Understanding purpose? Kant and the philosophy of biology (editor) (original) (raw)
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Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2006
Naturalism' is the aspiration of contemporary philosophy of biology, and Kant simply cannot be refashioned into a naturalist. Instead, epistemological 'deflation' was the decisive feature of Kant's treatment of the 'biomedical' science in his day, so it is not surprising that this might attract some philosophers of science to him today. A certain sense of impasse in the contemporary 'function talk' seems to motivate renewed interest in Kant. Kant-drawing on his eighteenth-century predecessors-provided a discerning and powerful characterization of what biologists had to explain in organic form. His difference from the rest is that he opined that it was impossible to explain it. Its 'inscrutability' was intrinsic. The third Critique essentially proposed the reduction of biology to a kind of pre-scientific descriptivism, doomed never to attain authentic scientificity, to have its 'Newton of the blade of grass'. By contrast, for Locke, and a fortiori for Buffon and his followers, 'intrinsic purposiveness' was a fact of the matter about concrete biological phenomena; the features of internal self-regulation were hypotheses arising out of actual research practice. The difference comes most vividly to light once we recognize Kant's distinction of the concept of organism from the concept of life. If biology must conceptualize self-organization as actual in the world, Kant's regulative/ constitutive distinction is pointless in practice and the (naturalist) philosophy of biology has urgent work to undertake for which Kant turns out not to be very helpful.
Teleology and the Organism: Kant's Controversial Legacy for Contemporary Biology
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 93, 47–56, 2022
This paper distinguishes two ways in which Kant's ideas concerning the relation between teleology and biological organization have been taken up in contemporary philosophy of biology and theoretical biology. The first sees his account as the first instance of the modern understanding of teleology as a heuristic tool aimed at producing mechanistic explanations of organismal form and function; the second sees in Kant's intrinsic purposiveness the seed of a radically new way of thinking about biological systems that should be developed by turning teleology into a legitimate concept of natural science. We name the two approaches heuristic and naturalistic, respectively. Our aim is to critically evaluate these approaches and suggest that the naturalistic option, which remains a minority position, deserves to be taken more seriously than it currently is in contemporary biological theory. While evolution by natural selection closes the case on intelligent design, it does not close the case on teleology in general. In fact, the current return of the organism and the recent calls for an agential perspective in evolutionary biology point out that we still have some thinking to do concerning this side of Kant's legacy.
Kant on biological teleology: Towards a two-level interpretation
… and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2006
According to Kant’s Critique of the power of judgment, teleological considerations are unavoidable for conceptualizing organisms. Does this mean that teleology is more than merely heuristic? Kant stresses the regulative status of teleological attributions, but sometimes he seems to treat teleology as a constitutive condition for biology. To clarify this issue, the concept of natural purpose and its role for biology are examined. I suggest that the concept serves an identificatory function: it singles out objects as natural purposes, whereby the special science of biology is constituted. This relative constitutivity of teleology is explicated by means of a distinction of levels: on the object level of biological science, teleology is taken as constitutive, though it is merely regulative on the philosophical meta level. This distinction also concerns the place of Aristotelian teleology in Kant: on the object level, the Aristotelian view is accepted, whereas on the meta level, an agnostic stance is taken concerning teleology.
Philosophy of Biology: About the Fossilization of Disciplines and Other Embryonic Thoughts
Acta Biotheoretica, 2007
This paper focuses on a running dispute between Werner Callebaut's naturalistic view and Filip Kolen and Gertrudis Van de Vijver's transcendentalist view on the nature of philosophy of biology and the relation of this discipline to biological sciences. It is argued that, despite differences in opinion, both positions agree that philosophy of biology's ultimate goal is to 'move' biology or at least be 'meaningful' to it. In order to make this goal clear and effective, more is needed than a polarizing debate which hardly touches upon biology. Therefore, a redirection in discussion is suggested towards a reflection on the possibilities of incorporating philosophy in interdisciplinary research, and on finding concrete research questions which are of interest both to the philosopher and to the biologist.
Biological and human life. French philosophy and the life sciences (1830-1990)
In France, starting from the early 19 th century, the interaction between what we call today the "life sciences" and "philosophy" provoked several important controversies. Academic philosophers, physicians and naturalists frequently competed for the monopoly over common topics, and colleagues across faculties would thus interfere in each other's work. This conflictual interaction, which often involved the use of texts coming from the history of knowledge, resulted in the emergence of new disciplines, in the epistemological reframing of scientific theories and in the readjustment of philosophical concepts, pressured by empirical evidence. This chapter analyzes the five most important sequences of these interactions taking place from the beginning of the process of disciplinarization, at the start of the 19 th century. The first section, which spans 1830 to 1852, focuses on the strategies adopted by the academic philosophers in order to defend their area of competence, namely the "moral" part of man, from the physicians' attempts to naturalize human cognition and behavior. The second section analyzes how, between 1855 and 1864, philosophers were involved in controversies concerning both the difference between human and biological life and between biological life and unanimated matter. The third section shows how Claude Bernard's Introduction to Experimental Medicine (1864) pushed philosophers to adopt a more cautious approach, avoiding expressing claims about the nature of life. The fourth section concerns the limited fortune of the theory of evolution and the rejection of social Darwinism by philosophers and sociologists between 1865 and 1920. Finally, the fifth section exposes two apparently contradictory evolutions: on the one hand a growing attention towards the history of the transformation of biological concepts and theories, and, on the other hand, the return to bolder metaphysical claims about the nature of life and the organisms.