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Genetic Information as Instructional Content*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Ulrich E. Stegmann
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Abstract

The concept of genetic information is controversial because it attributes semantic properties to what seem to be ordinary biochemical entities. I argue that nucleic acids contain information in a semantic sense, but only about a limited range of effects. In contrast to other recent proposals, however, I analyze genetic information not in terms of a naturalized account of biological functions, but instead in terms of the way in which molecules determine their products during processes known as template-directed syntheses. I argue that determining an outcome in a certain way is constitutive for being an instruction. On this account, the content of genetic information is identified with the template's properties, which determine the product in the way constitutive for instructions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 72 , Issue 3 , July 2005 , pp. 425 - 443
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I am grateful to Martin Carrier, Ulrich Krohs, Eva Neumann-Held, David Papineau, and Richard Samuels for their comments on different versions of the manuscript, and to Wilfried Meyer-Viol for helping me to think about structure-preservation. I also wish to acknowledge the comments of two referees. Research was supported by the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina through funds from the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF-LPD 9901/8-83).

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