3 Biological and Cultural Proper Functions in Comparative Perspective

3.1 Proper Function

It is widely acknowledged that both biological traits and artifacts have proper functions.
That is, there are performances in which they are “supposed” to engage, and failure to
engage in these performances counts as malfunctioning. The literature on proper function
has been devoted almost exclusively to proper function in biology, but it is widely assumed
that some version of this account will work for proper function in material culture. But
due to this initial biological focus, accounts of proper function have typically made liberal
use of biological concepts such as “selection,” “fi tness,” “reproduction,” and so on. So
adapting this account will require fi nding cultural analogues of these concepts. This creates
an opportunity for things to go wrong in two ways. The biological concepts may not
succeed in picking out either biological or cultural proper functions; or, alternatively, they
may succeed for biological proper functions but fail for cultural proper functions because
they have no good cultural analogues. I argue that things have gone wrong in the fi rst way
with regard to selection, and in the second way with regard to fi tness. Finally, I argue that
the only way forward is to closely examine the phenomena of reproduction and use in
material culture.

3.2 Selection

The problem for theorists of proper function is to pick out proper functional performances
from all the performances in which a thing engages. So, for example, we want to be
able to say that the proper functions of leaves are photosynthesis and transpiration, even
though leaves do a lot of other things as well, such as shade roots, conceal fruit, harbor
insects, provide nutritious mulch, and so on. It is thought that natural selection picks
out proper functions by indicating which performances have historically accounted for
the reproduction of the trait in question. Importantly, a trait has been selected only if
it has coexisted with variant traits, and if it has been so much better at contributing to

Beth Preston