Teleology

Teleology (Greek: telos: end, purpose) is the philosophical study of design, purpose, directive principle, or finality in nature or human creations. It is traditionally contrasted with philosophical naturalism, which views nature as lacking design or purpose. In opposition to this, teleology holds there is a final cause or purpose inherent in all beings. There are two types of such causes, intrinsic finality and extrinsic finality.

Historically, teleology may be identified with Aristotelianism and the scholastic tradition in philosophy, again, made central to speculative philosophy by Hegel. The rationale of teleology was explored in detail by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgement. Friedrich Engels refuted teleology as pantheism or deism and defended Darwin's evolution theory.

In theology, "intelligent design" is a teleological argument for the existence of God. In bioethics, teleology is used to describe a utilitarian view that an action's ethical right or wrong is based on the balance of good or bad consequences.

Teleology versus philosophical naturalism

Teleology traditionally is contrasted with philosophical naturalism, which views nature as lacking design or purpose. Teleology would argue that a person has eyes because he has the need of eyesight, form follows function, while naturalism is the reverse of this position: it would say that a person has sight simply because he has eyes, or that function follows form (eyesight follows from having eyes). Organisms with eyes may be more successful at interacting with the world, so organisms with eyes survive long enough to produce offspring whereas organisms without eyes die without offspring.

Two classic examples of these opposing views are found in Aristotle and Lucretius, the former as a supporter of teleology and the latter as a supporter of what is now often called philosophical naturalism, or accidentalism:

Nature adapts the organ to the function, and not the function to the organ — Aristotle, De Partibus Animalium (On the Parts of Animals)^[1]	Nothing in the body is made in order that we may use it. What happens to exist is the cause of its use. — Lucretius, De Rerum Naturā (On the Nature of Things)^[2]

Extrinsic and intrinsic finality

Teleology depends on the concept of a final cause or purpose inherent in all beings. There are two types of such causes, 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.
Intrinsic finality consists of a being realizing a purpose by means of a natural tendency directed toward the perfection of its own nature. In essence, it is what is "good for" a being. For example, physical masses obey universal gravitational tendencies, which did not evolve, but are simply a cosmic "given". Similarly, life is intended to behave in certain ways so as to preserve itself from death, disease, and pain.

Over-emphasizing extrinsic finality is often criticized as leading to the anthropic attribution of every event to a divine purpose, or superstition. For instance, "If I hadn't been at the store today, I wouldn't have found that $100 on the ground. God must have intended for me to go to the store so I would find that money." or "We won the game today because of my lucky socks." Such abuses were criticized by Francis Bacon ("De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum," III, iv), Descartes ("Principia Philosophiæ", I, 28; III, 2, 3; "Meditationes", III, IV), and Spinoza (Ethica, I, prop. 36 app.).

Intrinsic finality, while more subtle, provides the basis for the teleological argument for the existence of God and or some supernatural force, and its modern counterpart, intelligent design. However, some argue that in the limited context of biology this argument can be turned on its head by Darwinism. The American philosopher Daniel Dennett devoted a book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, to outlining the profound implications of this counter-intuitive inversion. Proponents of teleology argue that it does not resolve a fundamental defect in philosophical naturalism. They argue that naturalism focuses exclusively on the immediate causes and mechanisms of events, and does not attend to the reason for their synthesis. For example, if we take a clock apart, we discover in it nothing but springs, wheels, pivots, levers etc. But having explained the mechanism which causes the revolutions of the hands on the dial, is it reasonable to say that the clock was not made to keep time?

Philosophers of science respond that since Aristotle, biology has been profoundly concerned with the constraint function places on structure, and that the arrival of Darwinian evolutionary theory did not alter this concern. A classic and early example is Darwin's interest in functional constraints on the evolutionary development of the beaks of Galapagos finches. Of these birds, Darwin wrote, "Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends. " (Origin of Species, chapter 19)

Classical Greek teleology

Plato summarized the argument for teleology as follows in Phaedo, arguing that it is error to fail to distinguish between the ultimate Cause, and the mere means by which the ultimate Cause acts:

Imagine not being able to distinguish the real cause from that without which the cause would not be able to act as a cause. It is what the majority appear to do, like people groping in the dark; they call it a cause, thus giving it a name that does not belong to it. That is why one man surrounds the earth with a vortex to make the heavens keep it in place, another makes the air support it like a wide lid. As for their capacity of being in the best place they could possibly be put, this they do not look for, nor do they believe it to have any divine force, but they believe that they will some time discover a stronger and more immortal Atlas to hold everything together more, and they do not believe that the truly good and "binding" binds and holds them together." [Plato, Phaedo 99bc]

Thus, it is argued, those who attempt to explain nature in terms of nature alone are forced to deny the ultimate binding Good in the universe, and hope that they will someday discover a stronger supporting argument (for example, "Atlas", natural selection, or a grand unified theory) to hold their universe together.

Similarly, Aristotle argued that it is error to attempt to reduce all things to mere necessity, because such thinking neglects the purpose, order, and "final cause" that causes the apparent necessity. He wrote:

Democritus, however, neglecting the final cause, reduces to necessity all the operations of nature. Now they are necessary, it is true, but yet they are for a final cause and for the sake of what is best in each case. Thus nothing prevents the teeth from being formed and being shed in this way; but it is not on account of these causes but on account of the end; these are causes in the sense of being the moving and efficient instruments and the material. …to say that necessity is the cause is much as if we should think that the water has been drawn off from a dropsical patient on account of the lancet alone, not on account of health, for the sake of which the lancet made the incision. [Aristotle, Generation of Animals V.8, 789a8-b15]

In addition to the final cause, Aristotle's analysis speaks of the material cause, efficient cause, and formal cause.

Modern/postmodern philosophy

Historically, teleology may be identified with the philosophical tradition of Aristotelianism. The rationale of teleology was explored by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgement and, again, made central to speculative philosophy by Hegel and the various neo-Hegelian schools. In this interpretation of the history of our species on this globe — an interpretation some consider to be at variance with Darwin, 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 (the multiplicity of world views, ethnic, cultural and national identities) which divide the human race both now and in the past, and which set off (and always have set off) different groups of people against each other in violent conflict. Hegel conceived of the 'totality' of mutually antagonistic world-views and life-forms in history as being 'goal-driven', i.e. oriented towards an end-point in history in which the 'objective contradiction' of 'subject' and 'object' would eventually 'sublate' into a form of life which has left violent conflict behind it. 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.

According to Jean-François Lyotard (1979) teleology and "grand narratives" are eschewed in a postmodern attitude. Teleology may be viewed as reductive, exclusionary and harmful to those whose stories are erased.^[3] Against this, Alasdair MacIntyre has argued that a narrative understanding of one's self is liberatory, in understanding one's capacity as an independent reasoner and, also, in understanding one's dependence on others and on the social practices and traditions in which one participates. Social practices may 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. Although beginning with his book After Virtue, which famously dismissed the naturalistic teleology of Aristotle's 'metaphysical biology', MacIntyre 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.

Science

Anthropic principle

In recent decades, a form of teleological reasoning has reappeared in certain quarters of physics and cosmology, under the heading of anthropic principle, a term Brandon Carter coined in 1973. One of the problems the anthropic principle tries to address is this: Why did the universe begin in a very simple state (Big Bang) but has since grown ever more complex, to the extent that it is hospitable to human life, even more so than is necessary for survival -- for example, advanced human civilization?

Philosophy of science

Contemporary accounts of teleology within biology are heavily influenced by Larry Wright's "etiological" account of teleology.^[4] Wright sought to supply a definition of "function" that could be applied to natural phenomena as well as human artifacts - that is, human constructions such as a hammer. Most contemporary accounts of teleology follow in the steps of Wright's etiological account (Ruth Millikan^[5] for instance^[6]). There is, however, disagreement over its use. Some, such as Godfrey-Smith^[7] and Ernst Mayr,^[8] object to any sort of etiological theory of teleology that attempts to explain both natural phenomena as well as human artifacts. Their accounts are therefore naturalistic accounts of teleology.

For a very detailed discussion of this resurgence of teleology in natural science, see Barrow and Tipler (1986). Their work includes:

A review of much of the intellectual history of teleology and design arguments.
A chapter on the teleological implications of earth science and chemistry, with special reference to the work of Lawrence Joseph Henderson;
A discussion of the implications of evolutionary biology for teleology, emphasizing the writings of Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ernst Mayr;
Teleological speculations on the ultimate fate of the universe.

Technology

Teleology has a long history in the study of purpose in human creations such as technology. The study of "teleological mechanisms" in machinery (i.e. machines with corrective feedback) dates back at least to the late 1700s when James Watt's steam engine was equipped with a governor.

More recently, Julian Bigelow, Arturo Rosenblueth, and Norbert Wiener conceived of teleology in machinery as being a feedback mechanism. Wiener, a mathematician, coined the term 'cybernetics' to denote the study of "teleological mechanisms," which was popularized through his book Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and machine (1948). 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 systemics and engineering, teleological is frequently used as equivalent to goal-oriented, goal-driven, goal-based or purposive, it means that human or artificial entity applies a method where the attributes of the goal of activity are used for the specification of particular design, reasoning or acting steps (according to the Gadomski's TOGA meta-theory,1993, where teleological represents the subjective requirement for every intelligent system). In such sense, for example, all engineering is, by definition, teleological, as well as, every human rational mental act is also oriented on a goal.

Teleonomy

In recent years, end-driven teleology has become contrasted with "apparent" teleology, i.e teleonomy or process-driven systems.

References

^ De Partibus Animalium On the Parts of Animals, IV, xii, 694b; 13
^ De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), IV, 833; cf. 822-56. William Leonard's translation is very different: "Since naught is born in body so that we / May use the same, but birth engenders use".
^ Lochhead, Judy (2000). Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought, p. 6. (ISBN 0-8153-3820-1)
^ Wright, Larry. Teleological Explanations: An Etiological Analysis of Goals and Functions, (University of California Press, 1976). Also see Wright, Larry. The Case Against Teleological Reductionism. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (Vol. 19, No. 3 [Nov. 1968]) and Wright, Larry. Functions, The Philosophical Review (Vol. 83, No. 2 [Apr., 1973]), pp. 139-168.
^ Millikan, Ruth. Varieties of Meaning (The 2002 Jean Nicod Lectures) (Cambridge, Mass : MIT Press, 2004)
^ For a collection of essays mostly in the line of Wright's thought, see David J. Buller, Function, Selection, and Design (State University of New York Press, 1999)
^ Godfrey-Smith, Functions: Consensus Without Unity
^ Mayr, Ernst. The Idea of Teleology, Journal of the History of Ideas (Vol. 53 [Jan./Mar. 1992]), pp. 117-135.