Teleology
Teleology or finality is a branch of causality giving the reason or an explanation for something as a function of its end, its purpose, or its goal, as opposed to as a function of its efficient cause.
A purpose that is imposed by human use, such as the purpose of a fork to hold food, is called extrinsic. Natural teleology, common in classical philosophy, though controversial today, contends that natural entities also have intrinsic purposes, regardless of human use or opinion. For instance, Aristotle claimed that an acorn's intrinsic telos is to become a fully grown oak tree. Though ancient materialists rejected the notion of natural teleology, teleological accounts of non-personal or non-human nature were explored and often endorsed in ancient and medieval philosophies, but fell into disfavor during the modern era.
Much of the discussion on teleology revolves around religion and the belief in a Godly, purposeful existence for the world and for humans. See Teleological argument for an in-depth discussion on teleology and religion.
History
In Western philosophy, the term and concept of teleology originated in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle's 'four causes' gives a special place to the telos or "final cause" of each thing. In this, he followed Plato in seeing purpose in both human and nonhuman nature.Etymology
The word teleology combines Greek telos and logia. German philosopher Christian Wolff would coin the term as in his work Philosophia rationalis, sive logica.Platonic
In Plato's dialogue Phaedo, Socrates argues that true explanations for any given physical phenomenon must be teleological. He bemoans those who fail to distinguish between a thing's necessary and sufficient causes, which he identifies respectively as material and final causes:Socrates here argues that while the materials that compose a body are necessary conditions for its moving or acting in a certain way, they nevertheless cannot be the sufficient condition for its moving or acting as it does. For example, if Socrates is sitting in an Athenian prison, the elasticity of his tendons is what allows him to be sitting, and so a physical description of his tendons can be listed as necessary conditions or auxiliary causes of his act of sitting. However, these are only necessary conditions of Socrates' sitting. To give a physical description of Socrates' body is to say that Socrates is sitting, but it does not give any idea why it came to be that he was sitting in the first place. To say why he was sitting and not not sitting, it is necessary to explain what it is about his sitting that is good, for all things brought about are brought about because the actor saw some good in them. Thus, to give an explanation of something is to determine what about it is good. Its goodness is its actual cause—its purpose, telos or 'reason for which'.
Aristotelian
argued that Democritus was wrong to attempt to reduce all things to mere necessity, because doing so neglects the aim, order, and "final cause", which brings about these necessary conditions:In Physics, using the hylomorphic theory,, Aristotle rejects Plato's assumption that the universe was created by an intelligent designer. For Aristotle, natural ends are produced by "natures", and natures, Aristotle argued, do not deliberate:
These Platonic and Aristotelian arguments ran counter to those presented earlier by Democritus and later by Lucretius, both of whom were supporters of what is now often called accidentalism:
Modern philosophy
In the 17th century, philosophers such as René Descartes, Francis Bacon, and Thomas Hobbes wrote in opposition to Aristotelian teleology. The suggestion that there’s more to objects than their materialism was rejected in favor of a mechanistic view of even complex creatures and organisms. According to Hobbes, writing in Leviathan:Bacon likewise sought to divorce the study of final causes from scientific inquiry, saying:
Descartes, on the other hand, argued that whether or not final causes existed, the purposes of God in creating things were inscrutable:
But while science was doing a great job at explaining natural phenomena, it stopped short of explaining how life develops. In the late 18th century, Immanuel Kant acknowledged this shortcoming in his Critique of Judgement:
Kant, Hegel and Marx
explained teleology as a subjective perception, necessary for humans to understand the world, but in actuality, not a determining factor in biology or even in human personal and social behavior. Biological behavior, reacting to "self-preservation" criteria, is an outcome of Darwinist-like adaptation, with the organisms having "intrinsic and natural purposiveness".Wilhelm Hegel opposed Kant's view and claimed it was legitimate for a materialistic view to accept "high" intrinsic teleology, where organisms, or at least the human self-conscious mind, and following it, whole societies are capable of determining and deciding their actions, for self-preservation and awareness, and the human pursuit of self-conscious freedom. This, according to Kant, differs from the "low" teleology where an entity decides to use external means for its own goal, which was the religious claim about god or some "high" entity with its own agenda for the world and humans.
In The Science of Logic, and more elaborately in Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel wrote that life occurs when a body advances from "mechanism" and "chemism" to acquire the goals of self-preservation and "self-realization", and acts accordingly. History, according to him, is the outcome of humanity becoming conscious of its own freedom through social antagonism and self-recognition and changing from an irrational and unaware state to a free, rational, self-conscious state of being.
Hegel's basic theory is that every idea being realized has a stage of thesis where its flaws are revealed, creating an antithesis, which resolves those flaws but has flaws of its own, and finally the two clash and a new, improved synthesis is created. This process continues with the ideas advancing and becoming better and refined. History, according to Hegel, is actually this realization of ideas through clashing and refinement.
Leaning on these notions, Karl Marx wrote with teleological terminology that society advances through cultural clashes between classes striving for material economic goals, struggling through revolution with the ruling classes inherent to capitalism, until finally society will establish a classless commune. Since Marx is speaking about a scientific explanation to history and social behavior, many explain this as being consequentialist, with the culture clash caused by the existence of unequal classes and the lack of economic wealth by the lower classes, leading to an open, non-deterministic result caused by the situation and the collective behavior in response to it.
Postmodern philosophy
Teleological-based "grand narratives" are renounced by the postmodern tradition, where teleology may be viewed as reductive, exclusionary, and harmful to those whose stories are diminished or overlooked.Against this postmodern position, Alasdair MacIntyre has argued that a narrative understanding of oneself, of one's capacity as an independent reasoner, one's dependence on others and on the social practices and traditions in which one participates, all tend towards an ultimate good of liberation. Social practices may themselves be understood as teleologically oriented to internal goods. For example, practices of philosophical and scientific inquiry are teleologically ordered to the elaboration of a true understanding of their objects. MacIntyre's After Virtue famously dismissed the naturalistic teleology of Aristotle's "metaphysical biology", but he has cautiously moved from that book's account of a sociological teleology toward an exploration of what remains valid in a more traditional teleological naturalism.
Ethics
Teleology significantly informs the study of ethics, such as in:- Business ethics: People in business commonly think in terms of purposeful action, as in, for example, management by objectives. Teleological analysis of business ethics leads to consideration of the full range of stakeholders in any business decision, including the management, the staff, the customers, the shareholders, the country, humanity, and the environment.
- Medical ethics: Teleology provides a moral basis for the professional ethics of medicine, as physicians are generally concerned with outcomes and must therefore know the telos of a given treatment paradigm.
Consequentialism
In the classical notion, teleology is grounded in the inherent nature of things themselves, whereas in consequentialism, teleology is imposed on nature from outside by the human will. Consequentialist theories justify inherently what most people would call evil acts by their desirable outcomes, if the good of the outcome outweighs the bad of the act. So, for example, a consequentialist theory would say it was acceptable to kill one person in order to save two or more other people. These theories may be summarized by the maxim "."
Deontology
Consequentialism stands in contrast to the more classical notions of deontological ethics, of which examples include Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative, and Aristotle's virtue ethics—although formulations of virtue ethics are also often consequentialist in derivation.In deontological ethics, the goodness or badness of individual acts is primary and a larger, more desirable goal is insufficient to justify bad acts committed on the way to that goal, even if the bad acts are relatively minor and the goal is major. In requiring all constituent acts to be good, deontological ethics is much more rigid than consequentialism, which varies by circumstance.
Practical ethics are usually a mix of the two. For example, Mill also relies on deontic maxims to guide practical behavior, but they must be justifiable by the principle of utility.