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Teleology
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Teleology (Greek: telos: end, purpose) is the philosophical study of design and purpose. A teleological school of thought is one that holds all things to be designed for or directed toward a final result, that there is an inherent purpose or final cause for all that exists.
As a school of thought it can be contrasted with metaphysical naturalism, which views nature as having no design or purpose. Teleology would say that a person has eyes because he has the need of eyesight (form following function), while naturalism would say that a person has sight because he has eyes (function following form).
In European philosophy, teleology may be identified with Aristotelianism and the scholastic tradition.
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Encyclopedia
Teleology (Greek: telos: end, purpose) is the philosophical study of design and purpose. A teleological school of thought is one that holds all things to be designed for or directed toward a final result, that there is an inherent purpose or final cause for all that exists.
As a school of thought it can be contrasted with metaphysical naturalism, which views nature as having no design or purpose. Teleology would say that a person has eyes because he has the need of eyesight (form following function), while naturalism would say that a person has sight because he has eyes (function following form).
In European philosophy, teleology may be identified with Aristotelianism and the scholastic tradition. Most theology presupposes a teleology: design in nature can be used as a teleological argument for the existence of God. Aristotle's analysis of four causes speaks of a material cause, efficient cause, and formal cause but all these serve a final cause.
Later teleology was fundamental to the speculative philosophy of Hegel and was explored in detail by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgement.
In general it may be said that there are two types of final cause, which may be called intrinsic finality and extrinsic finality.
- Extrinsic finality consists of a being realizing a purpose outside that being, for the utility and welfare of other beings. For instance, minerals are "designed" to be used by plants which are in turn "designed" to be used by animals - and similarly humanity serves some ultimate good beyond itself.
- Intrinsic finality consists of a being realizing a purpose directed toward the perfection of its own nature. In essence, it is what is "good for" a being. Just as physical masses obey universal gravitational tendencies, which did not evolve, but are simply a cosmic "given," so life is intended to behave in certain ways so as to preserve itself from death, disease, and pain.
In bioethics, teleology is used to describe the utilitarian view that an action's ethics is determined by its good or bad consequences.
Classical teleology
Plato summarized the teleological position in his dialogue Phaedo, bemoaning those who fail to distinguish between the ultimate Cause and the mere means by which that Cause acts:
Similarly, Aristotle argued that Democritus, proponent of the atomic theory, was wrong to attempt to reduce all things to mere necessity, because such thinking neglects the purpose, order, and "final cause" that causes the necessity:
Hence Plato and Aristotle agreed that all lesser causes were in the service of an ultimate good (for Plato the good of the whole cosmos, for Aristotle the good of each individual living thing) while Democritus and Lucretius were supporters of what is now often called metaphysical naturalism, or accidentalism:
However, in the Physics Aristotle rejected Plato's assumption that the universe was created by an Intelligent Designer using eternal Forms as his model. For Aristotle, natural ends are produced by "natures" (principles of change internal to living things), and natures, Aristotle argued, do not deliberate: "It is absurd to suppose that ends are not present because we do not see an agent deliberating." (Physics 2.8, 199b27-9; see also Physics 2.5-6 where "natures" are contrasted with intelligence) Aristotelian teleology, then, offers us the idea of natural design without a Designer.
Modern and postmodern philosophy
In the various neo-Hegelian schools - proposing a history of our species some consider to be at variance with Darwin, with the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and with what is now called analytic philosophy — the point of departure is not so much formal logic and scientific fact but 'identity'. (In Hegel's terminology: 'objective spirit'.)
Individual human consciousness, in the process of reaching for autonomy and freedom, has no choice but to deal with an obvious reality: the collective identities (such as the multiplicity of world views, ethnic, cultural and national identities) which divide the human race and which set (and always have set) different groups in violent conflict with each other. Hegel conceived of the 'totality' of mutually antagonistic world-views and life-forms in history as being 'goal-driven', that is, oriented towards an end-point in history. The 'objective contradiction' of 'subject' and 'object' would eventually 'sublate' into a form of life which leaves violent conflict behind. This goal-oriented, 'teleological' notion of the 'historical process as a whole' is present in a variety of 20th Century authors, from Lukács and Jaspers to Horkheimer and Adorno.
In contrast teleology and "grand narratives" are eschewed in the postmodern attitude and teleology may be viewed as reductive, exclusionary and harmful to those whose stories are erased.
Against this, Alasdair MacIntyre has argued that a narrative understanding of oneself, of one's capacity as an independent reasoner, one's dependence on others and on the social practices and traditions in which one participates, all tend towards an ultimate good of liberation. Social practices may themselves be understood as teleologically orientated to internal goods, for example practices of philosophical and scientific enquiry are teleologically ordered to the elaboration of a true understanding of their objects. MacIntyre's book After Virtue famously dismissed the naturalistic teleology of Aristotle's 'metaphysical biology', but he has cautiously moved from that book's account of a sociological teleology toward an exploration of what remains valid in a more traditional teleological naturalism.
Teleology and science
Science concerns itself with physical causality and is well able to function within the bounds of naturalism, indeed, it has frequently to counter appeals to undemonstrable modes of causality. Yet teleological ideas still find refuge in the unpenetrated beginnings and endings of things.
Physics
It has been claimed that within the framework of thermodynamics, the irreversibility of macroscopic processes is explained in a teleological way.
Chemistry
Teleological arguments in the field of chemistry have once again often centred around the fitness of materials to form the complex molecular bonds of life. For example, Lawrence Joseph Henderson, an American bio-chemist, advanced such a view in the early 20th century.
Biology
Biology has always been susceptible to teleological thought, even after Darwin proposed survival as the only observable final good. Driesch, for example, presented a modified vitalism in which an Aristotlean (or Kantian) entelechy drove embryonic development. Contemporary accounts of teleology within biology are heavily influenced by Larry Wright's etiological account, which seeks to supply a definition of "function" that can be applied to natural phenomena as well as human constructions such as a hammer. Most contemporary accounts of teleology follow Wright (Ruth Millikan, for instance). Others, however, such as Godfrey-Smith and Ernst Mayr, object to any such theory, preferring naturalistic accounts of teleology.
Cybernetics and teleonomy
Julian Bigelow, Arturo Rosenblueth, and Norbert Wiener have conceived of feedback mechanisms as lending a teleology to machinery. Wiener, a mathematician, coined the term 'cybernetics' to denote the study of "teleological mechanisms." Cybernetics is the study of the communication and control of regulatory feedback both in living beings and machines, and in combinations of the two.
In recent years, end-driven teleology has become contrasted with "apparent" teleology, i.e teleonomy or process-driven systems.
Philosophy of science
For a very detailed discussion of the recent resurgence of teleology in natural science, see Barrow and Tipler (1986). Their work includes:
See also
Further reading
- Aristotle, Metaphysics Book Theta (translated with an introduction and commentary by Stephen Makin), Oxford University Press, 2006. (ISBN 0-19-875108-7 / 978-0-19-875108-3)
- John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Oxford University Press, 1986. (ISBN 0-19-282147-4)
- Julian Bigelow, Arturo Rosenblueth, and Norbert Wiener, 1943, "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology," Philosophy of Science 10: 18-24.
- Allan Gotthelf, "Aristotle's Conception of Final Causality", in Philosophical Issues in Aristotle's Biology (edited by A. Gotthelf and J. G. Lennox), Cambridge University Press, 1987 (ISBN 0-52-131091-1 / 978-0-52-131091-8)
- Monte Ransome Johnson, Aristotle on Teleology, Oxford University Press, 2005. (ISBN 0-19-928530-6 / 978-0-19-928530-3)
- Kelvin Knight, Aristotelian Philosophy: Ethics and Politics from Aristotle to MacIntyre, Polity Press, 2007. (ISBN 978-0-7456-1977-4 / 0-745-61977-0)
- Georg Lukacs. History and Class Consciousness. (ISBN 0-262-62020-0)
- Horkheimer and Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. (ISBN 0-8047-3632-4)
- Alasdair MacIntyre, 'First Principles, Final Ends, and Contemporary Philosophical Issues', in idem., The Tasks of Philosophy: Selected Essays, Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, 2006. (ISBN 978-0-521-67061-6 / 0-521-67061-6)
- Herbert Marcuse. Hegel's Ontology and the Theory of Historicity. (ISBN 0-262-13221-4)
- Lowell Nissen, Teleological Language in the Life Sciences, Rowman & Littlefield, 1997 (ISBN 0-8476-8694-9)
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