Title: Is Teleological Judgement (Still) Necessary? Kant's Arguments in the Analytic and in the Dialectic of Teleological Judgement 1
Abstract: Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1For their very helpful comments on this paper I am deeply indebted to Henry Allison, Gideon Freudenthal, Zoe Gutzeit, Peter McLaughlin, Catherine Wilson and the reader for the British Journal for the History of Philosophy. 2See Henry E. Allison, Kant's Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, 35–42; Henry E. Allison, 'Reflective Judgment and the Application of Logic to Nature: Kant's Deduction of the Principle of Purposiveness as an Answer to Hume', in Strawson and Kant, edited by Hans-Johann Glock, 169–83; Henry E. Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism, 423–48. 3See Ido Geiger, 'Is the Assumption of a Systematic Whole of Empirical Concepts a Necessary Condition of Knowledge?'Kant-Studien, 94. 4Allison himself says very clearly that Kant does not discuss induction explicitly. See Allison, Kant's Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, 35; Allison, 'Reflective Judgment and the Application of Logic to Nature: Kant's Deduction of the Principle of Purposiveness as an Answer to Hume', 169, 175, 181; Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism, 427, 433–4. 5It is worth noting that these parts are themselves organized wholes. 7Ibid., 49–50. A similar claim is made by McFarland. See John D. McFarland, Kant's Concept of Teleology, 77–9, 138–9. 6Ernst Mayr, 'The Multiple Meanings of Teleological', in Towards a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist, 45. 8Mayr, 'The Multiple Meanings of Teleological', 48. 9Ibid., 53–4. 10This claim is central to Zumbach's interpretation of the Critique of Teleological Judgement, which, in broad outline, is similar to the interpretation developed in the next section. See Clark Zumbach, 'Kant's Argument for the Autonomy of Biology', Nature and System, 3 (1981); Clark Zumbach, The Transcendent Science: Kant's Conception of Biological Methodology. This ultimately raises the following question: 'Is it just an empirical fact, a matter of empirical psychology rather than transcendental psychology, that organisms suggest the idea of purposiveness to us?' Paul Guyer, 'Organisms and the Unity of Science,' in Kant and the Exact Sciences, edited by Eric Watkins, 276. 11We might be lead to think that the attribution of self-organization is a determinative judgement by Kant's own presentation of his argument, for the argument proceeds by conceptual analysis: purposiveness is divided into objective and subjective purposiveness; objective purposiveness is divided into formal and material purposiveness; and material purposiveness is divided into relative or external and absolute or internal purposiveness. This might suggest that Kant begins with an analytically acquired concept of absolute or internal purposiveness and then simply seeks objects to subsume under it – a task for determinative judgement. I will argue that however acquired, the attribution of absolute or internal self-organization to a natural object can never be a fully determinative judgement. It should be noted that it is not the case that reflective judgement has to find a new concept or universal under which to subsume a particular. Furthermore, we should distinguish here the general concept of self-organization, which is an a priori principle, and the particular concepts of self-organization which empirical investigation reveals. 12See LL 360–1, 490. 13This particular circularity in the characterization of self-organization explains why Kant speaks of it as 'infinitely remote from all art' (371; see also: 383, 388, 400, 409). For the distinction between the mechanistic inexplicability of artefacts and of organisms, see Hanna Ginsborg, 'Two Kinds of Mechanical Inexplicability in Kant and Aristotle', Journal of the History of Philosophy, 42. 14For the historical background of Kant's philosophy of biology see Shirley A. Roe, Matter, Life, and Generation: Eighteenth-century Embryology and the Haller–Wolff Debate, 1–20; Peter McLaughlin, Kant's Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation: Antinomy and Teleology, 7–24. 15Mayr, 'The Multiple Meanings of Teleological', 58. 16Kant does occasionally speak loosely of the 'teleological mode of explanation' (411; see also 412). But he means the characterization of properties or functions of an organism as purposive and not causal explanations of their generation. 17Cornell succinctly formulates the point: to reject Kant's argument we would have to 'explain away' the organism. John F. Cornell, 'Newton of the Grassblade? Darwin and the Problem of Organic Teleology', Isis, 77 (1986): 408. 18For this point, see Guyer, 'Organisms and the Unity of Science', 269–72. 19This implies that Kant is not committed to the conception of a system of nature which is a hierarchical taxonomy of genera and species which we find in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic and in the Introductions to the third Critique, but has a more flexible view of the part–whole conceptual relations of teleological judgement. 20For this point, see McLaughlin, Kant's Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation: Antinomy and Teleology, 128–9. 21Kant says that the transcendent use of reason 'works the most strongly of all to awaken philosophy from its dogmatic slumber, and to prompt it toward the difficult business of the critique of reason itself' (Prol 338) and in a letter testifies that 'the antinomy of reason … first aroused me from my dogmatic slumber and drove me to the critique of reason itself, in order to resolve the scandal of the ostensible contradiction of reason with itself' (Letter to Garve, 21 September 1798, Corr 258). For this point, see Ernst Cassirer, Kant's Life and Thought, translated by James Haden, 110–15. Kuehn argues that the claim of this letter does not contradict Kant's famous assertion that it was Hume who awoke him from his dogmatic slumber (Prol 261). Manfred Kuehn, 'Kant's Conception of 'Hume's Problem','Journal of the History of Philosophy, 21. 22For criticism of the view that takes this to be the antinomy of teleological judgment, see McLaughlin, Kant's Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation: Antinomy and Teleology, 137–40. 23Nuzzo claims that the point of the discussion is to argue that the conflict between the principles of mechanism and teleology can only be resolved within the perspective of the reflective faculty of judgment. See Angelica Nuzzo, Kant and the Unity of Reason, 342. In the Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgement, Kant says that 'the conflict between judgments of taste, in so far as each person appeals merely to his own taste, does not constitute a dialectic of taste, since no one has any thought of making his own judgment into a universal rule' (336). A dialectic that would apply to taste can only be a 'dialectic of the critique of taste (not of taste itself)' (336). Kant then goes on to try and relate the antinomy to what he calls a 'commonplace [Gemeinort] of taste' (336). He succeeds in relating one horn of the antinomy to the common expressions: 'Everyone has his own taste' and 'There is no disputing about taste'. The other horn, he admits, is not 'a proverb in general circulation [sprichwörtlich in Umlaufe], but which nevertheless everyone has some sense of: it is possible to argue about taste (but not dispute)' (338). The antinomy itself is clearly formulated in the terms of the critique of taste and depends on the derivation of the propositions in the Analytic of Aesthetic Judgement (§32, §33). 24For the claims that the antinomy of teleological judgement presupposes the distinction between things in themselves and appearances and that its resolution is the elucidation of the role of the principle of teleology, see Gary Banham, Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics, 146–64. 25For the equivalent point in the Appendix see Geiger, 'Is the Assumption of a Systematic Whole of Empirical Concepts a Necessary Condition of Knowledge?' 289–90. For the sense of 'analytical universal' see Henry E. Allison, 'Kant's Antinomy of Teleological Judgment,'The Southern Journal of Philosophy, XXX Supplement (1991): 36. See also: Zumbach, 'Kant's Argument for the Autonomy of Biology', 74; Zumbach, The Transcendent Science: Kant's Conception of Biological Methodology, 133–4; but see fn. 25. Cf., McLaughlin, Kant's Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation: Antinomy and Teleology, 175; Peter McLaughlin, 'Newtonian Biology and Kant's Mechanistic Concept of Causality', in Akten des Siebenten Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, edited by Gerhard Funke, 65. 26For the equivalent point in the Appendix, see Geiger, 'Is the Assumption of a Systematic Whole of Empirical Concepts a Necessary Condition of Knowledge?' 290. Cf., Rudolf A. Makkreel, 'Regulative and Reflective Uses of Purposiveness in Kant', Southern Journal of Philosophy, XXX Supplement (1991): 53. According to Zumbach, ours is a discursive understanding which intuits certain particulars as self-organizing. Zumbach, 'Kant's Argument for the Autonomy of Biology', 75; Zumbach, The Transcendent Science: Kant's Conception of Biological Methodology, 133–4. 27'An understanding, in which through self-consciousness all the manifold would at the same time be given, would intuit; ours can only think and must seek the intuition in the senses' (B135). 28McLaughlin claims that 'intuitive understanding' is a genus term under which there are different species. In the Kantian corpus we find: (a) an understanding that intuits directly and does not need sensibility; (b) an infinite understanding; (c) a legislative understanding. In the Critique of Teleological Judgement, McLaughlin claims, discursive understanding means mechanistic understanding. Indeed, he takes the point of the argument of §77 to be to explain the mechanistic peculiarity of our understanding. McLaughlin, Kant's Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation: Antinomy and Teleology, 169–71. The first point of the argument, however, is to explain the teleological peculiarity of our understanding, as the title of §77 asserts. Its mechanistic peculiarity will be explained as a corollary. Furthermore, in the passage quoted above an intuitive understanding is clearly an understanding that intuits directly. We saw that it is from the fact that our understanding is discursive, i.e. conceptual, that Kant explains the fact that it can only grasp a part, i.e. a particular given in intuition, through a whole – a concept. Second, we saw above that Kant shifts between the model of an infinitely detailed hierarchical taxonomy of concepts and the organic model. An intuitive understanding would grasp that taxonomy as a whole and is therefore infinite. Absolutely no human reason (or even any finite reason that is similar to ours in quality, no matter how much it exceeds it in degree) can ever hope to understand the generation of even a little blade of grass from merely mechanical causes. (409; see also: 371, 383, 388–9, 400) An understanding that would not be compelled to judge organisms teleologically would, by implication, be infinite. Third, in §76 Kant explains that for an intuitive understanding there would be no distinction between possibility and actuality and 'no distinction between what should be done and what is done, between a practical law concerning that which is possible through us and the theoretical law concerning that which is actual through us' (404). It is therefore lawgiving. 29For clear statements of this decisive point, see Banham, Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics, 152; Nuzzo, Kant and the Unity of Reason, 175–7 and passim. In contrast, McFarland claims that 'we could quite well have experience which, though subject to the categorial principles, was otherwise so diverse as to be incapable of further systematization'. See McFarland, Kant's Concept of Teleology, 16; see also, passim. 30For the transcendental deduction of the Appendix, see Geiger, 'Is the Assumption of a Systematic Whole of Empirical Concepts a Necessary Condition of Knowledge?' 293–5. 31There is a sentence in the Appendix that, with hindsight, seems to anticipate this discovery: 'the understanding cognizes everything only through concepts; consequently, however far it goes in its divisions, it never cognizes through mere intuition but always yet again through lower concepts' (B684). 32For an examination of this interpretation, see Geiger, 'Is the Assumption of a Systematic Whole of Empirical Concepts a Necessary Condition of Knowledge?' 275–81. 33The interpretation of the maxim of mechanism as merely derivative of the category of causality is convincingly rejected by McLaughlin. McLaughlin, Kant's Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation: Antinomy and Teleology, 140–2. 34For this point, see McFarland, Kant's Concept of Teleology, 72. 35In several loci Kant gives the impression that there cannot be determinative empirical judgements, in particular where he means to deny that transcendental determinative judgement determines the particular empirically (see, e.g., 406, 406–7). 36Most interpretations do not ask what justifies the claim that explanations are mechanistic. McLaughlin is a notable exception. He claims that although Kant does not answer this question, the answer is that this is just what explanations are for the analytic–synthetic method of modern science. For it, analysis of a material whole into its parts reveals the general principles that determine the parts and the proof of the truth of the results 'thus reached consisted in deriving again with necessity the initial phenomenon (synthesis) – either in thought or experiment'. McLaughlin, Kant's Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation: Antinomy and Teleology, 175. See also, McLaughlin, 'Newtonian Biology and Kant's Mechanistic Concept of Causality', 62–6. (Kant, indeed, says that the study of the mechanism of nature is restricted to what we can subject to our observation or experiments, so that we could produce it ourselves, like nature, at least as far as the similarity of its laws is concerned; for we understand completely only that which we ourselves can make and bring about in accordance with concepts. (383) As McLaughlin sees clearly, this account grounds mechanistic explanation in a historical fact. On my reading, Kant offers an argument that grounds the analytic–synthetic method of modern science in the very constitution of a discursive understanding. 37For the claim that for Kant scientific explanations are mechanistic, see Makkreel, 'Regulative and Reflective Uses of Purposiveness in Kant', 52–5. Although at various places Nuzzo speaks loosely of teleological explanations, she too claims that through them 'we do not come to know anything scientifically'. See Nuzzo, Kant and the Unity of Reason, 338. 38For this point, see Henry E. Allison, 'Causality and Causal Law in Kant: A Critique of Michael Friedman', in Idealism and Freedom: Essays on Kant's Theoretical and Practical Philosophy, 80–91; Allison, Kant's Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, 36–8; Allison, 'Reflective Judgment and the Application of Logic to Nature: Kant's Deduction of the Principle of Purposiveness as an Answer to Hume', 176–7; Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism, 246–60, esp. 252–60. See also, Michael Friedman, 'Causal Laws and the Foundations of Natural Science', in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, edited by Paul Guyer, 1992) 161–80. Friedman not only notes the gap but argues that it is closed by a series of steps that ground merely observed regularities in the transcendental principles of the understanding: The empirical experience of matter and its properties of impenetrability and weight specifies the transcendental view of a nature made up of spatially extended substances that act on one another through external forces; thereby, the analogies of experience are transformed into Newton's laws of motion. Kepler's merely observed regularities are couched in the resulting principles of pure natural science, deductively yielding Newton's theory of universal gravitation. The principle of the systematic unity of nature sets science the task of connecting other observed regularities to matter as the highest concept of empirical classification. (Friedman, 'Causal Laws and the Foundations of Natural Science', 181–92) A detailed examination of Friedman's position cannot be undertaken here. The following point, however, must be noted. Friedman takes the Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment to contend only with the systematization of empirical knowledge. His answer to the question of how Kant closes the gap between the Second Analogy and particular empirical laws does not stand in conflict with the interpretation developed in this paper; indeed, it can dovetail with it. See n40. 39For the argument that the principle of purposiveness completes Kant's account of the content or meaning of empirical concepts, see Geiger, 'Is the Assumption of a Systematic Whole of Empirical Concepts a Necessary Condition of Knowledge?', 285–91. 40This is very clearly demonstrated in the following note that Kant added to the fair copy of the First Introduction: Could Linnaeus have hoped to outline a system of nature if he had had to worry that if he found a stone that he called granite, this might differ in its internal constitution from every other stone which nevertheless looked just like it, and all he could hope to find were always individual things, as it were isolated for the understanding, and never a class of them that could be brought under concepts of genus and species [?]. (CF-FI 216) McFarland, in contrast, says that the real problem with which the Introduction to the third Critique is consciously concerned is induction. See McFarland, Kant's Concept of Teleology, 74–5. 41For the argument that Kant does not exorcise the threat of what Allison calls 'empirical chaos' but renders it idle by grounding the normative or prescriptive force of the assumption of the purposiveness of nature, see Allison, Kant's Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, 37–42; Allison, 'Reflective Judgment and the Application of Logic to Nature: Kant's Deduction of the Principle of Purposiveness as an Answer to Hume'. See also, Ralph C. S. Walker, 'Induction and Transcendental Argument, in Transcendental Arguments: Problems and Prospects, edited by Robert Stern, 19; McFarland, Kant's Concept of Teleology, 88–9. Kant might indeed be seen as harnessing sceptical doubt to drive scientific inquiry. Kraft seems to think that the assumption of the systematic unity of nature guarantees that nature forms a systematic unity. See Michael Kraft, 'Kant's Theory of Teleology', International Philosophical Quarterly, XXII (1982): 44. See also, Friedman, 'Causal Laws and the Foundations of Natural Science', 177–8. Guyer attributes to Kant the position that an empirical law, considered contingent in isolation, will appear necessary as part of a comprehensive system of empirical laws. It is not clear how the assumption of systematic unity can ground anything more than the assumption of necessity of empirical laws. Indeed, Guyer argues that Kant's claim that the pleasure we take in the discovery of systematic unity reveals its contingency undercuts the former position. Paul Guyer, 'Kant on the Systematicity of Nature: Two Puzzles', History of Philosophy Quarterly, 20 (2003). 42For an illuminating discussion of this question, see Catherine Wilson, 'Kant and the Speculative Sciences of Origins', in The Problem of Animal Generation in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Justin E. H. Smith. 43Wilfrid Sellars, 'Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man', in Science, Perception and Reality.
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-06-01
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