Aristotle on Teleology

Introduction:

Teleology is central to Aristotle’s scientific method. He applies teleological explanations to many disciplines, including physics, cosmology, meteorology, theology, biology, zoology, anthropology, political science, and ethics. Although there has been much discussion of the role of teleology with respect to each of these specialized domains, there has been no comprehensive treatment of the issue. But a thoroughgoing investigation can tell us much about Aristotle’s philosophy, about Greek philosophy in general, and about our own natural philosophy.

Part I: Teleology as a critical explanatory framework:

Aristotle is commonly considered the inventor of teleology, although the precise term originated in the eighteenth century. But if teleology means the use of ends or goals in natural science, then Aristotle was rather a critical innovator of teleological explanation. Teleological notions were widespread among Aristotle’s predecessors, but he rejected their conception of extrinsic causes such as intelligence or god as the primary cause for natural things. Instead, he considers nature itself as an internal principle of change and as an end, and his teleological explanations focus on what is intrinsically good for natural substances themselves. Aristotle’s philosophy was later conflated with the teleological proof for the existence of god, the anthropic cosmological principle, creationism, intelligent design, vitalism, animism, anthropocentrism, and opposition to materialism, evolution, and mechanism. But and examination of both his explicit methodology and the explanations actually offered in his scientific works (on physics, cosmology, theology, psychology, biology, and anthropology) shows that Aristotle’s aporetic approach to teleology drives a middle course through traditional oppositions between: causation and explanation, mechanism and materialism, naturalism and anthropocentrism, realism and instrumentalism.

Chapter 1: Historical background to the interpretation of Aristotelian teleology

According to the standard history, Aristotelian teleology and final causes were discarded in the scientific revolution in favor of the mechanical philosophy. In fact, the term teleology was invented in the eighteenth century to designate the search for evidence of god in purposes, goals, intelligence, and design manifest in nature. The background natural theology is the adaptation of Aristotelian philosophy by Greek commentators and Neoplatonists (to bring it into line with the creation myth of Plato’s Timaeus), and by Arabic and Latin commentators (to being it into line with the creationism of Islam and Christianity). But already with the scholastics, there was a move to consider final causes applicable only to cases of intentional agency, or as a heuristic for material and moving causes (later, ‘mechanistic’ causes). Kant attempted to resolve the impasse between the natural theology and heuristic perspectives in his third Critique. Kant’s view of teleology has had a profound and arguably distorting influence on the later interpretation of Aristotle’s use of ends and goods in natural science. A better starting point for the examination of Aristotle’s teleology is a treatise by Aristotle’s associate and successor, Theophratus, who in his Metaphysics presents a critical view of teleological explanations.

Chapter 2: Preliminary study of Aristotle's causes

Aristotle considers nature, art, spontaneity, luck, necessity, and intelligence to be causes, and they fit into the four kinds of cause that he distinguishes throughout works on natural philosophy. The four kinds of cause, e.g. matter, mover, form, end, are not themselves causes, but are classes of causes. The causes can be combined in various ways, and the same thing can be classified as several kinds of cause. Causes play a crucial role in scientific demonstration: the middle term in a syllogism of natural science. But only intrinsic (as opposed to incidental) causes can play this role, and so it is important to distinguish between things that happen to be predicated of a cause (such as paleness of a the sculptor), and things essential to a cause (such as the art of sculpture). Due attention to these distinctions can show how Aristotle thinks that various causes can be integrated (such as ends and movers) in a way that is still explanatory, and how causation does not violate temporal sequence, requiring “backwards causation”.

Chapter 3: Teleological Notions

The key term of Aristotle’s teleology is “the cause for the sake of which”. Aristotle discusses in several key texts (Physics, On the Soul, Metaphysics, Eudemian Ethics) the fact that this has two different senses: aim and beneficiary. The aim of a knife is cutting, but the beneficiary is the person who does, or orders, the cutting. Aristotle uses this distinction to show how natural things have both aims and are beneficiaries of their functions. He also shows how non-natural things, such as god, can operate as causes for the sake of which, but not as beneficiaries. Eternal things (like the unmoved mover, forms of living things, the universe itself, nature, and so forth) cannot be beneficiaries, because they cannot undergo change. Thus, the beneficiaries of Aristotle’s teleology are the elements, plants, and animals that can both undergo change and have functional aims. A survey of other terms of Aristotle’s teleology, such as “nature does nothing in vain”, the terms “complete” or “perfect”, as well as “end” and “entelechy” further show the specific orientation of Aristotle’s teleology, as do his use of axiological terms such as “better” and “fine”.

Chapter 4: Teleological Dialectic

Aristotle articulates his natural teleology in the context of a dialectical engagement with his predecessors, identifying each of them with a salient causal factor: Empedocles (luck or chance), Democritus (necessity or spontaneity), Anaxagoras (intelligence or mind), and Plato (art and form). Aristotle tries to co-opt each of these factors into his naturalistic teleology by an a fortiori argument: to the extent that luck, necessity, intelligence, or art is a cause, nature must even more so be considered a cause. For luck is an incidental cause of that which nature is an intrinsic cause, necessity is a conjoint cause of that which nature is a leading cause, and art imitates nature.

Part II: Teleological Explanations in Natural Science

Aristotle is commonly considered the inventor of teleology, although the precise term originated in the eighteenth century. But if teleology means the use of ends or goals in natural science, then Aristotle was rather a critical innovator of teleological explanation. Teleological notions were widespread among Aristotle’s predecessors, but he rejected their conception of extrinsic causes such as intelligence or god as the primary cause for natural things. Instead, he considers nature itself as an internal principle of change and as an end, and his teleological explanations focus on what is intrinsically good for natural substances themselves. Aristotle’s philosophy was later conflated with the teleological proof for the existence of god, the anthropic cosmological principle, creationism, intelligent design, vitalism, animism, anthropocentrism, and opposition to materialism, evolution, and mechanism. But and examination of both his explicit methodology and the explanations actually offered in his scientific works (on physics, cosmology, theology, psychology, biology, and anthropology) shows that Aristotle’s aporetic approach to teleology drives a middle course through traditional oppositions between: causation and explanation, mechanism and materialism, naturalism and anthropocentrism, realism and instrumentalism.

Chapter 5: Teleology and elements

Did Aristotle consider the properties of the elements to be teleologically explicable? According to some commentators, he did not, but considered these to operate according to material, moving, or mechanical causes. According to others, he did, and this is evidence of his commitment to an “overall” or “global” teleology. Both of the positions are wrong. Aristotle did consider each of the elements teleologically explicable, but he considered the beneficiaries of their properties and motions to be the elements themselves. This is relatively clear in the case of ether, the element that composes the heavenly bodies: it has a simple motion in a circle, which is a manifestation of the intelligence of the extra-terrestrial bodies. But the other elements are included in a cycle of transmutation that guarantees their perpetual existence. This is a benefit to them according to the axiom: it is better to exist than not exist. Thus, rainfall is a necessary and cyclical process (happening completely independently of the needs of living things), but it is also somehow benefits the elements that are transformed in the process, for in so doing they complete cycles that resemble or imitate the eternal cycles of the heavenly bodies.

Chapter 6: Teleology and organisms i: general principles

Elements compose organic bodies, including tissues (homogenous bodies) and organs (heterogeneous bodies), and in so doing are for the sake of the whole organism of which they are the transformed parts. But the starting point for the explanation of living things is the identification of its functions: nutrition and reproduction for plants, perception and locomotion for animals, and virtue and intelligence for humans. Since the functions of plants are fundamental to all other living things, the vegetative functions are the primary ones in biological explanation. Thus, the survival and reproduction of each species is the basis for its explanation, and these are represented as goods for it. But although goods come first in the order of explanation, they come last in the order of development of the organism. Thus, intelligence is the last thing developed by a human, even though everything else has come to be for the sake of this. The reversal of explanatory and genetic order does not, however, imply some kind of mysterious “backwards causation”.

Chapter 7: Teleology and organisms ii: specific explanations

Aristotle normally begins a teleological explanation of a living thing with an identification of its goods (reproduction, pleasure, intelligence, etc.). The existence of these goods implies certain requirements or “hypothetical necessity”. For example, if a fish is to survive and reproduce, it must be able to acquire food, which requires that it move, and so it must have fins, which in turn require tissues, and these must be composed of a certain combination of the elements. Some features of living things are not necessary for its survival, but only as a concomitant to some other necessity (for example the production of waste residua is a product of nutrition, but is not itself for the sake of something), or because it is better for the creature that way. The case of animal behavior shows that Aristotle does not indulge in anthropomorphism: apparently purposeful behavior (such as the weaving of webs by spiders, and the building of nests by birds) is not caused by deliberation. In fact, far from assimilating animal to human behavior, Aristotle goes the other direction and shows how many purposeful human activities (especially in the arts) happen without deliberation.

Chapter 8: Teleology and humans

Humans are capable of intentionally pursuing goals that they consciously set for themselves, and thus a different order of teleology applies to them, one which places them in the domain of ethics and politics. Every inquiry, art, and science has a goal, and they can broadly be classified into the productive-practical on the one hand, and the theoretical, on the other. Practical knowledge aims at practical goods by grasping causes for the sake of producing effects, while theoretical knowledge aims at grasping causes for the sake of knowledge itself, an intrinsic good. The ultimate good for a human can be identified by a process of elimination: whatever is the highest good for another kind of organism cannot be the unique good for this kind of thing, and so the end of human life cannot be nutrition, reproduction, growth, perception or pleasure, for these are the proper goods of other kinds of organisms. This leaves knowledge, in particular theoretical knowledge. It is argued that Aristotelian teleology cannot be anthropocentric, or else it would be impossible to identify the unique human good by elimination, and the activity of the final good for humans (contemplation and knowledge of causes) would have no real object.

Chapter 9: Teleology and cosmos

Aristotle’s cosmos consists of natural substances, each with its own proper functions, motions, and ends. To this extent, his cosmos is teleological. But there is no overall or cosmic teleology in a stronger sense, above and beyond the applicability of teleological explanations to each of the natural things. For the universe (or nature as a whole) does not have a proper function, or motions, goods or ends. The stars, elements, plants, animals and humans do, and nature is the principle of motion and the end for each of these. In the final chapter of Metaphysics XII (Lambda), Aristotle discusses an aporia about how the good exists in “the nature of the whole”. He ends not with a positive account, but with a criticism of his predecessors who have advanced an account of an extrinsic cause of the cosmos.

Conclusion:

Aristotle’s teleological explanations are most successful in the domain of living things, and there is good reason to think that organisms are the objects of his most important teleological remarks. The attempts to apply teleological explanations to less complex entities (such as the elements) and more complex entities (such as cities) have been judged by history a failure. His explanations of organisms, on the other hand, have been celebrated by molecular biologists, embryologists and developmental biologists, and advocates of adaptationism in evolutionary biology. Teleology as a scientific proposition seems to require a sufficient level of complexity, but to break down at levels of too much complexity (at the level of human behavior, or of society, for example) or too little complexity (at the level of inanimate entities, for example). But whatever the scientific verdict on Aristotle’s teleology, it is clear that his conception of intrinsic ends has important implications for axiology (the theory of value). For he has shown how it is possible to identify objective goods, independent of human minds, and to avoid the dilemma between radical egalitarianism on the one hand and arbitrary or self-serving hierarchy on the other.