Kant's Teleology

Kant argues for almost a new idea of teleology. He states that “nature’s purposiveness is for our cognitive faculties”, which is subjective when teleology is meant to be objective. This however is essential for his teleology because he says we naturally attribute purposiveness to nature. He argues that this is unavoidable, in a way arguing that anthropomorphism is unavoidable, and therefore we give nature intentionality. If this is unavoidable, Kant states we must use our reason to decide nature’s ends while at the same time recognizing that we are attributing intentionality on to nature. He says that scientists such as Newton, argue that we have to examine the mechanical processes of nature, but these processes are hidden from us. Kant argues that we must take a more broad view. By doing this for years we have been able to discover many laws of nature.

            Later on in this reading, Kant argues that we are either looking at nature in very mechanical terms or in very teleological terms. He describes these both as not being able to know truly what nature is but only being able to set principles by which we can view nature and use our reason with. Kant seems to be saying that there is no way to know what true nature is, but the closest way to know what it is, is to use reason.

            We have discussed anthropomorphism a lot in class, and in this essay Kant directly deals with it. I thought his argument was strong, but it still is scary thinking that we should determine the ends of nature, because that then effects the way we act towards nature, for example the polemical language we saw in the readings by Mcphee, and how that influenced the actions they took.