The ENCODE project has made important new estimates of human genome functionality, now revising the percentage considered functional to more than 80%, which is in stark contrast to the received view, which estimated that less than 10% of the conserved parts of the human genome are functional. ENCODE's unorthodox use of the notion of biological function has stirred the so-called ENCODE controversy, involving conflicting views about the correct notion of function in postgenomics. The debate hinges on the traditional philosophical contrast between the causal role (CR) and selected effects (SE) approaches. In this paper, we examine the ENCODE controversy in terms of the distinction between function monism and pluralism. We propose to apply a weak etiological account to genomic function ascriptions. In this approach, we can ascribe a function to a genomic structure of an organism if and only if performing the function persists in causally contributing to the organism's and its ancestors' fitness. In comparison to the strong etiological (i.e., the selected effects) approach, the present account does not require there to be selection for the structure in question. This is a monistic approach that enables us to avoid the main difficulties of CR, as well as SE's overdependence on natural selection, while still preserving an evolutionary-constrained notion of biological functions. Our proposal is much more moderate in accommodating the estimates of the functionality of the human genome than both ENCODE's proposal itself and the views of the critics relying on a version of the SE account of functions.

中文翻译：

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后基因组功能一元论。

ENCODE项目对人类基因组功能进行了重要的新估计，现在将认为具有功能的百分比修改为80％以上，这与所收到的观点形成鲜明对比，后者认为人类基因组保守部分的比例不到10％是功能。ENCODE对生物功能概念的非正统用法引起了所谓的ENCODE争议，涉及对后基因组学中正确的功能概念的不同观点。辩论取决于因果作用（CR）与选择效果（SE）方法之间的传统哲学对比。在本文中，我们从功能一元论和多元论之间的区别出发，研究了ENCODE争议。我们建议将弱病因学应用于基因组功能归因。用这种方法 当且仅当执行该功能持续因果地有助于该生物体及其祖先的适应性时，我们才能将该功能归因于该生物体的基因组结构。与强大的病因（即选择的效果）方法相比，本报告不需要对所讨论的结构进行选择。这是一种一元论的方法，它使我们能够避免CR的主要困难以及SE对自然选择的过度依赖，同时仍保留了进化受限的生物学功能概念。我们的建议在适应人类基因组功能的估计时要比ENCODE的建议本身和依赖SE功能版本的批评者的观点要适度得多。