Functions in biological and artificial worlds : comparative philosophical perspectives - Krohs, Ulrich; Kroes, Peter (Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2009)
Introduction -- Philosophical perspectives on organismic and artifactual functions / Ulrich Krohs and Peter Kroes -- Bridging functions of organisms and artifacts -- Changing the mission of theories of teleology : dos and don'ts for thinking about function / Mark Perlman -- Biological and cultural proper functions in comparative perspective / Beth Preston -- How biological, cultural, and intended functions combine / Françoise Longy -- On unification : taking technical functions as objective (and biological functions as subjective) / Pieter E. Vermaas -- Functions and normativity -- Functions and norms / Peter McLaughlin -- The inherent normativity of functions in biology and technology / Maarten Franssen -- Conceptual conservatism : the case of normative functions / Paul Sheldon Davies -- Ecological restoration : from functional descriptions to normative prescriptions / Andrew Light -- Functions and classification -- Being for : a philosophical hypothesis about the structure of functional knowledge / Giacomo Romano -- Realism and artifact kinds / Marzia Soavi -- A device-oriented definition of functions of artifacts and its perspectives / Yoshinobu Kitamura and Riichiro Mizoguchi -- Evolutionary perspectives -- The open border : two cases of concept transfer from organisms to artifacts / Wybo Houkes -- Innovation and population / Tim Lewens -- The cost of modularity / Ulrich Krohs -- Technical artifacts, engineering practice, and emergence / Peter Kroes.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Keywords: Biology -- Philosophy; Technology -- Philosophy