Teleology and the Zombie Mistress

Teleology and the Zombie Mistress

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Teleology and the Zombie Mistress

Richard Sandlant

October 2014

Teleology and the Zombie Mistress

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Introduction Since the time of the ancient Greeks, there have been two very different approaches to explaining

the extraordinary phenomena of life and consciousness, and the incredible order and complexity

that we see in the natural world. In the first way, we ask about the purposes of the things we want

to explain. We ask ‘why?’ In the second way, we describe the causal chain of events that led to the

things we want to explain. We ask ‘how?’1

The first approach, known broadly as ‘teleology’, was central to thinking about the world for more

than two thousand years, until the Scientific Revolution in the 17th Century. The second approach,

often called ‘mechanistic’, supplanted teleology following the enormous success scientists achieved

through explaining the world in terms of cause and effect.

As Bertrand Russell writes, the main reason the cause and effect approach won out is because

“experience has shown that the mechanistic question leads to scientific knowledge whereas the

teleological question does not”.2 The mechanistic approach proved to be far more productive in

certain respects whereas the teleological approach did not seem to generate any comparable

addition to our knowledge. As Francis Bacon once famously put it, "research into Final Causes, like a

virgin dedicated to God, is barren and produces nothing".3

Today, teleology is largely regarded as unfashionable, outdated and discredited. Yet the idea

continues to exert a fascination and from time to time there is a resurgence of interest in the ‘why?’

question. Despite the undoubted success of science, the mechanistic explanation remains deeply

unsatisfying to many people. We still wonder if there might not be some meaning, or purpose to the

universe after all.

Clearly, it seems that there can be meaning and purposes in our lives (though how this is even

possible is another matter), but many people have a distinct feeling that there must be some larger

purpose associated with life, consciousness, and existence itself. Surely all the incredible wonder,

beauty and complexity that we see around us is more than just the accidental by-product of blind

physical processes?

The evolutionary biologist, Ernst Mayer, once observed that teleology seems more plausible and

appealing to a layperson, rather than a scientist.4 To the untrained eye, it sure seems as if there has

been an evolutionary progression towards more sophisticated forms of life and consciousness. It

sure looks as though there are purposes and end-goals in nature.

“Author after author has referred to the progression from the lowest prokaryotes

(bacteria) to the nucleated eukaryotes, the metazoans, warm-blooded mammals and

birds, and finally man with his elaborate brain, speech and culture. The defenders of

1 For more on this, see Frans Soontiëns (1992), “Evolution, Teleology and Theology”, International Journal for Philosophy and Theology, Volume 53, Number 4, pp.394-406. 2 Bertrand Russell (1946), History of Western Philosophy, Unwin paperbacks, p.84. 3 Quoted in C. D. Broad (1926), The Philosophy of Francis Bacon: An Address Delivered at Cambridge on the

Occasion of the Bacon Tercentenary, 5 October. 4 Ernst Mayer (1992), “The Idea of Teleology”, Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 53, Number 1, Jan-Mar, pp.134-35.

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orthogenesis never tired of claiming that this was irrefutable evidence for some intrinsic

power in living nature, towards progress, if not even to an ultimate goal”.5

Indeed, it is not only the layperson that is susceptible to the allure of teleology. Biologists too find it

difficult to describe what goes on in the biological world without using teleological language, a fact

that has always been embarrassing. For example, a biologist might say “the birds flew south in the

winter to get to warmer weather” when what they probably should say is something like: “the birds

that didn’t fly south died”. As the scientist J.B.S. Haldane famously put it: “teleology is like a mistress

for a biologist: he cannot live without her but he’s unwilling to be seen with her in public”.6

Of course, any respectable biologist will protest that s/he is only using teleological language for

convenience—it’s only an as-if teleology: “we don’t literally mean what we say”.7 And recently,

biologists have found a clever way to sneak their mistress in through the back door using the

‘naturalized’ concept of teleonomy (of which we’ll have more to say in a moment).

But if science maintains that, appearances to the contrary, there are no purposes in nature, what

could this mean for humans? The fact is that we can see in our own lives purposeful, intentional

behaviour directed towards end-goals. Does this mean that end-goals can exist in nature, or are we

somehow being self-deluded here? Are we, in reality, no more than wholly-determined bio-

mechanical zombies, playing out our various ‘cybernetic programs’ that have evolved through blind

chance and natural selection, and only thinking (in some machine-like, computational way) that we

have purposes?

What would it mean, anyway, to say that there can be purposes in nature? The physical world is

composed, science tells us, of thermodynamic energy flows, force fields and sub-atomic particles.

Could these things have purposes? Do purposes emerge naturally somehow when enough quarks

get together? Or if we say that only living things can have purposes are we in effect saying that

there must be something additional to the physical realm, perhaps some ‘supernatural life-force’,

‘vitalist spark’ or ‘emergent epiphenomenalism’? Ask enough of these questions, and one begins to

see why it is much simpler if we only have to deal with cause and effect.

These are, however, exactly the sorts of questions that I wish to ask. Is teleology really so empty

compared to the findings of modern science? Does it have nothing important to tell us about the

nature of the universe? And what exactly should we expect from teleology anyway?

To address these questions, I will first examine the meaning of ‘purpose’, and its application to both

living and non-living entities. I will then examine Plato and Aristotle’s thoughts on teleology and

show why medieval teleology was such a soft target for the Scientific Revolution. I’ll finish by

showing, hopefully, that teleology is far from irrelevant, and should be regarded as an essential

component (alongside science) of our knowledge about ourselves and the universe.

5 Ernst Mayer (1992), “The Idea of Teleology”, pp.134-35. 6 See Victoria N. Alexander (2011), The Biologist's Mistress: Rethinking Self-Organization In Art, Literature, And

Nature, Emergent Publications; Web address: http://biologistsmistress.wordpress.com/. 7 Andreas Weber and Francisco J. Varela (2002), “Life after Kant: Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality”, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Volume 1, p.98.

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Teleology and Purpose Teleology is defined as: “The explanation of phenomena by the purpose they serve rather than by

postulated causes”.8 This concept of ‘purpose’ is at the heart of teleology—so our first step must be

to understand what purpose is. What exactly does it mean to have a purpose? What sorts of things

can have purposes?

This will lead to a key question—can only biological organisms have purposes? Beyond that lays the

grand prize—could the universe as a whole have a purpose?

The Oxford dictionary tells us that a purpose is: “The reason for which something is done or created

or for which something exists”. So what do we mean by ‘reason’? The definition of a ‘reason’ is a

‘cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event’. Now, because teleology deals with

‘purpose’ and not just with ‘postulated cause’, we’re not interested in ‘reasons’ to the extent that

they are simply ‘causes’ but rather to the extent that they are ‘explanations’ and/or ‘justifications’.

To illustrate the difference, we might say that the reason the tree branch waved was because the

wind blew, but in that case we’d be talking about cause and perhaps explanation but not

justification and certainly not purpose. On the other hand, if we said that the reason I visited the

clinic was to donate blood then, clearly, we would be talking about more than just ‘postulated

causes’, we would be talking about why I visited the clinic—the explanation, justification, reason or

purpose that I had.

At this point, there is another important ingredient that we need to bring into the mix. The

dictionary definition of the word ‘justification’ is: “Good reason for something that exists or has been

done” (emphasis added). As the philosopher Thomas Nagel writes, “An intentional agent must be

thought of as having aims that it sees as good”.9 So any given purpose must not only be based on

reasons, but necessarily on good reasons. This brings value into the meaning of purpose, which is

one more of the many reasons why teleological explanations are problematic in science.10

The Zombie Mistress

Our question has now become: what kind of entities can have good reasons for their actions? This is

where we enter slippery territory. One view, which we might call the ‘common-sense’ view, is that

only a conscious, living being is capable of having justifications or good reasons for its actions.

As the philosopher David Ross puts it:

“Unconscious teleology implies a purpose which is not the purpose of any mind, and hence

not a purpose at all”.11

According to this way of thinking, purposes require minds. How could it be possible for an inanimate

object to have ‘good’ reasons or justifications for its ‘actions’? A rock rolling down a hill under the

8 All dictionary references are to the Oxford Dictionary: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/. 9 Thomas Nagel (2012), Mind and Cosmos, Oxford University Press, p.25. 10

See Mark Bedau (1992), “Where’s the Good in Teleology?”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 52, Number 4, p.781. 11 Mark Bedau (1990), “Against Mentalism in Teleology”, American Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 27, Number 1, cited on p.61.

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force of gravity is end-directed in only a passive, automatic way12, whereas a mind acts on a ‘good

purpose’. Surely having a ‘good reason’ for an action implies some measure of intentionality and

awareness of the value of the action.

Such a view, you may not be surprised to learn, is troublesome for science. As the philosopher

Francis Sparshott puts it:

“[I]n this necessary introduction of the notion of awareness or consciousness into an

explanation of what ‘purpose’ means we find a partial explanation of the hostility the

concept arouses”. 13

Why the ‘hostility’? The reason is that the descriptive methods used by science reduce

consciousness to observable external behaviour, and most scientists are materialists who think that

subjective experience must be an illusion of some kind.14 Consciousness, in the eyes of science, is

something that is spooky, supernatural, mysterious and career-limiting.15

As a result, a biologist will typically regard using hidden mental states to explain behaviour as

‘unscientific’ and besides that, unnecessary. Indeed, when a biologist talks about the purposes of a

living entity ‘consciousness’ need not enter the picture at all. Instead, the living entity can be viewed

as a sort of cybernetic ‘servo-mechanism’, with at most a computer-like brain that operates certain

highly-evolved behavioural ‘programs’.16

With a powerful enough computer-brain, a living entity (such as a human being) can quite

legitimately calculate ‘good reasons’ for its actions using a core value framework (e.g. survival and

reproduction) that has been shaped largely by natural selection.17

This bio-mechanical zombie, of course, is none other than the biologists’ new mistress (‘teleonomy’).

She has undergone some radical surgery in order to ‘naturalise’ her mysterious purposes and make

them fully compatible with scientific models of cause and effect.

Unconscious Teleology

There is an interesting implication to all this. If we ‘naturalise’ consciousness away but keep

purpose, then for starters not only the ‘higher’ animals with their more sophisticated and obvious

‘intentions’ can be said to have purposes.

We could equally well say that the reason the paramecium swam to other side of the petri dish was

to get to its dinner.18 Even if we think it ‘unscientific’ to suggest that a paramecium has any

12 Mayr describes such phenomena as ‘teleomatic’. See Ernst Mayr (1974), “Teleological and Teleonomic: A New Analysis”, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume 14, pp.91-117. 13 F. E. Sparshott (1962), “The Concept of Purpose”, Ethics, Volume 72, Number 3, April, pp.157-170. 14 Richard Sandlant (2014), Two materialist theories of qualia: Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained and Nicholas Humphrey’s Soul Dust, http://independent.academia.edu/RichardSandlant. 15 "Look, in my discipline it's okay to be interested in consciousness, but get tenure first. Get tenure first." https://www.ted.com/talks/john_searle_our_shared_condition_consciousness/transcript. 16 Colin Allen and Marc Bekoff (1994), “Function, Natural Design, and Animal Behaviour: Philosophical and Ethological Considerations”, In N.S. Thompson (ed.) Perspectives in Ethology, Volume 11: Behavioural Design, Plenum Press, pp.1-47. 17 Ernst Mayr (1974), “Teleological and Teleonomic: A New Analysis”, pp.91-117. 18 For this example, see Antonio Damasio (2004), Looking for Spinoza, Vintage, pp.40-41.

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modicum of subjectivity, as a biological servo-mechanism reacting to various chemical stimulants

and other types of postulated causes it clearly has a ‘good reason’ for its observed behaviour

(swimming towards its food). Even a tree branch growing towards the sunlight has a purpose for

this growth—to get to the sunlight. And there is a good reason too—because that is the direction

for sustenance, life and so on.

It turns out that brains and consciousness are not strictly necessary for purposes to exist in the

universe. All that is required is a sensing mechanism of some sort and a value distinction, such that

‘good’ exists and can provide a justification for an action or event. As the philosopher Andrew

Woodfield writes:

“It is not fantastic to countenance goal-directed behaviour that is not consciously purposive.

We think that many lowly organisms behave in a goal-directed way; and we have learnt to

describe certain self-correcting mechanisms as goal-directed“.19

The scientific view is simply that goal-directed bio-mechanical entities can come into existence

through chance, necessity, and natural selection. Through evolution, such mechanisms can take on

a myriad of forms, including forms with complex brains and behavioural programs capable of

generating highly sophisticated purposes.

All teleology/teleonomy really requires is that the entities in question are capable of having good

reasons for their actions. Since it is possible to imagine a bio-mechanical zombie performing this

trick, the issue of consciousness becomes almost immaterial (no pun intended).

But if purposes can be generated out of certain naturally oriented states, haven’t we just created

space to say that ‘life itself’ or ‘the universe’ might generate natural purposes in a similar way? If we

expand the class of entities that might legitimately be considered to have purposes, could this class

of entities include the universe itself?

Classical Teleology Before we address such questions, it will be instructive to take a short detour and consider some

ancient philosophy on teleology.

A look at Plato and Aristotle will be helpful, not only because they practically invented teleology, and

not only because the way their thoughts on teleology were subsequently combined into medieval

Scholasticism helps to explain much about why the idea was destined for such a spectacular crash in

the 17th Century, but because they were the first to put their finger on certain very important

aspects of what is going on here.

Let’s begin by acknowledging that ‘the ancients’ understood ‘efficient cause’ (in modern parlance:

physical cause and effect). They were not ignorant about ‘push-pull’ causation. They could see that

the actions of one object can ‘physically’ cause a reaction in another object. They might have

entertained a few imaginative yet incorrect ideas about the ‘physics’ of what was going on here, but

they recognised that ‘efficient causation’ is an important part of the story.

19 Andrew Woodfield (1976), Teleology, Cambridge University Press, p.89.

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However, despite this, the ancients believed that you can’t have complete knowledge of a thing by

understanding ‘efficient cause’ alone—you must also understand its ‘final cause’, its telos (end or

completion), or as Aristotle liked to put it: that for the sake of which it happens.20 You can’t have

true knowledge of a thing unless you understand its purpose. You have to answer the question

‘why?’

Why does Socrates sit in his jail cell? An ‘efficient cause’ explanation will refer to the movement of

his body, the force of gravity, the bones and sinews in his legs. But all this tells us is the causal

history that led up to Socrates sitting in the cell. For the full picture, we need to know that Socrates

had good reasons for sitting in his cell.21 There is a larger purpose involved which explains, more

completely than any merely causal explanation, why Socrates sits in his cell, despite the fact that this

will inevitably lead to his death.

Now, according to ‘teleonomy’, Socrates is a zombie with a computer brain and his intentions can be

reduced to ‘efficient causes’. Plato and Aristotle, however, were not yet acquainted with the

biologist’s new mistress, so they regarded answering this ‘why?’ question as absolutely vital.

And interestingly, each of them took a different path. In fact, there are really only two broad

sources for ‘good reasons’, and Plato and Aristotle chose one each. These two paths define a major

distinction between what we can call ‘external’ versus ‘internal’ teleology.

External Teleology

In external teleology, end-goals or purposes come from outside the entities that are being

explained.22 Plato can be considered the ‘god-father’ of external teleology. In a famous dialogue

between Socrates and Timaeus (Timaeus, 360 B.C.E.), Plato has Timaeus (a contemporary

Pythagorean philosopher) outline a mythology in which the cosmos is designed by a supernatural

Craftsman (whom Plato called the Demiurge) in accordance with ‘eternal and perfect patterns’.23

This concept of ‘eternal and perfect patterns’ is another, equally famous, Platonic idea. Plato

thought that the visible world is a pale copy of an unseen, ‘otherworldly’ realm that consists of

perfect ‘forms’ (sometimes also called ‘Ideas’), including the ‘form of the Good’.24 He had in mind

something more concrete than mere semantics. In Plato’s world the perfect forms have a real,

objective existence.

All very well, but Plato still needed to explain why a Demiurge would bother to create this world.

Surely, he thought, the visible cosmos embodies values such as order, proportionality, beauty, and

goodness because these things are intended by the Demiurge?25 If they are intended, then there

20 The word ‘teleology’ is derived from telos, which is based on the Greek word τέλος, meaning ‘end’, ‘purpose’, or ‘goal’. 21 Andre Ariew (2002), “Platonic and Aristotelian Roots of Teleological Arguments”, in Ariew, A. et al (ed.s), Functions: New Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology and Biology, Oxford University Press, p.10. 22 Note that this ‘entity’ might be a living organism, such as a human being or an animal of some description, but it may also be some kind of inanimate object or collection of objects. 23

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html. 24

Arthur O. Lovejoy (1936, 2011), The Great Chain of Being, Transaction Publishers. 25 Richard McDonough (undated article), “Plato: Organicism”, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Web address: http://www.iep.utm.edu/platoorg/ , accessed 10 May 2014.

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had to be a ‘good reason’. The good reason, Plato concluded, could only be that it is better that our

world exist. As the philosopher Richard McDonough puts it:

“The Demiurge creates a living and intelligent world because life is better than non-life and

intelligent life is better than mere life”.26

Of course, this idea of the ‘Divine Designer’ is one of the most powerful ideas in all human history.

Plato’s conception of externally-sourced design and purpose subsequently had a major influence on

Jewish, Christian, and Muslim cosmologies.27 In fact, as we will see the external version became the

dominant idea in teleology.

However, Plato’s idea that certain values, such as order, proportionality, beauty, and goodness, can

have an objective existence (ultimately because existence is better than non-existence) and can

therefore provide an external source of objective meaning is an equally potent proposition and one

that we will return to later.

Internal Teleology

In internal teleology, end-goals or purposes are sourced somehow from within the entity that is

being explained. Aristotle, Plato’s student, can be viewed as the ‘biological father’ of internal

teleology. Aristotle’s ideas are difficult, sometimes contradictory, and at times just plain wrong, but

also unquestionably deep, even after two thousand years. So there is a continuing fascination with

Aristotle, for good reason.

Let’s try and understand a little of what he said. Aristotle was particularly interested in explaining

the obvious design of living organisms. Not having anything like natural selection or genetic theory

at hand, and having never met the biologist’s teleonomic mistress, he developed a powerful

combination of pre-scientific ideas with a unique version of internal teleology at the center.

The first idea is that what makes the living world unique is that is has an internal (or

immanent) source of change or motion. Nature (physis) is matter that moves by itself.

The second idea is that life represents the actualisation of ‘form’ (eidos), or ‘essence’. To

modern ears, this Aristotelian concept of ‘form’ sounds very strange. He had in mind the

essence of a thing—think of the ‘flying-ness’ of a bird, or for humans our capacity for rational

thought.28 ‘Form’ is what things can become (in the sense that the form of an acorn is the

oak tree that it grows into).

The third idea is that life is all about moving from potentiality (dunamei) to actuality

(energeia, entelecheia). Indeed, for Aristotle, the more ‘actual’ a thing becomes the more

perfect and complete it is.

Put these ideas together and you get purposes emerging naturally out of the living movement of

matter, in the form of potential end-states. These potential end-states then become the point, or

purpose, of the living things that come to embody them.

26 Richard McDonough, Op. cit. 27

Jeffrey Wattles (2006), “Teleology past and present”, Zygon: A Journal of Religion and Science, Volume 41, Number 2, June. 28 Margaret J. Osler (1996), “From Immanent Natures to Nature as Artifice: The Reinterpretation of Final Causes in Seventeenth Century Natural Philosophy”, The Monist, Volume 79, Number 3, p.154.

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When Aristotle looked at living things, he saw an inner movement towards more perfect forms (or

end-goals) that were somehow already latent or present. Energeia comes into the picture because it

takes work for nature to actualise and maintain these higher ‘forms’. He coined the term entelechy

(without properly defining it, to the frustration of philosophers ever since) by combining the Greek

words enteles (complete, perfect, full-grown), with telos (end, purpose), and echein (to have).

Aristotle is, of course, famous for his doctrine of the ‘Four Causes’, which is often used to define

classical teleology. As mentioned, he believed that in order to truly understand a thing, you must

consider all of its causes, not just ‘efficient cause’ but also how living matter moves towards the

actualisation of potentiality, towards more perfect forms. Consequently, the ‘Four Causes’ are:

1. Material cause—“that out of which” a thing is made;

2. Formal cause—“the form”, or what it is to be (i.e. the potential to be made actual);

3. Efficient cause—“the agent source of the change (or rest)”; and

4. Final cause—“the end, that for the sake of which a thing is done”.29

The ‘material cause’ of something is simply what it is made of. The ‘formal cause’ concerns its

‘essence’ or inner potentiality. ‘Efficient cause’ is pretty much just the familiar ‘physical causation’

of modern science. The ‘final cause’ is the end-goal or purpose. In practice, Aristotle said that the

formal cause (inner potentiality) and the final cause (telos) could be different ways of stating the

same thing, so that ‘formal’ and ‘final’ causes can overlap.

Put another way, Aristotle saw the telos of a living thing as its mature form or ‘completion’. For

Aristotle, teleology is all about this inner motion from potentiality to actuality. The more ‘form’

something has the more ‘actual’ it becomes (Aristotle regarded matter without ‘form’ as merely

‘base potentiality’). The final cause (telos) is therefore logically the point at which ‘form’ reaches its

highest actuality.30

Aristotle saw the essence of life (which he called psyche or ‘soul’) as the mature form of a natural

body. In other words, Aristotle saw ‘life’ as the actuality of a natural body under certain conditions.

All natural (i.e. living) bodies have an inner source of motion and the form of ‘aliveness’. In a

memorable phrase, Aristotle said that “if the eye was an animal—sight would [be] its soul”.31

For both Plato and Aristotle, end-goals and purposes are always for the better. Right from the start,

the ancients recognised the important role value plays in teleology.32 As Aristotle puts it, “not

everything that is last claims to be an end (telos), but only that which is best (emphasis added)”.33

The Greeks clearly associated the concept of teleology with the universe “developing towards

something continually better than what went before”.34

29 For a good summary, see Andrea Falcon (2012), “Aristotle on Causality”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 15 October. Web address: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-causality/. 30 Bertrand Russell (1946), History of Western Philosophy, Unwin paperbacks, p.178-9. 31 Aristotle, De Anima, 412b 18-19. 32

Mark Bedau (1992), “Where’s the Good in Teleology?”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 52, Number 4, December, pp.781-806. 33 Cited in Andrea Falcon (2012), Op. cit. 34 Bertrand Russell (1946), History of Western Philosophy, Unwin paperbacks, p.180.

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The Eclipse of Teleology Skipping forward in time (indeed, more than a thousand years), we find Plato and Aristotle’s ideas

still playing a major role in the development of European thought.

The spread of Christianity brought Plato’s idea of the Divine Designer, though this idea is so powerful

that it probably would have sprung out of the earth fully formed had Plato never existed. The

rediscovery of Aristotle in the 13th Century brought his unique thoughts on ‘form’, ‘potentiality and

actuality’, and the rest, which Thomas Aquinas synthesised into Christian theology.

All of these ideas were blended together into something called ‘Scholastic-Aristotelianism’, which

dominated the intellectual landscape for a few hundred years until it was eclipsed by the Scientific

Revolution in the 17th Century.

This period represents perhaps the highpoint of teleology’s influence in philosophy and science.

Unfortunately, it was largely an era of pseudo-scientific nonsense and obscurant speculative

metaphysics.35

To truly understand why teleology is viewed the way it is today we have to go back to the strange

medieval worldview that was characteristic of this period. It was a vastly different paradigm to

today’s ‘popular’ conception of an inanimate, mechanistic universe which, if the truth be told, is

equally as strange and, moreover, to the extent that it is still based on Newtonian physics, out of

date. But if you like your Kuhnian paradigm shifts, this is a really good one!

Try to imagine living in a tiny universe that is not much more than a small stage under lights,

watched over by the Grand Designer. Aristotle is the final word in natural philosophy (science) and

metaphysics, but he has more than a few things ‘wrong’ (for example, his theory of motion).36

Moreover, his ideas on form and the ‘four causes’ have now been largely reframed in terms of

external teleology. Thus, the Scholastics teach that heavy things fall to the earth and lighter bodies

rise not only because of their immanent nature but also because this is the intent of the Designer.

Indeed, everything now has a reason and a proper place, and the authorities teach that the natural

world has been designed specifically for human enjoyment, instruction and use.37

In this intellectual environment, teleological explanations largely consisted of the ‘Argument from

Design’ with the addition of speculative rationalist deduction. Only the limits of the imagination

could keep this kind of teleology from reaching the heights of absurdity, and imagination was

apparently a strongpoint. To give an example, a French Bishop named Charles François d'Abra de

Raconis explained the saltiness of the sea as follows:

If the purpose of the sea is to provide a home for fish and allow for shipping and commerce

[as it must be, of course!], then the explanation for the saltiness of the sea would have to be

35

For a more sympathetic treatment, see Edward Feser (2014), Scholastic Metaphysics. A Contemporary Introduction, Transaction Publishers. 36 John Henry (2008), The Scientific Revolution and the Origin of Modern Science, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 27. 37 E. A. Burtt (1932), The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, Dover Publications, p.19.

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that “saltiness keeps the sea from putrefying and makes it stronger and denser so as to hold

the greater weight of ships”.38

Clearly, whatever merits teleology might have the Scholastic-Aristotelian version was almost wholly

detached from reality. And so things might have continued, had not a small number of revolutionary

thinkers, among them Galileo Galilei and René Descartes, begun to develop a radically different

approach to explaining natural phenomena. The new approach would lay the groundwork not only

for the mechanics of the 17th century but for the future epistemology of science itself.39

In essence, they stopped asking why the natural world might be this way or that, and instead

focused on using precise mathematical descriptions of quantity, size, motion, and so on, to verify

‘facts’ about the world through repeatable experiments. After the “rationalistic orgy” of Scholastic-

Aristotelianism, the new approach became celebrated for being grounded on "irreducible and

stubborn facts”, objective, testable by anyone.40

Galileo described the change in focus as follows:

“The present does not seem to be the proper time to investigate the cause of the

acceleration of natural motion concerning which various opinions have been expressed by

various philosophers, some explaining it by attraction to the center … Now all of these

fantasies, and others too, ought to be examined; but it is not really worthwhile. At present it

is the purpose of our Author merely to investigate and to demonstrate some of the

properties of accelerated motion (whatever the cause of this acceleration may be) …”41

The new approach dispensed with three of Aristotle’s ‘Four Causes’ and kept only ‘efficient cause’.

Isaac Newton put it as follows:

“The moderns, having rejected substantial forms and occult qualities, have undertaken to

bring back the phenomena of nature to mechanical laws”.42

The ‘moderns’ found the cause and effect approach to be the most productive when what was to be

explained was restricted to what could be observed, described and quantified.43 The reason was not

only because this produced ‘objective facts’ to work with, but because it revealed an extraordinary

underlying order to the universe. Their repeated experiments uncovered physical regularities which,

though they were inexplicable in themselves, indeed not much more than brute facts, enabled a new

type of scientific explanation to be developed based on mathematical ‘laws of nature’.44

38 Cited in Jeffrey K. McDonough (2009), “Leibniz on natural teleology and the laws of optics”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 78, Number 3, pp.505-544. 39 Jacques Monod (1971), Chance and Necessity, Alfred and Knopf, p.21. 40 Alfred North Whitehead (1925), Science and the Modern World, The Free Press, pp. 3, 15, 114. See also Bertrand Russell (1935), Sceptical Essays, Unwin paperbacks, pp.31-35. 41 Margaret J. Osler (1973), “Galileo, Motion and Essences”, Isis, Volume 64, Number 4, p.505. 42 Lydia Jaeger (2008), “The Idea of Law in Science and Religion”, Science and Christian Belief, Volume 20, Number 2, p.135. 43

Dennis des Chene (2008), “Aristotelian Natural Philosophy: Body, Cause, Nature”, in John Carriero and Janet Broughton (ed.s), A Companion to Descartes, Wiley-Blackwell, pp.17-32. 44 Ernst Nagel (1961), The Structure of Science, Routledge and Kegan Paul, p.4.

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Importantly, mathematical laws explain very little in themselves; they merely re-describe observed

regularities using mathematical language. Newton's law for gravitation, for example, describes the

observed causal relations between objects that attract each other at a distance but tells us nothing

about why the objects attract each other in that way. As the physicist Richard Feynman put it,

“[T]here is no model of the theory of gravitation today, other than the mathematical form”.45 As the

philosopher Bertrand Russell put it: “All that physics gives us is certain equations giving abstract

properties of their changes. But as to what it is that changes, and what it changes from and to—as

to this, physics is silent”.46

However, despite this lacuna, the new mathematical laws provided keys to unlock many doors. To

begin with, using various techniques it was possible to extract yet more mathematical hypotheses

from which observed facts were deductible.47 The scientists were then able to test and verify the

new hypotheses mathematically and/or experimentally and in this way extend their knowledge—

indeed, to this day scientists are still working on ‘cracking the code’!

But beyond even that, the scientists found that the growing corpus of scientific knowledge could be

applied to predict and control natural phenomena. In a short space of time, the ‘hypothetico-

deductive’ model proved to be enormously productive in generating new scientific discoveries and

the invention of a host of useful technologies across a wide range of human activities. This

enormous practical success only further served to reinforce the conviction that the scientific method

was the most reliable source of human knowledge.48

So it was, that scientists stopped asking ‘why?’ questions and switched to asking ‘how?’ questions.

Medieval teleology had, in effect, disqualified itself through an excess of rationalist-theological

speculative-nonsense, whereas the new scientific method offered a way to identify truths more

certain than anything that had gone before (even if the philosophers still carped from the sidelines

about irrational faith in the observed regularities49).

With the new methodology, there was simply no longer any reason to enquire about the purpose of

a thing. Speculation about ‘why?’ could never produce anything comparable to mathematical laws,

verifiable facts, or enable anyone to predict or control nature. The idea of purpose came to be

regarded as metaphysical, anthropomorphic, and above all, unnecessary. As a result:

“Purpose, which had since Aristotle formed an intimate part of the conception of science,

was now thrust out of scientific procedure”.50

Teleology had been made redundant, its reputation in tatters. The scientific method, by contrast,

went on to greater and greater success, demonstrating its effectiveness beyond a shadow of a

doubt, reinforcing the validity of the new approach. Along the way, anything that could not be

45 Richard P. Feynman (1992), The Character of Physical Law, Penguin, p.39. 46 Bertrand Russell (1959), My Philosophical Development, Unwin Books, p.13. 47 Hans Reichenbach (1951), The Rise of Scientific Philosophy, University of California Press, p.100. 48

Ernst Glasersfeld (1990), “Teleology and the Concepts of Causation”, Philosophica, Volume 46, Number 2, pp.17–43. 49 Peter Medavar (1991), The Threat and the Glory, Oxford University Press, p.92. 50 Bertrand Russell (1945), History of Western Philosophy, Unwin paperbacks, p.523.

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observed, measured or quantified, either mathematically or experimentally, came to be seen as

unverifiable, hence excluded from serious consideration as a ‘scientific fact’.

Not only teleology fell into this category, but all things subjective including life, consciousness, and

mind. Using the ‘scientific method’, the subjective world could only be described and quantified

through external signs and behaviour. Extraordinary difficulties, not yet resolved, were generated

when causality itself was caught in the net, for (as the philosopher David Hume showed) the nature

of causality cannot be understood through external observation alone. As the philosopher Hans

Jonas put it, it is only our subjective experience that gives us an understanding of how force

operates in the world.51

Exclusion meant, in practical terms, that subjectivity and all that it entailed could not exist in the

eyes of science. Anything outside the methodological boundaries was, by definition, ‘unscientific’. It

came to be viewed as surrender to mysticism or the supernatural. However, as the philosopher

Edward Feser writes:

“The reason qualitative features don’t show up is not that the method has allowed us to

discover that they aren’t there but rather that the method has essentially stipulated that

they be left out of the description whether they are there or not”.52

So it was that science came to see living beings as teleonomic machines and recused itself from

considering what our purpose might be. Above all, the idea that the universe itself might have a

telos was rejected most emphatically. As the biologist Jacques Monod put it, “[T]he scientific

attitude implies what I call the postulate of objectivity—that is to say, the fundamental postulate

that there is no plan, that there is no intention in the universe”.53

Discussion We now have enough pieces of this puzzle to put a picture together. I will begin by stating my

position. I have an intuition that there is indeed an underlying purpose—a telos—that can be said to

exist in the universe; something that is closely related to life and consciousness.54

I have in mind an objective purpose that we can identify using a mix of scientific knowledge and

reasoning from the brute fact of our own subjective experience (i.e., traditional scientific findings

and good old-fashioned metaphysics). It is always a good principle for the science to come first in

order that philosophy may have something to reflect on.55

So, how do we identify this telos using our scientific knowledge? We are in luck. Much of the work

has already been done for us by biologists and philosophers with the concept of teleonomy.

We have seen that all that is required for purposes to exist is a ‘sensing mechanism’ and a value

distinction. When a given servo-mechanism can distinguish value (‘good and bad’, if you like) we get

51 Hans Jonas (1966), The Phenomenon of Life, University of Chicago Press, pp.24-25. 52 Edward Feser (2014), Scholastic Metaphysics. A Contemporary Introduction, Transaction Publishers, p.14. 53 Cited in Frank J. Prial (1076), “Jacques Monod, Nobel Biologist, Dies: Thought Existence is Based on Chance”, New York Times, 1 June. 54

See Richard Sandlant (2013), Realist / Idealist. An essay on life, meaning and purpose in a material world, http://independent.academia.edu/RichardSandlant. 55 R. G. Collingwood (1960), The Idea of Nature, Oxford University Press, p.2.

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purpose. The existence of naturally occurring, bio-chemical, cybernetic machines with purposes is

not controversial within science.

It is of course not surprising that teleology/teleonomy finds its most fertile ground in the study of life

and consciousness. While physics views the world in terms of inanimate objects and uses the

objective language of mathematics, biology deals with animated bodies which have sensing

mechanisms and can make value distinctions. For this reason, living beings can be described as

“embodied teleological processes”.56

But do we conclude from all this that living beings are merely teleonomic machines, or is there

something more going on? The ‘common sense’ view would seem to be that there is indeed an

important additional element: ‘subjectivity’. However, as we have seen, science cannot ‘measure’

this subjectivity using its tried and true methods. Therefore, science is forced to regard the

phenomenon as an illusion of some sort, and reduce it to teleonomy.

What can we do? It seems that the only option left is to fall back on our own subjective experience.

Is this a valid approach? The developmental psychologist and philosopher Jean Piaget once said that

“any problem can become scientific if it is sufficiently delimited and admits of a solution verifiable by

everyone”.57 The problem here is: how can everyone verify the existence of the subjective? How

could my subjective experience be verifiable by everyone when from an external perspective there is

nothing verifiable?

One solution to this conundrum is to have everyone verify their own subjective experience

(admittedly, zombies may find this difficult). Indeed, this is how we know that subjectivity exists in

the first place—we only know about this phenomenon because we are alive, conscious and self-

aware. If each of us verifies our own subjectivity, and can corroborate its existence to the rest, then

subjective experience can be ‘verified by everyone’.

If we can verify subjectivity, then we can make the enormous leap from teleonomy to teleology. We

can dispense with cybernetic machines and servo-mechanisms, and kiss our fake zombie mistress

goodbye. But why is this subjectivity so important? What is going on here?

The reason Aristotle is still regarded as ‘the Master’ by many biologists is because two thousand

years ago he put his finger on a unique characteristic of living beings. He saw that living nature

moves by itself. Consequently, he developed a philosophy of immanent natural purpose which

highlighted:

“The kind of purposefulness and goal-directedness that can account for everybody’s naïve

intuition: we strive to go on, to develop, to keep ourselves in a dynamical balance”.58

With the exception of the zombies among us, each of us can vouch for this innate organic

purposefulness and striving in our own lives. We can experience it directly for ourselves and see it

operating in the natural world, if we know what to look for. It is not always or necessarily conscious;

56 Andreas Weber (2001), “The 'Surplus of Meaning'. Biosemiotic aspects in Francisco J. Varela's philosophy of cognition”, Cybernetics & Human Knowing, Volume 9, Number 2, pp.11-29. 57

Jean Piaget (1965), Insights and Illusions of Philosophy, New American Library, pp. 109-10. 58 Andreas Weber and Francisco Varela (2002), “Life after Kant: natural purposes and the autopoietic foundation of biological individuality”, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Volume 1, Issue 2, p.100.

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it does not even require a mind. It is something that comes into being through the “primordial

tendency of matter manifest in the form of organisms”.59

This is what is important about the subjective: if we allow for even a whiff of it to exist then a telos

comes into being. Science tells us that purpose exists where there is a sensing mechanism and a

value distinction. Subjectivity is sensing, it is feeling, and the ability to feel is itself the Mother Value

of all values.60 The telos that comes into being with subjectivity is therefore an incredibly powerful

value distinction, perhaps the most powerful of all: that between existence and non-existence. The

telos at the heart of existence is a concern to go on, a ‘yes’ to continued existence.61 This is

fundamentally the answer to the question ‘why?’

Once the ability to feel and its associated value exists then a universe of extraordinary possibility is

opened up. For every actual thing that exists there will be a set of adjacent possibilities: the

possibility of ceasing to exist, the possibility of continuing to exist, and the possibility of becoming

something better. There is always the possibility of something more. If the subjective exists, then

this fact alone will generate a wellspring of fundamental values: existence is better than non-

existence, life is better than non-life, and mind is better than non-mind.

Plato was right, certain values, such as order, proportionality, beauty, and goodness, can have an

objective existence and can therefore provide an external source of objective meaning. But to truly

understand teleology, we need to dispense with the view that matter is inanimate. Science rejected

Aristotelian forms and hidden powers and explained ‘motion’ in terms of mathematical laws alone.

Galileo regarded the notion of ‘force’ as “very obscure”, preferring to measure the outer appearance

rather than speculate on its internal nature. We still live in the shadow of 17th Century

epistemological paradigms; even though science has long since moved on and we should now be

able to recognise that there are active principles in matter.62

If we follow Ariadne’s thread all the way back from our own subjective experience to the very

beginning of the universe, then some form of sensing and value must have existed prior even to the

emergence of biological life. The ‘Law of Continuity’ suggests that when the universe exploded into

being 13.7 billion years ago it was already “biased towards the marvellous”.63

All of the values that we are concerned with today, such as order, proportionality, beauty, and

goodness, were present at the moment of the Big Bang. They were already our future goals, but

only in a universe that was somehow already ‘alive’ to the possibility.

59 Andreas Weber and Francisco Varela (2002), “Life after Kant”, p.113. 60 Andreas Weber (2002), “Feeling the signs: The origins of meaning in the biological philosophy of Susanne K. Langer and Hans Jonas”, Sign Systems Studies, Volume 30, Number 1, p.188. 61

For more on this, see Hans Jonas (1966), The Phenomenon of Life, University of Chicago Press. 62 See David Gunn (2013), Pneumatology of Matter, Iff Books, for an excellent discussion. 63 Thomas Nagel (2012), Mind and Cosmos, Oxford University Press, p.92.

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Questions and Answers

Throughout this paper I have asked a number of questions about teleology. Though the paper

provides a general response I provide more direct responses below.

If science maintains that, appearances to the contrary, there are no purposes in nature, what could

this mean for humans?

Science does maintain, more or less, that there are no purposes in nature aside from teleonomic

purposes. This means, in effect, that the only purposes that exist are the purposes of mechanical

zombies and cybernetic machines. What does this mean for humans? Of course, it is de-

humanising. Most people would not be comfortable with being described as a bio-chemical

machine, and would be even less comfortable if they appreciated that a corollary is that their

consciousness must be an illusion. The key part of our humanity that is missing from the scientific

picture is our subjectivity, because it cannot be verified by scientific methodology.

The fact is that we can see in our own lives purposeful, intentional behaviour directed towards end-

goals. Does this mean that end-goals can exist in nature, or are we somehow being self-deluded

here?

Teleonomy (the biologist’s zombie mistress) provides an explanation for how end-goals can exist in a

materialistic universe, but beyond that science is saying that we are indeed self-deluded if we think

that there is anything more. My argument is that if we accept the existence of the subjective, then

there is clearly something more than cybernetics at play here. This ‘something more’ is inextricably

linked with the existence of life and consciousness, and ‘active principles’ in matter.

Are we, in reality, no more than wholly-determined bio-mechanical zombies, playing out our various

‘cybernetic programs’ that have evolved through blind chance and natural selection, and only

thinking (in some machine-like, computational way) that we have purposes?

No, of course not. It takes a certain amount of mental gymnastics to view ourselves in this way but

apparently humans have a particular knack for mental gymnastics.

What would it mean, anyway, to say that there can be purposes in nature? The physical world is

composed, science tells us, of thermodynamic energy flows, force fields and sub-atomic particles.

Could these things have purposes?

My argument is that if subjectivity exists, you get sensing and value. With subjectivity, the telos

comes into being automatically. The ability to feel is itself the ‘Mother Value’ that provides the

foundation stone for teleology. For sophisticated living beings (like humans) the telos will be

comparatively complex, whereas for something primordial like a thermodynamic energy flow, force

field or sub-atomic particle, the telos will be much simpler in nature. We already know something of

the telos through core values such as order, proportionality, beauty, and goodness.

Do purposes emerge naturally somehow when enough quarks get together? Or if we say that only

living things can have purposes are we in effect saying that there must be something additional to

the physical realm, perhaps some ‘supernatural life-force’, ‘vitalist spark’ or ‘emergent

epiphenomenalism’?

Teleology and the Zombie Mistress

17

When enough quarks get together, new purposes emerge naturally. The physicist and Nobel

Laureate, Murray Gell-Mann, might describe this as a gateway event that opens up “whole new

realms of possibility, sometimes involving higher levels of organisation or higher types of function”.64

The theoretical biologist and complexity guru Stuart Kauffman might describe it as a process through

which “the initial actual plus its adjacent possible can be considered a new actual, which will then

have a new adjacent possible”.65 There are many ways to describe the same process. However, all

of this is entirely possible in a physical universe if we accept the existence of subjectivity. There is no

need to postulate anything additional to the physical realm.

Is teleology really so empty compared to the findings of modern science? Does it have nothing

important to tell us about the nature of the universe? And what exactly should we expect from

teleology anyway?

In this paper I have tried to show that teleological explanations should not be confused with or

directly compared with scientific explanations, even though both types of explanation are valuable.

Scientific explanations enable us to identify natural regularities and use them productively. The

existence of these natural regularities explains something important about the universe but,

ironically, science basks in the glow without being equipped to explain what it really signifies. It is

absurd to try to use teleology to explain ‘the saltiness of the sea’ but it is not absurd to use it to

explain why the universe has produced life and consciousness.

If purposes can be generated out of certain naturally oriented states, haven’t we just created space

to say that ‘life itself’ or ‘the universe’ might generate natural purposes in a similar way? If we

expand the class of entities that might legitimately be considered to have purposes, could this class

of entities include the universe itself?

I do not argue that the universe is some sort of vast cybernetic system that generates purposes,

though there may be some truth in this model. Instead, my argument relies on the existence of

subjectivity and uses the ‘Law of Continuity’ to say that active principles must go ‘all the way down’.

The ‘ability to feel’, in combination with the adjacent possible, is what generates the telos. In the

first moments of the universe, the possibility of everything that could exist in the future was already

present. We can think of all these possibilities as Platonic or Aristotelian forms waiting to be made

actual via some entelechy. Thanks to the ‘ability to feel’, there is a tendency, primordial at first but

more sophisticated once living beings come into existence and become intelligent and self-aware,

for the universe to embody values such as order, proportionality, beauty, and goodness.

64 Murray Gell-Mann (1994), The Quark and the Jaguar, Little, Brown and Company, p.240. 65 Stuart A. Kauffman (2008), Reinventing the Sacred, Basic Books, p.64.