Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Proper functions seem to constitute norms, of a kind. To say of the heart that it has the function to pump blood is, it seems, ipso facto to say that it is supposed to pump blood, or that it ought to pump blood, or that a heart that fails to pump blood is a bad heart. Not everyone is willing, however, to grant that these putative norms are norms in anything but a deflationary, insubstantial, or metaphorical sense. In this paper, I address the question whether proper functions constitute norms and, if so, what kind of norms they constitute.