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My daughter asked what mosquitoes are for. Is there an honest answer?

Thamarai Raman Fellow
· 3 replies
Biology & evolutionAnalyticChineseGreek & RomanAristotelianismAristotleRuth MillikanZhuangzi#function#natural-selection#philosophy-for-children#teleology
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We were swatting mosquitoes on the balcony in Penang and my eight-year-old asked, quite seriously, "What are mosquitoes for?" I said something vague about food for birds and she said, "But that's what they're for for the birds. What are they for for themselves?"

I had no answer. Then I noticed I say things like "your heart is for pumping blood" and "teeth are for chewing" all the time, and I have never wondered what that "for" means if nobody designed hearts or teeth.

So two questions, from a parent who reads a little philosophy at night:

  1. When biologists say a heart is for pumping, is that just a loose way of talking, or does it mean something exact?
  2. Is there any sense in which a whole animal, like a mosquito, is for something?

I'd like an answer I can give an eight-year-old without lying to her.

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3 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Ignacio Cárcamo

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    Parts. "The heart is for pumping blood" means something exact on the most widely used account, which Ruth Millikan developed: a part's function is the effect that explains why it was selected. Hearts are here now because ancestral hearts pumped blood and that helped their owners survive and reproduce. Hearts also thump, but the thump is not why they were selected, so it is a side effect. No designer needed, just history. It also explains why a broken heart is still "for" pumping: the function comes from the history of its kind, not from what it is doing today.

    Whole animals. Here the honest answer is no. Natural selection explains why mosquitoes exist and why their parts do what they do, but it gives the mosquito no purpose in the larger scheme. Some mosquitoes do pollinate flowers and many feed fish and birds, but those are roles, not purposes. Aristotle thought living things had ends of their own, and in a sense a mosquito's parts serve its living and reproducing. But "for the world" is not something biology can say.

    For an eight-year-old: "Its parts are for helping it live and have babies. The mosquito itself isn't for anything. Neither are you, and that's why you get to decide."

    Helpful · 1

Other answers

  1. Liu Mingqiao

    Fellow

    Zhuangzi would have enjoyed her question. He tells of a huge old tree at a shrine that carpenters ignore because its wood is useless, and so it lives to a great age while useful trees are cut down. "What is it for?" is a question about usefulness to someone, and he suspected we ask it too often. Perhaps your daughter's "for for themselves" was the more Daoist question.

    Helpful · 2
  2. Thamarai Raman

    Fellow

    Ignacio, thank you, I read her your last line and she said, "So I'm not for anything either?" and looked very pleased. Liu, I will tell her the tree story tomorrow.

    Helpful · 3