Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Consciousness and EF.
Consciousness: Creeping Up on the Hard Problem - Jeffrey Alan Gray - Google Books
Consciousness: Creeping Up on the Hard Problem - Jeffrey Alan Gray - Google Books
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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 4
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
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I have read those pages and the pages preceding and following them. I suggest that you back up at least to the beginning of that section, on page 81, and read the whole of that section. I think the phi symbol that appears near the bottom of page 81 has somehow signified for you that Thompson is supporting your (and formerly Tononi's) presuppositions about the adequacy of 'information' as an explanation of the nature of reality.
Why build your understanding on a masters-degree-level “dissertation?” when there are so many papers and books available by major theorists and experimentalists involved in pursuing the relationship of phenomenological experience to the problem of understanding the nature of the universe. See especially the papers from the endophysics collection I linked as well as the complement of Varela and Thompson’s books and papers in their development of neurophenomenology, which is now of great interest to formerly 'cognitive' neuroscientists and to physical scientists and theorists at this point.
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Despite what you believe (or prefer to believe), it has not been proved and is not generally agreed in neuroscience that "neural networks give rise to phenomenal consciousness." For some reason you remain stuck in the presupposition that all of nature and life can be accounted for objectively as originating in a matrix of unexperienced 'information'. As you've said in some more personal posts in the past, you yourself don't seem to experience phenomenal consciousness. (Perhaps you are actually an advanced computer, an AI machine?)
Of course consciousness and executive functioning are "strongly related" in humans, and likely also in some other mammals and even crows. Correlation is not causality, a general scientific insight that you need to meditate on and apply to your attempt to reduce consciousness (to an unaffected, ineffective, and insignificant veneer of some undefined kind) or even to eliminate consciousness from the world entirely.. We and all other living organisms are not automata 'generating' our temporal presence to and experiences in and of the world we live in out of a closed system of abstract mathematical 'information'. Really, see (understand) the endophysics abstracts and read the papers they describe that are available on the internet.
That you still refer to the 'hard problem' indicates that you might yet be open to exploration of phenomenal experience and phenomenological interpretation of it. If so, why not pursue the reading at the links I've provided rather than continually looking for points of view that coincide with yours (or appear to) in order to maintain your belief that the world and mind within it can be accounted for by 'information'?
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Soupie
Paranormal Adept
@Constance, unfortunately, i think we are just going to have to agree to disagree. We seem incapable of communicating with each other, haha.
I somehow mistakenly got the impression that you view consciousness as an external phenomenon that interacts with humans, and you mistakingly got the impression that I do not experience phenomenal consciousness (i wonder now if there are any disorders in which people do not experience phenomenal consciousness?).
I think consciousness is constituted of information; the mind is a dynamic pattern of information; this dynamic pattern of information is generated by the equally dynamic electro-chemical processes of the nervous system. As the mind is fully embodied by physiological processes, physiological process which interact physically with the environment, these physically embodied dynamic patterns of information are not a closed system cut off from the physical world.
I somehow mistakenly got the impression that you view consciousness as an external phenomenon that interacts with humans, and you mistakingly got the impression that I do not experience phenomenal consciousness (i wonder now if there are any disorders in which people do not experience phenomenal consciousness?).
I think consciousness is constituted of information; the mind is a dynamic pattern of information; this dynamic pattern of information is generated by the equally dynamic electro-chemical processes of the nervous system. As the mind is fully embodied by physiological processes, physiological process which interact physically with the environment, these physically embodied dynamic patterns of information are not a closed system cut off from the physical world.
Phenomenology does not conceive of temporal embodied experience as "cut off from the physical world," but it appears that you fundamentally do. [Insert: You do not deal with the individual and temporal interactions of consciousness and mind with the environment, what is felt, learned, understood, and produced through the increasing growth of situated embodied consciousnesses and minds in the still evolving world as a whole.] Your information-theoretical concept of "physically embodied dynamic patterns of information" does not recognize the ways in which embodied and lived consciousness and mind add temporal and experiential perspectives to what can be thought and understood about the nature of reality. Insert: Indeed, the nature of reality could not even be posed as a question without the prior phenomenological perspectives obtained in experienced life. Your 'ontology' seems to me to be a synchronic one rather than a diachronic one (for clarification see the paper by Terrence Blake that I linked earlier, linked again below*). While your ontology might refer to time (or blink time entirely, as in the 'block universe' hypothesis), it fails to include an understanding of temporality. Concerning this primary distinction, see the endophysics research.
* HARMAN’S THIRD TABLE | AGENT SWARM
Also read On Becoming Aware: A Pragmatics of Experiencing by Varela, Natalie Depraz, and Pierre Vermersch:
On Becoming Aware: A Pragmatics of Experiencing - Google Books
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S
smcder
Guest
available here in PDF for download
http://morephilosophystuff.pbworks.com/f/Depraz-Varela-Vermersch-2002-ON-BECOMING-AWARE.pdf
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Haha. No, that is not it. It was the following:
"Mind itself is a spatiotemporal pattern that molds the metastable dynamic patterns of the brain. Mind-body dualism is replaced by a single isomorphism, the heart of which is semantically meaningful pattern variables."
Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind - Evan Thompson - Google Books
Isomorphism (Gestalt psychology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
And I said nothing about "the nature of reality," but rather the nature of consciousness/mind.
Constance, I have read and greatly appreciated many of the resources you've shared - neurophen, panksepp, etc - but I have found that they don't seem to support the paranormal approaches you take to consciousness.
I also think our different approaches to consciousness are captured well by these words of Valle:
"An engineer observing a computer would want to look at the back and open up the boxes. He would want to take a probe and examine the different parts of the computer. But there is another way of looking at it; the way of the programmer, who wants to sit in front of the computer and analyze what it does, not how it does it."
I want to know from whence consciousness comes, and that is where much of my focus lies. You seem to think I am therefore reducing consciousness to the processes from which it comes to exist. I'm not. I am equally interested in what consciousness does; but I am more focused on how, not what. But I value the "what it does and allows us to do."
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Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
@Soupie
I don't know where this idea of executive function has come from... I'm not talking about function really, although the mind does 'function'.
Comparative evluation does not require phenomenal consciousness. But we can run with this:
I take it that you do not disagree with the following premise, that innate qualitative characterisation and delineation is rigidly designated in the physiological makeup of individuals that possess only inherited behavioural capabilities. In other words, physiological mechanisms evolve in such a way that is relevant to the qualitative impact that an environment has on a species. For example, if sensing movement is qualitatively pertinent to survival, physiological features and mechanisms will evolve that distinguish 3-dimensional movement and will do so by alerting the individual organism through autonomic responses etc. Nevertheless, though qualitative, these characterisations are rigidly designated because the mechanisms are inherited and, in the individual, are unalterable.
If you accept this premise, or some approximation to this, we have light at the end of the tunnel and we can proceed as follows:
When autonomic mechanisms and sensations evolve in complexity (which is inevitable because the greter the complex, the greater the potential environmental responsivity) there is the increased likelihood of conflicting behavioural responses from multiple sensory inputs and qualitatively delineated autonomic biochemical and neurological mechanisms. Now remember from the first premise, that these physiologies are qualitatively differentiated for each sense and for each range of sensory experiences generated from each sensory organ. [That there is the potential of autonomic conflict should be easily demonstrated in the lab through the observation of repetitive cyclical behaviours that, like a catch 22, lead to nowhere but exhaustion and death (in insects)].
In response, the evolutionary precedent is to evolve mechanisms for the management of the qualitative conflict and discrepancy that is driven by the multiple qualitative impressions emmanating through the senses from the environment. The terms of management are the 'consideration' of the relative importance of the qualitative impressions, and henceforth, the prioritisation of certain qualitative evaluations over others.
These mechanisms prioritise the autonomic qualitative millieu. From one moment to the next, an individual that possesses capabilities for the comparative evaluation and prioritisation of its own individuated qualitative impressions is an organism that has an individuated phenomenal experience concerning its own point of qualitative/environmental reference, viz. its own qualitatively relevant world-view. That world-view is phenomenal consciousness because it is spatially, temporally, and qualitatively differentiating in a way that is individuated, rather than only species specific as was the case with the organism that possessed only innate, inherited, autonomic mechanisms (even though they too were qualitatively differentiated by virtue of the evolution of the species). So, phenomenal consciousness is the process of evaluating the qualitative impressions that the environment evinces through the evolved physiologies of the senses and their qualitatively differentiated physiological mechanisms. I would expect that this process is primarily instituted through neural mechanism because neural mechanism is fast, and hence environmentally responsive, and is well connected throughout the organism and its endocrine system. What is the nature of that mechanism... extremely complex, sophisticated and beyond purely theoretic speculation, i.e., it requires empirical validation.
Have you got it... cool isn't it. That is how we get subjectivity from objectivity. Let me know if you don't get it.
Now before you say anything, humans are something else entirely. You cannot look at this through your own eyes (which is what @Constance wants us to do) because the way us humans relate to phenomenal consciousness is unique and is not the same as it is for those animals that merely experience it.... constance is talking about another plane of relation to reality.
What do you take those two sentences to mean? Can you re-express what you think they mean in your own words? You cite the wikipedia article on 'Isomorphism' as support for the meaning you take from that sentence from Thompson, from which I'll quote the first three paragraphs:
Isomorphism (Gestalt psychology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The term isomorphism literally means sameness (iso) of form (morphism). In Gestalt psychology, Isomorphism is the idea that perception and the underlying physiological representation are similar because of related Gestalt qualities. Isomorphism refers to a correspondence between a stimulus array and the brain state created by that stimulus, and is based on the idea that the objective brain processes underlying and correlated with particular phenomenological experiences functionally have the same form and structure as those subjective experiences.[1][2]
Isomorphism can also be described as the similarity in the gestalt patterning of a stimulus and the activity in the brain while perceiving the stimulus. More generally, this concept is an expression of the materialist view that the properties of mind and consciousness are a direct consequence of the electrochemical interactions within the physical brain.[3]
A commonly used example of isomorphism is the phi phenomenon, in which a row of lights flashing in sequence creates the illusion of motion. It is argued that the brain state created by this stimulus matches the brain state created by a patch of light moving from one location to another. The stimulus is perceived as motion because the subjective percept of spatial structure is correlated with electric fields in the brain whose spatial pattern mirrors the spatial structure in the perceived world.[4][5]"
To repeat my question, what do you think Thompson is saying in the two sentences you quoted, and how does it relate to his neurophenomenological thesis in the book as a whole?
Also, please cite the location of that sentence in the text so I can look up its context in my copy of Mind in Life. Thanks.
The last paragraph of your post confirms the difference between the ways in which you and I approach the question 'What is consciousness?'
You might be "equally interested in what consciousness does" but as you go on to say you are "more focused on how, now what." Your focus on the 'how' of consciousness is predominantly restricted to hypotheses offered by cognitive neuroscientists committed to physicalist/objectivist interpretations of the reality of what-is in the world in which we find ourselves existing, and those hypotheses have been developed out of a still-young 'brain science' and what it has been capable of seeing (literally seeing) in fMRI scans of visible regions of brain activity. I do consider this approach to be reductive and more seriously based on a false premise -- that the development of subjective capacities for affectivity, awareness, seeking behavior, protoconsciousness, consciousness, and mind recognized in evolutionary biological and ethological sciences and in philosophies of consciousness and mind can be accounted for as computational effects and expressions of 'information' processed in the brain without the prior involvement and direct interactions of living organisms in their own continuous experience in the actual temporal and palpable world.
You are now (following my suggestion of a year ago) reading, in Thompson's Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, a major effort to overcome the reductiveness of cognitive neuroscience and information theory, but my impression is that you are reading it against the grain of the phenomenologically based thinking of Varela and Thompson, pulling out isolated sentences that you read as still supporting the reductive theories of consciousness and mind that they attempt to move beyond with 'neurophenomenology'. How do you understand what they signify by that term? Putting that in words might take us to the core of the distance between your approach to consciousness and the one I have been writing about all along in this thread.
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Pharoah, a few questions ... So it isn't the experiences of living organisms and animals that propels evolution forward but a 'complex' of what? You seem to identify this complex as existing in 'the environment' but not in the evolving organism. (if not, please clarify) Does mechanistically evolving 'information' of some sort [what sort?] occur prior to and dictate/determine biological evolution and the evolution of consciousness within it? And if so, how? And where is that 'environmental' information generated in nature? In the quantum substrate, or somewhere else along the line of the evolution of the universe itself? When do 'autonomic mechanisms' in living organisms cease to entirely determine what happens in evolution and share the stage with options exercised, choices made, for better or for worse, in the activities of organisms as they explore their local environments? How do organisms learn how to cope with increasing skill within the palpable local realities they encounter in living in their ecological niches?
Borges, “The Exactitude of Science”
. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
Suarez Miranda,Viajes de varones prudentes,
Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lerida, 165.
. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
Suarez Miranda,Viajes de varones prudentes,
Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lerida, 165.
On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on Scale 1 to 1
by Umberto Eco
“We would have to postulate an empire that achieves awareness of itself in a sort of transcendental apperception of its own categorial apparatus in action. But that would require the existence of a map endowed with self-awareness, and such a
map (if it were even conceivable) would itself become the empire, while the former empire would cede its power to the map.”
by Umberto Eco
“We would have to postulate an empire that achieves awareness of itself in a sort of transcendental apperception of its own categorial apparatus in action. But that would require the existence of a map endowed with self-awareness, and such a
map (if it were even conceivable) would itself become the empire, while the former empire would cede its power to the map.”
"The Style of the World," an illustrated thesis on Borges' "The Exactitude of Science" ~~~
http://www.styletheworld.com/oeis.pdf
http://www.styletheworld.com/oeis.pdf
Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
ah Scheiße... typo... should say 'complexity' not 'complex'
I don't think I mentioned information... I would rather stay clear of that term for now.
when an organism evaluates and prioritises, it then acts accordingly, and that act counts as a decision determined by the weight of possibilities given the array of sensory environmental impressions it has at its evaluative disposal. The correlation between this process (which is phenomenal consciousness) and decision making and action is very tightly entwined as a unified character of existing. Of course, these evaluative sensibilities are ratcheted up (and down) by the imperatives of bodily needs as and when they change over cycles.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Pharoah, although I have followed your thinking this entire time, and have much affinity for it, the framework you share above is the richest idea you've shared yet. Yes, it is cool.
I feel that you have articulated very nicely indeed how organisms become attuned to their various niches. I love your explanation of the shift from objective to subjective. It makes sense that an organisms nervous system and the phenomenal landscape associated with it would exquisitly attuned to the environment in which the organism (species) evolved. And your explanation of why processes to make real-time decisions might evolve and relate to subjectivity is great.
However, what I feel you havent done is explain how -- in "nuts and bolts" terms -- a "something it is like" emerges.
Furthermore, what you describe above -- the management, consideration, and prioritization of the senses to coordinate action -- is considered Executive Functioning. There is a growing body of literature on this. I recommend reading Barkley's book linked above. Perhaps Barkleys work with EF could support HCT?
Animal models of prefrontal-executive function. - PubMed - NCBI
I feel that you have articulated very nicely indeed how organisms become attuned to their various niches. I love your explanation of the shift from objective to subjective. It makes sense that an organisms nervous system and the phenomenal landscape associated with it would exquisitly attuned to the environment in which the organism (species) evolved. And your explanation of why processes to make real-time decisions might evolve and relate to subjectivity is great.
However, what I feel you havent done is explain how -- in "nuts and bolts" terms -- a "something it is like" emerges.
Pharoah, what you describe above is a "function" for consciousness. Im sure youre aware that there is no agreed upon function for consciousness.
Furthermore, what you describe above -- the management, consideration, and prioritization of the senses to coordinate action -- is considered Executive Functioning. There is a growing body of literature on this. I recommend reading Barkley's book linked above. Perhaps Barkleys work with EF could support HCT?
Animal models of prefrontal-executive function. - PubMed - NCBI
"Executive function allows us to interact with the world in a purposive, goal-directed manner. It relies on several cognitive control operations that are mediated by different regions of the prefrontal cortex. While much of our knowledge about the functional subdivisions of the prefrontal cortex comes from the systematic assessment of patients with brain damage, animal models have served as the predominant tool for investigating specific structure-function relationships within the prefrontal cortex, especially as they relate to complex executive behaviors. These studies generally involve the targeted disruption of neural circuits combined with behavioral testing using carefully designed cognitive paradigms. In this review, I will describe a broad range of such experiments conducted in rats and monkeys that together reveal the distinct contributions of dorsal, medial, and ventral prefrontal cortex to different aspects of executive function. The effects of lesions and local pharmacological manipulations have provided valuable insights into the neural underpinnings of executive function and its neurochemical modulation. Despite the challenges associated with establishing a precise homology between animal models of prefrontal function and the human brain, such models currently offer the best means to systematically investigate the cognitive building blocks of executive function. This helps define the neural circuits that lead to a range of neurological and psychiatric disorders and facilitate the development of effective therapeutic strategies to ameliorate the associated cognitive impairments."
Pharoah, I think what you present in post 528 is enormously improved over your previous version. I have just a few suggestions and questions concerning this segment:
". . . phenomenal consciousness is the process of evaluating the qualitative impressions that the environment evinces through the evolved physiologies of the senses and their qualitatively differentiated physiological mechanisms."
I think it would be less fuzzy and more direct to say something like this:
'. . . phenomenal consciousness enables the organism to prioritize which qualitative sensed impressions incoming from the environment are most significant in terms of survival or seeking (food, prey, mates, etc.) and should guide action. At this level of phenomenal consciousness qualitative impressions in the present moment override earlier automatic responses in relation to things and events in the organism's immediate situation.'
I don't think that revision changes your meaning, or does it?
~~~~~~~~
In this next segment, I question the word 'instituted' and suggest instead that you change "primarily instituted" to "increasingly facilitated," and also replace "through neural mechanism" with "through the evolution of neural nets" . . .
Thus:
'I would expect that this process is primarily instituted through neural mechanism ==> increasingly facilitated through the evolution of neural nets . . .
~~~~~~~~
I also think the following is problematic --
"What is the nature of that mechanism... extremely complex, sophisticated and beyond purely theoretic speculation, i.e., it requires empirical validation."
-- because there is surely no single 'mechanism' that accounts for the interactive ways and means in and by which an animal's experiences in its environment influence its learning and increasing coping skills. In any case, the answer to how phenomenal consciousness develops and is enriched over time is not a question you've set out to answer. The answer(s) require, just as you indicate, future "complex" and "sophisticated" investigations involving many disciplines.
". . . phenomenal consciousness is the process of evaluating the qualitative impressions that the environment evinces through the evolved physiologies of the senses and their qualitatively differentiated physiological mechanisms."
I think it would be less fuzzy and more direct to say something like this:
'. . . phenomenal consciousness enables the organism to prioritize which qualitative sensed impressions incoming from the environment are most significant in terms of survival or seeking (food, prey, mates, etc.) and should guide action. At this level of phenomenal consciousness qualitative impressions in the present moment override earlier automatic responses in relation to things and events in the organism's immediate situation.'
I don't think that revision changes your meaning, or does it?
~~~~~~~~
In this next segment, I question the word 'instituted' and suggest instead that you change "primarily instituted" to "increasingly facilitated," and also replace "through neural mechanism" with "through the evolution of neural nets" . . .
Thus:
'I would expect that this process is primarily instituted through neural mechanism ==> increasingly facilitated through the evolution of neural nets . . .
~~~~~~~~
I also think the following is problematic --
"What is the nature of that mechanism... extremely complex, sophisticated and beyond purely theoretic speculation, i.e., it requires empirical validation."
-- because there is surely no single 'mechanism' that accounts for the interactive ways and means in and by which an animal's experiences in its environment influence its learning and increasing coping skills. In any case, the answer to how phenomenal consciousness develops and is enriched over time is not a question you've set out to answer. The answer(s) require, just as you indicate, future "complex" and "sophisticated" investigations involving many disciplines.
S
smcder
Guest
@Constance - thanks for the "On Becoming Aware" book reference:
available here as a PDF
http://morephilosophystuff.pbworks.com/f/Depraz-Varela-Vermersch-2002-ON-BECOMING-AWARE.pdf
I've been reading it and the discussion of the epoche in 1.2 is very helpful, almost a how-to ... and the place of experience in philosophy in 6.1 is also brilliant ...
available here as a PDF
http://morephilosophystuff.pbworks.com/f/Depraz-Varela-Vermersch-2002-ON-BECOMING-AWARE.pdf
I've been reading it and the discussion of the epoche in 1.2 is very helpful, almost a how-to ... and the place of experience in philosophy in 6.1 is also brilliant ...
We talked in an earlier part of this thread (at least I have) about the inadequacy of Chalmers's characterization of qualia in terms of "what it is like." Qualia are more than mere passively received sensations; they embody significations about the environment in which an organism lives moment by moment and guide its interactions with things and other organisms in the environment, as I think Pharoah's new text indicates. Whether qualia can be accounted for in "nuts and bolts terms" remains to be discovered in neurophenomenological investigations. Cognitive nueroscience has never been able to account for qualia and as a result has ignored their effects as significant grounding influences on behavior.
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Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
I understand your point about executive function... but I think I am expressing more.
If you take one sense, for example the sensations from light perception from the eye, it does not evaluate just red berries versus green grass (in my simplified story). It has an entire field of view with multiple colours, shapes and movements going on. Many entice automous interest: the neural and biochemical responses to each part of the field of view are qualitatively differentiating. One's line of vision is drawn, to engage focal interest... the qualitative impact is physiological and every nuance of our physiology (neural and biochemical) is atuned to the various subtle distinctions. They do this because they make a difference and our priortising of that qualitative millieu makes a difference too.
These constantly changing processes are qualitatively evocative and competing for our focal interest. This is phenomenal consciousness, which, in being individuated, realises a first-person perspective stance about the world as experienced phenomenally. This brings me onto @Constance's response, see below.
1. You suggest rephrasing one of my passages with an alternative...
one issue I have with your alternative is "phenomenal consciousness enables". "Enables", sounds like the organism 'uses' phen con. and this gives me an equivalent sense of a homunclus 'using' levers. Alternatively, what I am saying is that when all of these processes are happening phen con. is the result and that it is individuated (i.e the phenomenal experience has ownership and is a process of constant qualitative differentiation). And so it is not 'all about' function, but of course, it is not gratuitous indulgence either: there is functionality.
2. Both your phrase and mine are equally valid.
3. Fair point
That picture might be a hangover from thinking about consciousness and mind as machine-like, which is the general notion most of us have absorbed from cognitive neuroscience, information theory, and much contemporary philosophy of mind dominating discourse about consciousness and mind until recently. Organisms/animals don't use consciousness like a tool; they are experientially infused with it bodily, emotionally, and mentally. Germinal forms of protoconsciousness and consciousness are, as Panksepp argues, evident in the 'affectivity' and 'seeking behavior' recognizable even in primordial organisms. Maturana and Varela's recognition of the autopoietic relationship existing between primitive single-celled organisms and their environment makes the same point. Consciousness is a capacity that emerges in the physical world with the emergence of life.
I would say, by contrast, that 'function' can be a misleading term, originating again in objectivist, machine-like conceptualizations of living organisms. I first came across the reliance on the term 'function' as an undergraduate hanging around with behaviorists in the psychology department whose laboratory work consisted in stimulus-response experiments with rats, their thinking still conditioned by the thinking of B. F. Skinner. Lots of explanations of what they were doing and thought they were learning in terms of 'functions' -- "this is a function of this" and "that is a function of that".
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