James Kreines
The Inexplicability of Kant’s Naturzweck: Kant on Teleology, Explanation and Biology
Kant’s position on teleology and biology is neither
inconsistent nor obsolete; his arguments have some surprising and enduring
philosophical strengths. But Kant’s account will appear weak if we
muddy the waters by reading him as aiming to defend teleology by appealing to
considerations popular in contemporary philosophy. Kant argues for very
different conclusions: we can neither know teleological judgments of living
beings to be true, nor legitimately explain living beings in teleological terms;
such teleological judgment is justified only as a “problematic” guideline in our
search for mechanistic explanations. These conclusions are well supported by
Kant’s defense of his demanding analysis, according to which teleological
judgment literally applies to a complex whole only where teleology truly
explains the presence of its parts.
Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, Walter de Gruyter
Print ISSN: 0003-9101
Volume: 87, 10/2005
Pages: 270 - 311
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