 Thank you very much for joining us today, we're going to do a Q&A session, this is the end of the line. That real best review of our interview today, I just got an update. She's currently teaching at the program. She's here to teach you a little bit about the Q&A project. I just want to make sure you heard about the description of the question. Her research in her PhD now has been very much focused on the face-between chemistry and biology. Her PhD was in Bioconics, Bioparticles, and I would dare say that her favorite Bioconics are for identity. And then, well, I'm going to show you the briefings of those things. You have one hour for your talk, you have your short break, and then we'll give you the other hour. Thank you. Well, therefore, I think we'll take you for a bit here. This is indeed a paper that I've been going to with my colleague, and it's currently written. And basically, what I'm trying to do here is to present a model actually as a biology in chemistry. And in particular, indeed, as the title says, the idea is to explore a new form of productionism in your chemistry. Now, the novelty is to write an account that we're using, which is functional productionism, but lies mostly in the application. So the idea of our paper is to take something that has been used widely in philosophy of mind and in philosophy of physics, and apply it to the field that is in the application yet. Now, what is the big problem? What is the big problem that has been driving my research, but is also behind the paper? That means I can't work with more than chemical substances. I can imagine anything that I would use to work with chemical reactors. Or even more, what is the relation between the chemical and the biological and the biochemical level? The big problem is particularly relevant if we consider the definition of chemical products like chemicals. That actually is the answer to the one starting relation between chemical substances and the biological substances, which chemical substances contribute to. And that is really a question of which properties are available on behalf of chemical mines, but also on that direction between properties. And, specifically, the problem of these two is that while in biological sciences, these kinds of concepts, I guess, and they're actually encompassed in various forms. So in biology, the order of influence of your biology, there seems to be something close to a philosophical consensus about the effect that life is somehow irreducible, or if not irreducible, it is strongly emergent, or if not gradual, radical number of properties. In the situation in chemistry, it is different. There are a lot of macrostructurist accounts, macrostructures, of course there is a consideration of some macroproperties for chemical mines, but somehow it can be reduced to structure and what the real form of strong emergence of chemistry in particular between chemistry and physics, it is more or less said that what matters to chemical mines is somehow the structure and the structure grounds most of the properties. So the problem of chemistry is that we have two broad sets of properties, one that is the structure properties provided by the chemical characterization of the kind, but also biochemical kinds are interesting because they contribute to the biological process. So a vitamins contributes to the existence of these additional blood cells, protein, epifolament, for instance, for carrying, around the blood in the case of hemoglobin and the contribution to red blood cells. So what is the relation between the structure and the function that actually is more or is closer to biological characterization of these kinds? What we are going to argue in this talk is that in order to solve, or in order to provide an account that tries to solve, the tension that there is between the chemical and the biological characterization of these kinds is that we can apply functional reductionism. And the idea is that we can reduce entities like vitamins to the chemical basis that realizes them because it's possible to apply a reduction that happens in two ways by a functional reductionism. The first one is that we have a functional kind, so vitamins, proteins also. We also considered in the paper some molecular genes, for instance, are entities that are characterized functionally, that these are entities characterized in terms of their behavior or the contribution that they give to given processes. A vitamin is a compound that contributes to life processes, for instance. And hemoglobin is a protein that has the function of carrying oxygen in red blood cells. And so this is the first ingredient that we need. The second ingredient that we need is that we can find a chemical realizer for that behavior. And according to us, if we are able to find a functional kind and to find a realizer at the lower level, and in this case it will be a chemical realizer, then we can apply functional reductionism in biochemistry. So this will be the thesis of the talk. Again, functional reductionism in this form has been presented already in many other fields, the novelty lies in the application. So what is the structure of my talk? First, I'm going to present more or less what's the status of reductionism in the life sciences, especially what are the challenges to reductionism in the life sciences. Then I'm going to present functional reductionism more in general, and I'm going to apply it regarding biochemical functions and functional reductionism, and then at last I will consider some implications. Okay, now let me enter a bit more precisely into the problem and into the state of art, basically. Now, why are biochemical molecules interesting? I've kind of introduced that already, but they're mostly interesting because they can be studied from two perspectives. They can be studied from the perspective of chemistry, and in that case we would focus on the microstructure that can be the amino acid chain that realises the protein or it can be the chemical compound that composes the vitamin, but they also can be studied from the perspective of biology, and if we come in from the perspective of biology, then we would focus on the function that these molecules play. So if we are studying amoglobin, we are interested in amoglobin because amoglobin is a very important protein for red blood cells and then for the individuals or the biological organisms that have those kind of cells. If we are studying vitamins, as this is the case actually for the history of vitamins, we are interested in the function that the vitamins play for organisms in preventing given disease or improving the fitness of an organism and so on. Where is the tension for the reductionist debate? The tension for the reductionist debate is that while a chemical perspective on biochemical kind is compatible with reductionism, or seems to be more compatible with reductionism because we can provide a microstructural characterization of the molecules and somehow reduce its properties to the chemical properties. The functional perspective instead, the functional biological perspective makes things a bit more complicated. And this in particular in relation to the fact that the realisation of the function is complicated, it's one actually of the main topics that is studied in biochemistry is how the structure realises the given function in the given context. But it's also related to the fact that functions are often considered a sign of life or functionalities considered as a sign of life and life might be considered irreducible. So we have this tension that I think is... We have this tension in general possibly between the life sciences and the non-life sciences in a way between a more reductionist approach and maybe a more anti-reductionist approach. But biochemical molecules instantiate basically or are an instantiation of these debates. Why is... Now, what we want to do in this talk is to try to propose a form of reductionism. And in order to do so we think that the reason that basically what we need to do is basically to reply to the criticism that would come from the anti-reductionist or to show that our account is able to deal with the arguments that are in favour of anti-reductionism. So here I won't consider broader arguments in favour of reductionism because this is where somehow we want to go, but I will consider the arguments in favour of anti-reductionism. Because if we show that our theory can basically make the observation of the anti-reductionist happy or they can make them satisfied, then somehow we think that we have reached what we want to do. Now, broadly anti-reductionism can be seen to be supported by two kinds of considerations. We find a methodological consideration, that is, the different sciences operate differently. They use different models, they use different concepts, they use different tools. So we should, instead of trying to reduce all the sciences together, we should be happy with the fact that they are actually methodologically disentangled. And this is one of the arguments that John Dupree, advocate of strong pluralism, puts forward. Biology operates differently from chemistry, chemistry operates differently from physics. We shouldn't even try to put them together because we have this difference in the methodology. However, this, especially for those of us that have a metaphysical inclination, might not be considered enough because we can be like, well, yes, scientists can do whatever they want, but they are still trying to describe the word. They are still trying to describe basically the same big target system, that is the nature of the structural world. So in order to give me a round for anti-reductionism, I need to provide an ontological argument. And the ontological argument that Dupree points out, it's based on two types of problems itself. One is what I've called the kind problem, and the kind problem for Dupree is based on the fact that we classify things differently in the different sciences. So in chemistry, we are interested in structure. In biology, we are interested into evolutionary history and functionality, and functionality is really linked to evolutionary history itself. So there is a sense for which the kinds are historical, and then maybe from a physical perspective, we are interested into relation and extrinsic properties. So again, we find another model of kindhood, and then we can go up to social kinds and economic kinds and so on. So this plurality, the plurality of the various classifications in the kinds, is a sign of ontological disunity. The second problem that we find ontologically is what I've called the relation problem, and the relation problem relates to the fact that not only we have these various kinds of kinds, but we need to relate them. If we want to be a reductionist, we need to show that they are somehow related. And according to Dupree, we don't have a strong account of that relation. We can't really find a link between the various kinds. To make the problem more precise, we can, in particular, the last problem. So I won't consider in detail the methodological problem and the kind problem. I've considered that somewhere else, so if you want to ask me, I'm happy to discuss those. Here I will focus on what we call the relation problem. Now, the relation problem seems to take three forms in the debate. Again, here we are generalizing, but these problems are the problem of multiple determinability. The notion of multiple determinability was introduced by Taco in a paper of 2020, but the idea is quite intuitive. And the idea is that we are starting from one kind that can be, in our case, in the case of the biochemical, we are starting from one chemical kind, and that chemical kind can be determined into many different kinds. I will provide you with examples in a second, but for now it's just introducing the notion. So the notion of multiple determinability is so that we have one kind that can be determined into many different things. So from the one to the many. The opposite problem, and this seems to be a feature of the life sciences, the opposite problem that is extraordinarily well known, this instead is widely debated, is the problem of multiple realizability. So for multiple realizability we have a given biochemical kind, but any other kind, as in the example, that can be realized by many underlying molecular processes or by many underlying phenomena. So opposite of multiple determinability, in this case we have many to one. And then we have a last problem that seems to be particularly important for considerations in the life sciences, but in particular within the biochemical domain is that the relations between the realizers are context dependent. So the context seems to play a massive role in determining what a kind is going to be. Now what does this mean? This means that we can't, we don't have enough information if we want to talk in terms of information in the realizer to figure out what the realized is going to be. Why? Because the context is playing a very important role. So the contextual difference is matter. Let me make this more precise and sorry for the slide that is very dense, but I will go through it slowly and I wanted to keep the same structure of the previous one. So concrete examples. The first example of multiple determinability are the cases of multifunctional or moonlighting proteins. What are these proteins? These proteins are proteins that have the same amino acid structure, but they can play radically different roles in different contexts to the point that some, if we want to classify those proteins in terms of their function, would say that we have two different kinds. A concrete example of this is the case of crystallines. These are proteins that have a structural function in eye lenses, and this function is a function that they play across species, but at the same time they can also have a function as an enzyme during digestive processes. Now as you might imagine, in one case we have a structural function, in another case we have an enzymatic function, so they do radically different things, and they are realized basically by the same structure that is determined into two different functions, to the point that one can even question whether we should classify them as one, because somehow the generalizations that we make and the kind of information that are relevant, especially if we come from a biological perspective, are quite different. In one case we are side, in the other we have digestion, so the contribution is quite different. And this is a case of multiple determinability. What is the import for our purpose here? The import of this is that we can't track a one-on-one relation, we can't reduce easily our realized functioning digestion to the structure. Why? Because in one case the structure might give us digestion, in another case it might give us structure or function inside. To the opposite side we find multiple realizability. An example of multiple realizability is the case of hemoglobin, but actually a lot of proteins can be realized by different amino acid chain. The case of hemoglobin is that it can be realized by at least two, but actually many more different amino acid chain. But in both cases, or in all these cases, then hemoglobin's character is defined by the function as that protein that allows binding oxygen into red blood cells. So in this case the function of hemoglobin is magically realizable, by different amino acid chain that can play the role. Again, the contrast in taxonomy and the contrast for reductionism is that if we would come with a chemical perspective or with a strong structural perspective, we should classify all these instances differently. We should consider them differently. Why? Because they have different chemical realisers. However, from a biochemical perspective and from a biological perspective these kinds are clustered together instead. Why? Because the function realized is the same. The last difficulty that needs to be accounted for by reductionism and that comes as a criticism is what we have seen, like the context dependency. Now, for you to know, I imagine you know, but I'm just going to be extra clear. So proteins undergo a stage, a fourth stage process of folding. So we start from our amino acid chain and then the proteins fold and they get a secondary structure, a tertiary structure and a paternal structure. And the last two are those that are mostly relevant for the function that the protein is going to change. Now, these transformations that the protein, like the process of protein folding is highly context sensitive. So the environment and the context in which the proteins fall as a role in determining the function that the protein is going to play. These, for instance, might be seen as an explanation for the first phenomena, like for multiple determinability. Why do we have the same structure into context played different roles? Well, because the context matters. So whether we are in a stomach or whether we are in the eye is going to play a difference. So this is a first level of context dependency that we find. A second level is that in the moment in which we characterize our kinds functionally, context matters because a function is always a contribution in a given context. So the fact that the function operates into the specific context plays a massive role in the case of biochemistry, the fact that these are molecules that are not only undergoing different or entering actually different chemical reactions, but they operate in given biological contexts that are going to constrain which contributions they are going to perform. So these are really the reasons why, in a way, one should almost be like, reductionism doesn't work. These things are too complicated. The relation between structure and function is way too complicated. I give up. What we are trying to do instead is actually saying that we can account for those. Now I've seen, like, I've actually discussed what are more ontological approaches to reductionism and anti-reductionism and I've shown that we have these basically claims coming from the anti-reductionist. So the other thing that we want to consider here, and this is the other side of the criticism that is done to reductionism in the life sciences, is that we can take an ontological approach to reductionism, which is the one more or less implied in the previous slides, or we can take a theoretical approach to reductionism. And normally a theory approach to reductionism is based on forms of negalian reductionism. Now, negalian reductionism has two main components. It's a low base view of reduction, for which basically reduction is based on the derivation of laws. So we can derive the laws of the reducible theory from another theory. And it's also a global approach to reduction. That is, we need to reduce the whole theory. So what would happen, like, if we need to apply this to biochemistry? As you might imagine, what are the laws of biochemistry? Like, who is able to define them? Can we really point them out in a clear way so that we can derive them from the laws of chemistry? Maybe we can. Maybe we can't. But this is one of the criticisms that has been done to try to apply a negalian model of reduction to the life sciences, is that at least the laws don't work as they work in physics, for instance. The second point is that in biology and in molecular biology, in biochemistry, it seems that two reduced whole bodies of theories doesn't seem to be quite interesting. What seems to be quite interesting is instead to do a local approach to reduction. And it seems that, and this comes maybe a lot with the context dependency of this phenomenon, is that we can't really overgeneralize. We actually need to consider each context and we need to consider each process and within each process we need to apply some reductionist tools, so we can't really put forward a global approach to reduction. So, one side, what I've said so far, what does it happen if we want to apply a form of ontological reductionism? We get multiple determinability, multiple realizability, context dependency, so very complicated. What happens if I want instead to apply reductionism ala negal? It seems that we don't have the tools, yet maybe it's just a matter of systematizing knowledge more, but at the moment, this model as well seems to be quite difficult to be applied. Now, what is the problem with anti-reductionism? Because, again, one can be like, well, yeah, on the face of this, we have to be anti-reductionist. Now, the problem of anti-reductionism is that biochemistry itself, at least the problem of anti-reductionism in our cases, is that biochemistry itself is based on a sense of relation between chemistry and biology. The discipline is actually so fruitful, it's so much able to provide us explanation and predictions about the biological work, because there is this relation between the chemical processes and the living organism. If we look at the definition, again, of the biochemical society, we see that biochemistry is the discipline that explores chemical processes between the in and related to living organisms. So, their relation is there. The science works because there is a relation between the components. This is seen by the fact that function and structure are not independent properties. They are related. The contribution that a given biochemical molecules gives to a biological process is based on the chemical structure that exists. And if, for some kinds, the ground can be found more straightforwardly into the chemical structure of the molecules for others, especially with proteins. We need to consider other properties. That's why we need to consider the geometry of the protein and the physical properties. But the function is related. It's not that the molecule can be shapeless or can have literally any component for it to play a role. There is a constraint that is done by the structure. And also, and you might have seen in a little bit the tension in the case studies that I briefly discussed, hybrid schemes are needed or are used when we consider biochemical kinds. Biochemical kinds are not just clustered in terms of structure or in terms of function. We can't really disentangle the two. We can't say, well, we have a biological classification of biochemical molecules that is purely function-based. And we have a chemical classification of biochemical molecules that are structural-based and the two don't relate. So what we find or what we think or what we are arguing for in this paper is that we can't really be satisfied with the anti-reductionism. Why? Because we have these strong reasons to at least explore reductionism or to at least give it another go. If we can't apply one-on-one reduction, maybe there are other forms of reductionism that can be used. If we can't apply negation reductionism, there are other forms of reductionism that can be used to maintain this. So to maintain the fact that on the one hand almost a naturalistic close, that is, well, the science works so well because it assumes a relation between the two. On the other, also, maybe a more metaphysical reason that is that we can see that there is a correlation between the two and this seems to be important also for how it thinks about the kinds. So the model that we propose is the one of functional reductionism. Now, what are the benefits of functional reductionism? Functional reductionism has been used widely, has been proposed indeed firstly in the debates in philosophy of mind related to physicalism, has been applied especially recently in philosophy of physics and the idea is that a local approach to reduction, so instead of trying to reduce theories we reduce explanations or descriptions or directly kinds of phenomena and also in doing so it allows us to combine a theoretical and an ontological approach to reduction. Here I will focus on the ontological side, but functional reductionism has been proposed also in a more theoretical setting. And the idea is to indeed being local to focus on specific phenomena. So the goal of functional reductionism is to show once we focus on a specific phenomena and that specific phenomena is functionally defined so it's defined by the role that it plays by the behavior that it has. Functional reductionism want to show that there is a particular bottom level that is playing the role that is definitively or crucial for the higher level and the way in which we track the relation has to be specified and hopefully we will do that satisfactorily. Looking at a definition of functional reductionism more closely and here we are following two classical definitions another classical characterization of functional reductionism as in Lewis and as in Keem we notice that functional reductionism is based on two steps. The first step which I mentioned already is the functional characterization. So according to the functional characterization we take a higher level entity or property this higher level entity or property is functionally characterized so we offer a definition in terms of the behavior that it has. Now the way in which we do that is that we look at the role that the higher level theory is ascribing it. So making it complete let us take hemoglobin or let us take vitamin B12 and we notice that hemoglobin is defined as that protein that has the function of carrying oxygen and this is how it is defined by our higher level phenomena. So what it is to be hemoglobin is to be that protein that carries oxygen what it is to be vitamin B12 is to be that vitamin as a function in a retropoyasis among other processes. The second step is to find the functional realizer. So we look at the lower level entities and we see which of the lower level entities is playing the role that is definitive of the upper level or higher level entity. So what is the lower level entity that is realizing the behavior in the right context. So these are our two steps. Functional kinds and finding a functional realizer. What are the advantages of this account? The advantages of this account is that it is a form of reduction that does not focus on lows but it is a local model of reduction that we can apply to different phenomena. So this advantage against the Neogalian or Neonegalian approaches to reduction it accommodates multiple realizability and multiple determinability. Why is this the case? This is the case because according to functional reductionism we have a form of token reductionism so in a given context a given token is playing the role of the given token higher level kind but the type remains different. I am going to consider that more in detail with the case study but the idea is that we are not offering an account of type reductionism we are offering an account of token reductionism. What does it mean for multiple realizability and multiple determinability? It means that our higher level kind can be token realized by different tokens in different times in different contexts that we are considering we have different tokens realizing the token kind but maintaining a form of type specificity that is given by the function. The same with multiple determinability that is the same set of properties can be determined into different types according to the given context so functional reductionism doesn't bind us to a type type reduction but actually delivers us a type a form of typing anti reductionism but token reductionism. Moreover this account is also flexible enough to accounts for context-dependent reductions that is given that the kind is defined by the role the role can happen in a context rather than another and functional reductionism is quite compatible with that. Moreover indeed it is a non-eliminary approach to ontological reduction so as I said given that it is not a form of type type reductionism but it is a form instead of token token reductionism and a type anti reductionism this doesn't allow us to eliminate identities from our ontology we can retain them in our case we can retain biochemical kinds in our ontology despite showing that they are realized by the chemical kind underlying it. This is now the juicier probably part of the topic in which we are trying to apply this to a case study that is becoming B12 that I know best. Now, as we have seen we have some challenges to reductionism in biochemistry specifically because the kinds are characterized by a biochemical function and a chemical structure the relation between the two as we said already is like both of multiple realizability and of multiple determinability and this is particularly the case studies, just more life in proteins but also for simpler case studies such as the one of vitamins which we will see in a second. Now, the notion of chemical structure has been analyzed extensively widely in the literature Robin Henry published very recently a fantastic overview on the notion of chemical structure so if one wants to go and read or study or consider the chemical structure biochemical molecules, but possibly one can really rely on this massive body of work that is done on chemical structure however, the notion of biochemical function hasn't been as explored and this is something that I've done in one of my papers and as you might see this is one of the core notions to understand what is going on there because if the problem of the relation is the one between chemical structure and biochemical function then to know what a biochemical function is is quite important. Now, what I've done in the paper is basically to show that a chemical view of function and a biological view of function do not really capture the nature of biochemical functions and I'm happy to answer questions on this and what I've been doing is that I have proposed a definition of biochemical function that basically tries to be the best of both worlds or tries to combine a chemical view of functions to a biological view of function and the way in which I define biochemical functions is that biochemical functions are those functions associated with a specific set of chemical dispositional properties so we have our chemical dispositional properties that are present in the chemical structure of the biochemical kind that we are considering and this specific set is that one because it's able to bring out a specific effect within biological processes so technically what does that mean? This means that our chemical kind our biochemical kinds are able to enter into specific chemical reactions that are those that contribute to relevant biological processes Now, what is the biology there? The biology there is that as I said it's not that we are interested in any chemical reaction that our compound let us say, Kubanamin in the case of vitamin B12 can bring about we are not just interested in the general activity of the molecule for instance we are interested in very specific contributions that are the contributions that Kubanamin is going to give for instance to erythropoiesis Now, how do we select these chemical powers? These chemical powers, I've argued are indirectly evolutionary selected at least it means that even at the process to which they contribute is a target of selection the process has been selected so that it reacts or so that it's going to relate with specific chemical compounds that are our biochemical kinds considered so the set of chemical properties that is relevant for our biological processes is very specific so it's one that has been that can be identified by the evolutionary history of the process why we have at least because there is a big question mark on the role of evolutionary selection for molecules at least the process needs to be indirectly evolutionary selected whether some chemical powers for instance of proteins have been also directly evolutionary selected is a second question so this is the definition of biochemical function that we need to keep in mind now let me unpack this because this is important for our application of functional reductionism now we see that if we consider the functional profile of our biochemical kinds we notice that we have basically a two level notion of function or like a two level side of the same function we have a chemical level because indeed the biochemical compound has a chemical function which is given by the functional groups that the compounds have as those parts that can enter into chemical reactions and then it has a kind of selection of the function at the chemical level that is going to be the functional group relevant for the given biological processes so and these ones that are going to be a subset so we have our chemical properties we will see that in a second for our chemical properties there is a set of those that are those that give the reactivity to the molecule so the capacity to enter into reactions and then of that we have another subset that is the one that is relevant for the biochemical function so we notice that the functionality of the molecule is kind of like a two tier with a chemical part and a biochemical part ok now that we have all these ingredients we can eventually apply the functional reductionism so according to the functional reductionism indeed we have a functional characterization and then we need to find a functional realiser so functional characterization we have seen that the kind for instance the kind vitamin is characterized in terms of the biochemical function it plays and this includes a chemical and a biochemical component so why is this interesting? this is interesting because this makes biochemical kinds in a way not only characterized in terms of the biochemical function but it brings in constrain about the chemical properties that the molecule has to have which are actually constrained in the structure so this is interesting for our relation between structure and function because a vitamin is not any kind of thing that you can consider contributes to erythropoiesis but it's actually going to be in the case of vitamin B12 a form of cobalamin molecule because why? because we need this set of chemical powers these are specific chemical dispositional properties and then we need to find a functional realiser so once we have defined a kind functionally and then we need to find a functional realiser we can find a functional realiser which is embedded basically in the definition of biochemical function provided because we can find those specific chemical properties that are going to realize the kind and accordingly we can say that our biochemical kind is functionally reduced to a given chemical kind now this hopefully is going to help to picture what we have been trying to do so we have our chemical compound that can be our cyanocubalamin molecule it is an instance of vitamin B12 that has its chemical properties now we notice that we have a first set of chemical powers of our chemical compound that are those that give us the chemical functional groups of the molecules that is the capacity of the molecule to handle the implications and this is the first step of the functional realisation then we have the second step which is going to give us the biochemical function and possibly also the biochemical kind if we take the kind to be so defined it is going to be a proper subset of those chemical of those chemical kinds so in a way there should be another arrow going down so we have the functional realisation on the one going up but this also means that we have the functional reduction going down why? because we are able to find the functional realiser at the lower level what is interesting about this picture compared to other kinds of functional reductionism in the literature is the fact that it is two tiers so we have a first level of functional reductionism in a way or functional reductionism here and then here why? because we have a two level realisation we have a first realisation of the chemical function and then we have a second realisation of the biochemical function making it more precise this is a case study so vitamins are classified in terms of composition and function so same structure of the kinds that we have discussed so far and what is interesting though about vitamins is that they very often come in vitamins what does it mean? it means that we have different compounds that are similar enough but they are different and they are grouped together because they display the same function quite interesting so is vitamin B12 it is a molecule that comes in four types now if you go normally to the local pharmacy and you buy vitamin B12 in terms of supplements is probably going to be Characobalamin and Metilcobalamin but for instance in the ones that you buy in boots in the UK they don't specify straight away on the label which one is you are going to find you need to go on the website before you find the information and this gives an idea of the fact that somehow the functionality of these compounds is so similar that is an information that can basically be the structure can basically be screened off so we don't need to consider to consider that these vitamins have many functions one of the functions that has been studied loads is the function that they play in elitropoiesis it is the process of renovation of red blood cell why are these molecules philosophically interesting because they display multiple constitution which comes with which is basically the parallel of multi-parallelizability in the sense that our kind vitamin B12 can be composed of all these compounds and also the function of vitamin B12 can be considered possibly an instance of multi-paralization the function of contributing to elitropoiesis can be realized by these different chemical compounds now specifically we can say that considering our function and it is also possibly like an illustration of what I meant by my definition is that we have a function that is for instance the function of contributing to elitropoiesis that is associated to the chemical powers of cobalamin that is what is in common between all of these compounds and specifically we can identify what is the chemical reaction that is needed for the regeneration for the contribution to elitropoiesis that is the biosynthesis of metionine and this specific set of the chemical powers of our cobalamin compound so because of the evolutionary history of elitropoiesis elitropoiesis in humans has been selected so that it is going to interact with specific chemical properties of the molecule now if we want to apply functional reductionism to our molecule we find that we have functional characterization vitamin B12 is function characterized in terms of the biochemical functions it plays and this includes a chemical and a biochemical component and then we need to find the functional realiser so we notice that the biochemical function is realized by a specific set of chemical dispositional properties that have been selected and this in the second step of the reduction these chemical dispositional properties are themselves realized by the general structure of the molecule and accordingly we can see that we can say or we can see that the vitamin is thus realized so we can functionally reduce the vitamin because we are able to offer this characterization of the biochemical function now what are the advantages of these we mentioned them already in the general presentation of the account but specifically we can see that the account is compatible with multiple realisability why because the function can be realized by any set of chemical dispositional properties identified so in the case of vitamin B12 why can the function to contribute to a retropoyasis be realized in the four vitamers because we are able in all these cases to find the specific set of chemical dispositional properties that are able to realize the function now whether this is genuine multiple realisability this is what I've been discussing with Peter all week so maybe it's not but I don't think it has as much value as well at least within a given account of multiple realisability the account is compatible the same but the opposite way can be said about multiple determinability in which we can see that the lower level can be determined into different functions because we select basically different sets of chemical dispositional properties now important here because this is an objection that comes out quite frequently is that this election of these chemical powers is not arbitrary it's not me as a scientist or me as a philosopher to draw and be like yes these are going to contribute this is where our indirect evolutionary history plays a role why because vitamin B12 in DNA renewal is going to play a function that is kind of like evolutionary selected by the evolutionary history of DNA renewal and instead the function that vitamin B12 has in erythropoiesis is going to be carved out by the evolutionary history of erythropoiesis and this is compatible with our account why because again we can identify a kind of token identity and then the account is compatible with context dependency so the function is realized within the context as indeed the presence of the dispositions and dispositions can be manifested in even contexts it's almost embedded into the account so it is compatible making it indeed precise this view gives us a form of token reductionism but not type reductionism so the type realized is different from the token why because there is a difference in causal specificity so our vitamin B12 is causally more specific than the cobalamin compound that we are considering why because it has specific because it has a specific causal role in the given context so this offers us a difference in type because in a way the realizer the chemical compound has a broader causal spectrum compared to the type realized that instead is specific and it's related to a given context at the same time though even that it's an account that offers token identity we can have a ground for reductionism so we can maintain the reduction relation and indeed this gives us a form of reduction without elimination and these are like general arguments that are presented in the literature on functional reductionism like if being X is to play the role of X then X exists as long as there is something that realizes the role of X so we don't eliminate our upper level entity we don't eliminate it because of this but especially because of the cobalamin specificity so this is where the stronger ontological components come in and this is interesting from my perspective for instance is because it gives us a form of plausible realism towards biochemical entities or biochemical kinds on the one hand it doesn't make them too strong in terms of existence because at the end when we look at them they are especially like vitamins they are just chemical compounds it's not that I look at them and I see something magic or something alive or something that is drastically different and the same actually also with proteins like very complex surely but I don't see anything more to them that complex chemical compounds however at the same time though it is true that they have something different because they have this cobalamin specificity so I might want to be realist about their biochemical features and this also because it brings us advantages in science for instance so functional reductionism gives us a plausible realism or a form of like soft realism yes these molecules exist they have a type there is a type difference but they are serialized another advantage is that it gives us indeed a unified ontological view and also the link between the sciences here you can see the link the previous work done with meta science it was on the unity of science so this was kind of contribution to that broader project that is that indeed we can find a form of unity between the two which actually seems to be presupposed by biochemistry itself while maintaining autonomy now I have said a lot about the advantages but let us say something about some objections or some of the problems that might come out from this account and we have identified the two objections the first that I call no novelty and the second that I called no reduction and you might imagine where these are going the first one is that well our account doesn't really account for autonomy or for novelty or for type for a form of type until reductionism so if we accept the successfulness of functional reductionism of functional reductionism then there is no real novelty and like why do I need to postulate the higher level phenomena if I can offer a kind of reductionist explanation of the context as well so if the context doesn't act as this magic thing in which the entities operate but actually I can reduce the context as well in which for instance protein folding happens then actually everything that I need can be given in terms of the lower level phenomena so we don't really have novelty by postulate like if the reduction works then we don't have novelty then we actually have also type reductionism so this can basically be the charge now we answer to this objection by two points one that I've mentioned already the first one that comes from the account of novelty defended by Eleanor Knox and also Alexander Franklin that is that biochemical kinds bring in novelty because they improve explanation and prediction so actually there is a novel epistemic component that biochemical kinds bring into the picture so this is the first way to defend the novelty the second which is stronger ontologically and that I have mentioned already is that the higher level has a distinctive causal profile so the fact that there is this distinctive causal profile in a way should allow us to see that actually there is a form of novelty actually there is a a country account for everything with precision if I consider only the lower level I also need to consider the specificity of the causal process that I am considering or the specificity of the kind that I am considering to the opposite side and one can say okay I give you the novelty but then you don't have reduction so especially like if you accept context dependency if you accept autonomy especially like the causal specificity relation then we don't have reduction so this can be the other side now what we and the difficulty of this objection is that there is no consensus of what we take reduction to be so reduction has really been interpreted in a vastly broad way we go from strong type type reductionism to milder forms of reductionism so what do we take reduction to be we take a very minimal definition of reduction here and we say that we need an asymmetrical link and in our picture there is an asymmetrical link so the reduction pins down basically to the fact that there is an asymmetry between the realized entity and the realized we need the chemical component in order to have the biochemical component and somehow the biochemical component couldn't be without a chemical realizer so the fact that there is a symmetry for us gives us reduction the last bit and this is a kind of like possible development of our picture and this also comes because the view as you might have seen it is very very similar to the proper set account proposed by Jessica Wilson and Shoemaker is that like this account is quite similar to accounts of weak emergence presented in the literature and this is the case because we can make the account compatible with the emergence in terms of dependence so the functional realization of the upper level not all by the lower level we have a form of robustness the robustness comes in here because we have multiple realizability so we see that as compatible in that way and then we have a form of autonomy that is given by the specific functional profile and this is also part for us important in the general picture because of another work that I have done on the emergence of molecular of the molecular genes of like molecular genetic phenomena that seem basically to respect this framework concluding now we have biochemical molecules are very interesting for anyone that wants to study this is really me advocating my field are interesting for anyone that wants to study inter-terior relation why because by definition they are characterized by two sides from a chemical microstructural perspective and from a functional biological perspective now why are they interesting then for reductionism and anti-reductionism because the chemical you might be seen more compatible with forms of reductionism but this is not the case in particular for the biological side and specifically indeed if we want to defend the form of reductionism we need to consider the problematic aspect of biological anti-reductionism and try to show an account that is compatible with them which is what we have been doing in this talk in this talk in particular we have focused on the fact that the relation problem between structure and function comes through with these three phases multiple determinability multiple realizability and context dependency and this might be our the support for anti-reductionism and we have introduced functional reductionism to show that we can actually have a form of reductionism meant as a form of dependence and a form of token identity while maintaining a type difference and this allows us to deal with these problems indeed the scope of our paper was to present a functional reductionism model applied to case studies from biochemistry so the tool itself is not new the application is new the novelty though of our account is that we have seen that there is this two tier model and this is actually something that improves maybe the general count of functional reductionism or it is anyway new so an account in which we have two functional rows while embedded in the other in order to have the kind so there is some novelty there it allows also to bring back maybe reductionism in the life sciences in general after a long consensus on anti-reductionism and pluralism what are the future developments of this work while first consideration of functional reductionism across different case studies consider the implications for multi-paralysability and multiple determinability does this make them unexistent really so kind of like phenomena that we think are there but actually we can unpack them so they are not genuine does that make them for instance explainable but still existent as in some analysis so what are the implications there and also we think that functional reductionism can have an impact on scientific research in the sense that especially for the scientists starting protein structure, protein folding but also scientific biochemistry synthetic biology in which there is an interest in producing functions or in predicting functions from given structures then maybe the tool of functional reductionism with this idea of the proper subset can be helpful in terms of clarity and explanatory purposes of course without telling scientists what to do but it can offer them at least conceptual tools to analyze a series of relations that are actually very complex and that the talk didn't account for how complex they are so hopefully this philosophical discussion can boost that and thank you all for your attention so break? 5 minutes break? cool yeah we are back do we have questions online? not yet but I have opened it up so I will let you know yeah well the floor is open for questions yes so I always you know I am a philosopher of biology but I always worry about this token reduction because in my understanding but I know it's a function in biology is the produce of a selection so even if I have a heart that does not pump blood it has the properties as the function how would I reduce something like that something that is deficient biomilitary but still has the biological function from a token token from a title I can see but token token your strategy yeah yeah yeah that's excellent like so this is mostly a function a question about these functions as a token token so how this function can happen well the idea is that biochemical molecules per side do not have a biological function in the sense that do not have a function that is bigger or maybe they have but it's different from biochemical function that they don't have a function that is directly selected because in a way the argument that I make is that they might not be object directly of selection why because like they are molecules and not traits for instance so because it's indirect it's okay well no no but the fact that it is indirect is the first step to understand why it is okay so the way in which we have normativity of functions to work is that for instance let us consider a case of deficiency of vitamin B12 in the case of the deficiency of the vitamin B12 the two kinds of vitamins B12 would still enter into the given chemical reactions for erythropoiesis but then erythropoiesis would be disfunctioning so it is the biological process to which the bio molecules contributes that they exhibit the disfunction because it is that one that has been the target of selection while we have the molecule that is still contributing to the process a similar because for instance there is a deficiency so the chemical reactions are still going but they are not enough for the biological process to perform as it was selected for something similar happens with misfolded proteins so in the case of misfolded proteins they are proteins that don't fold correctly they can also cause quite severe diseases in that case but basically the argument can be similar and can be like while the proteins are they are still giving a chemical contribution to the process in which they are involved but this is the process that doesn't work as basically it has been selected to do so so the process of erythropoiesis has still the potentiality to function properly but given that there is for instance a deficiency it doesn't the case of misfolded proteins is more interesting because proteins might have an evolution a history themselves that is dependent either upon the genetic the genetic sequence from which they are transcribed so this might make them a bit more of a target of selection so that's kind of an open question on whether proteins can have a biological kind of function as well but given that it's the notion of function considered is the biochemical one what you see my point is that you bring you're talking about function but you're talking about function like a machine like function as a role and of course biological function are not like that but it's the function of produce of selection so even a very malformed deficient are still the function because it has been selected for to do that it just doesn't here you're just very well avoiding my question saying they still have the function it's the process that is not doing so there's no case of bio your concept biochemical function for something selected like proteins that would be in that case that the fact that we do not define function through history but only through its current role would be a problem yeah I see what you mean I think that the way in which I kind of avoid the question is basically or either like I move the question away basically by saying that I wouldn't ascribe a biological functions in evolutionary terms to bio molecules and the reason for it are actually two one is that functions apart from some cases of proteins for which I leave it open and it's something that I'm actually basically starting to work on now like protein function because they seem to be a bit more ambiguous but let us consider the case of like becoming B12 which is the one that I know best like in that case we have a chemical compound now can they have biological functions evolutionary are normally attributed to traits that are described like phenotypic characteristic of a given organism now something like a macro molecule is not a trait so that excludes basically function ascriptions straight away because it is almost in the definition the second bit is that there are definitions of biological functions that are a bit more complex than that because they basically refer to the reason why something is produced by the organism now the interesting thing of vitamin B12 is that it's not produced by humans or by other mammals despite the fact that it has a vital role in them it is a compound that is introduced by nutrition so even according to a broader notion of the type of entity to which we could ascribe a trait vitamin B12 wouldn't count as the right kind of entity that has biological history now vitamin B12 are produced in bacteria and archaea only and maybe in those we can find a form of biological function because they are produced to perform a role so they have been selected to perform a given role and then they would still have the function even if it is not manifested in the organism but for instance in humans we couldn't say the same so we need to introduce them by nutrition okay I think we have a question so first Gary Patterson asks is this work intended to have impact on the scientific community well we hope so we hope so at the moment I am collaborating with a lab at the University of Birmingham of Professor Andrew Lovering that is working on protein functions so with him we are actually working together on protein folding in particular and function and we found this work and the other work on functions interesting but yeah this is hopefully something that might have more impact thank you cool and a second question that comes from Marco Casale who writes have you had a chance to explore intrinsically disordered proteins yet so it is hypothesized that three-dimensional structure isn't always essential for functionality is this a relevant example for your theory this is one of the cases that I want to consider for this other work that I am working on on protein functions specifically because indeed this is a case in which the properties relevant do not seem to be the chemical properties but rather the geometrical physical properties and the interaction with the context but yeah they are a good case study for the future thanks for the talk it was great, I am still struggling a little bit to really understand the general position of this account the way I was trying to make sense of this you are probably familiar with this is it seems quite similar to the so-called new mechanism because they also have a kind of like that it is against the a nomological approach reductionism they are token-token in the sense that they really focus on specific instances they have a dispositional account of functions but this is the second part of my question the function is isolated on the part of the researcher depending on what you are trying to explain so is that the same features that your account is proposing and also what the second part of my question will be because also in the last Q&A you seem to have somewhat a more at least as well a conceptual function that is more evolutionary based or more etiological this is a function that has been selected for both of that in the talk especially in the beginning you seem to have a more dispositional account of functions whereas there seems to be an etiological component as well so I was trying to understand the several features of the account I will answer in two steps in a way my project goes in parallel with the new mechanism and I wouldn't make it incompatible at all I think the only reason why I haven't said the talk and the research in that framework is that I don't want to be binded to a mechanistic view of organisms so I know that there are other understandings that we can have of organisms in particular in relation to self-assembly phenomena for instance and self-organization as well that seem not to be I mean at least traditionally it's not as compatible with mechanistic views of organisms so somehow I wanted to be neutral on my general ontological picture but the view per se is not incompatible with the mechanistic kind of like causal account of function in particular it is compatible with that regarding the second beat I think that what you pointed out I think is what makes my account more interesting because my mechanistic view of function is exactly the fact that I'm trying to merge a dispositionalist when my commitment on this position is very minimal I take them to be as like properties that are causal efficacious with an ontological view and I think that that's the basically the interesting novel part of the paper and I think that this stems from the very nature of the biochemical molecules that are indeed like what makes them interesting is indeed the fact that the one hand yes they are chemical compounds but the fact that they do what they do is within a biological context that we can't screen off and this is where the ecological story comes back which is related to the idea of like causal specificity again so I'm not interested into any chemical reactions of cobalamin I want to know which chemical reactions are relevant for humans let us say in the case of vitamin B12 also this allows us to consider the relativity really that these molecules have across organisms so let us consider again the fact that vitamin B12 is synthesized by bacteria and archaeas but we introduce it by nutrition and so other mammals now the fact that we bring in the evolutionary history allows us to consider the causal specificity that the molecule is going to have in bacteria that is the reason why it is synthesized and the reason why instead it is needed by humans and mammals to do whatever they are doing and I think that the evolutionary context is the one that is telling us which of these chemical powers are relevant however we can't go at least straightforwardly with like an evolutionary view of function for what I've said earlier that is that molecules do not seem to be the right object ontologically for a selection the generalized selected effect of functions theory that could work better but that theory is the problem of the fact that either it is too general so too many things are functional including like the case of the art drops on the beach is very famous and the way in which he redefined the account is by saying that the selection needs to be within a like members of a population competing and again molecules do not seem to be the right target for that thank you so about Garson this is just a parenthesis about Garson is more because the distribution of which are the similar the similar problem that everything can have a function and the question my follow up would be do you have a position for example another account that tries to bridge a little bit some dispositional components and some it's a logical component and that account is the so called organizational account of functions you have a position on that do you care what do you think in all honesty I will need to consider it again in detail so yeah I don't have a something but I think that because that definitely goes in the direction of the need also like self-organization stream so yes thank you that's actually a very good idea of something that I need to look at you too yeah I think it seems that your idea is more based on the function kind is do you propose a new natural kind theory in biology and your in your idea the function kind you know the biologic phenomenon the same biologic phenomenon show the same kind relation of the function kind while the macro structure show the explanation virtual it seems is a kind theory how do you compare the function kind with other kind theory or individual theory yes thank you so in a way I am defending a sui generis view of biochemical kinds which is what I have explored in my thesis so that they actually yes need to have this dual characterization I don't take them to be purely functional and that picture that I did in which and the focus on the fact that there are like specific chemical functional groups is important for that because they are kinds that are also structural so it's not like they're not purely functional kinds we have a constraint that is given by the molecular structure that realizes them and that's important in that kind of definition they are they like different from the traditional view of picturing kinds the answer is yes so if we take in particular the contrast between the micro structure is the kinds in chemistry and the historical kinds in biology yes biochemical kind somehow lie in between the two because we need to have composition we need to have function and we need to have this bit of evolutionary history which I think is very important to not over generalize the kinds or to not like make them everywhere basically the way in which I think about kinds is in a way very naturalistic and dependent on like the Khalidi's view of kinds for which I'm quite happy of the fact that there are different kinds of kinds I don't think that like yeah I wouldn't make constraints on the kind of properties for the kind does this answer your question no? sorry doesn't answer your question I'm sorry I'm sorry well your kinds theory is very is a bit different from the HPC kind HPC kind is more about the causal mechanism while the individual theory is more more say that the whole is composed of by different parts while I see your idea in your power point is you are combined some of them yeah in a way they are combined I would say that like if I'm probably pushed it wouldn't be too far from like a non-static property cluster view of kinds in the sense that I still want to have like some relation between the properties that compose the kind which is why like there is all this process of like basically pointing down how the properties are realized so in a way like there are these properties that more or less stays in homostasis the reason why I don't go down fully that road is because it seems to be committed again on an idea of mechanism an idea of causality that maybe is too broad as well for all kinds this is one of the objections made to the theory but for the application of this is not too far in the sense that we have these properties kind of clustered together and we can track why they are clustered together so we can offer a causal explanation okay, thanks just an advanced warning because I see it so Ludo Skullmacher says online that the text box on the youtube chat is too small for the question so you'll have an email coming soon great so much appreciated and thanks for being there online other questions I know that you said that you won't talk about that in the talk but since you said that how will your account contribute to the kind problem yes so this is basically following up from the question just made so the account of biochemical kinds that I have in mind is indeed one in which I've tried to explore whether we can basically characterize in a satisfactory way biochemical kinds either from a chemical or from a biological perspective and see that this doesn't really work so considering like a chemical approach to kinds the idea is that we should find a form of like importance of the microstructure in terms of robustness but also in terms of informativeness so how much information can we get about the kind by considering the chemical components and the idea is that this doesn't really work because without the functionality we mean we miss what's important or what is interesting about biochemical kinds and we would miss also the evolutionary history and this is particularly the case for kinds like proteins which the direction of the folding or like the primary structure isn't really enough to tell us about the functionality so Goodwin for instance like defended the fact like the primary structure is the most stable thing in a protein because it's the only thing that remains same throughout the process of folding and while this is the case this also doesn't tell us that's tell us very little about what the what the function is going to be on the other side like in this paper by Bartel the reason suggestion that biochemical kinds might be biological kinds in which what is stable is the evolutionary the evolutionary trajectory however this enters into the problems that I already mentioned that is not one biochemical kind might have an evolutionary history that is easily trackable the second is that again the function biochemical functions does not seem to be only at least a biological function but it seems to be this like biochemical function that is differently characterized so the account that I bring forward is an account in which biochemical kinds are characterized by structure function and the evolutionary history of the process to which they contribute so we really need to have this basically three-parted view of biochemical kinds to get the specificity of the kind so this is basically like the argument this might inform taxonomy I do take taxonomy to be though based on utility so there might be many different pragmatic ways in which we want to taxonomize stuff and it's fine however I think that a characterization that brings together the three components is quite helpful so maybe in the case of crystalline even like I'm not sure of of our use like I'm not sure of our reasons informativities about the actual nature of the protein to cluster them together despite the fact that they play quite radical different roles because also the evolutionary of the process to which they contribute might be different the information about the folding might be different and then somehow to cluster them together just because of the chemical structure which is what is the case now might be misleading but then again like scientific taxonomy is its own thing but yeah from a kind of perspective it's the idea that there are these three own thing which is new but I think it works for the this is actually kind of a follow up to that because you so I am a philosopher of biology so you gestured a couple times during the talk and I just want to get you to talk some about something that I don't know anything about that sounds cool you gestured a couple times at the talk at the idea that whether or not these biochemical kinds like basically how much you can lean on natural selection here is a matter of controversy and I just wanted to like just tell me more because that sounds interesting and I've never heard I don't know anything about this debate so like it just sounds cool yes so well first level of this is what we said already know that why this is intuitive like why it might seem intuitive to ascribe a biological function to these molecules the more we think about it the more complex it gets it's like is a molecular target of selection is this it can it be the right target of selection like of how small selection gets this opens the whole question on the levels of selection of course so there is that which is a kind of like are they even the right things which we can ascribe evolutionary selection the second step that is probably empirically more interesting knowing here we enter really into the yeah units of selection debate and the answer might come indeed empirically and I think it's particularly interesting for kinds that are synthesized by the organisms so we think about hormones if we think about well hormones hormones are kind at the end that's very close enough to proteins so anyway the big big family of proteins as whatever comes from the transcription of DNA in a form of an amino acid chain that then gets folded in various ways there of course selection appears in a different way because indeed it seems that while the genetic sequence is a target of selection so whether thanks to the evolutionary history of the genetic sequence we can track an evolutionary history of the protein it's of course a different story however what makes this situation complex there is that as we have seen and as it seems to be the case the relation between the sequence that is transcribed and the function it's complicated and this is where also the question gets empirically interesting because it's like ok I can more or less get a story about evolutionary selection of the sequence and I can get a story about the evolutionary selection like the evolutionary history of the amino acid chain by consequence but from that to the folding that happens of course the situation gets more complicated and this is where the controversy lies and the context dependency brings in a role because the way in which the proteins fold seems to be dependent on the context but it is super interesting cool, no that's really cool thanks, yeah great you must have a question well but it's been grilling me for a week oh maybe not anymore you know all the answers are in I actually wanted to better understand the two tieredness of your model or let me put it more precisely the need to go to such a two tiered model and indeed in particular trying to better understand what the picture is representing here yes well the need of going with a two tiered model seems basically being precise enough in terms of the realization so on the one hand would also be a simple two tiered model basically get rid of these no I just identify the biochemical function as a specific group however it seems like that if we want to present a kind of like more precise picture that considers like chemistry itself and the realization of functions we need to add like this extra role basically to see the causal efficiency of chemistry so so the fact that like we are like well we have a chemical compound and then we have this notion of chemical function that comes within the functional groups so the middle the middle level let's say yes that set represents one chemical function so this could be a hitrexil group with all the powers associated with that function exactly okay well actually then of course like to have a better picture we need to have many of them so we would need to have like potentially dependent on the number of functional groups present okay and then we identify so no no no but why you don't say that at the higher level there's some evolution and directly the middle level no that's true yes actually thank you I thought it was the reason it's a little bit surprise you're a little bit surprised to separate biochemical from chemical but biochemical is defined as you define it yes yes yes because in a way like the biochemical is this this bit that the chemical doesn't thank you indeed to the perhaps a question from from Marco Casaleo online who says can you say some more about your general idea of reductionism as asymmetry as asymmetry ah yes interesting well I mean the idea is that like indeed this is the consensus on what we take reductionism to mean but one of the things that seem to be important is that we need to have a level of dependency and that level of dependency needs to be asymmetric at least in terms of existence I would say so the yes I would say that we take the asymmetry in terms of existence and not in terms of identity which is why we can maintain the type difference so our biochemical function is dependent for existence from the chemical compound then for identity it is not because it has this specificity or maybe the dependency for identity stress strong but we would take the dependency in terms of existence which is where the asymmetry lies thank you he also just noted as a comment I think this was following up on our discussion earlier also of course the relationship between gene sequence and amino acid chain is obviously also highly not obvious with alternative the translation, splicing and stuff so yeah yeah yeah but you are a metaphysician you might have some maybe you have a definition of reduction exactly where I need a movie the philosophy of science is a myth help help yeah you said a few words about emergence of course you are using this definition of loss and that personally I prefer my no no no you explain it but maybe I missed some part the autonomy is coming from the winner the autonomy is coming from the CODA specificity again yes so from the fact that a proper subset is different from the set of which it is so it's why even if you have some kind of reduction at token-token level it does not reduce more because you don't have the title exactly that's the intuition of course it is not a strong form of autonomy but still yeah can you remind us how you dealt with the context dependency yes so somehow it seems that for function function reduction as the context embedded in it already so maybe it's almost cheating because in a way the behavior always happens in a given context anyway so somehow the fact that a function is realized in a context it's fine for function reductionism because it doesn't put any constraint on the fact that it should be independent from the context to make it more precise if we think about how for instance there is a paper of Samsung protein folding and how they interpret like for instance the reductionist claims is to say that everything about the protein should be in the amino acid sequence so everything that you need about the protein folding should be in the amino acid sequence that would be a form of reductionism that doesn't take into account the context so the context represents a challenge for function reductionism this is not the case because the context can be embedded into the context in which the underlying level realizes the given role and possibly you can give us a definition of the context in microstructural levels as well which is where maybe a problem lies as well because if we can't reduce biological processes then we might be in a bit of a worrying situation like if we can't if we can't give a chemical depiction of everything that goes around so I think that's what I was trying to go with your question to understand better are you still happy to be a microstructuralist when it comes for example to protein folding do you think that on a token-token level you can start from the primary sequence and get to wherever you want or do you feel like no I really have to include the whole context that's something outside of the microstructure and so that's a very different account exactly it's the second one now yes now I guess to make this work properly maybe what we need to do though is that we need to take into account the context but to really see a full reduction we also need to offer a reductionist account of the context as well because you were talking about this position so that you would take the context to be the trigger you know you have all those powers in the microstructure but depending of course on the context you may trigger one or another set of powers so if you have water present that is going to trigger whatever behavior from that microstructure but so that seems like you could make that compatible with something that's very microstructuralist yes because you make it but then of course you make it fully dispositional yes which could be come on the proteins have intrinsically all the disposition for all the context that it could appear in all the form of life and we say that us we're crazy about that position and I think it's a kind of pompsiquism I think in the end you get to a picture where it's not even as clear anymore what the disposition is and what the trigger is so it's more a picture in which you have just different powers interacting with it's a kind of interaction between the powers so maybe we should put it in explicitly dispositional terms compared to the Wilson view of the world so like she goes all the way down to fundamental physical powers and they basically have the powers to be determined into anything and it is basically by like making subsets of specificity that we go down to the higher level so how those powers react in the in the subsets it's like saying the face space of the universe has already human being from the beginning this is crazy maybe maybe it's more your style of structuralist the function is not just this position everything is there and context is a trigger maybe it's in the relation between the proteins and the context that the function emerge that the power is not there before it's there because there's such a thing as biological stuff and that would be a little bit maybe more complicated metaphysics but it seems more economical this was the view that I put forward at the end of the thesis it is in the relation between different entities of the kinds arise but then I left it open of how this work and a way in which it works could even be like if we take Wilson seriously at least up to free will because then she might argue that that's everybody exactly I mean apart from some things that might be strong emergence and actually they're talking to her yeah we were kind of discussing whether actually evolutionary things are strong emergence or whether actually with evolution we have an over power that breaks the circles of proper subsets but I know that Peter wouldn't be happy about it as it's only the physician or a reductionist until there's a kind oh no wouldn't go that far you wanted to no I went to a conference last year organized by Kaiser she's a beautiful, very Kaiser and they have a project with the role in inductive metaphysics and they she was her talk I think the general selling point of a project is the idea of the disposition, the power being multi-track so of course it's intrinsic to the object but it's multi-track and the way it's actualized depends on the context so of course you can say both yeah so of course you have a bunch of powers that are inherent to the mechanical object but the way they are actualized depending on the organizational structure there so it's not just a trigger, it's more complicated than that yeah I love, I was discussing this with Anna Love via email and she was making specific examples of some biomolecules that may bind with I don't remember the details but you have a structure that potential different things and then what they actually do depends on where you put them essentially it's a question but if they are multi-track powers in a way yes please join me now thank you