Results for 'natural teleology'

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  1. Animism and Natural Teleology from Avicenna to Boyle.Jeff Kochan - 2021 - Science in Context 34 (1):1-23.
    Historians have claimed that the two closely related concepts of animism and natural teleology were both decisively rejected in the Scientific Revolution. They tout Robert Boyle as an early modern warden against pre-modern animism. Discussing Avicenna, Aquinas, and Buridan, as well as Renaissance psychology, I instead suggest that teleology went through a slow and uneven process of rationalization. As Neoplatonic theology gained influence over Aristotelian natural philosophy, the meaning of animism likewise grew obscure. Boyle, as some (...)
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  2. Naturalized Teleology: Cybernetics, Organization, Purpose.Carl Sachs - 2023 - Topoi 42 (3):781-791.
    The rise of mechanistic science in the seventeenth century helped give rise to a heated debate about whether teleology—the appearance of purposive activity in life and in mind—could be naturalized. At issue here were both what is meant by “teleology” as well as what is meant “nature”. I shall examine a specific episode in the history of this debate in the twentieth century with the rise of cybernetics: the science of seemingly “self-controlled” systems. Against cybernetics, Hans Jonas argued (...)
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  3. The “Rational Kernel” of Natural Teleology: Dialectical Interaction as the Concrete-Universal’s Form of Development.Rogney Piedra Arencibia - 2023 - Dialektika 5 (12):1-20.
    It is often believed that the only alternative to an idealist conception of natural phenomena excludes both the presence of objective universal forms and their progression towards higher forms as the finality of processes in the natural world. Realism regarding the universal and teleological approaches regarding processes are signs of idealism. Therefore, materialism, it would seem, must conform to a nominalist and mechanical view of nature. However, an intelligent materialist reading of idealism’s classics reveals a more complex scenario. (...)
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  4. What’s at stake in the debate over naturalizing teleology? An overlooked metatheoretical debate.Carl Sachs & Auguste Nahas - 2023 - Synthese 201 (4):1-22.
    Recent accounts of teleological naturalism hold that organisms are intrinsically goaldirected entities. We argue that supporters and critics of this view have ignored the ways in which it is used to address quite different problems. One problem is about biology and concerns whether an organism-centered account of teleological ascriptions would improve our descriptions and explanations of biological phenomena. This is different from the philosophical problem of how naturalized teleology would affect our conception of nature, and of ourselves as (...) beings. The neglect of this metatheoretic distinction has made it difficult to understand the criteria we should use for evaluating proposals to naturalize teleology. We argue that a clearer distinction between scientific and philosophical contexts shows that we need more than one set of criteria for evaluating proposals to naturalize teleology, and that taking these into account might advance or dissolve recurring debates in the literature. (shrink)
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  5. From Craft to Nature: The Emergence of Natural Teleology.Thomas Johansen - 2020 - In Liba Taub (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Science. Cambridge University Press. pp. 102-120.
    A teleological explanation is an explanation in terms of an end or a purpose. So saying that ‘X came about for the sake of Y’ is a teleological account of X. It is a striking feature of ancient Greek philosophy that many thinkers accepted that the world should be explained in this way. However, before Aristotle, teleological explanations of the cosmos were generally based on the idea that it had been created by a divine intelligence. If an intelligent power made (...)
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  6. Teleology and function in non-living nature.Gunnar Babcock - 2023 - Synthese 201 (4):1-20.
    There’s a general assumption that teleology and function do not exist in inanimate nature. Throughout biology, it is generally taken as granted that teleology (or teleonomy) and functions are not only unique to life, but perhaps even a defining quality of life. For many, it’s obvious that rocks, water, and the like, are not teleological, nor could they possibly have stand-alone functions. This idea - that teleology and function are unique to life - is the target of (...)
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  7. Teleology and Natures in Descartes' Sixth Meditation.Karen Detlefsen - 2012 - In Descartes' Meditations: A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 153-176.
    In this paper, I consider Descartes’ Sixth Meditation dropsy passage on the difference between the human body considered in itself and the human composite of mind and body. I do so as a way of illuminating some features of Descartes’ broader thinking about teleology, including the role of teleological explanations in physiology. I use the writings on teleology of some ancient authors for the conceptual (but not historical) help they can provide in helping us to think about the (...)
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  8. Explanation, teleology, and analogy in natural history and comparative anatomy around 1800: Kant and Cuvier.Hein van den Berg - 2024 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 105 (C):109-119.
    This paper investigates conceptions of explanation, teleology, and analogy in the works of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Georges Cuvier (1769-1832). Richards (2000, 2002) and Zammito (2006, 2012, 2018) have argued that Kant’s philosophy provided an obstacle for the project of establishing biology as a proper science around 1800. By contrast, Russell (1916), Outram (1986), and Huneman (2006, 2008) have argued, similar to suggestions from Lenoir (1989), that Kant’s philosophy influenced the influential naturalist Georges Cuvier. In this article, I wish (...)
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  9. Teleological Essentialism: Generalized.David Rose & Shaun Nichols - 2020 - Cognitive Science 44 (3):e12818.
    Natural/social kind essentialism is the view that natural kind categories, both living and non-living natural kinds, as well as social kinds (e.g., race, gender), are essentialized. On this view, artifactual kinds are not essentialized. Our view—teleological essentialism—is that a broad range of categories are essentialized in terms of teleology, including artifacts. Utilizing the same kinds of experiments typically used to provide evidence of essentialist thinking—involving superficial change (study 1), transformation of insides (study 2) and inferences about (...)
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  10. On Nature and Normativity: Normativity, Teleology, and Mechanism in Biological Explanation.Lenny Moss & Daniel J. Nicholson - 2012 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (1):88-91.
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  11. Monsters, Laws of Nature, and Teleology in Late Scholastic Textbooks.Silvia Manzo - 2019 - In Rodolfo Garau & Pietro Omodeo (eds.), Contingency and Natural Order in Early Modern Science. Springer Verlag. pp. 61-92.
    In the period of emergence of early modern science, ‘monsters’ or individuals with physical congenital anomalies were considered as rare events which required special explanations entailing assumptions about the laws of nature. This concern with monsters was shared by representatives of the new science and Late Scholastic authors of university textbooks. This paper will reconstruct the main theses of the treatment of monsters in Late Scholastic textbooks, by focusing on the question as to how their accounts conceived nature’s regularity and (...)
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  12. An externalist teleology.Gunnar Babcock & Daniel W. McShea - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):8755-8780.
    Teleology has a complicated history in the biological sciences. Some have argued that Darwin’s theory has allowed biology to purge itself of teleological explanations. Others have been content to retain teleology and to treat it as metaphorical, or have sought to replace it with less problematic notions like teleonomy. And still others have tried to naturalize it in a way that distances it from the vitalism of the nineteenth century, focusing on the role that function plays in teleological (...)
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  13. Nature as a good Housekeeper. Secondary Teleology and Material Necessity in Aristotle’s Biology.Mariska Leunissen - 2010 - Apeiron 43 (4):117-142.
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  14. Optimality and Teleology in Aristotle's Natural Science.Devin Henry - manuscript
    In this paper I examine the role of optimality reasoning in Aristotle’s natural science. By “optimality reasoning” I mean reasoning that appeals to some conception of “what is best” in order to explain why things are the way they are. We are first introduced to this pattern of reasoning in the famous passage at Phaedo 97b8-98a2, where (Plato’s) Socrates invokes “what is best” as a cause (aitia) of things in nature. This passage can be seen as the intellectual ancestor (...)
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  15. Teleological essentialism across development.Rose David, Sara Jaramillo, Shaun Nichols & Zachary Horne - forthcoming - Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.
    Do young children have a teleological conception of the essence of natural kinds? We tested this by examining how the preservation or alteration of an animal’s purpose affected children’s persistence judgments (N = 40, ages 4 - 12, Mean Age = 7.04, 61% female). We found that even when surface-level features of an animal (e.g., a bee) were preserved, if the entity’s purpose changed (e.g., the bee now spins webs), children were more likely to categorize the entity as a (...)
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  16. Resolving teleology's false dilemma.Gunnar Babcock & Dan McShea - 2023 - Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 139 (4):415-432.
    This paper argues that the account of teleology previously proposed by the authors is consistent with the physical determinism that is implicit across many of the sciences. We suggest that much of the current aversion to teleological thinking found in the sciences is rooted in debates that can be traced back to ancient natural science, which pitted mechanistic and deterministic theories against teleological ones. These debates saw a deterministic world as one where freedom and agency is impossible. And, (...)
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  17. Politics and Teleology in Kant.Paul Formosa, Avery Goldman & Tatiana Patrone (eds.) - 2014 - University of Wales Press.
    The fourteen essays in this volume, by leading scholars in the field, explore the relationship between teleology and politics in Kant’s corpus. Among the topics discussed are Kant’s normative political theory and legal philosophy; his cosmopolitanism and views on international relations; his theory of history; his theory of natural teleology; and the broader relationship between morality, history, nature, and politics. _Politics and Teleology in Kant_ will be of interest to a wide audience, including Kant scholars; scholars (...)
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  18. Teleology and Realism in Leibniz's Philosophy of Science.Nabeel Hamid - 2019 - In Vincenzo De Risi (ed.), Leibniz and the Structure of Sciences: Modern Perspectives on the History of Logic, Mathematics, Epistemology. Springer. pp. 271-298.
    This paper argues for an interpretation of Leibniz’s claim that physics requires both mechanical and teleological principles as a view regarding the interpretation of physical theories. Granting that Leibniz’s fundamental ontology remains non-physical, or mentalistic, it argues that teleological principles nevertheless ground a realist commitment about mechanical descriptions of phenomena. The empirical results of the new sciences, according to Leibniz, have genuine truth conditions: there is a fact of the matter about the regularities observed in experience. Taking this stance, however, (...)
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  19. Teleology and Normativity.Matthew Silverstein - 2016 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 11:214-240.
    Constitutivists seek to locate the metaphysical foundations of ethics in nonnormative facts about what is constitutive of agency. For most constitutivists, this involves grounding authoritative norms in the teleological structure of agency. Despite a recent surge in interest, the philosophical move at the heart of this sort of constitutivism remains underdeveloped. Some constitutivists—Foot, Thomson, and Korsgaard (at least in her recent *Self-Constitution*)—adopt a broadly Aristotelian approach. They claim that the functional nature of agency grounds normative judgments about agents in much (...)
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  20. Is intuitive teleological reasoning promiscuous?Johan de Smedt & Helen de Cruz - 2019 - In William Gibson, Dan O'Brien & Marius Turda (eds.), Teleology and Modernity. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 185-202.
    Humans have a tendency to reason teleologically. This tendency is more pronounced under time pressure, in people with little formal schooling and in patients with Alzheimer’s. This has led some cognitive scientists of religion, notably Kelemen, to call intuitive teleological reasoning promiscuous, by which they mean teleology is applied to domains where it is unwarranted. We examine these claims using Kant’s idea of the transcendental illusion in the first Critique and his views on the regulative function of teleological reasoning (...)
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  21. Teleology in Aristotle’s Practical Philosophy.Manuel Knoll - 2022 - Aither. Journal for the Study of Greek and Latin Philosophical Traditions (10):4–29.
    This article contributes to the debate on the relation between Aristotle’s practical and theoretical philosophy. It argues that his practical philosophy depends to a considerable extent on his teleological conception of nature. This thesis is primarily directed against scholars who maintain that Aristotle does not derive political and human relations from natural or cosmic conditions. The paper defends David Sedley’s anthropocentric interpretation of Aristotle’s natural teleology and shows how Aristotle applies teleological explanations to power relations among human (...)
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  22. Organisational teleology 2.0: Grounding biological purposiveness in regulatory control.Leonardo Bich - 2024 - Ratio.
    This paper critically revises the organisational account of teleology, which argues that living systems are first and foremost oriented towards a goal: maintaining their own conditions of existence. It points out some limitations of this account, mainly in the capability to account for the richness and complexity of biological systems and their purposeful behaviours. It identifies the reason of these limitations in the theoretical grounding of this account, specifically in the too narrow notion of closure of constraints, focused on (...)
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  23. Teleology and Nous in Plotinus’s Ennead 6.7.Bernardo Portilho Andrade - 2020 - Kriterion: Journal of Philosophy 61 (147):609-632.
    In this paper, I argue that Plotinus’s critique of divine deliberation in Ennead 6.7 does not seek to banish teleology altogether from his philosophy of nature. Rather, his critique aims to situate teleology within his own metaphysical system so as to reconcile it with the basic principles governing the intelligible universe. In this sense, Plotinus does not propose that we expunge all reference to notions of utility and benefit from our natural explanations; he merely wishes to render (...)
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  24. (1 other version)Kant on the Peculiarity of the Human Understanding and the Antinomy of the Teleological Power of Judgment.Idan Shimony - 2018 - In Violetta L. Waibel, Margit Ruffing & David Wagner (eds.), Natur und Freiheit: Akten des XII. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses. De Gruyter. pp. 1677–1684.
    Kant argues in the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment that the first stage in resolving the problem of teleology is conceiving it correctly. He explains that the conflict between mechanism and teleology, properly conceived, is an antinomy of the power of judgment in its reflective use regarding regulative maxims, and not an antinomy of the power of judgment in its determining use regarding constitutive principles. The matter in hand does not concern objective propositions regarding the possibility (...)
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  25. Hume, Teleology, and the 'Science of Man'.Lorenzo Greco & Dan O'Brien - 2019 - In William Gibson, Dan O'Brien & Marius Turda (eds.), Teleology and Modernity. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 147-64.
    There are various forms of teleological thinking central to debates in the early modern and modern periods, debates in which David Hume (1711–1776) is a key figure. In the first section, we shall introduce three levels at which teleological considerations have been incorporated into philosophical accounts of man and nature, and sketch Hume’s criticisms of these approaches. In the second section, we turn to Hume’s non-teleological ‘science of man’. In the third section, we show how Hume has an account of (...)
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  26.  88
    Origins of Biological Teleology: How Constraints Represent Ends.Miguel García-Valdecasas & Terrence W. Deacon - 2024 - Synthese 204 (75):1-28.
    To naturalize the concept of teleological causality in biology it is not enough to avoid assuming backward causation or positing the existence of an inscrutable te- leological essence like the élan vital. We must also specify how the causality of or- ganisms is distinct from the causality of designed artifacts like thermostats or asym- metrically oriented processes like the ubiquitous increase of entropy. Historically, the concept of teleological causality in biology has been based on an analogy to the familiar experience (...)
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  27. Wolff’s Science of Teleology and Kant’s Critique.Nabeel Hamid - 2019 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 6.
    This essay examines Wolff’s science of teleology, which has historically been dismissed as a crude physico-theology resting on a simple confusion between uses and purposes. Focusing especially on his two German volumes (German Teleology, 1723, and German Physiology, 1725), I argue that, first, Wolff never intended teleology to be a self-standing theology; and second, that teleology, as a part of physics, is primarily an applied or practical discipline. In its theological function, teleology presupposes the ontological (...)
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  28. (1 other version)A trilemma for teleological individualism.John Basl - 2017 - Synthese 194 (4):1027-1029.
    This paper addresses the foundations of Teleological Individualism, the view that organisms, even non-sentient organisms, are goal-oriented systems while biological collectives, such as ecosystems or conspecific groups, are mere assemblages of organisms. Typical defenses of Teleological Individualism ground the teleological organization of organisms in the workings of natural selection. This paper shows that grounding teleological organization in natural selection is antithetical to Teleological Individualism because such views assume a view about the units of selection on which it is (...)
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  29. Plato's Unnatural Teleology.James Lennox - 1985 - In Dominic J. O'Meara (ed.), Platonic Investigations. Catholic University of Amer Press. pp. 195-218.
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  30. Teleology and the Meaning of Life.Osamu Kiritani - 2012 - Journal of Mind and Behavior 33 (1-2):97-102.
    The “units of selection” debate in philosophy of biology addresses which entity benefits from natural selection. Nanay has tried to explain why we are obsessed with the question about the meaning of life, using the notion of group selection, although he is skeptical about answering the question from a biological point of view. The aim of this paper is to give a biological explanation to the meaning of life. I argue that the meaning of life is survival and reproduction, (...)
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  31. The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment.Ina Goy - 2015 - Studi Kantiani 28:65-88.
    The antinomy of teleological judgment is one of the most controversial passages of Kant’s "Critique of the Power of Judgment". Having developed the idea of an explanation of organized beings by mechanical and teleological natural laws in §§ 61-68, in §§ 69-78 Kant raises the question of whether higher order mechanical and teleological natural laws, which unify the particular empirical laws of organized beings, might pose an antinomy of conflicting principles within the power of judgment. I will argue (...)
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  32. The Preservation of the Whole and the Teleology of Nature in Late Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern Debates on the Void.Silvia Manzo - 2013 - Journal of Early Modern Studies 2 (2):9-34.
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  33. Teleology Beyond Metaphysics: Husserlian Phenomenology and the Historical Consciousness of Modernity.Timo Miettinen - 2014 - Journal of Speculative Philosophy 28 (3):273-283.
    Throughout its history, the relationship of phenomenology to historical reflection has appeared ambiguous. On the one hand, phenomenology—with the help of its founding figures—gave a promise to return from the world-historical speculations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the phenomenon of lived historicity, that is, to the question of how historical time is experienced within the life of the individual. On the other hand, phenomenology could not resist the temptation to critically reconsider some of the fundamental historical narratives that (...)
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  34. Subjectivity, nature, existence: Foundational issues for enactive phenomenology.Thomas Netland - 2023 - Dissertation, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
    This thesis explores and discusses foundational issues concerning the relationship between phenomenological philosophy and the enactive approach to cognitive science, with the aim of clarifying, developing, and promoting the project of enactive phenomenology. This project is framed by three general ideas: 1) that the sciences of mind need a phenomenological grounding, 2) that the enactive approach is the currently most promising attempt to provide mind science with such a grounding, and 3) that this attempt involves both a naturalization of phenomenology (...)
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  35. (1 other version)The natural behavior debate: Two conceptions of animal welfare.Heather Browning - 2019 - Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science:1–13.
    The performance of natural behavior is commonly used as a criterion in the determination of animal welfare. This is still true, despite many authors having demonstrated that it is not a necessary component of welfare –some natural behaviors may decrease welfare, while some unnatural behaviors increase it. Here I analyze why this idea persists, and what effects it may have. I argue that the disagreement underlying this debate on natural behavior is not one about which conditions affect (...)
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  36. Natural goodness without natural history.Parisa Moosavi - 2020 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research:78-100.
    Neo‐Aristotelian ethical naturalism purports to show that moral evaluation of human action and character is an evaluation of natural goodness—a kind of evaluation that applies to living things in virtue of their nature and based on their form of life. The standard neo‐Aristotelian view defines natural goodness by way of generic statements describing the natural history, or the ‘characteristic’ life, of a species. In this paper, I argue that this conception of natural goodness commits the neo‐Aristotelian (...)
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  37. On the Use and Abuse of Teleology for Life: Intentionality, Naturalism, and Meaning Rationalism in Husserl and Millikan.Jacob Rump - 2018 - Humana Mente 11 (34).
    Both Millikan’s brand of naturalistic analytic philosophy and Husserlian phenomenology have held on to teleological notions, despite their being out of favor in mainstream Western philosophy for most of the twentieth century. Both traditions have recognized the need for teleology in order to adequately account for intentionality, the need to adequately account for intentionality in order to adequately account for meaning, and the need for an adequate theory of meaning in order to precisely and consistently describe the world and (...)
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  38. From Extrinsic Design to Intrinsic Teleology.Ignacio Silva - 2019 - European Journal of Science and Theology 15 (3):61-78.
    In this paper I offer a distinction between design and teleology, referring mostly to thehistory of these two terms, in order to suggest an alternative strategy for arguments thatintend to demonstrate the existence of the divine. I do not deal with the soundness ofeither design or teleological arguments. I rather emphasise the differences between thesetwo terms, and how these differences involve radically different arguments for the existence of the divine. I argue that the term „design‟ refers to an extrinsic (...)
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  39. Spinoza’s Conatus: A Teleological Reading of Its Ethical Dimension.Neşe Aksoy - 2021 - Conatus 6 (2):107-130.
    In this article I examine how a teleological (or purposive) reading of Spinoza’s conatus shapes the ethical framework of his philosophy. I first introduce Spinoza’s criticism of teleology and argue contra many critics that Spinoza has a mild approach to human teleology. On the basis of this idea, I develop the claim that the human conatus includes purposive elements such that it is envisioned as a purposive being that is oriented towards the adequate knowledge of Nature or God, (...)
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  40.  80
    Hegel: The Reality and Priority of Immanent Teleology.James Kreines - 2020 - In Jeffrey McDonough (ed.), Philosophical Concepts: Teleology. pp. 219-248.
    Hegel defends the reality and the priority of immanent teleology. He does so by accepting Kant’s analysis of immanent teleology, but arguing against Kant’s subjectivist position. Key to Hegel’s argument is the idea that a general kind—in Hegel’s terms, a “concept” of a form of life—can be the substance or nature of the individual organism, or determine what it is to be that organism. In some ways Hegel here follows his own interpretation of Aristotle, while also trying to (...)
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  41. Review of Johnson. Aristotle on Teleology[REVIEW]Thornton Lockwood - 2006 - Bryn Mawr Classical Review 8:37.
    Few ideas are more central to Aristotle’s thought than that of the causal purposiveness of natural things. Few ideas in the Aristotelian corpus are more controverted—whether historically, by early modern natural philosophers seeking to break with Aristotelian science or currently, by modern scholars of ancient philosophy seeking to interpret Aristotle’s physics—than what has come to be called Aristotle’s “teleology” (a term coined in the 18th century, apparently by the German philosopher Christian Wolff). In this ambitious study (derived (...)
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  42. The Explanatory Role of Umwelt in Evolutionary Theory: Introducing von Baer's Reflections on Teleological Development.Tiago Rama - 2024 - Biosemiotics 1:1-26.
    Abstract: This paper argues that a central explanatory role for the concept of Umwelt in theoretical biology is to be found in developmental biology, in particular in the effort to understand development as a goal-directed and adaptive process that is controlled by the organism itself. I will reach this conclusion in two (interrelated) ways. The first is purely theoretical and relates to the current scenario in the philosophy of biology. Challenging neo-Darwinism requires a new understanding of the various components involved (...)
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  43. An Historic Defence of William Paley's Teleological Argument.Mavaddat Javid - manuscript
    While it may remain difficult for the student of modernity to understand the weight of Paley’s teleological arguments for nineteenth century British scientists, the idea of a design in nature and the implication of a designer nevertheless provided lasting explanatory power amongst competing hypotheses until up to Darwin. As Richard Dawkins points out, it was reasonable for English scientists to maintain telic 'causes' in the explanation of biological origins until the observations of Paley were ascribed to a natural mechanism (...)
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  44. La nature dans Le Conte d'hiver.Antoine Pageau St-Hilaire - 2013 - Klesis 25 (25):86-108.
    Résumé -/- Cet article vise à expliquer comment Shakespeare articule une philosophie de la nature dans Le Conte d’hiver. Nous suggérons que la spécificité dramatique de la pièce ainsi que son schéma narratif expriment cette philosophie. D’une part, l’histoire racontée par la plume de Shakespeare peut montrer d’abord un éloignement de la nature pour laisser suivre une redécouverte et une renaissance de la nature – d’abord par son acception simple, brute, puis dans la compréhension téléologique de celle-ci. D’autre part, la (...)
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  45. Nature et caractère dans l’Anthropologie kantienne.Riccardo Martinelli - 2011 - Esercizi Filosofici 6 (2):366-375.
    In this essay I analyze Kant's concept of character in the light of the concept of nature adopted in Kant's Pragmatic anthropology. In the Preface, Kant contrasts mechanical nature with freedom and opts for a pragmatic, rather than a physiological anthropology. In the Anthropological characteristics, however, Kant introduces his teleological concept of nature. Accordingly, he defends the view that there is no basic contrast between the purpose of nature (in the latter sense) and human freedom.
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  46. Gender Is a Natural Kind with a Historical Essence.Theodore Bach - 2012 - Ethics 122 (2):231-272.
    Traditional debate on the metaphysics of gender has been a contrast of essentialist and social-constructionist positions. The standard reaction to this opposition is that neither position alone has the theoretical resources required to satisfy an equitable politics. This has caused a number of theorists to suggest ways in which gender is unified on the basis of social rather than biological characteristics but is “real” or “objective” nonetheless – a position I term social objectivism. This essay begins by making explicit the (...)
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  47. Nietzsche's Functional Disagreement with Stoicism: Eternal Recurrence, Ethical Naturalism, and Teleology.James Mollison - 2021 - History of Philosophy Quarterly 38 (2):175-195.
    Several scholars align Nietzsche’s philosophy with Stoicism because of their naturalist approaches to ethics and doctrines of eternal recurrence. Yet this alignment is difficult to reconcile with Nietzsche’s criticisms of Stoicism’s ethical ideal of living according to nature by dispassionately accepting fate—so much so that some conclude that Nietzsche’s rebuke of Stoicism undermines his own philosophical project. I argue that affinities between Nietzsche and Stoicism belie deeper disagreement about teleology, which, in turn, yields different understandings of nature and human (...)
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  48. The Nature of Race: the Genealogy of the Concept and the Biological Construct’s Contemporaneous Utility.John Fuerst - 2015 - Open Behavioral Genetics.
    Racial constructionists, anti-naturalists, and anti-realists have challenged users of the biological race concept to provide and defend, from the perspective of biology, biological philosophy, and ethics, a biologically informed concept of race. In this paper, an ontoepistemology of biology is developed. What it is, by this, to be "biological real" and "biologically meaningful" and to represent a "biological natural division" is explained. Early 18th century race concepts are discussed in detail and are shown to be both sensible and not (...)
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  49. Invisible Beings. Adam Smith’s lectures on natural religion.Sergio Cremaschi - 2018 - In Fonna Forman (ed.), The Adam SMith Review 10. Routledge. pp. 230-253.
    I intend to dismantle a piece of historiographic mythology created by self-styled ‘Revisionists’ (Hill, Alvey, Oslington, etc.). According to the myth, Adam Smith endorsed several of the traditional proofs of God’s existence; he believed that the order existing in the world is a morally good order implemented by Divine Providence; he believed that evil in the world is part of an all-encompassing Divine Plan; and that the ‘invisible hand’ is the hand of the Christian God who leads the rich to (...)
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  50. Ergon and Practical Reason. Anscombe’s Legacy and Natural Normativity.Maria Silvia Vaccarezza - 2023 - Acta Philosophica 32 (2):400-406.
    One of Elizabeth Anscombe’s most decisive legacies is the rejection of modern legalistic morality, in the name of a rescue of Aristotelian-inspired natural normativity. However, as I will argue in this contribution, this legacy does not seem to have been fully collected, neither by those who, like Philippa Foot, are explicitly inspired by Anscombe’s work, nor by those who, while apparently opposing its assumptions, have also somehow recovered it by different routes, as emblematically does Christine Korsgaard in her constitutivist (...)
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