Abstract
This chapter revisits Ernest Nagel’s view of teleology in biology. In some of his writings from the 1950s to the 1970s, Nagel contended for the legitimacy of teleology in biology but argued against its uniqueness. In addition, Nagel also offered a goal-contribution account in the biological function debate which emerged in the 1960s and the 1970s. While questions of legitimacy and uniqueness of teleology draw little attention today, the biological function debate remains in focus in philosophy of biology. Although the ongoing debate does mention Nagel’s name occasionally, his view, often merely understood as the goal-contribution account, is treated as outdated. However, this treatment is limited, because it fails to consider Nagel’s another important thesis, that is, eliminativism. In this chapter, I attempt to do three things. First, I articulate Nagel’s view, by showing that the eliminativist Nagel considered it acceptable to eliminate teleological terms in biological discourse, and that he also treated them as anthropomorphic vestiges. Second, I defend Nagel’s view and use it to clarify the current biological function debate, by distinguishing a descriptive dimension of this debate from its prescriptive dimension. Third, I hope to deepen Nagel’s view, by pushing it to a further and perhaps its logical conclusion, that is, Kant’s view of biological teleology.
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Notes
- 1.
In this chapter, phrases like “biological teleology”, “teleology in biology” and “teleological terms, statements and explanations in biological discourse” are used interchangeably. Admittedly, at the start only the third seems the most appropriate, since it is an uncontroversial fact that teleological expressions are widespread in biological discourse. The main difficulty of the other two is that some authors (e.g., Ghiselin 2002), while acknowledging the previous fact, deny the existence of “genuine” teleological phenomena in biological sciences. However, as will be clear in this chapter (Sects. 10.4 and 10.5), this difficulty can be removed by distinguishing non-intentional accounts of teleology from its intentional accounts. If non-intentional accounts are prescribed, it is unproblematic to use phrases such as “biological teleology” and “teleology in biology”. Meanwhile, the same clarification also works for function terms, given the fact that some authors (e.g., Ghiselin 2001) also contend that function terms are not teleological terms. Yet, these authors, while attributing non-intentional accounts to function terms, insist on attributing intentional accounts to teleological terms and dismiss the latter as illegitimate in biological discourse. In this chapter I try to avoid these sometimes-frustrating terminological issues. I consider the possibility of attributing non-intentional accounts to both and prefer to treat function terms as teleological terms. Indeed, on these terminological issues, I am following the clarification approach (“clarifying…meaning and implications”) endorsed by Nagel, rather than the legislation approach (“legislating what sort of things it is permissible or possible for the empirical sciences to investigate”) he opposed (Nagel 1936, p. 6; also see Nagel 1945). The clarification approach is also supported by logical empiricists in general, and runs close to, in my view, the spirit of a Kantian Critique.
- 2.
For instance, Jeffrey McDonough (2020, pp. 151–152) recently shows from historical evidence that “most natural philosophers in the early modern period remained deeply committed to teleology”, and that the persistent impression conveyed in traditional historiography that “teleology was simply undermined by the so-called scientific revolution” (2020, p. 152) should be corrected. However, in my view, while traditional historiography can be disputed in its use of historical materials, it is also essential to understand that it mainly plays an ideological role, in legislating a Whiggish narrative for either the triumph of mechanism (for instance, the success of mechanism started from the scientific revolution) or the return of teleology (like, teleology was banned for a long time, now it is time for its re-emergence). In these cases, the authors care little about the historical accuracy of their narratives. For an example, see Walsh (2008).
- 3.
Again, there is a terminological issue here. Some might object that it is impermissible to place currently popular organizational accounts under the systematic approach, because, first, current organizational accounts (Mossio et al., 2009; Saborido et al., 2011; Saborido, 2014; Mossio & Saborido, 2016), in contrast to earlier ones (McLaughlin 2003; Schlosser 1998), claim to have integrated the virtues of both evolutionary and systematic approaches; second, they are also interpreted as belonging to the etiological approach (Artiga and Martinez 2016). In this chapter, I hope to evade this terminological issue, by following earlier organizational accounts (especially Schlosser, 1998) to explicitly place the under the systematic approach as against the evolutionary approach; current organizational accounts, I believe, will not object to this classification, since they oppose Artiga and Martinez (2016)’s interpretation and stress their own ahistorical character. Overall, these terminological issues constitute a non-negligible part of current “philosophical” discussions, in which hasty dismissals by presupposing different meanings of the same term flow around. In my hope, the clarification approach endorsed by Nagel in particular and logical empiricists in general might play a limited role in relieving “the climate of opinions” and promoting rational discussions.
- 4.
Indeed, while there are almost no declared eliminativists today in the biological function debate, the position of some philosophers (e.g., Craver 2001; Cummins 1975; Hardcastle 1999) runs rather close to Nagel’s version of eliminativism. I learn this from Garson (2014) who prefers to call them conventionalists.
- 5.
One objection often voiced against the systematic approach in the biological function debate refers to the normativity problem. According to this objection, most systematic accounts are problematic, because they are unable to capture the normative implications of function terms: the function of a biological entity is said to be different from its mere effect, because it is supposed to give rise to its effect; or put it positively, any account of biological function should distinguish functions from mere accidents, and captures the possibility of dysfunction or malfunction. For instance, Millikan (1989, p. 299) claims that “[systematic] accounts of purpose or function in terms of present disposition or structure run afoul exactly when they confront the most central issue of all, namely, the problem of what failure of purpose and defectiveness are”. To avoid this normativity problem, the evolutionary approach recommends that the function of a biological entity should be interpreted as its selected effect. While it is impossible to argue in detail here, I agree with Davies (2000), Craver (2001), Boorse (2002) and Brunnander (2011) that the normativity problem does not exist, and it actually retains an anthropomorphic mode of thinking.
- 6.
Indeed, this echoes the distinction between descriptive semantics and normative/pure semantics made by other logical empiricists like Rudolf Carnap (1942/1948, pp. 11–15).
- 7.
I learn from Garson (2014) that Schyfter (2015) adopts a similar view from the standpoint of social epistemology.
- 8.
Very interestingly, one of the main participants of the early biological function debate and the chief supporter of the evolutionary approach Wright (1976) already provided such a hypothetical scenario, in which “a metaphor dies when the metaphorically extended use of a term becomes established more or less independently of the original paradigm” (p. 19). As a matter of fact, only after having detected the meaning change of function terms, could Wright assign himself the new task of meeting “the requirement of literal translatability” (p. 18).
- 9.
For instance, within the evolutionary approach, one can place emphasis on the recent past (e.g., Godfrey-Smith 1994), or other types of selection (e.g., Garson 2011, 2012), or the non-selective history (e.g. Buller 1998). Within the systematic approach, one can focus on plasticity (e.g. Nagel 1977/1979; Enç and Adams 1992), or negative feedback (e.g. Faber 1984), or reproduction (e.g. Schlosser 1998), or self-maintaining networks (e.g. Mossio et al., 2009). In principle, one can even devise a rather peculiar account and prescribes it as a rule on how to use function terms. While this peculiar account might violate actual biological usage in every word, the point is that it is not refutable if treated as offering prescriptive rules.
- 10.
Further, consider the objection resulting from the normativity problem, mentioned in Footnote 5. If this objection is driven by an anthropomorphic mode of thinking, then the normativity problem cannot be solved in principle, since, no matter how many different laws and facts from biology are defined into function terms, accounts of biological function remain non-intentional and are therefore unable to achieve a genuine anthropomorphic status. So, in addition to the motivation of capturing actual biological usage, another motivation of offering so many accounts of biological function seems a rather implicit anthropomorphic tendency, channeled through the normativity problem.
- 11.
As can be anticipated, some will take issues with this point and claim that, since the biological function debate attempts to describe actual biological usage and even recommend biologists new rules of using function terms, it helps vocabularies used by biologists to achieve a higher level of systematicity and comprehensiveness, and is resultantly still relevant to genuine biological knowledge. In fact, I do not dispute this claim, and my point is rather that giving so many accounts are unnecessary to adequately expressing biological knowledge.
- 12.
Here it is important to distinguish objects predicatable of life (extension) and life itself (intension). What we general call biological knowledge is only knowledge about the former, rather than the latter (Ben-Naim, ms). Indeed, it is safe to say that we possess no genuine knowledge about life itself, even though we recognize so many things as alive in the world.
- 13.
As Kant maintained, “information […] about […] the origination and the inner possibility of these forms [of living beings] […] is that with which theoretical natural science is properly concerned”, and “positing ends of nature in its products […] in accordance with teleological concepts […] provides no [such] information at all” (1790/2000, 5: p. 417).
- 14.
Resonating with eliminativism in the biological function debate, in the life definition debate there is also an eliminativist stance which tends to remove the concept of life from biology (Machery 2012; Mariscal and Doolittle 2018); correspondingly, there are also biologists and philosophers who attempt to relate life, like those who relate biological function, to different portions of biological knowledge (Bich and Green 2016; Koonin 2012; Mix, 2015; Smith 2016; Trifonov 2011). Yet, eliminativism is less defensible regarding life: if the reality of life is not denied (very implausible), while biological teleology can be reduced to life as the anthropomorphic tendency, life (to emphasize again, I mean the pure phenomenon of life, not ordinary biological phenomena) is irreducible to anything else. For this point, see also Voegelin (1933/1998, p. 144).
- 15.
As is often known to Kant scholars, Kant conceived of the principle of teleology (and life) as merely regulative rather than constitutive. Then some judged Kant’s pessimism over a scientific biology (due to the lack of constitutive principles) inadequate (e.g., Zammito, 2006). However, my view is that Kant’s sophisticated discussion on teleology and life remains little understood, due to the failure of clarifying different meanings of the regulative-constitutive distinction. For details, see Friedman (1992) and Chen (2019, pp. 275–91).
- 16.
As one reviewer helpfully points out, at least in the descriptive dimension of the debate there remains the possibility of selecting a best account in terms of its ability to describe and predict relevant biological usage. Indeed, even though pluralism might be the best solution given current biological usage, it is still plausible that in a different spatial–temporal world a dominant account exists as it best describes and predicts biological usage in that world.
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Chen, B. (2022). On Ernest Nagel on Teleology in Biology. In: Neuber, M., Tuboly, A.T. (eds) Ernest Nagel: Philosophy of Science and the Fight for Clarity. Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, vol 53. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81010-8_10
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