| 2684 | Aristotle needed to distinguish teleological description from teleological explanation [Irwin on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle does not distinguish teleological description and teleological explanation, or not as clearly as he should. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE]) by Terence Irwin - Metaphysical and psych. basis of 'Ethics' p.40 | |
| A reaction: I assume the explanation has to be factual and true, but the description might be a convenient way of focusing our view of something. |
| 5227 | The nature of any given thing is determined by its end [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The nature of any given thing is determined by its end. | |
| From: Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics [c.334 BCE], 1115b23) | |
| A reaction: A nice statement of the essence of the teleological view. A counterexample might be something which had a very unimpressive end, but was incidentally rather wonderful, like being a perfectionist about a menial task. |
| 5866 | It is folly not to order one's life around some end [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Not to have ordered one's life in relation to some end is a mark of extreme folly. | |
| From: Aristotle (Eudemian Ethics [c.333 BCE], 1214b10) | |
| A reaction: A most interesting claim, not found in the Nichomachean Ethics. There the teleology is descriptive, but here it is prescriptive. It is tempting to rebel against Aristotle's injuncture. He was a driven workaholic. Why not float through life like gossamer? |
| 5086 | The nature of a thing is its end and purpose [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The nature of a thing is its end and purpose. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194a29) | |
| A reaction: Cf 5084. This is the teleologists' manifesto, but it is very hard to find out why Aristotle took this view. He seems to offer it as self-evident. What would he have made of the proposal that there is no ultimate purpose to anything? |
| 5087 | A thing's purpose is ambiguous, and from one point of view we ourselves are ends [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: From one point of view we too are ends. What a thing is for is ambiguous. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194a35) | |
| A reaction: A really interesting concession from the great teleologist. This opens up what I think of as the 'existentialist' possibility - that we can invent our own purposes. If there are two types of 'telos', which one matters for morality? |
| 5091 | Teeth and crops are predictable, so they cannot be mere chance, but must have a purpose [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Things such as teeth and crops turn out as they do either always or usually, whereas no chance or spontaneous event does. ..So, given that these things cannot be accidents or spontaneous events, they must have some purpose. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 199b33) | |
| A reaction: This is a good argument, and Darwin's theory does not destroy it. We have no idea why there is order, regularity and pattern in nature. Aristotle does not leap to a divine explanation. The 'purpose' of things might be non-conscious. |
| 2800 | The best instruments have one purpose, not many [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Every instrument will be made best if it serves not many purposes but one. | |
| From: Aristotle (Politics [c.332 BCE], 1252b03) | |
| A reaction: Sound like a good general truth, but not a universal truth. Swiss army knife. Ship in a bottle. Pins. Wrapping paper. |
| 4826 | Nature has no particular goal in view, and final causes are mere human figments [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Nature has no particular goal in view, and final causes are mere human figments. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: This is Spinoza's famous rejection of Aristotelian teleology, which was the last seventeenth century nail in the coffin of the great man. Spinoza substitutes God, but loss of faith in that concept then left us with no purpose at all, as in Hume. |
| 19376 | A machine is best defined by its final cause, which explains the roles of the parts [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Any machine ...is best defined in terms of its final cause, so that in the description of the parts it is therefore apparent in what way each of them is coordinated with the others for the intended us. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (The Human Body is a sort of Machine [1683], p.290), quoted by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 3 'Machines' | |
| A reaction: We would use the 'function', an inherently teleological concept, and a concept which is almost indispensable for giving an illuminating description of the world. If nature is dispositional, it points towards things. Leibniz views persons as machines. |
| 2195 | We can discover some laws of nature, but never its ultimate principles and causes [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The ultimate springs and principles are totally shut up from human enquiry. Elasticity, gravity, cohesion of parts, communication of motion by impulse; these are probably the ultimate causes and principles which we shall ever discover in nature. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.26) |
| 18237 | Without men creation would be in vain, and without final purpose [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Without men the whole creation would be mere waste, in vain, and without final purpose. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement II: Teleological [1790], C3 442), quoted by Christine M. Korsgaard - Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value 8 'Kant' | |
| A reaction: The standard early twenty-first century response to that is 'get over it'! The remark shows how deep religion runs in Kant, despite his great caution about the existence of God. His notion of 'duty' is similarly religious. |
| 5591 | Reason must assume as necessary that everything in a living organism has a proportionate purpose [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Regarding the nature of living beings in this world, reason must assume as a necessary principle that no organ, no faculty, nothing superfluous, or disproportionate to its use, hence nothing purposeless, is to be met with. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B425) | |
| A reaction: Extraordinary to treat this as an a priori truth! In fact Darwin seems to have discovered that most organs have a purpose, but sometimes they have become redundant, and certainly they can be disproportionate. Did Kant really need that massive intellect? |
| 7176 | 'Purpose' is like the sun, where most heat is wasted, and a tiny part has 'purpose' [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The case of every purposive action is like the supposed purposiveness of the sun's heat - the huge mass of it is wasted, and a part barely worth considering has 'purpose', has 'meaning'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 07[1]) | |
| A reaction: A very nice metaphor for human life, where you might discern a purpose in certain large events, but you certainly won't find it in the myriad of small actions that make up nearly all of our existence. |
| 4422 | The end need not be the goal, as in the playing of a melody (and yet it must be completed) [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Not every end is the goal; the end of a melody is not its goal; and yet: as long as the melody has not reached its end, it also hasn't reached its goal. A parable. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Wanderer and his Shadow [1880], §204) | |
| A reaction: A nice message for Aristotle, that there is no simple separation of ends and means. |
| 7368 | Originally there were no reasons, purposes or functions; since there were no interests, there were only causes [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: In the beginning there were no reasons; there were only causes. Nothing had a purpose, nothing had so much as a function; there was no teleology in the world at all. The explanation is simple: there was nothing that had interests. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained [1991], 7.2) | |
| A reaction: It seems reasonable to talk of functions even if the fledgling 'interests' are unconscious, as in a leaf. Is a process leading to an end an 'interest'? What are the 'interests' of a person who is about to commit suicide? |
| 6538 | We need a notion of teleology that comes in degrees [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: We need a notion of teleology that comes in degrees. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Anyone who says that key concepts, such as those concerning the mind, should come 'in degrees' wins my instant support. A whole car engine requires a very teleological explanation, the spark in the sparkplug far less so. |
| 21045 | Teleological thinking is essential for social and political issues [Sandel] |
| Full Idea: It is not easy to dispense with teleological reasoning in thinking about social institutions and political practices. | |
| From: Michael J. Sandel (Justice: What's the right thing to do? [2009], 08) | |
| A reaction: I think teleological thinking is also indispensable in biology. You can't understand an ear or an eye if you don't know what it is FOR. If it relates to a mind, it is teleological. The eye of a dead person is for nothing. |