Functional Explanation Again

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Wed Mar 21 13:04:48 PST 2001


Justin 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.)

I haven't read the above paper & intend to do so later, but could you tell me when you think intentional-functional explanations are useful & when you think they aren't?

It seems to me that intentional-functional explanations aren't useful for explaining the origins & transformations of ruling-class & working-class racisms, for instance. Intentional-functional explanations don't seem useful for explaining imperialism either.

Yoshie



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