caa a22 4500 605448280 CHVBK 20210128100136.0 cr unu---uuuuu 210128e20150501xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s10539-014-9453-z doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s10539-014-9453-z Boucher Sandy The School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, The Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne, 3010, Parkville, VIC, Australia aut Functionalism and structuralism as philosophical stances: van Fraassen meets the philosophy of biology [Elektronische Daten] [Sandy Boucher] I consider the broad perspectives in biology known as ‘functionalism' and ‘structuralism', as well as a modern version of functionalism, ‘adaptationism'. I do not take a position on which of these perspectives is preferable; my concern is with the prior question, how should they be understood? Adapting van Fraassen's argument for treating materialism as a stance, rather than a factual belief with propositional content, in the first part of the paper I offer an argument for construing functionalism and structuralism as stances also. The argument draws especially on Gould's (The structure of evolutionary theory. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2002) insights concerning functionalism and structuralism, in particular their apparent historical continuity from the pre-Darwinian period through to today. In the second part of the paper I consider Godfrey-Smith's distinction between empirical and explanatory adaptationism, and suggest that while the former is an empirical scientific hypothesis, the latter is closely related to the functionalist stance. Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht, 2014 Functionalism nationallicence Structuralism nationallicence Adaptationism nationallicence van Fraassen nationallicence Stances nationallicence Biology & Philosophy Springer Netherlands 30/3(2015-05-01), 383-403 0169-3867 30:3<383 2015 30 10539 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-014-9453-z text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-014-9453-z text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Boucher Sandy The School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, The Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne, 3010, Parkville, VIC, Australia aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Biology & Philosophy Springer Netherlands 30/3(2015-05-01), 383-403 0169-3867 30:3<383 2015 30 10539