With Kant, Beyond Kant: The Organisational Approach to Naturalised Biological Teleology

This paper critically examines the organisational approach (OA) to biological teleology in relation and opposition to Immanuel Kant’s notion of natural purpose. Whereas for Kant biological purposiveness leads to an antinomy of mechanism and teleology, the OA succeeds in naturalising biological purpose through the notion of biological organisation as self maintaining and self-determining. In particular, I argue that the OA naturalisation strategy hinges on two theoretical moves: (1) adopting a pluralistic understanding of causality which conciliates mechanism and teleology in one causal network (through the notion of closure of constraints and Robert Rosen’s anti-Newtonian stance); (2) reinterpreting Kant’s own notion of natural purpose, by, contra Kant, centring self-organisation (‘epigenesis’) over organisation (‘design’). This work not only positions the OA in the contemporary ‘post-Kantian’ theoretical debates about biological teleology as a unique naturalising position but also identifies theoretical organisational bases for further studies regarding the role of biological self determination in evolution.