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2 ideas
10431 | Things are thought to have a function, even when they can't perform them [Sainsbury] |
Full Idea: On one common use of the notion of a function, something can possess a function which it does not, or even cannot, perform. A malformed heart is to pump blood, even if such a heart cannot in fact pump blood. | |
From: Mark Sainsbury (The Essence of Reference [2006], 18.2) | |
A reaction: One might say that the heart in a dead body had the function of pumping blood, but does it still have that function? Do I have the function of breaking the world 100 metres record, even though I can't quite manage it? Not that simple. |
11907 | Maybe the identity of kinds is necessary, but instances being of that kind is not [Mackie,P] |
Full Idea: One could be an essentialist about natural kinds (of tigers, or water) while holding that every actual instance or sample of a natural kind is only accidentally an instance or a sample of that kind. | |
From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 10.2) | |
A reaction: You wonder, then, in what the necessity of the kind consists, if it is not rooted in the instances, and presumably it could only result from a stipulative definition, and hence be conventional. |