Wholes that cause their parts: Organic self-reproduction and the reality of biological teleology

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42 (2):252-260 (2011)
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Abstract

A well-rehearsed move among teleological realists in the philosophy of biology is to base the idea of genuinely teleological forms of organic self-reproduction on a type of causality derived from Kant. Teleological realists have long argued for the causal possibility of this form of causality—in which a whole is considered the cause of its parts—as well as formulated a set of teleological criteria of adequacy for it. What is missing, to date, is an account of the mereological principles that govern the envisioned whole-to-part causality. When the latter principles are taken into account, we find that there is no version of whole-to-part causality that is mereologically, causally and teleologically possible all at once, as teleological realism requires

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Author's Profile

Thomas Teufel
Baruch College (CUNY)

References found in this work

Parts: a study in ontology.Peter M. Simons - 1987 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Minds, Brains and Science.John R. Searle - 1984 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Real Time.D. H. Mellor - 1981 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Parts : a Study in Ontology.Peter Simons - 1987 - Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 2:277-279.
Mereology.Achille C. Varzi - 2016 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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