Thomas Teufel

Kant’s denial, in his Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment, of the possibility of a Newton of the Blade of Grass is often cited as evidence that Kant rejects the possibility of biology as causal science altogether. Kant’s denial is then treated as symptomatic of the irrelevance, for contemporary biology and philosophy of biology, of Kant’s teleological views in the second half of his _Critique of the Power of Judgment_. But when Kant’s denial is considered in its proper context—namely, as a re-formulation of the antithesis position of Kant’s antinomy of the teleological power of judgment—a more nuanced picture emerges. Kant embraces both the necessity and sufficiency of causal (mechanistic) explanations for an account of the _corporeal reality_ of organic nature. But Kant denies the sufficiency of causal (mechanistic) explanations for an account of the totality of our _phenomenal awareness_ of organic nature.

In this paper I argue, first, that Kant's technical definition of purposiveness in § 10 of the third Critique is designed to abstract from all forward-looking considerations (teleological, intentional, normative, etc.) that accompany the conventional understanding of the term. Kant seeks to establish a strictly backward-looking, etiological conception of purposiveness in order to capture the causal link connecting artifacts with their concepts. I argue, second, that he succeeds. Kant's etiological conception of purposiveness neither collapses into mere mechanism, nor smuggles normative considerations in through the backdoor. I frame my discussion by critically engaging Hannah Ginsborg's reading of § 10 – a leading representative of normative interpretations of Kant's notion of purposiveness.

The notion of ‘power of judgement’ in the title of Kant'sCritique of the Power of Judgementis commonly taken to refer to a cognitive power inclusive of both determining judgement and reflecting judgement. I argue, first, that this seemingly innocuous view is in conflict both with the textual fact that Kant attempts a Critical justification of the reflecting power of judgement – only – and with the systematic impossibility of a transcendentally grounded determining power of judgement. The conventional response to these difficulties is to point out that, Kant's systematic ambitions in the thirdCritiquenotwithstanding, reflection, qua concept-forming synthesis, is too closely tied to determination to be a cognitive power in its own right. I argue, second, that this response is question-begging, since the notion of reflection it employs is not only not one central to the thirdCritiquebut one antecedently tied to the understanding. I argue, third, that Kant's discussion, in the pivotal § § 76–7, of our cognitive relation to sensible particularity addresses an epistemic problem present (but not raised) in theCritique of Pure Reason. This is the problem of the synthesizability, qua absolute unity, of unsynthesized intuitions. Solving this problem requires Critical justification of a principle of reflection. It follows that Kant's systematic ambitions in the thirdCritiqueare appropriate. Given the problem Kant seeks to address, he must offer what he takes himself to be offering: aCritique of the(Reflecting)Power of Judgement.

In his teleological antinomy in the Dialectic of the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment, Kant presents two competing views of the explanatory power of causal mechanism for a science of origins. Kant expresses both the positive (thesis) view and the negative (antithesis) view in the guise of merely regulative principles for the reflecting power of judgment. The regulativity of these principles is usually taken to entail: i. Kant's demotion of causal mechanism to an explanatory principle of heuristic, merely subjectively necessary status; ii. the possibility of mechanically inexplicable phenomena in nature. I argue that neither consequence ensues. Kant in both thesis and antithesis of his teleological antinomy is as firmly committed to the universal necessity of judging natural origins mechanistically as he ever was and would be. Accordingly, Kant is fully committed to the mechanical explicability of all causal processes (including organic processes) in nature. At issue in the antinomy is, instead, the universal sufficiency of judging natural origins mechanistically.

A well-rehearsed move among teleological realists in the philosophy of biology is to base the idea of genuinely teleological forms of organic self-reproduction on a type of causality derived from Kant. Teleological realists have long argued for the causal possibility of this form of causality—in which a whole is considered the cause of its parts—as well as formulated a set of teleological criteria of adequacy for it. What is missing, to date, is an account of the mereological principles that govern the envisioned whole-to-part causality. When the latter principles are taken into account, we find that there is no version of whole-to-part causality that is mereologically, causally and teleologically possible all at once, as teleological realism requires