Karen Neander

(1954 - 2020)

Abnormal Psychobiology provides a comprehensive philosophical analysis of the anti-psychiatry discourse and the relationship between psychology and biology. Part I diagnoses a methodological problem in disputes over "mental illness" and the "medical model": arguments often conflate conceptual claims about illness and dysfunction with moral and political critiques of psychiatric practice. The text proposes bracketing the political dimension (without denying it) to clarify the explanatory commitments of the medical model. Part II develops an etiological theory of biological function and dysfunction and applies it to the distinctions between disease, illness, and organic disorder. Particular attention is given to the question of whether psychological conditions can involve biological dysfunction. Part III defends a biological theory of mind ("biological functionalism") and addresses classic objections, as well as questions about broad mental states and representation. It argues that representational status and content are grounded in biologically proper histories of acquisition and use.

Karen Neander criticizes Kitcher’s account of functions and responds to his criticisms of etiological notions. Neander argues that Kitcher’s account fails to make sense of the possibility of malfunction in token traits. Moreover his criticisms apply only to an ultra-strong etiological notion of functions. In contrast, Neander defends what she calls a middling-strong etiological account. Her account is stronger than Kitcher’s in requiring that natural selection played some role (relatively recently) in explaining the presence or maintenance of the trait over (at least some of) the available alternatives that actually existed, but unlike the ultra-strong notion it does not require that the trait would have offered an advantage over all possible alternatives.

Most theories of function ascribe biological functions to token traits on the basis of their being traits of a certain type. This raises a circularity concern, given that, traditionally, biological traits are thought to be typed by their functions. This chapter discusses this circularity problem, primarily as a problem for etiological theories of function. Drawing on a proposal made in earlier works by herself and with Alex Rosenberg, Karen Neander suggests and defends an answer to the question of how traits should be typed for the purpose of ascribing them functions. She argues that, although many trait categories are functional-homologous categories that are partly sensitive to distinctions of function (and not strictly based on distinctions in lineage), this generates no vicious circularity. By locating a trait in a lineage that is parsed at those junctures where there are relevant changes in the direction of selection, one can at once determine its function and classify it with respect to a functional-homologous classification. She shows how this proposal handles vestigial traits and exaptations, and how it helps with Robert Cummins’ worries about gradual selection and trait fixation.

This paper argues that a minimal notion of function and a notion of normal-proper function are used in explaining how bodies and brains operate. Neither is Cummins’ (1975) notion, as originally defined, and yet his is often taken to be the clearly relevant notion for such an explanatory context. This paper also explains how adverting to normal-proper functions, even if these are selected functions, can play a significant scientific role in the operational explanations of complex systems that physiologists and neurophysiologists provide, despite a lack of relevant causal efficacy on the part of such functions.

Drawing on insights from causal theories of reference, teleosemantics, and state space semantics, a theory of naturalized mental representation. In A Mark of the Mental, Karen Neander considers the representational power of mental states—described by the cognitive scientist Zenon Pylyshyn as the “second hardest puzzle” of philosophy of mind. The puzzle at the heart of the book is sometimes called “the problem of mental content,” “Brentano's problem,” or “the problem of intentionality.” Its motivating mystery is how neurobiological states can have semantic properties such as meaning or reference. Neander proposes a naturalistic account for sensory-perceptual representations. Neander draws on insights from state-space semantics, causal theories of reference, and teleosemantic theories. She proposes and defends an intuitive, theoretically well-motivated but highly controversial thesis: sensory-perceptual systems have the function to produce inner state changes that are the analogs of as well as caused by their referents. Neander shows that the three main elements—functions, causal-information relations, and relations of second-order similarity—complement rather than conflict with each other. After developing an argument for teleosemantics by examining the nature of explanation in the mind and brain sciences, she develops a theory of mental content and defends it against six main content-determinacy challenges to a naturalized semantics.

This paper argues that a minimal notion of function and a notion of normal-proper function are used in explaining how bodies and brains operate. Neither is Cummins’ notion, as originally defined, and yet his is often taken to be the clearly relevant notion for such an explanatory context. This paper also explains how adverting to normal-proper functions, even if these are selected functions, can play a significant scientific role in the operational explanations of complex systems that physiologists and neurophysiologists provide, despite a lack of relevant causal efficacy on the part of such functions

argue that natural selection does not explain the genotypic arid phenotypic properties of individuals. On this view, natural selection explains the adaptedness of individuals, not by explaining why the individuals that exist have the adaptations they do, but rather by explaining why the individuals that exist are the ones with those adaptations. This paper argues that this ‘Negative’ view of natural selection ignores the fact that natural selection is a cumulative selection process. So understood, it explains how the genetic sequences that individuals inherit and that are responsible for their complex (and co-adapted) adaptations first arose in the gene-pool

On dit souvent que, tandis que la biologie de l'évolution utilise un concept étiologique de fonction (la fonction d'un trait biologique n'est autre que son effet sélectionné), la physiologie prend appui sur un autre concept de fonction, celui de rôle causal. Cependant, un examen plus attentif montre que le concept non normatif de rôle causal n'est pas ce dont la physiologie générale ou la neurophysiologie ont besoin. Ces disciplines font un large usage de notions comme celles de bon fonctionnement, de fonctionnement normal, de fonctionnement perturbé ou de trouble fonctionnel. Il semble ainsi qu'un concept normatif comme le concept étiologique n'est pas seulement utile dans le contexte d'explications téléologiques ou évolutionnistes, mais aussi dans celui d'explications mécanistes ou opérationnelles telles qu'elles sont couramment proposées par la physiologie. La différence entre types d'explication n'est pas une différence entre deux concepts de fonction. En particulier, l'analyse physiologique serait une tâche impossible si elle devait prendre en compte toutes les relations causales à l'intérieur de l'organisation fonctionnelle de chaque système biologique. Pour résoudre ce problème, la physiologie doit être une analyse du fonctionnement normal du système, quelle que soit la part d'idéalisation nécessaire. La notion de bon fonctionnement, conçu comme le produit de l'histoire évolutive, nous aide en particulier à comprendre pourquoi les systèmes qui fonctionnent bien se ressemblent, et pourquoi les systèmes qui dysfonctionnent peuvent le faire de tant de façons différentes. It is often claimed that although evolutionary biology uses an etiological concept of function (according to etiological theory, the function of a biological feature is its selected effect), physiology relies on a different concept of function, the causal role concept. However, upon closer scrutiny, it appears that the non-normative causal role concept is not what is needed by physiology or neurophysiology. These disciplines make a wide use of normative notions like proper functioning, normal functioning, impaired functioning, or functional disorders. In this case, it seems that a normative concept like the etiological concept is not only useful in the context of teleological or evolutionary explanations, but also in the context of mechanical or operational explanations as they are routinely offered by physiology. The difference between types of explanations is not a difference between two kinds of concepts of function. In particular, physiological analysis would be an impossible task if it had to take into account all causal links within the functional organization of each biological system. To solve this problem, physiology has to be the analysis of the proper or normal functioning of the system, even if normal functioning is usually obtained through a process of idealization. The notion of proper functioning, conceived as the product of evolutionary history, helps us understand, among other things, why properly functioning systems tend to be similar, and why malfunctioning systems may differ in so many different ways