Teleology by Andrew Woodfield (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 841 waite, Nagel, Canfield, and Ruse, simply ignore the problem. It is a sign of progress in the field that Wright, Wimsatt ("Teleology and the Logical Structure of Function Statements," Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 1972), and Woodfield (below) try for a more comprehensive theory. Wright divides functions into the conscious and the natural. The division does not indicate a difference in meaning, for the formal analysis serves both. Rather, it indicates a difference in origin. Where the function comes from is " a matter of mere etiological detail " (p. 97) . " Accordingly , the consequence-etiological analysis begs no theological questions: the organs or organisms logically could get their functions through God's conscious design; but we can also make perfectly good sense of their functions in the absence of divine intervention " (p. 97) . Wright holds, as does Wimsatt, that both conscious and natural functions have their origin in selection: conscious election and natural selection. " For just as conscious functions provide a consequence-etiology by virtue of conscious selection, natural functions provide the very same sort of of etiology as a result of natural selection" (p. 84). Wright sees the difference between conscious and natural selection as only " the slightest change in nuance" (p. 84) and warns the reader that it would be "obscurantist ... to drive much of a conceptual wedge between conscious and natural consequence-selection " (p. 87) . The concept of natural selection is an extension of that of conscious selection (p. 85). Wright, like Wimsatt, believes that selection does not require a selector (pp. 86, 105), implying that design may not require a designer and even suggesting as much (p. 105). The final chapter is devoted to arguing that his analysis is adequate to account for deliberate and intentional human action, attacking arguments which say that such behavior cannot be the result of mechanical factors. University of Arkansas Fayetteville, Arkansas LOWELL NISSEN Teleology. By ANDREW WooDFIELD. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1976. Pp. 232. $16.95. Andrew Woodfield's only previous work on teleology has been "Darwin, Teleology, and Taxonomy," Philosophy, 1973. His Teleology, however, is clearly a major contribution to the subject. Woodfield begins by offering a historical perspective, reviewing Aristotle 's doctrine of final causes, the Renaissance reply, and the teleological metaphysics of Leibniz. There follows a rather extended account of his 342 BOOK REVIEWS own methodology and assumptions, during the course of which he discusses and rejects Kant's projectionist account (that teleological descriptions are projections of the observer and make no claims about the objective world), showing the influence of McFarland's recent and excellent Kant's Concept of Teleology. He disclaims any attempt to reduce teleology to anything else (p. 21), but, nevertheless, regards teleological statements as conceptually complex, with his task one of identifying the underlying conceptual components (p. 85). Preliminaries aside, Woodfield turns to examining the views of several predecessors. Braithwaite's plasticity theory of goal directed behavior succeeds in providing an implicit definition of " goal " which partially overcomes Scheffier's multiple goal challenge, but it has the fatal defect that it is easily trivialized. Any causal chain can be made into a multiple chain (thereby providing the variancy the plasticity theory requires) simply by refining the criteria of identity of the elements of the chain. This produces the familiar problem of a theory that includes too much, rendering even a snowball overcoming an obstacle and rolling downhill a goal directed system (p. 46). Further, because the goal must be reached in order to identify plasticity, Braithwaite's theory cannot handle certain cases of multiple goals nor cases where goal direction rides on a single causal chain. Contrary to Braithwaite, the proper view of plasticity in teleology is that it " is merely evidence of goal-directedness, nor constitutive of it " (p. 102) . Woodfield finds Sommerhoff's analysis more sophisticated than Braithwaite 's and deserving of more attention than it has received. Sommerhoff 's division of goal directed behavior into searching, aiming, and keeping paradigms gives it wide scope. Nagel's well known analysis is derived largely from Sommerhoff's but is less general in that it is appropriate primarily to keeping behavior. However, Sommerhoff...