Behavior, purpose andteleology.Arturo Rosenblueth,Norbert Wiener &Julian Bigelow -1943 -Philosophy of Science 10 (1):18-24.detailsThis essay has two goals. The first is to define the behavioristic study of natural events and to classify behavior. The second is to stress the importance of the concept of purpose.Given any object, relatively abstracted from its surroundings for study, the behavioristic approach consists in the examination of the output of the object and of the relations of this output to the input. By output is meant any change produced in the surroundings by the object. By input, conversely, is (...) meant any event external to the object that modifies this object in any manner. (shrink)
The Inexplicability of Kant’s Naturzweck: Kant onTeleology, Explanation and Biology.James Kreines -2005 -Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 87 (3):270-311.detailsKant’s position onteleology and biology is neither inconsistent nor obsolete; his arguments have some surprising and enduring philosophical strengths. But Kant’s account will appear weak if we muddy the waters by reading him as aiming to defendteleology by appealing to considerations popular in contemporary philosophy. Kant argues for very different conclusions: we can neither know teleological judgments of living beings to be true, nor legitimately explain living beings in teleological terms; such teleological judgment is justified only (...) as a “problematic” guideline in our search for mechanistic explanations. These conclusions are well supported by Kant’s defense of his demanding analysis, according to which teleological judgment literally applies to a complex whole only whereteleology truly explains the presence of its parts. (shrink)
The Modern Philosophical Resurrection ofTeleology.Mark Perlman -2004 -The Monist 87 (1):3-51.detailsMany objects in the world have functions. Typewriters are for typing. Can-openers are for opening cans. Lawnmowers are for cutting grass. That is what these things are for. Every day around the world people attribute functions to objects. Some of the objects with functions are organs or parts of living organisms. Hearts are for pumping blood. Eyes are for seeing. Countless works in biology explain the “Form, Function, and Evolution of... ” everything from bee dances to elephant tusks to pandas’ (...) ‘thumbs’. Many scientific explanations, in areas as diverse as psychology, sociology, economics, medical research, and neuroscience, rest on appeals to the function and/or malfunction of things or systems. They talk of how humans and other organisms or their parts work, what their functions are, why they are present, and how different situations will affect them and how they will react. Philosophers, going back to Aristotle, used to make generous use of functions in describing objects, organisms, their interactions, and even as the basis of ethics and metaphysics. And yet, since the Enlightenment, talk of the function of natural objects, teleological function, began to be viewed with suspicion, as the mechanical model of the world replaced the old Aristotelian model. From a religious standpoint, it used to be easy to see how objects in the natural world could have natural functions, for God was said to instill functions by design throughout Creation. But philosophers became increasingly reluctant to invoke God to solve every difficult philosophical problem, and became unwilling to indulge in such religious explanations ofteleology. (shrink)
Upper-directed systems: a new approach toteleology in biology.Daniel W. McShea -2012 -Biology and Philosophy 27 (5):663-684.detailsHow shall we understand apparently teleological systems? What explains their persistence and their plasticity? Here I argue that all seemingly goal-directed systems—e.g., a food-seeking organism, human-made devices like thermostats and torpedoes, biological development, human goal seeking, and the evolutionary process itself—share a common organization. Specifically, they consist of an entity that moves within a larger containing structure, one that directs its behavior in a general way without precisely determining it. If so, thenteleology lies within the domain of the (...) theory of compositional hierarchies. (shrink)
Monsters, Laws of Nature, andTeleology in Late Scholastic Textbooks.Silvia Manzo -2019 - In Rodolfo Garau & Pietro Omodeo,Contingency and Natural Order in Early Modern Science. Springer Verlag. pp. 61-92.detailsIn the period of emergence of early modern science, ‘monsters’ or individuals with physical congenital anomalies were considered as rare events which required special explanations entailing assumptions about the laws of nature. This concern with monsters was shared by representatives of the new science and Late Scholastic authors of university textbooks. This paper will reconstruct the main theses of the treatment of monsters in Late Scholastic textbooks, by focusing on the question as to how their accounts conceived nature’s regularity and (...)teleology. It shows that they developed a naturalistic teratology in which, in contrast to the naturalistic explanations usually offered by the new science, finality was at central stage. This general point does not impede our noticing that some authors were closer to the views emerging in the Scientific Revolution insofar as they conceived nature as relatively autonomous from God and gave a relevant place to efficient secondary causation. In this connection, this paper suggests that the concept of the laws of nature developed by the new science –as exception-less regularities—transferred to nature’s regularity the ‘strong’ character that Late Scholasticism attributed to finality and that the decline of the Late Scholastic view of finality played as an important concomitant factor permitting the transformation of the concept of laws of nature. (shrink)
From Extrinsic Design to IntrinsicTeleology.Ignacio Silva -2019 -European Journal of Science and Theology 15 (3):61-78.detailsIn this paper I offer a distinction between design andteleology, referring mostly to thehistory of these two terms, in order to suggest an alternative strategy for arguments thatintend to demonstrate the existence of the divine. I do not deal with the soundness ofeither design or teleological arguments. I rather emphasise the differences between thesetwo terms, and how these differences involve radically different arguments for the existence of the divine. I argue that the term „design‟ refers to an extrinsic (...) feature that was in history understood to be imposed by God in nature, while one may argue for an internal tendency, what I call „teleology‟. I first offer a historical tour of design arguments and how the basic notion of design was understood in extrinsic terms. I then briefly present three kinds of objections available in history to these arguments: philosophical, scientific, and theological. I finally move to discussing an intrinsicunderstanding ofteleology, and how this notion differs from that of extrinsic design. Iend the paper showing how this notion could be useful in interpreting processes innature, in particular the reproductive tendencies in living beings. (shrink)
Purpose andTeleology.J. L. Cowan -1968 -The Monist 52 (3):317-328.detailsWe are witnessing at present a substantial efflorescence of the view that there are and must necessarily be fundamental differences between the methods—and especially the types of explanation—appropriate to the social sciences on the one hand and those appropriate to the natural sciences on the other. New and ever more subtle arguments seeking to re-establish a Geisteswissenschaften vs. Naturwissenschaften distinction are flowing from scholarly presses in ever greater volume. The works cited in footnote one are a mere sample just of (...) recent books which, while diverse to the point of contradiction in some respects, have as their common underlying theme the defense of such a methodological duality. (shrink)
Trust andTeleology: Locke’s Politics and his Doctrine of Creation.A. W. Sparkes -1973 -Canadian Journal of Philosophy 3 (2):263 - 273.detailsI shall argue that the central doctrines of Locke's politics have a theological basis, a doctrine of Creation similar to the Thomist one. Locke does not elaborate this doctrine; he presupposes it. It is not a hidden, esoteric element in his thought; it is there on the surface, but in a scattered and fragmentary form.I shall proceed in this fashion: First, I shall set out this doctrine of Creation and show its connexion with Locke's moral theory by way of an (...) examination of his doctrines of property and power. I shall then show that Locke extends this doctrine of Creation to human productive activity with crippling results for his political theory. (shrink)
Making Sense of Husserl’s Notion ofTeleology: Normativity, Reason, Progress and Phenomenology as ‘Critique from Within’.Andreea Smaranda Aldea -2017 -Hegel Bulletin 38 (1):104-128.detailsThe paper examines Husserl’s notion ofteleology through the lens of necessity and argues that there are two senses ofteleology—historical and transcendental—at work in the task of phenomenology, especially as Husserl comes to conceive it in theCrisis. To understand not only how these two senses are related but also how their relationship shapes Husserl’s notions of normativity, reason, and progress, I argue that we must look closely at phenomenology as a distinctive form of critique, namely critique ‘from (...) within’. What emerges is a philosophical stance that is fundamentally ambiguous: at once historical and transcendental-eidetic. This productive notion of ambiguity, I contend, differentiates Husserl’s conceptions of normativity, reason and progress from their Enlightenment guises. (shrink)
Does Naturalism Make Room forTeleology? The Case of Donald Crosby and Thomas Nagel.Mikael Leidenhag -2019 -American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 40 (1):5-19.detailsThis article explores an important metaphysical issue raised by Donald Crosby in his Nature as Sacred Ground1—namely, the reality and nature ofteleology and the explanatory relevance ofteleology for understanding human mentality. Crosby, in his endeavor to construct a metaphysical system on which to base religious naturalism, acknowledges the importance of positively accounting forteleology.Teleology is crucial for accounting for human freedom, and ifteleology falls prey to reductionism, then a dangerous dissonance is (...) created between naturalism and the necessary presupposition regarding ourselves as experiencing and causally effective creatures. To leave such a dissonance... (shrink)
Modern Ethics,Teleology, and the Love of Self.Henry B. Veatch -1992 -The Monist 75 (1):52-70.details“Modern ethics,” so-called, has only in the most recent years come under some very sharp and telling, not to say even devastating, criticism. And what is it that one should understand by this term, “modern ethics”? Well, it is a term used largely by very recent critics to designate that whole tradition in ethics, in part utilitarian and in part Kantian in character, that has quite dominated the study of ethics, at least in Anglo-American philosophy, for upwards of three-quarters of (...) a century and more now. (shrink)
Aristotle'sTeleology and Uexküll's Theory of Living Nature.Helene Weiss -1948 -Classical Quarterly 42 (1-2):44-.detailsThe purpose of this paper is to draw attention to a similarity between an ancient and a modern theory of living nature. There is no need to present the Aristotelian doctrine in full detail. I must rather apologize for repeating much that is well known. My endeavour is to offer it for comparison, and, incidentally, to clear it from misrepresentation. Uexküll's theory, on the other hand, is little known, and what is given here is an insufficient outline of it. I (...) do not maintain that either doctrine is right. I am fully aware that the problem of the essence of living nature by no means admits of an éasy solution. In offering for consideration the comparison contained in this paper I would go no farther than owning my belief that the two authors here discussed, both thinkers who combine an intensely philosophical outlook with a wide biological experience, are worth the attention not only of the historian of science and philosophy, but also of the student of philosophical biology. (shrink)
Neither Mereology nor Magic, butTeleology.Jason Bowers -2017 -Southern Journal of Philosophy 55 (2):177-195.detailsContemporary theories of universals have two things in common: first, they are unable to account for necessary connections between universals that form a structure. Second, they leaveteleology out of their accounts of instantiation. These facts are not unrelated; the reason why contemporary theories have such trouble is they neglect the ancient idea that universals are ends at which nature aims. If we want a working theory of universals, however, we must return to this idea. Despite its unpopularity among (...) realists,teleology is not a disposable eccentricity, and its dismissal is not an improvement on ancient views. (shrink)
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The Non-Aristotelian Novelty of Leibniz’sTeleology.Laurence Carlin -2011 -The Leibniz Review 21:69-90.detailsMy aim in this paper is to underscore the novelty of Leibniz’steleology from a historical perspective. I believe this perspective helps deliver a better understanding of the finer details of Leibniz’s employment of final causes. I argue in this paper that Leibniz was taking a stance on three central teleological issues that derive from Aristotle, issues that seem to have occupied nearly every advocate of final causes from Aristotle to Leibniz. I discuss the three Aristotelian issues, and how (...) major thinkers treated them in the medieval period. I argue that Leibniz rejected all of the mainstream Aristotelian teleological views on these issues. I conclude that Leibniz broke with longstanding threads of teleological thinking in ways that were often extreme. (shrink)
The sublime and itsteleology: Kant, German idealism, phenomenology.Donald Loose (ed.) -2011 - Boston: Brill.detailsBased on their critical analysis of Kant's "Critique of Judgment", the authors of this book show from different perspectives in what way the Kantian concept of the sublime is still a main stream of inspiration for contemporary thinking.
On the Use and Abuse ofTeleology for Life: Intentionality, Naturalism, and Meaning Rationalism in Husserl and Millikan.Jacob Rump -2018 -Humana Mente 11 (34).detailsBoth Millikan’s brand of naturalistic analytic philosophy and Husserlian phenomenology have held on to teleological notions, despite their being out of favor in mainstream Western philosophy for most of the twentieth century. Both traditions have recognized the need forteleology in order to adequately account for intentionality, the need to adequately account for intentionality in order to adequately account for meaning, and the need for an adequate theory of meaning in order to precisely and consistently describe the world and (...) life. The stark differences between their accounts of these fundamental concepts stem from radically different conceptions of the world, the natural and life. I argue that Millikan’s teleosemantic approach relies on ateleology of determination by means of the lawfulness of nature that leaves no room for the freedom of self-determination, for reason, or for experience—for the reality of lived human life. In contrast to Millikan’s account, Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology situatesteleology as a function of reason and first-personal experience, part of an extended account of intentionality and meaning according to which the full range of our making sense of the world is conceived as a rational activity that is itself a part of that world, and not an unnatural activity to be separated from it. While Husserl’s account of these issues is indeed symptomatic of what Millikan calls “meaning rationalism,” I argue that it is immune to the sorts of problems she claims will plague any such account, since these problems arise only against the background of a set of presuppositions about intentionality that Husserl does not share. Husserl’s position can itself be understood to be within the bounds of a suitably liberal conception of naturalism, and interpreting him in this way it has the added benefit—contra Millikan—of not divorcingteleology from reason, the latter construed as our first-personal striving to make sense of the world as we experience it—of life. (shrink)
Temporally-Asymmetric Principles, Parity between Explanation and Prediction, and Mechanism versusTeleology.Adolf Grünbaum -1962 -Philosophy of Science 29 (2):146 - 170.detailsThree major ways in which temporal asymmetries enter into scientific induction are discussed as follows: 1. An account is given of the physical basis for the temporal asymmetry of recordability, which obtains in the following sense: except for humanly recorded predictions and one other class of advance indicators to be discussed, interacting systems can contain reliable indicators of only their past and not of their future interactions. To deal with the exceptional cases of non-spontaneous "pre-records," a clarification is offered of (...) the essential differences in the conditions requisite to the production of an indicator having retrodictive significance ("post-record"), on the one hand, and of one having predictive significance ("prerecord" or recorded prediction), on the other. Purported counter-examples to the asymmetry of spontaneous recordability are refuted. 2. It is shown how in cases of asymmetric recordability, the associated retrodiction-prediction asymmetry makes for an asymmetry of assertibility as between an explanandum (or an explanans) referring to a future event and one referring to a past one. But it is argued that this epistemological asymmetry in the assertibility per se must be clearly distinguished from a logical asymmetry between the past and the future in regard to the inferability (deductive or inductive) of the explanandum from the explanans. And it is then contended that the failure to distinguish between an epistemological and a logical asymmetry vitiates the critiques that recent writers have offered of the Popper-Hempel thesis, which affirms symmetry of inferability as between predictive and post-explanatory arguments. In reply to Scriven, it is maintained that predictions based on mere indicators (rather than causes) do not establish an asymmetry in scientific understanding as between predictive arguments and post-explanatory ones. 3. As a further philosophical ramification of the retrodiction-prediction asymmetry, a set of sufficient conditions are stated for the correctness of philosophical mechanism as opposed toteleology. (shrink)
Teleology and function in non-living nature.Gunnar Babcock -2023 -Synthese 201 (4):1-20.detailsThere’s a general assumption thatteleology and function do not exist in inanimate nature. Throughout biology, it is generally taken as granted thatteleology (or teleonomy) and functions are not only unique to life, but perhaps even a defining quality of life. For many, it’s obvious that rocks, water, and the like, are not teleological, nor could they possibly have stand-alone functions. This idea - thatteleology and function are unique to life - is the target of (...) this paper. I begin with an overview of McShea’s field theoretic account ofteleology. I start with the field theoretic account because it presents a promising analysis of teleological systems. It is promising because, in not making any assumptions about life’s special status in teleological systems, it avoids counterexamples that have problematized other accounts. I then consider some of the prominent efforts that have been made to attempt to avoid ascribing functions orteleology to some form of inanimate nature. In my assessment, none of the efforts are successful. I conclude by offering mineral evolution as a case study to show how inanimate nature can be both teleological and functional. The evolution of mineral species reveals thatteleology and function extend to inanimate nature, and thatteleology and function come in degrees. (shrink)
Towards a Science of Life: The Cosmological Method,Teleology, and Living Things.Klaus Corcilius -2020 - In Liba Taub,The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Science. Cambridge University Press. pp. 58-78.detailsThe phenomena of life have special significance for us. Living things impress us in ways inanimate things couldn’t. This is because livings things do things. They act for the sake of some purpose, a purpose which moreover seems to be their very own. They instil in us the impression that there is something they are ‘up to’. This certainly seems to be the case with animals and, to a lesser degree, with plants and other growing things. Their goal-directed behaviours are (...) presumably the reasons why living things are closer, more interesting – and sometimes also more repelling – to us than inanimate things: they have, one might say, certain interests they pursue. We can understand these interests and therefore interact with these pursuits in sometimes cooperative and sometimes inimical ways. This is why our attitudes towards animate things are so very different from our attitudes towards the inanimate. (shrink)
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Evolutionary Emergence of Purposive Goals and Values: A NaturalisticTeleology.Donald A. Crosby -2023 - Albany: SUNY Press.detailsDevelops and defends a philosophical account of meaning, purpose, and value in human life and experience that is naturalistic without being reductionistic or scientistic.