Human Destinies: Philosophical Essays in Memory of Gerald Hanratty

Chapter Ten: Kant and Dennett on the Epistemic Status of Teleological Principles

t e n Kant and Dennett on the epistemic status of teleological Principles James R. O’Shea in the second half of his Critique of the Power of Judgment (Kritik der Urtheilskraft , 1790), which concerns teleological judgment, Kant presents an antinomy between two regulative principles or maxims of reflecting (or “reflective”) judgment.1 the first maxim, which we may call the “mechanistic maxim,” appears to affirm the sufficiency of mechanistic principles to explain the possibility of all the products of material nature .2 the second principle, however, which we may call the “teleological maxim,” appears to deny that sufficiency by asserting the necessity of nonmechanistic teleological explanation in the case of at least some of the products of material nature, most notably in the case of “organized beings” or living things. Kant states the two regulative principles as follows: the first maxim of the power of judgment is the thesis: all generation of material things and their forms must be judged as possible in accordance with merely mechanical laws. 252 epistemic status of teleological Principles 253 the second maxim is the antithesis: some products of material nature cannot be judged as possible according to merely mechanical laws (judging them requires an entirely different law of causality, namely that of final causes [Endursachen]).3 Broadly speaking, the mechanistic maxim reflects what Gerald Hanratty once described in relation to the enlightenment period in general as “the momentous project of extending the newtonian scientific method to all levels of reality.”4 When proper distinctions are drawn, there will clearly remain a sense in which Kant enthusiastically embraced and extended the broadly newtonian explanatory project that is given expression in the maxim of mechanism. it will be important to keep in mind, for instance, Kant’s repeated insistence that true insight (Einsicht) into objective laws of nature is possible for us only in terms of what he sometimes calls “the mechanism of natural causes” (die Mechanik der Naturursachen).5 However, as Hanratty also notes, there are other respects in which “Kant, who was himself an enthusiastic exponent of the enlightenment, reacted against what he saw as the superficial materialism and exaggerated optimism of the age.”6 in the present context, the teleological maxim points to Kant’s recognition that the explanation of the nature of living things as “organized beings ” (organisirte Wesen) presents special challenges for his own robust defense (as i read him) of the objective primacy of mechanistic explanation . the primary question to be investigated in this essay concerns the nature and epistemic status of Kant’s teleological principles considered in relation to the objective primacy of mechanistic explanation in natural science.7 again speaking generally to begin with, it is a familiar idea that Kant attempted to reconcile teleology with the objective mechanism of nature by in some sense relegating teleological principles to the status of “merely regulative” maxims. as such, teleological principles are characterized by Kant as being merely subjectively valid in comparison with the objective validity of mechanical principles of causality—although Kant also stresses that for a variety of important reasons we human beings must regard nature “as if ” it were governed by various teleological principles. teleological principles, on 254 James R. O’Shea this picture, turn out to be indispensable regulative ideas (Ideen) that serve to forward the ends of our own systematizing reflections on nature ; but they are not objectively true of the products of nature as such. there are undoubtedly many strands of truth in this familiar characterization of Kant’s views on teleological principles. However, if that were the whole story, then the result of his so-called “resolution” of the antinomy concerning teleology and mechanism would strike most philosophers as being of limited philosophical interest. as John Zammito in The Genesis of Kant’s Critique of Judgment expressed the worry in this connection: “Kant’s presentation does not resolve the dilemma it uncovers, but only offers the unpleasant but ostensibly ineluctable expedient of ‘thinking’ about actual problems of nature in terms which violate fundamentally the principle of his own science and epistemology .”8 i want to suggest, however, that the epistemic status of teleological principles in Kant’s conception of natural science is both more complex and more interesting than this common picture of an entirely subjective but necessary retreat from objectivity might suggest. toward this end i want to explore here in very general terms what i hope is a...