Teleonomy

Abstract: This paper proposes a basic revision of the understanding of teleology in biological sciences. Since Kant, it has become customary to view purposiveness in organisms as a bias added by the observer; the recent notion of teleonomy expresses well this “as-if” character of natural purposes. In recent developments in science, however, notions such as self-organization (or complex systems) and the autopoiesis viewpoint, have displaced emergence and circular self-production as central features of life. Contrary to an often superficial reading, Kant gives a multi-faceted account of the living, and anticipates this modern reading of the organism, even introducing the term “self-organization” for the first time. Our re-reading of Kant in this light is strengthened by a group of philosophers of biology, with Hans Jonas as the central figure, who put back on center stage an organism-centered view of the living, an autonomous center of concern capable of providing an interior perspective. Thus, what is present in nuce in Kant, finds a convergent development from this current of philosophy of biology and the scientific ideas around autopoeisis, two independent but parallel developments culminating in the 1970s. Instead of viewing meaning or value as artifacts or illusions, both agree on a new understanding of a form of immanent teleology as truly biological features, inevitably intertwined with the self-establishment of an identity which is the living process.

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter discusses Waddington's comments about the need to establish the logic of the relationships between evolutionary processes and behavior. It solves the problem of paradox of unity versus diversity. This is done by actually teasing out learning's teleonomic universals. The teleonomic universals are: (1) the evolutionary origins of learning are the same in all animals that can learn; (2) learning shares the same logical relationship to phylogenesis in all learners; and thus (3) learning always serves the same fundamental function. In doing so, it always tends to act in support of phylogenesis. At the same time, the nested relationship that learning has to phylogenesis demands diversity of learning. The chapter explains learning as one out of several classes of change in the internal organization of an animal that are consequent upon changes in external environmental order. All learning is a function of innate mechanisms of adaptability, which are both provided and primed by phylogenesis with respect to some specific primary referent.

Abstract: Throughout his career, Piaget rejected the adequacy of random trial and error, or variation and selection models. Instead, he argued that teleonomic autoregulations were necessary to account for the facts of evolution and development. This purported necessity of teleonomy has been a controversial and generally rejected aspect of his model – especially in its evolutionary version. Necessary teleonomy, however, is not an isolated part of Piaget’s thinking, but is instead deeply motivated by two central forces throughout Piaget’s oeuvre: a complex of assumptions organized around his structuralist assumption concerning the nature of knowledge, and the centrally important epistemological problem of logical necessity. Structuralism, however, is shown to be a seriously flawed foundation for Piaget’s epistemology, and to be at the center of a number of inadequate and erroneous positions within Piaget’s writings – positions concerning epistemology, evolution, and even necessity itself. An alternative conception of knowledge is outlined – interactivism – that offers a corresponding alternative approach to necessity.