Reevaluating Function In Ecology

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Functional language is pervasive in contemporary ecology. This symposium will provide a sustained analysis of functional ascription in that discipline. Although philosophers of ecology have only lately turned to the detailed study of these ascriptions, there are already a host of accounts on offer differing in their scope and advantages. Bringing together some of the major contributors to the philosophical literature on ecological function, this symposium attempts to address two central questions: (i) Can current philosophical accounts of function improve our understanding of functional ascriptions in ecology as they have clarified teleological and normative language in evolutionary biology and if not, how can they be modified? (ii) Is one philosophical account enough or should the diversity of scientific goals motivating ecological science and its applications force us to adopt within-discipline functional pluralism?

Biology Symposium

03 Nov 2018 09:00 AM - 11:45 AM(America/Los_Angeles)

Venue : Seneca (Fourth Floor Union Street Tower)

20181103T0900 20181103T1145 America/Los_Angeles Reevaluating Function in Ecology Functional language is pervasive in contemporary ecology. This symposium will provide a sustained analysis of functional ascription in that discipline. Although philosophers of ecology have only lately turned to the detailed study of these ascriptions, there are already a host of accounts on offer differing in their scope and advantages. Bringing together some of the major contributors to the philosophical literature on ecological function, this symposium attempts to address two central questions: (i) Can current philosophical accounts of function improve our understanding of functional ascriptions in ecology as they have clarified teleological and normative language in evolutionary biology and if not, how can they be modified? (ii) Is one philosophical account enough or should the diversity of scientific goals motivating ecological science and its applications force us to adopt within-discipline functional pluralism? Seneca (Fourth Floor Union Street Tower) PSA2018: The 26th Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association office@philsci.org

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Presentations

Ecological Role Functions and Ecosystem Resilience

Philosophy of Science 09:00 AM - 09:30 AM (America/Los_Angeles) 2018/11/03 16:00:00 UTC - 2018/11/03 16:30:00 UTC

Antoine Dussault (Collège Lionel-Groulx)
This paper argues that ecological role functions (ERF) should be defined as contributions to resilient ecosystem functioning. I draw on accounts of ERF in terms of Cummin's causal role theory of function, and argue that, although the causal role account adequately captures central aspects of the practice of functional ecologists, it can fully accommodate this practice only if ERF are conceived as contributions to resilient ecosystem functioning (rather than simply ecosystem functioning). I show the implications that this emphasis on resilience has how we should individuate functional groups and how we should understand the notions of functional redundancy in ecology.

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Community Function and the Concept of Healthy Microbiome

Philosophy of Science 09:30 AM - 10:00 AM (America/Los_Angeles) 2018/11/03 16:30:00 UTC - 2018/11/03 17:00:00 UTC

Stephen Inkpen (Brandon University), Ford Doolittle (Dalhousie University)
Concepts of function and dysfunction are central to naturalistic accounts of health and disease, according to which an organism is in a diseased state when the normal functioning of one or more of its parts is impaired. We extend such an account to clinical microbiomics: diseases inflicting the gut, for example, are said to arise when normal microbial community functions localized in that region are impaired. We argue that these functional ascriptions can be understood as selected effects: the function of a microbial community is that community-level effect which explains the persistence of community interactions under "host" selection.

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Functions and Functioning in Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic and Ecology

Philosophy of Science 10:15 AM - 10:45 AM (America/Los_Angeles) 2018/11/03 17:15:00 UTC - 2018/11/03 17:45:00 UTC

Roberta L. Millstein (University of California, Davis)
I examine the use of "function" in ecologist Aldo Leopold's land ethic, invoked in two ways: 1) the healthy functioning of the land community, which is dependent on 2) the maintenance of the characteristic functions of populations that are parts of the land community. I argue that Leopold's second use of function, similar to what Dussault and Bouchard (2015) call "functional types", can be understood in terms of the selected effect account of function. I further argue that the performance of these functions under certain conditions maintain what Leopold took to be healthy functioning and persistence of a land community.

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Ecological Functions in Ecosystem Ecology: A Defense of the Systemic Capacity Account

Philosophy of Science 10:45 AM - 11:15 AM (America/Los_Angeles) 2018/11/03 17:45:00 UTC - 2018/11/03 18:15:00 UTC

Jay Odenbaugh (Lewis & Clark College)
Along with (Maclaurin and Sterelny, 2008), I argued the best account of ecosystem functions are systemic capacity functions (Cummins, 1975). Two approaches to ecological function in ecosystem ecology have sprung up: the organizational account (Nunes-Neto et al., 2014) and the persistence account (Dussault and Bouchard, 2017). In this essay, I argue both the organizational and persistence accounts go beyond the minimalism of the systemic capacity account; ecosystem ecologists rarely provide evidence for an ecosystem's closure of constraints or propensity to persist respectively. Thus, we should accept the systemic capacity account if we are to make sense of the ecosystem functioning.

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The Organizational Approach of Ecological Systems: Some Steps Further

Philosophy of Science 11:15 AM - 11:45 AM (America/Los_Angeles) 2018/11/03 18:15:00 UTC - 2018/11/03 18:45:00 UTC

Nei Nunes-Neto, Charbel El-Hani, Victor Lefèvre (Pantheon-Sorbonne University)
In this work we present a more elaborated version of the organizational approach of ecological systems, where we aim: 1) To broaden the scope of the functional items in order to include the items of geodiversity or abiotic parts of ecosystems; 2) To point to the organizational approach as a ground to biodiversity itself; 3) To elaborate on the individuality of ecological systems from an organizational point of view. Besides these three main elaborations, we have also been working on the metatheoretical nature of the work we have been developing.

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