Online research in philosophy

Current teleology in Western biology, philosophy, and theology draws on resources from four main Western philosophers. (1) Plato’s ’Timaeus’, (2) Aristotle’s ’Physics’, (3) Kant’s ’Critique of Judgment’, (4) Hegel’s ’Philosophy of Nature’. Teleological themes persist, in different ways, in contemporary discussions; I consider two lines of criticism of traditional teleology -- by Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould -- and one line that continues traditional teleology in an updated way -- by Holmes Rolston, III. (edited).

Kant’s position on teleology 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 defend teleology 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 where teleology truly explains the presence of its parts.

An analysis of Hegel's chapter on teleology in the Science of Logic. Hegel argues that the 'intentional model' of teleology assumed by Kant actually presupposes a natural or organic teleology more like along Aristotelian lines.

Kant's philosophy of science takes on sharp contour in terms of his interaction with the practicing life scientists of his day, particularly Johann Blumenbach and the latter's student, Christoph Girtanner, who in 1796 attempted to synthesize the ideas of Kant and Blumenbach. Indeed, Kant's engagement with the life sciences played a far more substantial role in his transcendental philosophy than has been recognized hitherto. The theory of epigenesis, especially in light of Kant's famous analogy in the first Critique (B167), posed crucial questions regarding the 'looseness of fit' between the constitutive and the regulative in Kant's theory of empirical law. A detailed examination of Kant's struggle with epigenesis between 1784 and 1790 demonstrates his grave reservations about its hylozoist implications, leading to his even stronger insistence on the discrimination of constitutive from regulative uses of reason. The continuing relevance of these issues for Kant's philosophy of science is clear from the work of Buchdahl and its contemporary reception.

I try to identify the characteristic and distinguishing features of a theory of natural beauty (as opposed to the sublime) that can be found in Kant's Critique of Judgement. Lest this may seem superfluous, I argue first that, contrary to a common view, Kant's theory does not take the experience of beauty in nature as theoretically basic and that he does not deal with beauty in art only as a derivative case of aesthetic experience. I then try to understand what it means to require, as Kant famously does, that beautiful nature has to look as if it were art. Does this commit him to a projectionist view, according to which we appreciate nature aesthetically only for what it really is not (namely art) rather than for what it is? Pursuing this question we find that for Kant nature can be the object of pure judgements of taste only insofar as nature can be explained scientifically, which in Kant's framework means purely mechanically. This ‘blind mechanism’ of nature plays an important role in Kant's explication of the moral significance the experience of beautiful nature has for us.

In this paper the common association between ontological reductionism and a methodological position called 'Mechanism' is discussed. Three major points are argued for: (1) Mechanism is not to be identified with reductionism in any of its forms; in fact, mechanism leads to a non-reductionist ontology. (2) Biological methodology is thoroughly mechanistic. (3) Mechanism is compatible with at least one form of teleology. Along the way the nature and value of scientific explanations, some recent controversies in biology and why reductionism has proven to be such an attractive position are discussed.

The article surveys Kant’s treatment of biological teleology in the ’Critique of Judgment’, with special attention to the question of whether the notion of natural teleology is coherent. It argues that our entitlement to regard nature as teleological is not established by the argument of the ’Antinomy’, but rather results from our entitlement to regard the workings of our own cognitive faculties in normative terms. This implies a view of the relation between biological teleology and the representational character of mind which is the reverse of that adopted by naturalistic theorists of mind like Fred Dretske and Ruth Millikan.

This essay examines Kant's idea of organic teleology. The first two sections are devoted to Kant's analysis and justification of teleological conceptions in biology. Both the idea of teleology and Kant's anti-reductionism are derived from basic elements of his critical treatment of the human intellect. The third section discusses the limitations Kant places on accounts of origins in the life world. It is argued that the limitations Kant places on accounts of the origins of species do not follow from his idea of teleology. The final section briefly outlines the fate of the Kantian formulation of teleology in the nineteenth century.

I DISCUSS KANT’S ARGUMENT FOR THE IRREDUCIBILITY OF BIOLOGY TO "MECHANISTIC" SCIENCE AS IT IS FOUND IN THE SECOND PART OF THE "CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT", THE CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT. THE PAPER CONSISTS OF TWO PARTS. IN THE FIRST I LAY OUT KANT’S POSITION, SHOWING THE RESPECT IN WHICH TELEOLOGY, FOR KANT, IS THE MARK OF THE LIVING. IN THE SECOND I TEST KANT’S VIEW AGAINST THE RECENT MECHANISTIC ANALYSIS OF TELEOLOGY PUT FORWARD BY ERNEST NAGEL IN "TELEOLOGY REVISITED" AND SHOW THAT KANT’S POSITION MAY BE UNDERSTOOD AS A SERIOUS OBJECTION TO THE POSITION DEFENDED BY NAGEL.