Teleology beyond explanation

Mind and Language 38 (1):20-41 (2021)
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Abstract

People often think of objects teleologically. For instance, we might understand a hammer in terms of its purpose of driving in nails. But how should we understand teleological thinking in the first place? This paper separates mere teleology (simply ascribing a telos) and teleological explanation (thinking something is explained by its telos) by examining cases where an object was designed for one purpose but is now widely used for a different purpose. Across four experiments, we show that teleology judgments and teleological explanation judgments are dissociable, and identify three factors that influenced teleology judgments (and one that did not).

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Author Profiles

Sehrang Joo
Yale University
Joshua Knobe
Yale University

References found in this work

Graded Causation and Defaults.Joseph Y. Halpern & Christopher Hitchcock - 2015 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (2):413-457.
Teleological Essentialism.David Rose & Shaun Nichols - 2019 - Cognitive Science 43 (4):e12725.

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