Viability explanation
Biology and Philosophy 10 (4):435-457 (1995)
| Abstract | This article deals with a type of functional explanation, viability explanation, that has been overlooked in recent philosophy of science. Viability explanations relate traits of organisms and their environments in terms of what an individual needs to survive and reproduce. I show that viability explanations are neither causal nor historical and that, therefore, they should be accounted for as a distinct type of explanation. | |||||||||
| Keywords | functional explanation functional counterfactual proximate / ultimate design explanation explanation in ethology explanation in functional morphology explanation in evolutionary biology viability explanation | |||||||||
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