Teleology

Teleology (from the Greek, telos, or end, purpose) is an ancient branch of Metaphysics, which is a branch of Philosophy. The study of Design and Purpose in everything, Teleology is about “Why?”, the directive principles and finality of any Substance, Organism, or Event. This much is inherent in Science today as a basic explanation of how Systems work. However, Teleology also forms the basis for the “Teleological Argument”, or “Design Argument”, which is perhaps the most persuasive traditional “proof” of the existence of a Supreme Being. This use of Teleology has been strongly avoided in Modern Philosophy and Science, where Teleology has been limited to a more humble study of functional or systemic causes and purposes.

Understanding Teleology

Compared to Ontology, which is difficult to fully grasp, Teleology is more straightforward and easy to understand. An over-simplified way to explain it is to contrast Teleology with Naturalism, which views Nature as lacking Design or Purpose. For example, in Naturalism we would say a person has sight because they have eyes, meaning the function follows the form, while from Teleology we have the reverse, that a person has eyes because they have need of sight, meaning the form follows the function. In today's scientific context this comparison is quaint, but the opposing views are found in Aristotle and Lucretius:

Design and Finality

Another helpful, but ultimately meaningless contrast regards the concept of a Final Cause or Purpose inherent in all things, which leads to a distinction between “Extrinsic” and “Intrinsic” Final Causation. On the one hand, we can attribute a Final “Extrinsic” Purpose to an event or outcome because it benefited someone or something. For example, scientists can claim minerals are “designed” to be consumed by plants, and the plants in turn are “designed” to be consumed by animals. Extrinsic Finality very quickly leads to the “Anthropic Principle” (from Brandon Carter, 1973), that is, the attribution of every event to a “Higher” or “Divine” Purpose. It is easy to see how this quick Teleology is pervasive throughout our Science and Culture, and it is very seductive. Philosophers have argued against falling for these easy answers, including Francis Bacon (“De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum,” III, iv), René Descartes (“Principia Philosophiæ”, I, 28; III, 2, 3; “Meditationes”, III, IV), Baruch Spinoza (“Ethica”, I, prop. 36 app.), and many others.

On the other hand, there is “Intrinsic” Purpose, in which we realize a given Finality by means of a natural tendency directed toward the self-perfection or self-preservation of a given Organism. What is good for a given Being is what that Being tends to choose. To use the same example, minerals are consumed by plants, and plants by animals, because the plants adapt to the function of minerals, and animals to the function of plants. While this type of Final Causality is certainly far more subtle, it still leads us headlong again into the “Teleological Argument” for the existence of some Supreme Being. Whether Extrinsic or Intrinsic, this tendency toward presuming inherent Design has been called “Teleological Ascent” by M.R.M. Parrott.^[3]

These tendencies to attribute Finality and Causality to objects of our Experience may fit the context of Theology, but with Teleology we need a formal study of Purpose and Design without the Medieval baggage of viewing everything that happens as automatically pointing to someone's notion of “God”. This difficulty is because there is in fact no evidence of such a Being, but also, there are many diverse beliefs about Supreme Beings from people around the world. A number of “Proofs” of the existence of Supreme Being(s) have been developed, of which the Teleological Argument is the most infectious, arguably inherent within the others, such as the “Ontological Argument”, or the “Cosmological Argument”. It can be said that all of them rely on the Teleological Argument, which is rooted in our own built-in epistemological tendency to assign causal chains, even without evidence.

There is certainly Causation in the World, of course, but for us to assume all causes eventually point to the “Ultimate Cause”, and without any evidence at all, is why this Teleological Ascent is an amphiboly, an error in reasoning. Supreme Beings are simply not borne out in any reality we can scientifically observe, and yet we continually return to various Design assumptions because, as Immanuel Kant argued^[4], it's just part of how our Minds work. The Modern counterpart to this Teleological Ascent is “Intelligent Design”, which is a whole worldview very much based in Extrinsic and Intrinsic Finality, as well as a presumed “Problem of Complexity”.

The Simple and The Complex

Now, those who support Intelligent Design can argue that it resolves a fundamental defect in philosophical Naturalism, by showing that Naturalism focuses exclusively on the immediate causes and mechanisms of events, and does not attend to the reason for their generation. Thus, if we take a clock apart, we discover in it nothing but springs, wheels, pivots, levers, but having explained the mechanism which causes the revolutions of the hands on the dial, it is reasonable to say that the clock was designed to measure Time. Even if we ignore the fact that clocks to not actually measure Time itself (for that is truly outside all evidence), we cannot argue that clocks are not designed to tick off increments. That is their purpose.

However, this use of Intelligent Design only goes so far before it becomes Extrinsic/Intrinsic Finality all over again. That we humans developed clocks to tick off increments by no means proves that any higher purpose exists. They are a convenience. Much of Science, Biology in particular, has been concerned with the constraints and pressures which given functions place on biological structures. The “Theory of Evolution” from Charles Darwin illustrated this concept with a classic and early example of the evolutionary development of beaks on Galapagos Islands finches. Of these birds, Darwin wrote, “Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends”.^[5] In other words, evolutionary change is about biological opportunity rather than “Design”.

So much of this hinges on the faulty implication that because something is “complex” it cannot be “random” or “evolved”. For example, Design theorists will ask why the Universe seemingly began in a very simple state, called the “Big Bang”, but then grow ever more and more complex, to the extent that its complexity on this planet is so uniquely hospitable to our human life, even more so than is necessary for our survival and advanced human civilization, if it was not by “design”? This Simple and Complex is yet another false dichotomy which traps many into a presumption that because something is “too complex” for some given standard, it must have been designed, and most especially designed by a Being superior to we humans. The counterargument is to posit that it has not been shown there is any real meaningful difference between the “Simple” and the “Complex”. Isn't what is complex just a collection of what is simple? In this way, what used to be considered complex can often be rendered simple by better reasoning, evidence, or process.

Thus, Naturalism has won this overall teleological debate, reminding us that all we have to work with are the immediate causes and mechanisms of local functions and systems. Except in the contrived cases of clocks and other objects we've designed ourselves, we cannot reason intelligently about the ascent of causal chains “all the way up to to the top”, as it were. We cannot assume that because things and events seem complicated to us, like the clocks we build, that those things and events we did not build must have also been designed by a Supreme Being. This is why Teleology has become severely limited in its applications in Modern Science, particularly the Life Sciences, where it is helpful for us to discover and explain how functions and processes work. The Ancient aspect of Teleology has become something to avoid, an epistemological cautionary tale, rather than an active branch of contemporary Metaphysics, which allows Philosophy to remain separate from Theology.

Scholarship by M.R.M. Parrott

Dynamism: Life: Volume II: Biological Chemistry and Epistemology Philosophy and Science Treatise ©2001, 2010-2011 M.R.M. Parrott First Published: Jun 2011 Published by rimric press 0-9746106-5-8 | 978-0-9746106-5-8 216 Pages, Paperback & eBook, 2025 2025 Edition Extras: Afterword, Notes on the Text and Cover Art Amazon Paperback (author) Barnes & Noble Paperback (author) Waterstones Paperback (author)

Dynamism: Force: Volume I: Quantum Physics and Ontology Philosophy and Science Treatise ©2001-2004 M.R.M. Parrott First Published: Feb 05/Jun 11 Published by rimric press 0-9746106-1-5 | 978-0-9746106-1-0 204 Pages, Paperback & eBook, 2025 2025 Edition Extras: Both Prefaces, Afterword, Notes on the Text and Cover Art Amazon Paperback (author) Barnes & Noble Paperback (author) Waterstones Paperback (author)

References

1. De Partibus Animalium (On the Parts of Animals) IV, xii, 694b; 13.
2. De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), IV, 833; cf. 822-56. William Leonard's translation differs: “Since naught is born in body so that we / May use the same, but birth engenders use”..
3. In “Dynamism: Volume I: Force” (2005), and with extensive arguments in “Dynamism: Volume II: Life” (2011).
4. Critique of Pure Reason (1781).
5. Origin of Species (1859), Chapter 19.

Further Reading

• Aristotle, Metaphysics Book Theta (translated with an introduction and commentary by Stephen Makin), Oxford University Press, 2006. (ISBN 0-19-875108-7 / 978-0-19-875108-3)
• John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Oxford University Press, 1986. (ISBN 0-19-282147-4)
• Julian Bigelow, Arturo Rosenblueth, and Norbert Wiener, 1943, “Behavior, Purpose and Teleology,” Philosophy of Science 10: 18-24.
• Monte Ransome Johnson, Aristotle on Teleology, Oxford University Press, 2005. (ISBN 0-19-928530-6 / 978-0-19-928530-3)
• Kelvin Knight, Aristotelian Philosophy: Ethics and Politics from Aristotle to MacIntyre, Polity Press, 2007. (ISBN 978-0-7456-1977-4 / 0-745-61977-0)
• Georg Lukacs. History and Class Consciousness. (ISBN 0-262-62020-0)
• Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. (ISBN 0-8047-3632-4)
• Alasdair MacIntyre, 'First Principles, Final Ends, and Contemporary Philosophical Issues', in idem., The Tasks of Philosophy: Selected Essays, Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, 2006. (ISBN 978-0-521-67061-6 / 0-521-67061-6)
• Herbert Marcuse. Hegel's Ontology and the Theory of Historicity. (ISBN 0-262-13221-4)
• Lowell Nissen, Teleological Language in the Life Sciences, Rowman & Littlefield, 1997 (ISBN 0-8476-8694-9)
• Parrott, M.R.M., books refuting Teleological Ascent and other concepts, including “Dynamism: Volume I: Force” (2005), “Dynamism: Volume II: Life” (2011)