Emphasis on the importance of mechanisms is historically associated with the rejection of teleology and formal causes (e.g., Westfall 1971). Yet contemporary biology and many other special sciences, despite the widespread acceptance of the mechanism framework concept, continue to make use of the concept of function, a teleological notion (see the entry on   teleological notions in biology).  How is the notion of function at play in contemporary science related to the concept of mechanism? Craver (2001a), following Cummins (1975), argues that functional description is a perspectival means of situating some part within a higher-level mechanism. According to this view, teleology is not a feature of the world so much as it is imposed upon it by an intentional describer (see also Machamer 1977). Garson (2011, 2012), following Wimsatt (1972b), Wright (1973) and Neander (1991a,b), argues that functions are effects of an item that are part of the etiological explanation (through selection, learning, or reinforcement) for why the item is present; as such, functions are reduced to causal histories. In a third view, Maley and Piccinini (forthcoming) argue that the (teleological) function of an item is its contribution to the goals of organisms, which may be objective or subjective goals. Like Garson, Maley and Piccinini hold that functions are objective (i.e., not observer relative). Unlike Garson, however, they are not grounded in the etiology of the item but in their current contribution to survival or reproduction (the objective goals of organisms) or to what the organism itself desires (the subjective goals of organisms).