Newton of the Grassblade? Darwin and the Problem of Organic Teleology - JF Cornell (1986) - "Teleology is a descriptive, empirical matter tied up with our very recognition of self-organizing beings…The mind is inclined to misinterpret its own abstract working as the absolute framework of reality."

pyth

I got that. the settings are specifically set to say "Anyone with the link Anyone who has the link can access. No sign-in required."

So there should be no sign-in required. I tested it, it works.

pyth

p. 2

"We are continually presented with items in experience that cannot be fully understood, and for which no specific theoretical concepts are ready at hand. I propose to call these items "recalcitrant particulars." They are particulars whose generation and structure cannot be fully understood with reference to mechanical principles based on exclusive appeal to patterns of efficient causality."

3

“In his discussion of teleology the recalcitrant particular Kant is concerned with is the organism, the living and growing thing. If one were able to understand the generation and form of a living thing on exclusively mechanical principles based on efficient causal explanations, then there would be no distinction between living things and merely mechanical ones. I am encouraged by rational considerations to judge that those natural things that are also organisms subject to growth are ends of nature. I take them to be designed objects, although I have no theoretical warrant for believing them to be actually designed. Why is it that reason so constrains methodology? What do organisms have to do with acceptable scientific research strategies?”

“Most determining judgments are judgments of the understanding: any judgment that subsumes an individual or event under a schematized category is determining; this is true of any judgment that subsumes a particular under a given law or concept in accordance with a principle. Reflective judgments seek to subsume particulars under laws not yet given, and consequently must be thought of as principles to themselves. Determining judgments are objective and are ultimately based upon a priori principles. Reflective judgments apply maxims, which for Kant are always subjective and are only to be employed regulatively. These maxims articulate the research strategies we deploy in order to understand nature as expressed in its empirical laws (69).”

4

“…determining judgments are either true or false of objects of possible experience. Reflective judgments, based as they are on subjective maxims, are neither true nor false, not even probable or improbable; they are rather rational estimates of the way nature operates, and express chosen normative research strategies thought to render nature intelligible. Kant thinks there are two major research strategies, or two major maxims of reflective judgment (70): The maxim of mechanism…The maxim of teleology…[and] there is no a priori way of determining the possibility of the production of things by reference only to the empirical laws of nature.”

“The reason is obvious: the efficient causality whose necessity Kant had demonstrated in the Second Analogy of the first Critique authorizes every event; there are no (efficient) uncased events. Nevertheless nature (the universe) is not an object of possible experience; I cannot know anything about its ultimate causal features…Consequently, to employ the maxim of teleology where it seems appropriate does not in any way eliminate or supersede the maxim of mechanism.”

5

“The conclusion is that a deep teleological principle operates as an a priori presupposition of any scientific inquiry. Teleology subordinates mechanism, while at the same time vindicating its employment. Paradoxically, it is because we must necessarily think of nature as designed that we are justified in applying the principle of mechanism. In the absence of the expectation of order, it is irrational to suppose that the formalism of space/time and the categories can be applied.”

6

“To be fit for judgment as an end of nature, a thing must satisfy two conditions. First, the existence and form of its parts must be possible only in relation to the whole. As an end, the thing must be understood with reference to an idea determining a priori all that is to be contained in it.”

Kant thinks that only organisms satisfy the two conditions for being an end of nature. Although he remarks (65) that organisms provide “objective reality” to the conception of an end of nature and allow us to distinguish such ends from merely practical ones, he also insists…that the idea of a natural end has no constitutive employment, but only provides us with a rule for guiding investigation of organisms “…by a remote analogy with our own causality according to ends generally…”

7

“When we say that the purpose of the crystalline lens of the eye is the focusing of light rays coming from the source into a point on the retina, we are not making a factual claim, but are only claiming that it is a useful way of conducting research thus to impute purposes. This example also displays the practical aspect of such research policies: To take the lens of the eye to have this purpose allows us to seek ways to correct faulty vision. The adoption of a teleological principle encourages further investigation along mechanical lines.”

8

“This is true of the estimation of organisms as ends of nature. What is wanted is a guarantee that all of nature, that part estimated teleologically as well as that part estimated mechanically, is ordered in such a way that the questions we put to it get answered.”

10

“Kant’s argument for the subjective necessity of the presupposition of teleology is given in (75 – 78) of Critique of Judgment. It is offered in the context of a “solution” of the antinomy of reflective judgment. This is puzzling. We have seen that there is no real antinomy arising from the difference between the maxims of teleology and of mechanism. The maxims sanction different research programs. Kant’s “solution” will take the form of showing that human powers of judgment cannot operate without teleological commitments, even though mechanism promotes the interest of categorical knowing and makes possible knowledge of nature “in the true sense”, that is knowledge in mathematical physics. He will endeavor to prove that the two maxims can be employed in harmony, without logical distress. In addition, his “solution” will undertake to show that this harmony is only possible because mechanism is in a certain sense subordinated to teleology.”

11

“Understanding determines (through application of the categories) only those particulars that are given in sensuous intuition. Judgment requires that all (not only given) particulars be subject to understanding, that they be rendered intelligible under some law or other. Our limited cognitive equipment makes it impossible for us to fulfill the demands of judgment in any theoretical way, but we are able to think (within the demands of logic) that nature is so organized that we will be able always to understand it. However, in order for this thought to be fully coherent, we must also presuppose (again as a matter of logic), the possibility of an understanding different form our own, an intuitive understanding for which all particulars and all individuals are given at once.”

“The concept of god is in this sense replaceable by the regulative idea of an ordered universe in principle always accessible to human comprehension. The postulation of a designer of the universe thus amounts to nothing more than rational acceptance of an assumption about the systematic order of nature and the affinity between our cognitive capabilities and that nature.”

12

Kant’s philosophical conjuring trick amounts to this. In arguing that mechanism must be subordinated to teleology he is not urging that the maxim of teleology is more basic than the maxim of mechanism. That conclusion would be inappropriate for three reasons. First, one research category cannot be known a priori to be preferable to another. Rules of investigation are either adopted or not, and their justification in practice is pragmatic. Success in generating empirical laws is the test of methodological programs. Second, the maxim of teleology holds only for some products of nature, organisms…Finally, to suppose that we must always prefer teleological estimates to mechanical ones is for Kant to abandon the crucial epistemological standing of the principle of mechanism, the application of which generates laws of nature by consistent reinforcement of the employment of the formalism space/time and the categories to the phenomenal world. There are no teleological laws of nature; all empirical laws are expressions of causal mechanism.”

15

“Questions of teleology in science become matters of trust and confidence and of apprehensiveness and uncertainty, concerns stemming from human capabilities not only in trying to know, but in trying to live.”

Note 7

“For Kant the possibility of a living matter (hylozoism) is not even coherently conceivable (73), and thus is incapable of being properly hypothesized.”

pyth

Not that I can see, should be fixed.

pyth

p. 407

“A further synthesis, the creation of ideas from the particulars of categorized experience, is performed by Reason. In this higher operation no law is determined a priori, and Reason enters into a freer play with the phenomena. Reason forms, among other concepts, a concept of the organism, which contrasts with the presupposition of mechanical causality; this concept is thus crucial to the argument for a teleological principle in the third Critique.”

“We apply to living things, by analogy with human intention, a causality according to an end and an idea, although strictly speaking we do not observe this causation. Grasping the concept of organism means having this problematic teleological outlook, one that cannot be subsumed under the concept of mechanism, with which it is incommensurable in principle.”

408

“…in investigating organisms we must employ not one but two “higher” principles – two maxims of judgment. The mechanistic maxim advances science according to ordinary causality, and the teleological maxim articulates our experience that these particular things are alive. We rely on both rules – not simultaneously, but depending on whether we are considering a part in its efficient causality or in its role in the living whole.”

“Similarly, the merely practical example he gives of the teleological rule, based on the physiologist’s constant effort to discover the function of an organic structure, is sometimes mistakenly emphasized over the theoretical necessity of teleology.”

409

“For him, transformism offered no royal road to “solving” the problem of teleology, for, epistemologically, the theory of change is secondary to that of what is changing, namely, living organization.”

Again, the perception of life is simply fundamental to the human (as opposed to a hypothetical divine) perspective on nature, and hence it could not be neglected in the idea of transformation.”

“…teleology is a descriptive, empirical matter tied up with our very recognition of self-organizing beings…The mind is inclined to misinterpret its own abstract working as the absolute framework of reality.”

415

“Darwin’s Newtonian concern with universal creation thus obscured the Kantian’s phenomenological emphasis on self-formation as most eminently characteristic of life.”

421

“Our assessment of the extent to which he explained the teleological properties of organisms – and became Kant’s “Newton of the grassblade” – depends on how much we believe such an explanation is possible if it fails to confront fully the mystery of purposive, self-organizing matter. But in one sense at least Darwin was certainly a “Newton of the grassblade,” since the explanation he offered for organic purposiveness did depend historically on the belief that a hierarchy of Newtonian laws represented the absolute picture of nature.”

pyth

p. 46 – 47

“A thing is judged to be a natural organism in a teleological judgment; every empirical cognitive judgment assumes the objectivity of determinate concepts and laws which fit in a logical system…All these synthetic judgments claim intersubjective validity. Yet, they have something further in common: They consider their objects hypothetically as purposive, as products of intentional actions, but without assuming thereby that they are artifacts, products of human intentional actions.”

p. 49

“Kant’s use of the term ‘purposiveness’ diverges clearly from its ordinary use: for in the latter case the terms tends to be applied only when the means to the end is a material object or causal event and not when it is a conceptual representation determining the will of a person.”

50

“With respect to other objects the question of whether they are artifacts or products of nature will depend on the state of technology: one might think here, for example, of the possibility of making artificial substances identical with those found in nature.”

51

Kant, however, is concerned in the CJ…above all with judgments about relations of purposiveness in which it is maintained of an object in the world of appearances that it is necessary to be considered as a purpose or an artifact, because human beings can explain its possibility only by having recourse to a conceptual cause. Such an object is not an artifact, it is no object that has been or even could be produced by a person according to rules – however paradoxical this might at first appear…”

52

“that the possibility of an object can not be explained or conceived means, among other things, that the object can be no artifact, that it can be no product of the intentional act of a person, whose will was determined by the representation of the object. For in order to intentionally produce an object a person has to be able to explain the possibility of the object according to laws of nature, that is, the person must know and be in control of the causes which can bring about the object. And, in fact, artifacts are, according to Kant, the only objects whose possibility we can completely explain…Objects whose possibility humans cannot explain by means of laws of nature, but which are nevertheless parts of nature, cannot be considered artifacts.”

53

“The connection between the contingency of an object according to laws of nature and the judging of the object as purposive can be clarified in the following manner: a person to whom an object appears accidental in the light of natural laws, but who does not want to renounce an explanation of its possibility, can attribute to the object a relation to a conceptual cause in a hypothetical explanation; i.e. the person can consider this object as if it were a purpose, the effect of a representation of a purpose – even though it is no artifact. In this way hypothetical judgments about relations of purposiveness arise as hypothetical explanations of objects whose possibility would remain otherwise inexplicable.”

54

“But it should not be overlooked that in the judgments of artifacts one attributes to an object a relation to a conceptual cause quite different to that which is attributed to an object in hypothetical judgments about relations of purposiveness: in a judgment about an artifact the judged object is connected as an effect with its concept according to the causal law, which is why these judgments are an expression of theoretical knowledge.”

“Kant defines the faculty of judgment as “the faculty of thinking the particular as contained under the universal” (CJ, 15).”

56

“In a teleological judgment we judge a natural organism to be a “natural purpose”. A natural purpose is for Kant a thing that is “both cause and effect of itself.” In judging a natural organism to be a natural purpose we attribute to it a “form” or “inner possibility” which we cannot explain by means of mechanical laws. That is, we cannot explain how the parts of this organism interact in the formation of the whole organism, nor why they are only possible in relation to this whole.”

“The form which characterizes a natural organism is the form of a system, i.e. a whole, through which the parts as well as their relations are clearly determined. The interaction of the parts of such a system cannot be explained mechanically because the completeness of the parts, the essential characteristic of a system, cannot be explained by means of their mechanical relations without having recourse to the representation of the whole system. However, a grounding of the inexplicability of the form of natural organisms according to mechanical laws which presupposed that this form is the unity of a system would be circular…The reflective faculty of judgment closes this gap by considering natural organisms hypothetically as the products of intentional acts of a divine understanding which performed these acts according to rules in which these organisms were represented as purposes. In other words, the reflective faculty of judgment considers natural organisms as if they were artifacts. As such their form is, if only hypothetically, explicable…The reflective faculty of judgment must however always preserve the hypothetical character of this operation; for a thing cannot, without contradiction, be determined both as a product of nature and as an artifact.”

57

“This serves as a maxim in the reflection on the constitution of the organism. Only when we allow ourselves to be guided, in our reflection upon the parts of a natural organism and their interaction, by the representation of this organism as a whole, a systematic unity, are we able to at least approach an insight as to how the organism had to form itself in this way, and no other.”

“The question as to how objects of human experience are to be explained as instances of determinate concepts and laws which fit in a logical system is, on the other hand, a question about the ground of the knowledge of these objects, i.e., the question about how they can be known as such objects.”

pyth

Thank you.

If anyone is interested in Kantian philosophy of science, I have recently posted the following items on that topic. Most, however, concern the Critique of Judgment (the 3rd critique) but are likely valuable secondary sources nonetheless:

"Is it a self-organizing system that exhibits ontologically these [purposive] features, or does, the observer add his perspective to an otherwise neutral behaviour? Contemporary debate is inclined to reject this attitude...For Kant the question is never definitively decided."
Newton of the Grassblade? Darwin and the Problem of Organic Teleology - JF Cornell (1986) - "Teleology is a descriptive, empirical matter tied up with our very recognition of self-organizing beings…The mind is inclined to misinterpret its own abstract working as the absolute framework of reality."
Kant's Critique of Judgment and the Scientific Investigation of Matter - Rothbart & Scherer [1997]
Kant, Teleology and Evolution [Kolb, 1992] - The only way we can hope to gain an understanding of organic unity in nature is through our own experience of purposive activity in our mental and moral life. We have no reason to assume that there really is anything like this mode of causality in nature.
The Hypotheses of the Faculty of Reflective Judgement in Kant's 3rd Critique {Fricke 1990} - One can consider an object as if it were the effect of purpose. In this way judgments about purposiveness arise as hypothetical explanations of objects whose possibility would remain otherwise inexplicable.
Teleology and Sci. Method in Kant's Critique of Judgment [Butts 1990] - Kant is concerned with the organism, the living and growing thing. If one were able to understand life by exclusively causal or mechanical principles, then there would be no distinction between living things and mechanical ones.

This is my research for a paper I wrote several years ago. You can read it here (it's old and not terribly good).

Abstract

This paper discusses Kant's concept of biological teleology in light of post-Darwinian evolutionary theory. Kant's natural teleology is presented as a necessary form of judgment for purposive beings, such as ourselves, who can only conceptualize natural processes 'as if' they were rationally ordered. As such, Kant's biological teleology resolves the conflict between our ability to understanding evolution as a biological science driven by mechanical causal laws, while forever appearing to us 'as if' its processes were oriented towards a telos. This reading of Kant's biological teleology is offered in contrast to a phenomenological interpretation which attempts to stretch "naturalized teleology" beyond the realm of possible experience. This topic is of increasing importance given that science can now emulate evolutionary processes to achieve specific technological ends.

pyth

p. 10

“A teleological framework served as an integral component of biological investigation within which mechanical, chemical, and other non-teleological accounts could take place. This tradition found its philosophical justification in the work of Immanuel Kant...It is a way of interpreting the interrelation of structures and processes in organisms, not an explanation of how organisms originated. There is no a priori reason that it must be incompatible with the kind of account of species origination offered by Darwin.”

p. 11

“Living beings, according to Kant, have two distinct formative properties. First, they produce (i.e., reproduce) themselves in other members of their own species. Second, an organ being produces itself as an individual members of its species according to the plan of that species, i.e., it grows by incorporating matter into its form according to the plan or ‘idea’ which guides its development. The formative power is also apparent in the healing power of plants and animals.”

p. 12

“The guiding principle in judging organic form and processes is that nothing in an organism is purposeless; everything is organically interrelated. The unity of organisms is understood by Kant teleologically. The processes and structures in organisms essentially require reference to the goal or end that is achieved through them. This goal is the whole organism which is either reproduced, produced, or maintained by the structure or process.”

p. 13

“Explanations of purposive properties in organisms require both a systematic conception of a whole not found in mechanical explanations and a reversal of the mechanical order of cause and effect.”

“Kant’s account of the mode of production and type of form found in organisms leads naturally to two sets of questions. First, why does he think his analysis applies to anything? Could it not be that the entities we take to be organically structured are really nothing more than extraordinarily complex machines? Is the use of teleological explanations nothing more than a declaration of ignorance?”

“These two sets of questions are obviously related. The first set demands a defense of teleology against reductionism. The second asks for a closer specification of the idea of organic teleology itself...Surprisingly, to a large degree his argument against reductionism leaves open the question of the exact specification of organic teleology. His idea of teleology, consequently, proves to be frustratingly difficult to pin down while, at the same time, it turns out to be rich in offering suggestions of ways in which teleological accounts of organisms might be construed.”

14

“The only way in which we can even remotely hope to gain an understanding of organic unity in nature is through our own experience of purposive activity in our own mental and moral life. We have no reason to assume that there really is anything like this mode of causality in nature itself.”

“Given the problematic nature of teleological judgments in biology, one might wonder why Kant insists that we must make them. The answer to that question turns our attention from nature, the object judged, to the intellect, the faculty of judgment. The human intellect for Kant is characterized by its lack of a direct intuitive faculty for grasping the objects of its thought.”

15

“Our intellectual grasp of the objects of nature is discursive. We must move from part to part as we try to piece together a coherent picture of the whole of the object. Any conception of a whole that emerges from our reflection on nature is structured by the way the ideas hold together and thematize the movement of the intellect.”

This general characterization of the predicament of the human intellect is for Kant the foundation of any interpretation of natural objects, whether its fundamental structure is interpreted teleologically or mechanically.”

16

“The determination that something has changed in the material world does not explain why it happened. The phenomenal characteristics of matter simply are not rich enough to allow the construction of mechanical explanations of change. Once an event has been located in the field of appearances as an objective happening, it is still an open question what sort of explanation ought to be offered for the event. Explanation requires a principle which fixes the order of the series in the change as necessary. In mechanical accounts, the explanatory principles are a set of fundamental forces out of which matter is ‘constructed’.

"Contrary to much received opinion, Kant considers both the idea of fundamental forces and the mechanical interpretations of phenomena that rest on them to be problematic. Fundamental forces simply are not phenomenal. They are the basic theoretical concepts which make possible the construction of the phenomenal character of the mind.”

17

Kant’s idealistic account of fundamental forces means that he is unable to offer an a priori account of the scope and limits of mechanics. If the unconditional validity of the laws of mechanics could be established, we would have to rule out the possibility of organic connections in nature. However, since we lack insight into the inner ground of the reality of nature, both the mechanical and the organic are, from the point of view of our intellect, contingent…No matter how far we succeed in finding mechanical accounts of events, teleological accounts of the same events are still possible. The same limitation of our intellect which is responsible for our inability to determine the limits of mechanical causality is also the root of the very idea of organic unity itself.”

If our intellect were intuitive rather than discursive, we would grasp the arrangement of the parts in the objects through the unity of the whole. The structure of nature would be understood to be necessary; and we could draw no distinction between the teleological and mechanical connections in nature.”

18

"Kant's ultimate response to the reductionism, then, rests on a dualism of sources of knowledge of nature. The primacy of mechanical accounts could be established only if we could achieve insight into the supersensible ground of nature."

19

"We cannot know the ultimate ground of the unity of appearances. We are left with the possibility that any series of phenomena may be explained either teleologically or mechanically, and neither form of explanation can have a priori precedence over the other."

"It [teleology] implies no commitment on his part to any theory concerning either the ultimate origin of organisms or the kinds of structure that will exhibit purposive organization. Teleological judgments are judgments about the general system properties of organisms, not judgments about how those systems came about or the ways in which the ends of the organism are achieved. Natural objects that exhibit organic form require us to judge their form and processes teleologically regardless of whether they are instances of original organic patterns or they emerged from an inorganic substrate...The way in which organisms achieve their purposes is an empirical question."

20

"Kant's reluctance to accept this possibility seems to have derived from the importance of reproduction for organisms in relation to the constancy of types. Since the system properties exhibited by organisms are acquired by each generation of organisms only from the preceding generation of (like) organisms, the idea of tracing life back to a lifeless origin runs counter to the organic processes we know in our experience."

22

"Since we have no direct intuitions into the reality of organisms, we cannot know the ultimate status of forces. Eliminative reductionism fails because, while maintaining the absolute sufficiency of mechanical laws, it is able to explain the fact of organic unity in the objects of experience only by the chance confluence of mechanical process."

25

"For the teleologist, however, this line of argument simply misses the point. A complete account of the mechanisms by which an organism achieves its systematic purposes, such as growth or healing, does not account for the unique arrangement of mechanical processes in the organism that gives it its high-level system properties. A complete analysis of the mechanical and chemical processes of an organism does not explain how such an apparently self-regulating set of processes originated."

pyth

I call shenanigans... we have heard of 'concession' before from Israel and usually what that means is more Palestinian deaths. Further, the NY Post is not a credible source.

pyth

I first read: "...to be used for food."

pyth

Well done being a crank.

pyth

You shouldn't do it. I have 3 degrees, I always put school over trees, but never forgot how valuable it can be. About once a month or so we'd get baked while classes were going on. Good way to chill and "defrag your brain" once in a while, but habitual use is a waste of an education. [I mostly studied philosophy, ymmv]

If you have aspirations of graduate school especially, learning to spend your time sober and studious is very important.

pyth

nice beats.

pyth

I had good luck with CL.

He's not the greatest, but weed is weed.

pyth

22min long and the host is a beauty.

pyth

This is part IV of IV of a series on this report at DID, I read them all, not too long. I'd recommend this series, and a few related link all found at the DID main page.

pyth

TROPHY CASE

you'll need to login or register to do that

create a new account

login