Matteo Mossio, Cristian Saborido and Alvaro Moreno (2009), The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60(4):813–841.
The brief’s citation (BJPS 60(4), 2009) is correct.
Key takeaways
- The definition. A trait type T has a function iff (C1) T contributes to the maintenance of the organization O of S, (C2) T is produced and maintained under constraints exerted by O, and (C3) S is organizationally differentiated.
- Closure is not enough. Self-maintaining dissipative structures, a candle flame and Bénard cells among them, realise organizational closure. They lack functions because their components “converge” on a single pattern; there is nothing to say one part is for.
- One account, two questions. Because the trait’s existence depends on its current effects through closure, a functional attribution answers both “why is T there?” and “what is T for?”, which etiological and dispositional theories split between them.
- Fine distinctions. Functional versus useful (oxygen is useful, not functional: it fails C2), indispensable versus merely functional (heart versus eye), primary versus secondary (the nose warms air; it also holds glasses), and dysfunction relative to a regime of self-maintenance.
Standing in the record
Filed on 2026-10-03 at the owner’s request, in the biological-autonomy part of the agency batch. No anthology topic holds it, and it carries no instruction for machine-learning practice.
It matters to the record mainly for one sentence-level fact. NOTE-094 reports that closure-of-constraints accounts face the candle-flame problem, and LIT-526 rests its own line on the flame lacking a Markov blanket. Here the organizational school grants the flame closure in the paper’s own example and moves the line to organizational differentiation. Montévil & Mossio (LIT-582) later replace this broad closure with closure of constraints and keep the thesis that constraints subject to closure are functions; they cite this paper for it. Two of the authors’ book, Biological Autonomy (LIT-536, Deferred), has a chapter on teleology, normativity and functionality where the mature version should be.
Barandiaran, Di Paolo & Rohde (LIT-566) cite it as the account of how an organization generates its own norms, which their definition of agency requires.