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Record W2099390557 · doi:10.1163/157075605774840950

Do ideas about function help in the study of causation?

2005· article· en· W2099390557 on OpenAlexaff
David F. Sherry

Bibliographic record

VenueAnimal Biology · 2005
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldAgricultural and Biological Sciences
TopicAnimal Behavior and Reproduction
Canadian institutionsWestern University
FundersUniversity of Pennsylvania
KeywordsCausationFunction (biology)Causal modelTransitive relationCausal reasoningPsychologyCognitive scienceCausality (physics)Cognitive psychologyEpistemologyBiologyCognitionEvolutionary biologyNeuroscienceMathematics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abstract One of Tinbergen's most lasting contributions to the study of behaviour was the distinction he drew between causal, functional, developmental, and evolutionary questions about behaviour. More recently, behavioural ecologists have claimed that understanding the function of behaviour is an important step towards understanding its causes. This claim has, in turn, been criticised for confusing the fundamental distinction that Tinbergen defined. The study of behaviour, however, usually begins by identifying units of behaviour functionally and only then proceeds to causal analysis. Research carried out on four phenomena — disassortative mating by MHC loci, memory for cache sites in food-storing birds, auditory localisation of prey by barn owls, and magnetic orientation — illustrates the contributions made to causal research through understanding the function of behaviour. Understanding function, and sometimes simply a hypothesis about function, defines the causal questions that are asked, identifies novel questions for causal investigation, and sets the criteria that causal explanations must satisfy.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.033
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.055
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.033
Threshold uncertainty score0.177

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0330.055
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0030.002
Bibliometrics0.0060.003
Science and technology studies0.0030.042
Scholarly communication0.0080.033
Open science0.0040.004
Research integrity0.0050.008
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0080.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.035
GPT teacher head0.282
Teacher spread0.246 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations25
Published2005
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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