Antoine C. Dussault

We argue that ecology in general and biodiversity and ecosystem function (BEF) research in particular need an understanding of functions which is both ahistorical and evolutionarily grounded. A natural candidate in this context is Bigelow and Pargetter’s (1987) evolutionary forward-looking account which, like the causal role account, assigns functions to parts of integrated systems regardless of their past history, but supplements this with an evolutionary dimension that relates functions to their bearers’ ability to thrive and perpetuate themselves. While Bigelow and Pargetter’s account focused on functional organization at the level of organisms, we argue that such an account can be extended to functional organization at the community and ecosystem levels in a way that broadens the scope of the reconciliation between ecosystem ecology and evolutionary biology envisioned by many BEF researchers (e.g. Holt 1995; Loreau 2010a). By linking an evolutionary forward-looking account of functions to the persistence-based understanding of evolution defended by Bouchard (2008, 2011) and others (e.g. Bourrat 2014; Doolittle 2014), and to the theoretical research on complex adaptive systems (Levin 1999, 2005; Norberg 2004), we argue that ecosystems, by forming more or less resilient assemblages, can evolve even while they do not reproduce and form lineages. We thus propose a Persistence Enhancing Propensity (PEP) account of role functions in ecology to account for this overlap of evolutionary and ecological processes.

Analogies between ecological systems and organisms are a common trope in early ecology, but discussions of these analogies tend to focus on the particular version of them found in the works of pioneer plant ecologist Frederic E. Clements (1874-1945). This paper partly fills this gap by analyzing the relatively well-developed version of the analogy between lake ecological systems and organisms found in the works of founding American limnologist Edward Asahel Birge (1851-1950). I argue that although, for Birge, the lake-to-organism parallel did not imply that lakes were literally organisms, it reflected his commitment to a holistic view of lakes, which anticipated the distinctive holological perspective on ecological systems of later ecosystem ecology.

This chapter discusses the type of counterexample to the selected effects theory of function classically epitomized by Mark Bedau’s case of clay crystals, and more recently illustrated by rocks differentially eroding on a beach. These counterexamples purportedly show the excessive liberality of the selected effects theory by identifying items that are subject to selection processes, but do not seem to bear functions. I review three broad lines of responses to such counterexamples: the bite the bullet response, which contends that it is perfectly fine to ascribe functions to clay crystals, rocks, and the like; the population response, which argues that clay crystals, rocks, and the like are excluded from the selected effects theory because they do not form populations of an appropriate type; and the service response, which maintains that clay crystals, rocks, and the like are excluded from the selected effects theory because they are not selected for contributions to complexly organized systems. I argue that the service response is the most appropriate one. By attending to what I call the systemic dimension of function, this response yields better unity between the selected effects theory and the non-selected-effects uses of the concept of function that occur in many biological sub-disciplines.

Although an advantage commonly claimed for selected effects theories of function lies in their ability to eschew a problem of liberality that alternative theories allegedly face, they also face their own liberality problem. This problem is classically illustrated by Mark Bedau’s case of clay crystals, which seem apt to undergo a kind of natural selection, and also, more recently, by Justine Kingsbury’s example of rocks differentially persisting on a beach, discussed by Justin Garson in relation to his generalized selected effects theory. In this paper, I will be concerned with another type of case that illustrates this liberality problem: whole organisms. Although we may be reluctant to consider whole organisms as potential function bearers, they seem uncontestably subject to a selection process (i.e. natural selection), such that selected effects theories seem prima facie committed to ascribing them functions. I will use the case of whole organisms to comparatively assess two influential responses to the liberality problem faced by selected effects theories: the service response, which introduces the requirement that selected effects functions result from selection for a contribution to a complexly organized system, and the population response, which restricts selected effects functions to effects that result from selection processes operating on populations of the appropriate type. I will argue that, although the latter response has been preferred in Garson and others’ recent discussions of selected effects theories, the case of whole organisms shows the superiority of the former. Selected effects functions arise not from selection simpliciter, but from selection for service.

In a series of papers, J. Baird Callicott criticizes the wilderness concept of nature and the associated approach to environmentalism which focuses on the preservation of areas of land free of human intervention. As he notes, this concept rests on a human/nature dualism which defines the natural in opposition to the cultural and the artefactual, and thus in principle places humans outside the natural realm. This makes it conceptually impossible for humans to intervene in nature without denaturing it. Callicott rejects this concept of naturalness for two general kinds of reasons. First, because it is socio-politically oppressive, as it is frequently applied to areas where some aboriginal...

This book, originally published in French, examines the philosophical debates on functions over the last forty years and proposes new ways of analysis. Pervasive throughout the life sciences, the concept of function has the air of an epistemological scandal: ascribing a function to a biological structure or process amounts to suggesting that it is explained by its effects. This book confronts the debates on function with the use of the notion in a wide range of disciplines, such as biology, psychology, and medicine. It also raises the question of whether this notion, which is as old in the history of technology as it is in the life sciences, has the same meaning in these two domains.

Although Boorse’s and Wakefield’s accounts of health are generally regarded as competing ones, they are in fact so only if they are aimed at the same concept. Some remarks made by Boorse and Wakefield, however, leave it unclear whether they are. On one possible interpretation, Boorse’s account aims at analysing a theoreticalconcept of abnormality, which ought to be distinguished from a more clinicalor therapeuticconcept, whereas Wakefield’s account aims at analysing a clinicalor therapeuticconcept. The debate between Boorse and Wakefield would then either be merely terminological, or would boil down to whether Boorse is correct to assert the existence of a theoreticalconcept of abnormality which ought to be distinguished from a clinicalor therapeuticone. This paper aims to clarify what is at stake between Boorse and Wakefield, by maintaining that their accounts are most plausibly interpreted as both being aimed towards a theoreticalconcept of abnormality.

Antoine C. Dussault Cet article renforce l’objection des dysfonctions bénignes soulevée par Jerome Wakefield contre la théorie biostatistique de Christopher Boorse, en en présentant une version qui prend acte d’une critique importante de l’analyse conceptuelle comme visée pour une théorie de la santé et de la pathologie. Cette objection prend pour cible la considération, par la théorie de Boorse, que la dysfonction de la partie d’un organisme est suffisante pour la pathologie de cet organisme. Situant sa critique dans le cadre méthodologique de l’analyse conceptuelle, Wakefield soutient que cet aspect de la théorie de Boorse pose problème au regard des dysfonctions qui, parce qu’elles sont bénignes, ne sont pas considérées comme pathologiques par la médecine. Je présente une version de l’objection des dysfonctions bénignes intégrant les apports méthodologiques de l’explication philosophique telle que caractérisée par Peter Schwartz. Je fais valoir que sa considération des dysfonctions bénignes comme pathologiques fait échouer la théorie de Boorse à rendre compte de la portée pratique qu’ont les concepts de santé et de pathologie dans la médecine occidentale.

This paper revisits the debate over whether the study of facilitation requires ecologists to revise their understanding of the relationship between realized and fundamental niches as conceptualized by Hutchinson. Following Rodriguez-Cabal et al., I argue against Bruno et al.’s claim that facilitation can make a species’ realized niche larger than its fundamental niche. However, I also maintain that the abstract Hutchinsonian conceptualization of the niche makes a whole range of facilitative interactions—which I propose to call ameliorative facilitation—invisible to niche-based approaches to the study of ecological communities. I propose a way to incorporate ameliorative facilitation into such approaches. My proposal involves supplementing the Hutchinsonian realized/fundamental dyad with a third concept: the potential niche. This concept was introduced by ecologists studying the effects of environmental change on species distributions, but I show how it could also be fruitfully used in facilitation studies. I argue that this proposed solution is more appealing than Stachowicz’s suggestion that Hutchinson’s realized/fundamental contrast be applied to a spatial-geographical, as opposed to an abstract-conceptual, notion of the niche.

This paper discusses Millstein’s criticism of the consensus view formed against selected-effects ecological functions. I argue that Millstein’s defense of coevolution-based selected-effects ecological functions applies to a notion of function as an activity, whereas proponents of the consensus view are concerned with a notion of ecological function as the contribution of an organism, population, species, or abiotic item to the maintenance of its community and/or the functioning of its ecosystem. Millstein’s arguments hence do not invalidate the consensus view but draw attention to a notion of function that has been neglected in philosophical discussions and that deserves more attention.

This paper criticizes Jerome Wakefield’s harmful dysfunction analysis of disorder by arguing that the conceptual linkage it establishes between the medical concepts of health and disorder and the prudential notions of well-being and harm makes the account inapplicable to nonsentient organisms, such as plants, fungi, and many invertebrate animals. Drawing on a previous formulation of this criticism by Christopher Boorse, and noting that Wakefield could avoid it if he adopted a partly biofunction-based account of interests like that often advocated in the field of environmental ethics, I argue that integrating such an account of interests into the HDA would generate serious concerns. Specifically, it would make dysfunction sufficient for disorder and so reestablish between dysfunction and disorder precisely the kind of sufficiency relation that harm-requiring accounts of disorder strive to avoid; blur the line between the HDA’s dysfunction and harm components and, in so doing, deprive the HDA of its alleged main advantage over monistic dysfunction-based accounts of disorders like Boorse’s; and tie the HDA to an understanding of harm that is in itself problematic. I argue that these three concerns, and the dilemmas they generate, rob the HDA of much of its prima facie appeal, ultimately indicating that a satisfactory account of disorder should most likely eschew all references to prudential notions of well-being and harm.

The concept of biological inheritance has recently been extended so as to integrate, among other elements, parts of organisms’ environments. The literature refers to the trans-generational reconstruction of these parts in terms of environmental or ecological inheritance. This article’s main objective is to clarify the different meanings of "environmental inheritance," to underline so far unnoticed theoretical difficulties associated to this polysemous notion and to consequently argue that inheritance, even when extended, should be theoretically distinguished from trans-generational environmental stability. After disentangling the different meanings of environmental inheritance, I underline that studies dealing with this concept place themselves in the wake of earlier contributions about biological environment and elaborate on the role of organisms in the determination of their relevant developmental and selective surroundings. This leads me to question the legitimacy of the category shift operated by niche inheritance proponents—from environment to inheritance—and to explain why the very concept of inherited environment shows important and so far unnoticed theoretical limitations. In this context, I assert the necessity to distinguish two related but different research programs: the construction of a finer-grained theory of environment and the elaboration of an extended theory of inheritance.

This paper presents the interpersonal variability of harm challenge to Jerome Wakefield’s harmful-dysfunction account (HDA) of disorder. This challenge stems from the seeming fact that what promotes well-being or is harmful to someone varies much more across individuals than what is intuitively healthy or disordered. This makes it at least prima facie difficult to see how judgments about health and disorder could, as harm-requiring accounts of disorder like the HDA maintain, be based on, or closely linked to, judgments about well-being and harm. This interpersonal variability of harm challenge is made salient by the difficulty faced by harm-requiring accounts of disorder in dealing satisfactorily with cases of intuitively disordered conditions that seem harmless because they do not deprive the individuals that they affect of anything that they value (e.g., desired infertility). I argue that this challenge is made more serious for the HDA by some clarifications Wakefield has recently made on harm. In recent publications, Wakefield dissociates himself from the sheer cultural-relativist view of harm attributed to him by some critics based on his linkage of harm to social values, and adopts a more qualified social-values-based view of harm that leaves room for criticism of the values endorsed by members of a cultural group at a given time. I show how Wakefield’s qualified view makes it more difficult for the HDA to deal with the interpersonal variability of harm challenge, at least when applied to a Western cultural context where a high value is placed on autonomy and individual choice.

This article offers an analysis of ecologist Charles Elton’s “functional” concept of the niche and of the notion of function implicitly associated with it. It does so in part by situating Elton’s niche concept within the broader context of the “functionalist-interactionist” approach to ecology he introduced, and in relation to his views on the relationship between ecology and evolution. This involves criticizing the common claim that Elton’s idea of species as fulfilling functional roles within ecological communities committed him to an idea of communities as units of selection. While such a claim implicitly attributes to Elton an understanding of function along the lines of the selected-effects theory of function advocated by many biologists and philosophers of biology, Elton’s use of the niche concept, I maintain, involves an understanding of function more along the lines of alternative nonselectionist theories such as the causal-role, goal-contribution, and organizational theories. I also briefly discuss how ecologists after Elton also tend to have typically adopted a nonselectionist understanding of the function concept, similar to his.

This paper analyzes community ecologist Charles Elton’s ideas on animal communities, and situates them with respect to the classical opposition between organicist–holistic and individualistic–reductionist ecological views drawn by many historians of ecology. It is argued that Elton espoused a moderate ecological holism, which drew a middle way between the stricter ecological holism advocated by organicist ecologists and the merely aggregationist views advocated by some of their opponents. It is also argued that Elton’s moderate ecological holism resonated with his preference for analogies between ecological communities and human societies over more common ones between communities and individual organisms. I discuss, on the one hand, how the functionalist-interactionist approach to community ecology introduced by Elton entailed a view of ecological communities as more or less self-maintaining functionally organized wholes, and how his ideas on this matter were incorporated into their views by organicist ecologists Frederic Clements, Victor Shelford, and Warder C. Allee et al. On the other hand, I identify some important divergences between Elton’s ecological ideas and those of organicist ecologists. Specifically, I show how Elton’s ideas on species distribution, animal migrations, and ecological succession entailed a view of animal communities as exhibiting a weaker degree of part-whole integration than that attributed to them by Clements and Shelford; and how Elton’s mixed stance on the balance of nature idea and his associated views on community stability attributed to communities a weaker form of self-regulation than that attributed to them by Allee et al.

Functional diversity holds the promise of understanding ecosystems in ways unattainable by taxonomic diversity studies. Underlying this promise is the intuition that investigating the diversity of what organisms actually do—i.e. their functional traits—within ecosystems will generate more reliable insights into the ways these ecosystems behave, compared to considering only species diversity. But this promise also rests on several conceptual and methodological—i.e. epistemic—assumptions that cut across various theories and domains of ecology. These assumptions should be clearly addressed, notably for the sake of an effective comparison and integration across domains, and for assessing whether or not to use functional diversity approaches for developing ecological management strategies. The objective of this contribution is to identify and critically analyze the most salient of these assumptions. To this aim, we provide an “epistemic roadmap” that pinpoints these assumptions along a set of historical, conceptual, empirical, theoretical, and normative dimensions.

This paper discusses a challenge to the claims made by biocentrists and some ecocentrists that some nonsentient biological entities qualify as candidates for moral considerability. This challenge derives from Wayne Sumner’s critique of “objective theories of welfare” and, in particular, from his critique of biocentrists’ and ecocentrists’ biofunction-based accounts of the “good of their own” of nonsentient biological entities. Sumner’s critique lends support to animal ethicists’ typical skepticism regarding those accounts, by contending that they are more plausibly interpreted as accounts of the perfectionist value than of the welfare of nonsentient biological entities. In response to this critique and its implication that those function-based accounts would fail to qualify nonsentient biological entities as candidates for moral considerability, it is argued that those accounts should be interpreted as ones of the health of biological entities rather than ones of their perfectionist value. It is suggested that their being bearers of health may be sufficient for nonsentient biological entities to qualify as candidates for moral considerability, such that biocentrists and ecocentrists could grant Sumner and animal ethicists’ contention that the function-based accounts of the good of their own of nonsentient biological entities are not accounts of their welfare, while not giving up on the project of defending those entities’ moral considerability. | : Cet article discute d’une objection à la thèse défendue par plusieurs biocentristes et écocentristes selon laquelle les entités biologiques non sentientes se qualifieraient comme candidates à la considérabilité morale. Cette objection découle de la critique des « théories objectives du bien-être » formulée par Wayne Sumner et, plus particulièrement, de sa critique des théories du « bien propre » défendues par les biocentristes et les écocentristes, lesquelles définissent ce bien en relation avec les concepts biologiques de fonction et de téléologie. La critique de Sumner offre un certain appui au scepticisme généralement suscité par ces théories chez les auteur-e-s oeuvrant dans le domaine de l’éthique animale, en ce qu’elle fait valoir que celles-ci sont plus plausiblement interprétées comme concernant une forme de valeur perfectionniste s’appliquant aux entités biologiques non sentientes que comme concernant leur bien-être. Cet article soutient que la manière la plus prometteuse de répondre à cette critique pour les biocentristes et les écocentristes consiste à faire valoir d’une part, que les théories du bien propre qu’elles et ils défendent doivent être interprétées comme des théories de la santé des entités biologiques plutôt que comme des théories de leur valeur perfectionniste, et d’autre part, que la possibilité pour les entités biologiques non sentientes d’être en plus ou moins bonne santé suffit à les rendre candidates à la considérabilité morale.

This paper reinforces the current consensus against the applicability of the selected effect theory of function in ecology. It does so by presenting an argument which, in contrast with the usual argument invoked in support of this consensus, is not based on claims about whether ecosystems are customary units of natural selection. Instead, the argument developed here is based on observations about the use of the function concept in functional ecology, and more specifically, research into the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. It is argued that a selected effect account of ecological functions is made implausible by the fact that it would conflict with important aspects of the understanding of function and ecosystem functional organization which underpins functional ecology’s research program. Specifically, it would conflict with (1) Functional ecology’s adoption of a context-based understanding of function and its aim to study the functional equivalence between phylogenetically-divergent organisms; (2) Functional ecology’s attribution to ecosystems of a lower degree of part-whole integration than the one found in paradigm individual organisms; and (3) Functional ecology’s adoption of a physiological or metabolic perspective on ecosystems rather than an evolutionary one.

This paper examines the debate as to whether something can have final value in virtue of its relational (i.e., non-intrinsic) properties, or, more briefly put, whether final value must be intrinsic. The paper adopts the perspective of the fitting-attitude analysis (FA analysis) of value, and argues that from this perspective, there is no ground for the requirement that things may have final value only in virtue of their intrinsic properties, but that there might be some grounds for the alternate requirement that final value be grounded only in the essential properties of their bearers. First, the paper introduces the key elements of the FA analysis, and sets aside an obvious but unimportant way in which this analysis makes all final values relational. Second, it discusses some classical counterexamples to the view that final value must be intrinsic. Third, it discusses the relation between final, contributive, and signatory value. Fourth, it examines Zimmerman’s defense of the requirement that final value must be intrinsic on the grounds that final value cannot be derivative. And finally, it explores the alternative requirement that something may have final value in virtue of its essential properties.

This chapter argues that the common claim that the ascription of ecological functions to organisms in functional ecology raises issues about levels of natural selection is ill-founded. This claim, I maintain, mistakenly assumes that the function concept as understood in functional ecology aligns with the selected effect theory of function advocated by many philosophers of biology (sometimes called “The Standard Line” on functions). After exploring the implications of Wilson and Sober’s defence of multilevel selection for the prospects of defending a selected effect account of ecological functions, I identify three main ways in which functional ecology’s understanding of the function concept diverges from the selected effect theory. Specifically, I argue (1) that functional ecology conceives ecological functions as context-based rather than history-based properties of organisms; (2) that it attributes to the ecological function concept the aim of explaining ecosystem processes rather than with that of explaining the presence of organisms within ecosystems; and (3) that it conceives the ecological functions of organisms as use and service functions rather than design functions. I then discuss the extent to which the recently proposed causal role and organizational accounts of ecological functions better accord with the purposes for which the ecological concept is used in functional ecology.

We argue that ecology in general and biodiversity and ecosystem function research in particular need an understanding of functions which is both ahistorical and evolutionarily grounded. A natural candidate in this context is Bigelow and Pargetter’s evolutionary forward-looking account which, like the causal role account, assigns functions to parts of integrated systems regardless of their past history, but supplements this with an evolutionary dimension that relates functions to their bearers’ ability to thrive and perpetuate themselves. While Bigelow and Pargetter’s account focused on functional organization at the level of organisms, we argue that such an account can be extended to functional organization at the community and ecosystem levels in a way that broadens the scope of the reconciliation between ecosystem ecology and evolutionary biology envisioned by many BEF researchers. By linking an evolutionary forward-looking account of functions to the persistence-based understanding of evolution defended by Bouchard and others, and to the theoretical research on complex adaptive systems, we argue that ecosystems, by forming more or less resilient assemblages, can evolve even while they do not reproduce and form lineages. We thus propose a Persistence Enhancing Propensity account of role functions in ecology to account for this overlap of evolutionary and ecological processes.