The Ontological and Epistemological Superiority of Hylomorphism (original) (raw)
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Teleology, Intentionality, Naturalism
This paper is the author’s translation of a lecture he delivered in Hungarian at a conference entitled Action and Social Science, on June 18, 1993, at ELTE, Budapest, Hungary. The paper argues for the contemporary tenability of a "mentalist, Scholastic-Aristotelian" theory of teleological explanations, pace contemporary physicalism/naturalism.
The problem of intrinsic teleology is that of generating a scientific explanation of purposive (goal-directed) behavior in nature. It is far from clear, however, how purposive behavior could possibly arise in a purely causal universe. The popular approach within the biological and cognitive sciences is reductive in that it explains purposiveness in non-purposive terms. This thesis finds the reductive approach unsatisfying and offers a philosophical argument for a non-reductive alternative, delivered across six chapters. Chapter I introduces the problem of teleology and argues that the way in which the problem ought to be addressed is philosophically. Chapter II offers additional insight into the nature of the problem by situating it in a discussion of its historical context: it traces the beginnings of the reduction of teleology in the writings of René Descartes and locates the problem of teleology in its modern framing in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Chapter III explicates and critiques neo-Darwinism and cognitivism—two modern inheritors of Kantian philosophy—which act to jointly ground the reductive approach to teleology. Upon clearing the way for a non-reductive alternative, Chapter IV introduces the “enactive approach” to cognitive science and argues that it is able to leverage a non-reductive position with respect to teleology. Accordingly, Chapter V constitutes the theory-building element of this thesis and shows how exactly enactivism can act to leverage such a non-reductive position. Finally, Chapter VI summarizes the findings of this thesis and discusses some general applications for future research in cognitive science and psychopathology.
The Future of Human Nature, Jurgen Habermas' treatise on issues of genetic manipulation, invokes normative concerns arising out of a framework of a material re-ordering of human nature (2003). Implicit in Habermas' critique is a presupposition causally linking the human ontological status to a material program intrinsic to the human body and its mechanistic generation of the mature individual. This presupposition persists through numerous recent accounts that follow his work which are taken at the level of the neural architecture, as well as in various neuroaugmentation proposals. Together these reflect an epistemological approach seeking to deduce human nature from an exclusively empirical assessment of neural operation, a philosophical praxis that has been termed cognitive ontology. This approach adopts a paradigm widely employed for explication in living systems, now dominating discourse on the nature of reality and touted as the new mechanistic wave. Recourse to ascriptions of human nature grounded in a mechanical causal order, however, has been challenged by recent philosophical approaches for its severance of the metaphysical link between human properties and their predication in an entity, and the inversion of the conceptual order between ontology and epistemology. Unlike mechanistic approaches, these are related to formal organizational order; hence, they are termed non-causal or design explanations. This paper proposes that strictly causal sequences also fail to account for systemic operation in cognition and are needed to supplement causal accounts. Accordingly, they also implicate a material instantiation of propertied faculties that conforms to metaphysical principles of unity and property predication, which is to say that the instantiation of self and faculty circuitries are necessarily determined by extrinsic and realist principles of material order. This has the important ethical consequence of siting value to the whole individual and not solely to the perceptual realization of human faculties as proposed in modern cognitive ontology accounts.
Humana.Mente, 2018
Both Millikan's brand of naturalistic analytic philosophy and Husserlian phenomenology have held on to teleological notions, despite their being out of favor in mainstream Western philosophy for most of the twentieth century. Both traditions have recognized the need for teleology in order to adequately account for intentionality, the need to adequately account for intentionality in order to adequately account for meaning, and the need for an adequate theory of meaning in order to precisely and consistently describe the world and life. The stark differences between their accounts of these fundamental concepts stem from radically different conceptions of the world, the natural and life. I argue that Millikan's teleosemantic approach relies on a teleology of determination by means of the lawfulness of nature that leaves no room for the freedom of self-determination, for reason, or for experience-for the reality of lived human life. In contrast to Millikan's account, Husserl's transcendental phenomenology situates teleology as a function of reason and first-personal experience, part of an extended account of intentionality and meaning according to which the full range of our making sense of the world is conceived as a rational activity that is itself a part of that world, and not an unnatural activity to be separated from it. While Husserl's account of these issues is indeed symptomatic of what Millikan calls "meaning rationalism," I argue that it is immune to the sorts of problems she claims will plague any such account, since these problems arise only against the background of a set of presuppositions about intentionality (representationalism, the "mythiness" of all givens) that Husserl does not share. Husserl's position can itself be understood to be within the bounds of a suitably liberal conception of naturalism, and interpreting him in this way it has the added benefit--contra Millikan--of not divorcing teleology from reason, the latter construed as our first-personal striving to make sense of the world as we experience it--of life.
Review of Teleological Realism: Mind, Agency, and Explanation by Scott R. Sehon
The Philosophical Quarterly 57 (228), 2007
the term's history, speakers' psychology, and pragmatic considerations. Last, talk of concepts is not talk of well defined entities, and we do better to focus on 'the shifting manners in which our everyday standards of conceptual evaluation operate over the lifetime of an evolving predicate' (p. ).
Specifying the Conditions for a Theory of Teleology in Cognitive Science
Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 2021
One of the central and ongoing philosophical debates within the mind sciences today is that of reductionism. Cognitive scientists are generally divided on the matter, though a strong wave of non-reductionist thought known as the enactive approach has been organizing and gaining traction in the literature since the early 1990s. Of particular importance to the non-reductionist project is the question of intrinsic teleology, a central aspect of the functionality of the mind. In this article, I argue that the debate concerning the ontological status of teleology in cognitive science is in need of greater methodological clarity, which I venture to introduce by specifying the conditions for a non-reductionist theory of teleology. I build my case on historical-philosophical grounds and argue that reductionism with respect to teleology depends on commitment to four ontological doctrines—materialism, mechanism, atomism, and determinism—that emerged during the Scientific Revolution. I then claim that non-reductionism necessarily requires the refutation of all four of these doctrines in its conceptions of mind and nature and I outline ways in which the criteria I have articulated here could guide and further leverage the non-reductionist project in cognitive science.
This papers examines the feasibility of Evolutionary Epistemology and Telesosemantics as naturalistic accounts of knwoledge and intentionality. Both constitute a good example of what is called Philosophical Naturalism. After considering queries with both theories we propose a differnt account in order to naturalize knwoledge and meaning. The argumentative line defended is an other kind of naturalization, one based on History and not solely in Natural History. From this point of view concept fixation and epistemological justification practices are dependent of historical dynamics and not solely from Natural History.