Natural Teleology Research Articles

The Emperor of Dunhuang: Rethinking Political Regionalism in Tenth Century China

AbstractThe political history of medieval China is written primarily on the basis of official records produced at centers of political power by victors in the preceding trans-dynastic war. With the help of alternative sources, one can hope to challenge the triumphalist and teleological narrative imbedded in these records. In this article, I use documents preserved in the Dunhuang “library cave” to uncover a failed attempt to establish a regional state with imperial pretensions in Dunhuang immediately after the fall of the Tang. This kind of political regionalism seen in Dunhuang is also found in several other post-Tang states in Sichuan and Guangdong. My investigation of their similarities exposes the teleological nature of the conventional framework of “Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms,” and demands that we rethink the political history of China after the fall of the Tang.

Christiaan Huygens’s Natural Theology in HisCosmotheorosand Other Late Writings

Christiaan Huygens’s late writings, ranging from 1686 to 1695, bear witness to his philosophical and theological reflections. In his Cosmotheoros, which was intended for publication, and other late writings that can be regarded as its preparatory drafts, Huygens deals with issues central to seventeenth-century philosophical debates: God’s power, divine and human intelligence, probabilistic epistemology, natural theology, and the plurality of worlds. This paper explains how Huygens’s reflections on animals and their souls, rational or not, play a key role in his epistemological reflections on natural theology. The issue of animal generation, as well as of animal souls, is crucial to identifying elements of continuity between the scientific topics of Huygens’s works, and may be considered as the point of intersection between his understanding of mechanism and of the teleology of nature. This neglected perspective on Huygens’s philosophical-natural animism reveals key elements of his model of rationality and of his attitude towards religion, demonstrating his involvement in the debate over animism, in which he seems to have been strongly influenced by English Protestant empiricism.

Everything in Nature is in Intellect: Forms and Natural Teleology in Ennead 6.2.21 (and elsewhere)

Abstract According to a straightforward reading of Enn. 6.2.21, all principles (logoi) in nature have their origin in corresponding features of a divine Intellect. But interpreters have often advocated more restricted readings of Intellect’s contents. These restricted readings are based in part on other textual evidence, and in part on the concern that a more expansive reading would require Intellect to think objects that are of trivial value (‘the value problem’) or whose purposes depend upon facts about sensible reality to which it has no access (‘the teleology problem’). I argue that restricted readings are not well supported, and that Plotinus is committed to his more expansive conception of Intellect’s contents by his understanding of Plato’s paradeigmatism.

The Teleological Argument in Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals

Abstract The first section of Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals contains a teleological argument, the aim of which is to show that the natural purpose of human reason lies not in securing happiness but in morality. While the teleological argument is widely considered to be digressive and unconvincing in the secondary literature, in this article I attempt to show that the argument is neither digressive nor unconvincing. I argue that it fulfills an important synthetic task in the Groundwork (even if in a preliminary manner), that it is consistent with Kant’s views on natural teleology at the time, and that the criticism of happiness contained therein is as convincing as Kant’s criticism of happiness in the rest of the treatise.

Unseating the Craftsman: Natural Efficient Cause in Aristotle's Craft Analogy

Abstract In this essay, I respond to a problem raised by Sarah Broadie in her 1987 article “Nature, Craft and Phronesis in Aristotle.” Broadie analyzes Aristotle’s famous craft analogy for natural causation in order to determine whether or not it requires importing a psychological dimension to natural teleology. She argues that it is possible to make sense of the analogy without psychology, but that the tradeoff is a conception of craft so thoroughly de-psychologized that it is rendered unrecognizable, perhaps even incoherent as a referent. I dispute this suggestion and argue, rather, that Aristotle’s insistence on removing psychology from the craft side of the analogy points to his prioritization of techne itself, rather than any particular craftsman, as primary efficient agent. The lack of psychology that characterizes a techne ensures stability and reliability in the causal process that could not be guaranteed by the idiosyncratic psychologies of various craftspeople. The same kind of stability and reliability belong to nature as an efficient cause, forming the basis of the comparison between craft and natural teleology. It is therefore the craft, not the craftsman, that must stand as analog to nature. I demonstrate the value of this revision by applying the analogy to the case of natural teleology: reproduction as depicted in Aristotle’s Generation of Animals. The result is a reading of Aristotle’s analogies that can assuage Broadie’s concerns and allow for a natural thing’s own nature to more fully inhabit its intended role as an inner source of change.

Animism and natural teleology from Avicenna to Boyle.

Historians have claimed that the two closely related concepts of animism and natural teleology were both decisively rejected in the Scientific Revolution. They tout Robert Boyle as an early modern warden against pre-modern animism. Discussing Avicenna, Aquinas, and Buridan, as well as Renaissance psychology, I instead suggest that teleology went through a slow and uneven process of rationalization. As Neoplatonic theology gained influence over Aristotelian natural philosophy, the meaning of animism likewise grew obscure. Boyle, as some historians have shown, exemplifies this uneven process. There is an unresolved tension between his religious convictions and the implicit animism of his empirical practice.

Klasyczna koncepcja postępu w ujęciu Roberta Spaemanna

W artykule zaprezentowano wybrane aspekty klasycznej koncepcji postępu w rozumieniu Roberta Spaemanna. Koncepcję tę wybitny niemiecki myśliciel rozwijał w dyskusji z innymi wizjami postępu, takimi jak modernizm, naturalizm, marksizm, transhumanizm. Wspólna jest dla nich nowożytna idea, zgodnie z którą ciągle wzmagająca się naukowa dominacja nad naturą i wskutek tego również nad człowiekiem oznacza postęp. Taka jednak wizja stoi w sprzeczności z właściwym sensem postępu. Jest on realizowany wówczas, gdy dokonuje się w harmonii z teleologiczną naturą bytów.Wedle wspomnianych wizji postęp jest procesem koniecznym i nieskończonym. Szczególną zaś rolę w określaniu jego dynamiki odgrywa współczesne przyrodoznawstwo z charakterystyczną dla niego tendencją progresywnej instrumentalizacji natury. Spaemann słusznie poddaje ją krytyce. O tym, czy rzeczywiście dokonuje się postęp, rozstrzygają odpowiednie jego kryteria. Wśród nich filozof wskazuje i rozwija kryteria metafizyczne, etyczne (zarówno w ich negatywnym, jak i pozytywnym brzmieniu) oraz teologiczne. Jego zdaniem postęp zakłada moralnie dobre ulepszenia i sytuuje bytowanie człowieka w perspektywie nadziei, motywującej nieprzerwanie do doskonalenia siebie i świata. W artykule podjęto również próbę określenia aktualności, specyfiki i oryginalności analiz niemieckiego myśliciela.

Natural Teleology versus Material Determinism and Chance: Al-'Āmirī against Empedocles and Galen on Nature and Soul

Natural Teleology versus Material Determinism and Chance: Al-'Āmirī against Empedocles and Galen on Nature and Soul

Civil Code as a Legal Basis for Defining the Term. An Agricultural Holding

The aim of the publication is to assess the current legal solution within the scope of placing the notion of an agricultural holding as a basic conceptual category of the agricultural law in the Civil Code. This problem is directly connected with the postulate of coherence of the whole system of private law when it comes to the most important structural elements or just the understanding of basic notions. The statutory regulation of trade in agricultural real estate and agricultural holdings should be a code regulation, and the location of the definition of an agricultural holding in the Civil Code should be conducive to strengthening ownership. In the dilemma whether to keep in the Civil Code the regulation of trade in agricultural land (including its conceptual network with an agricultural holding at the forefront) or to transfer it to a special act (or perhaps even to the Agricultural Code), it is impossible to point to a just and possible solution. On the basis of arguments of teleological nature, especially from the scope of legislative policy, one should definitely opt for keeping the regulation of trade in agricultural land in the Civil Code.

In search of the text generating structure: Jakobson’s theory of the poetic function of language

The classic work of Roman Jakobson,“The Newest Russian Poetry. Sketch One. Ap­proaches to Khlebnikov”, is invariably referred to in the works on the history of structuralism, formalism and the history of the methodology of humanities. This article aims to address sev­eral questions: what are the epistemological attitudes of Jakobson and how are they imple­mented in his work? Can this 'disorganised' and 'sketchy' text be interpreted in context of the future attitudes of the scholar? The avant-garde literature of the early twentieth century not only created new methods of text generation but also required a new epistemological approach and a change in the recep­tive perspective. Jakobson's work is one of the first experiments in describing a new aesthetic phenomenon. Analysing language through shifts, Jakobson explores it in a structuralist way. In “The Newest Russian Poetry” the scholar summarises the ideas that became fundamental for him in the 1960s-1970s: the ideas of the teleological nature of poetry, a close connection between mental and language structures, and the relevance of the identification of text struc­ture as a relatively stable set of relations for the analysis of sense-making and text generation. Exploring the concept of literariness, Jakobson reveals a system of universal and interlevel methods of generating poetic speech. These observations have not lost their relevance and can be applied to the analysis of both avant-garde and classical texts.

On what a theory of natural law is supposed to be

A theory may properly be called a theory of natural law, if either it functions as such a theory is expected to function; or it has the expected content; or it is a plausible interpretation of a theory generally acknowledged to be in the tradition of natural law. It functions as such a theory if it supports appeals to natural law intended to ‘contextualize’ human law. It has the expected content, if it adverts to providential, natural teleology as the basis for a law given to us prior to convention. It would clearly be located in the tradition, and rightly accounted as such a theory, if it were a plausible interpretation of Aquinas’ Treatise on Law, which is the locus classicus for the philosophical treatment of natural law. But the ‘New Natural Law,’ first expounded in Natural Law and Natural Rights (NLNR) of John Finnis, meets none of these criteria. NLNR seems best construed, then, as a contribution to the «law and morality » debate, not a theory of natural law. It gives merely another ‘method of ethics’ along with the many others put forward in the 20th c. If so, the philosophical work needed for a persuasive, contemporary revival of natural law still remains to be done.

Kant’s conception of life and the limits of a discursive intellect

ABSTRACT Kant’s account of natural teleology has recently garnered significant interest, though there is little consensus regarding either Kant’s aim or whether this account coheres with the rest of his critical project. I argue that Kant’s position on natural teleology is only intelligible against the backdrop of his account of conceptual synthesis in the B-Edition of the Transcendental Deduction, in the Critique of Pure Reason, and, more generally, his account of ‘transcendental logic’. Viewed in this light, I argue that we must see Kant as committed to the seemingly implausible claim that there can be no objective ground for the distinction between the living and the non-living, and that, consequently, there could be no possible occasion for the—even regulative—deployment of natural teleological judgment. I argue, further, that this suggests that Kant’s discussion of natural teleology plays a far more significant role in his larger critical project than is commonly understood.

19th-century real analysis, forward and backward

19th century real analysis received a major impetus from Cauchy's work. Cauchy mentions variable quantities, limits, and infinitesimals, but the meaning he attached to these terms is not identical to their modern meaning. Some Cauchy historians work in a conceptual scheme dominated by an assumption of a teleological nature of the evolution of real analysis toward a preordained outcome. Thus, Gilain and Siegmund-Schultze assume that references to limite in Cauchy's work necessarily imply that Cauchy was working with an Archi-medean continuum, whereas infinitesimals were merely a convenient figure of speech, for which Cauchy had in mind a complete justification in terms of Archimedean limits. However, there is another formalisation of Cauchy's procedures exploiting his limite, more consistent with Cauchy's ubiquitous use of infinitesimals, in terms of the standard part principle of modern infinitesimal analysis. We challenge a misconception according to which Cauchy was allegedly forced to teach infinitesimals at the Ecole Polytechnique. We show that the debate there concerned mainly the issue of rigor, a separate one from infinitesimals. A critique of Cauchy's approach by his contemporary de Prony sheds light on the meaning of rigor to Cauchy and his contemporaries. An attentive reading of Cauchy's work challenges received views on Cauchy's role in the history of analysis, and indicates that he was a pioneer of infinitesimal techniques as much as a harbinger of the Epsilontik.

КОНЦЕПТУАЛІЗАЦІЯ ФЕНОМЕНУ ПАНДЕМІЇ У ФІЛОСОФІЇ, БОГОСЛОВ'Ї І РЕЛІГІЄЗНАВСТВІ: КОМПАРАТИВНИЙ АНАЛІЗ

The article provides a comparative analysis of the pandemic discourse in such areas of human knowledge as philosophy, theology and academic religious studies. The philosophical discourse associated with the pandemic phenomenon aims to reflect on the relationship between the individual and the social, the personal and the political, freedom and non-freedom. Through the concept of "biopolitics" philosophy considers this concept as a factor of modern power, although at the same time the epidemic becomes the basis for seeing the Other in a special way and helping him in the current crisis situation. It has been established that in a theological context, a pandemic is not only God's punishment for the sins of ignorance, but also one of the potential options for self-improvement. Theological discourse examines not only the causes of pandemics in humanity, but also tries to understand its teleological nature in the life of every person. The situation of the pandemic creates a special direction in theology, which has already been referred to as "quarantine theology", "pandemic theology", "virus theology", or "coronavirus theology" in general. It was revealed that in academic religious studies, the phenomenon of a pandemic is revealed in the threat-challenge binary opposition. Accordingly, within the framework of this discourse, the study of the specifics of the implementation of the activities of religious organizations, the characteristics of state-confessional relations, as well as the possible consequences of epidemics is carried out. Also, religious understanding focuses not so much on the study of the causes of epidemics, diseases, etc., but focuses on highlighting the specifics of the functioning of religious organizations in such a crisis situation, the peculiarities of state-confessional relations during a pandemic, and disclosing potential consequences for the spiritual , and the laity.

Why Liberalism Persists: The Neglected Life of the Law in the Story of Liberalism's Decline

The liberal consensus surrounding individual rights, rule of law, and tolerance for diversity that once characterized the American legal and political order is in peril. According to an ascendant, “post-fusionist” conservative critique, liberalism’s demise is the inevitable result of a failed philosophical system that fundamentally misunderstands the communal and teleological nature of meaning-making and identity formation. Sharing blame for liberalism’s downfall, according to post-fusionists, are both the right’s liberalism of individualism and the left’s liberalism of diversity. American society currently faces a double-sided dilemma, according to post-fusionists: (1) liberalism’s conception of the person has undermined meaning-making in traditional, natural (private) loci while (2) also leaving little, if any, space for considerations of the common good or meaning-making in the public sphere. As a result, liberal citizens are alienated, and liberal societies are listless. This Essay — Why Liberalism Persists: The Neglected Life of the Law in the Story of Liberalism’s Decline — demonstrates that the practices of liberalism — law especially — are much less vulnerable to the post-fusionist critique than the theories of liberalism that post-fusionists target. Drawing examples from America’s constitutional structure, recent legislative and constitutional developments, and contemporary corporate law, I show that law supports meaning-making, virtue, and the common good by securing the conditions for the exercise of individual conscience and associational autonomy in private sphere and by supporting norms and adopting policies that guarantee equal citizenship in the public realm. Recognizing the meaning-making capacities and functions of law, I argue, better enables those invested in the future of the liberal order — whether students, law teachers, legal professionals, or simply citizens — to defend the institutions that order our world.

The Teleological Nature of Digital Aesthetics – the New Aesthetic in Advance of Artificial Intelligence

If aesthetic and teleological judgments are equally reflective, then it can be argued that such judgments can be applied concurrently to digital objects, specifically those that are products of the rapidly developing sophisticated forms of artificial intelligence (AI). Evidence of the aesthetic effects of technological development are observable in more than just experienceable objects; rooted in inscrutable machine learning, AI’s complexity is a problem when it is presented as an aesthetic authority, particularly when it comes to automated curatorial practice or as a progressively determinative aesthetic force originating in an independent agency that is internally self-consistent. Rooted in theories of the post-digital and the New Aesthetic, this paper examines emerging new forms of art and aesthetic experiences that appear to reveal these capabilities of AI. While the most advanced forms of AI barely qualify for a ‘soft’ description at this point, it appears inevitable that a ‘hard’ form of AI is in the future. Increased forms of technological automation obscure the increasingly real possibility of genuine products of the imagination and the creativity of autonomous digital agencies as independent algorithmic entities, but such obfuscation is likely to fade away under the evolutionary pressures of technological development. It’s impossible to predict the aesthetic products of AI at this stage but, if the development of AI is teleological, then it might be possible to predict some of the foreseeable associated aesthetic problems. Article received: April 10, 2019; Article accepted: July 6, 2019; Published online: October 15, 2019; Original scholarly paper

A literatura infantojuvenil e as amarras da literatura: arte com funcionalidade

Informado pelos Estudos Descritivos da Tradução, este artigo problematiza algumas questões centrais para a literatura infantojuvenil (LIJ) e para a reescrita desse tipo de literatura. Com base na noção de reescrita de André Lefevere e no entendimento de que aspectos ideológicos e poetológicos condicionam a publicação de obras literárias, discute-se o caráter teleológico da LIJ, bem como as imposições de ordem cultural, ideológica ou mercadológica que podem interferir na criação da LIJ ou da literatura em geral. Considera-se que para a compreensão dos fenômenos tradutórios em dada cultura meta faz-se necessário analisar, além de aspectos literários, as condicionantes particulares dessa cultura, observando especialmente as propostas ou concepções de literatura e de sociedade por parte daqueles que atuam no processo de elaboração e difusão das reescritas. Observa-se ainda que diferentes perspectivas ideológicas e poetológicas podem ser entrevistas não somente na diacronia que separa as reescritas mais antigas das contemporâneas, mas também as reescritas publicadas em um mesmo momento histórico poderão apresentar propostas distintas, as quais são concretizadas, por meio de estratégias tradutórias, na própria reescrita, no modo de reler o Outro. Para isso, o artigo ilustra com exemplos concretos a discussão teórica apresentada, sendo abordados casos de projetos tradutórios em sistemas literários distintos, especificamente, Estados Unidos, Polônia e Brasil. Ao discutir as implicações de uma “literatura para” e abordar as fronteiras porosas entre os termos usualmente utilizados na reescrita de LIJ (tradução, adaptação, história recontada), este trabalho objetiva abordar a complexidade da LIJ quanto a sua própria definição e as suas formas de apresentação em detrimento de perspectivas que inserem a LIJ em uma posição de inferioridade ou à margem da literatura.

Framing Christian Eschatology through Natural Teleology? Theological Possibilities and Concerns

Framing Christian Eschatology through Natural Teleology? Theological Possibilities and Concerns

Does Naturalism Make Room for Teleology? The Case of Donald Crosby and Thomas Nagel

Research Article| January 01 2019 Does Naturalism Make Room for Teleology? The Case of Donald Crosby and Thomas Nagel Mikael Leidenhag Mikael Leidenhag University of Edinburgh Mikael Leidenhag is a Research Fellow in Theology and Science at the University of Edinburgh. He obtained his PhD at the University of Uppsala. His current research area is on the relationship between natural teleology and Christian eschatology. Some of his more recent publications are “From Emergence Theory to Panpsychism: A Philosophical Evaluation of Nancey Murphy’s Non-Reductive Physicalism” (Sophia: International Journal of Philosophy and Traditions [2016], “The Mysterianism of Owen Flanagan’s Normative Mind Science” (Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science [2018]), “Religious Naturalism: The Current Debate” (Philosophy Compass [2018]), and Naturalizing God? A Critical Evaluation of Religious Naturalism (forthcoming with State University of New York Press). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Journal of Theology & Philosophy (2019) 40 (1): 5–19. https://doi.org/10.5406/amerjtheophil.40.1.0005 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Mikael Leidenhag; Does Naturalism Make Room for Teleology? The Case of Donald Crosby and Thomas Nagel. American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 1 January 2019; 40 (1): 5–19. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/amerjtheophil.40.1.0005 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressAmerican Journal of Theology & Philosophy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2019 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

New times, new economics (why is the “old” economics failing?)

The purpose of the paper is to analyse the weaknesses, both epistemological and applicative, of the contemporary orthodox economics and, based thereon, to indicate the necessary changes it needs to undergo. Two groups of weaknesses are distinguished here – the intrinsic ones and the acquired ones. The former ones result from diversity and variability of its object of study and from the teleological nature of the economy. The latter ones, related to the methodological principles of economics stem from errors or omissions committed by the founders of economics in the historical development. The author identifies and analyses three such weaknesses – superficiality of cognition, overformalisation and the delusion of universalisation. The analysis shows that globalisation processes and other varied civilisational transformations we have been experiencing over the last 15–20 years have brought into light and highlighted the weaknesses of economics. The author comes to the conclusion that consequently the economics for the 21st century, to meet the challenges of the new times, should undergo three basic shifts: a/ from positive, descriptive science to including also the evaluative and axiological one; b/ from homogeneous, universal science to a considerably contextual one and c/from pure, formalised science to a deeply interdisciplinary one.