Humanities Talk

Abstract: Biological systems create generalization problems: there are too many possible activities to explain all, or even a representative sample, of them. So, which activities should a general theory of any biological system explain? In this talk, I argue that functions solve this problem: they direct us to center our explanations on the functional, correct activities and to abstract away from the dysfunctional, incorrect activities. I develop a transdisciplinary framework for functional generalization using case studies from molecular biology and autism studies. First, I explain how functions solve the generalization problem for a simple model system: the lifecycle of rhodopsin, a protein pigment in the rod cells of vertebrate retinas that is partly responsible for vision. This is an effective example because the underlying causal structure of rhodopsin is well understood. Second, I explain how functions solve the generalization problem for the harder case of autism. The causal structure of autism is much less understood, but our functional framework helps reconcile ethically controversial debates between disorder and neurodivergence models. One important upshot is that we should attribute a distinctive function to autism and then interpret many actual cases of autism as (disordered) deviations from functional autism (not from functional neurotypicality).