Abstract
The bad reputation teleological thinking enjoys in many circles may perhaps be traceable to its metaphysical history. As a young man with some interest in philosophy I was taught that there are two metaphysical variants of teleology, the transcendental form which saw in it a divine law, and the immanent form which regarded purposiveness as one of Nature’s inherent principles of design. I daresay that many scientists would have been willing to accept immanent teleology on its merits had it not been for the fact that it failed to provide a causal explanation and thus had no predictive value. The current scientific explanation is based on a causal relation between events A and B of such a nature that, knowing A one can predict that B will occur.
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Granit, R. (1972). In Defense of Teleology. In: Karczmar, A.G., Eccles, J.C. (eds) Brain and Human Behavior. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-95201-2_24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-95201-2_24
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