing so much
on their representational content and its function can make us miss the most important
factor. They seem to be functioning correctly, but in a foreign context. The lesson is not
that an organism can misrepresent its environment in a foreign context—it is rather that
even if you do everything right, it can get you killed. The bacteria function properly, but
unfortunately for them, doing it the way they do is fatal in this particular foreign context.
The change in context or environment is what explains their demise much more obviously
than obsessing about the function and content of their mental representations. Their
problem is that their systems cannot really perceive or comprehend their larger environ-
mental context, and thus cannot adjust to certain kinds of changes in it. For limited crea-
tures like that, change in context is more than they can adapt to, and they die. Focusing
on functions muddies the water, whereas focusing on context easily explains why switch-
ing hemispheres would give us a bunch of dead bacteria.


2.3 DON’T Make Designer’s Intentions Essential to Artifact Function


Human beings are (many of them) intelligent designers and creators, and often build or
produce objects for certain purposes, thus instilling in them proper functions. As long as
it is safe to talk of human intentions for producing such objects, we can simply put the
intentions into the objects as functions. While there seem to be long-standing questions
about ascribing teleology to natural objects, it seems easy to place teleology into human
artifacts. It seems much easier to have a purpose and a function in a lawnmower or can
opener than in a heart or a bee dance.
Karen Neander (1991a: 462) gives us a clear example of such an intentionalist view
of artifact functions, where the function “is the purpose or end for which it was
designed, made, or (minimally) put in place or retained by the agent.” McLaughlin (2001:
52) similarly has it rest in “the actual intentions of the designer, manufacturer, user, etc.”
Millikan (in LTOBC), not surprisingly, has artifact function based on the reproduction of
the artifact, in this case by the designers or users. Thus for Millikan an artifact’s function-
ing the way it does causes its reproduction and retention—survival of the technically
fi ttest—but it still rests indirectly (or in part) with the intentions of the designers and/or
users who make the judgments about whether or not an artifact is doing what they want
it to do.
Vermaas and Houkes (2003) make one of the key taxonomical distinctions among teleo-
logical theories whether or not a theory of function is “intentionalist” or “nonintentional-
ist.” Virtually all the theories of biological function are nonintentionalist, having no creator
with intentions. The only two exceptions are the religious (theistic) approach, which bases

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