Functional Explanation Again

[Dennis Breslin]

Justin Schwartz wrote:
> 
> Functionalist explanation may be intentional. It doesn't deprive an
> expalantion of its functional caharcter to say that X exists, persists,
> whatever, because it promotes Y, and people put it there because they
> thought it would ptomote Y. E.g., that elimianting welfare is promotes
> profit-maximization, and that's why Clinton eliminated welfare. That's an
> intentional-functional explanation. (See my "Functional Explanation and
> Metaphysical Individualism," Phil of Science 1993.)
> 

What is gained here?  Identifying an agent whose efforts are oriented to
particular goals seems to make function little more than a synonym for
intention.  Functional explanations seem to make sense in some kind
of systems analysis where any reference to intention is metaphor and
the discretion of agents becomes irrelevant.

DB