 Similar to direct natural selection accounts, organizational accounts can be forward or backward-looking: the function of a trait may identify its dispositional contribution to the complex organization of the system which results in its own persistence or reproduction in the future (forward-looking; Schlosser 1998), or a functional attribution may identify a trait’s past contribution (etiological, or backward-looking; McLaughlin 2001). Alvaro Moreno’s group adopts a third position. They claim their organizational account of function unifies these two perspectives (Mossio et al 2009; cf. Artiga &amp; Martinez 2016). All these organizational accounts differ from direct natural selection accounts, however, in that they make no appeal to the selection history of the trait. Instead, the function of a trait can be inferred from the present or past role of the trait in maintaining itself within the complex, organized system without further holding that the trait was selected for that role. On this view, functional attributions in biology are explanatory not because of selection, but rather because of the causal role traits play in contributing to the maintenance of the organization of a system, which in turn enables the traits themselves to persist. 