The Possibility of Reducing Biological Explanations to Explanations in Physics and Chemistry According to Keller and Dupré

Subject Areas : Philosophy

Received: 2015-10-03 Accepted : 2016-03-02 Published : 2016-08-22

Keywords: Explanation, Function, Biology of Systems, Keller, Dupré, Emergence, Downward Causation,

Abstract :

The fundamental question of the difference between living and non-living remains unanswered to date. Unlike most physical and chemical systems, living systems must, at the very least, be endowed with function, a concept that to this day remains indispensable to biology, yet is effectively missing from the vocabulary of physics and chemistry. Accordingly, we need an account of the evolution of function out of simple physical and chemical dynamics, which we do not as of yet have. Evelyn Fox Keller's argument requires the fundamental transformations of the conventional approaches in both physics and chemistry fields. John Dupré argues that the properties of constituents cannot themselves be fully understood without a characterization of the larger system, which they are a part of. This claim is elaborated through a defense of the concepts of emergence and of downward causation; causation acting from a system on its constituent parts. Although much of this argument can be read as having only epistemological or methodological forces, the final section of this paper defends a more robust metaphysical reading: even purely metaphysical understandings of reductionism such as are commonly represented by supervenience theses are misguided.

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