Causation and teleology in contemporary

philosophy of science
ALEXANDER ROSENBERG
Syracuse University

In the Cours de philosophie positive (1842) August Comte de-

scribed a process through which, he believed, all the sciences must
pass, and a hierarchy among these subjects that supposedly reflects
the order in which they pass through it and their relations of
generality, if not also reducibility. This typology for the sciences
and its associated sociology of science attracts little attention
today, and it is usually treated as reflecting superficial, dogmatic
and irrelevant speculation about the nature of science and its
history. Nevertheless, Comte's views may well provide the initial
motivation and the hidden agenda underlying contemporary
philosophy of science's program of analysis for teleological claims
and their uses. Comte claimed that human knowledge passes
through three stages: the theological, the metaphysical, and the
postive. The first of these stages is characterized by the conviction
that all events are to be explained by the citation of will, intention,
purpose, on the model of ordinary explanations of human actions.
In its animistic version, each object's behavior is explained by
attributing human violation to it; in its theistic versions, natural
phenomena are explained as reflecting one or inore divine wills.
The metaphysical stage of explanation substitutes abstract con-
cepts, like powers and causes, for notions like will, goal, or pur-
pose. Finally, according to Comte, scientific knowledge is attained
when the search for laws of coexistence and succession replace
the metaphysical principles of explanation. According to Comte
the first science to have passed through this three-staged process
was astronomy. This was to be explained by the fact that the
phenomena it treats are the most general and the simplest, in-
volving processes that effect all other phenomena, but which are

Contemporary philosophy. A new survey. Vol. 2, pp. 51-86.

© 1982, Martinus Niihoff Publishers, The Hague/Boston/London.
52 A. Rosenberg

isolated from processes involving the latter. Astronomy super-

sedes in fundamentality only physics, and upon physics rests
chemistry. Biology and the life sciences in turn presuppose chem-
istry, and the social sciences, biology. Now this conception can be
faulted on many grounds, but it seems undeniable both that the
appeal of animistic and anthropomorphic explanation is wide-
spread in prescientific and non-western cultures and that the range
of phenomena open to physical explanation, both in principle
and in point of detail, has reflected a similar increase before
Comte's day and after. In fact the way in which such physical
explanations have supplanted teleological ones in natural science,
and in the life sciences especially, is exactly what Comte foresaw.
Moreover, empiricist strictures on scientific method have made
the employment of teleological concepts in the explanation and
description of non-human events increasingly difficult to justify
and have even cast doubt on the cognitive status of such expla-
nations in their original locus: that of conscious, intentional,
purposive, human action. Despite this general trend, however,
statements of a teleological kind and explanations that cite such
statements continue to figure in botany, physiology, comparative
anatomy, ecology, ethology, and even in areas of life science
already supposed to have been assimilated to physical sciences,
such as transmission and molecular genetics. Moreover, and partly
under the influence of biological research strategies, implicitly
teleological language has found increasing use in the social and
behavioural sciences, throughout the twentieth century. To the
extent that parts of the life sciences, and most of the social
sciences are committed to teleological claims about the objects
and systems which they treat, these disciplines seem to reflect
either a serious counterexample to Comte's vision of the general
direction of human knowledge, or a blot on our claim to have
finally and fully transcended allegedly unscientific modes of
thought. These alternatives reflect real choices that philosophers
have made when faced with the Ubiquity of teleological claims in
the non-physical sciences, and the dearth of them in the physical
sciences. One tradition has argued that the appeal to intentions,
goals, purposes in the explanation of human and quasi-human
behavior is ineliminable and essential, and that therefore the
human sciences are different in kind from the natural ones. The
 Causation and teleology 53

dialectically antithetical tradition has concurred in the inelimin-

ability of such language for the pursuit of the social sciences as
presently practiced, but has inferred from this that these disciplines
are without cognitive significance and require complete recon-
struction on non-teleological bases. Neither of these radical
alternatives is at all attractive: the former erects a metaphysical
barrier between different fields that no one has ever cogently
expounded and successfully defended; the latter seems to entail
the utterly implausible conclusion that every one of our ordinary
singular teleological explanations of our own action in terms of its
purposes are not just false, but without cognitive foundation.
Because these radical positions are both unacceptable, it is
reasonable to suppose that they do not reflect exhaustive alter-
natives, and that there may be ways to pass between the horns
of the dilemna they pose. The path between these two alternatives
which modern philosophy of science chooses seems to reflect its
Comtean heritage. For work in contemporary philosophy of
science has tended to sustain the legitimacy and intelligibility of
teleological statements and explanations, but only by attempting
to show that their intelligibility and legitimacy is founded on
their compatibility with, and ultimately by their reduction to
statements and explanations of the sort familiar in physical science.
This strategy has the evident advantage of leaving undisturbed
our ordinary teleological claims in the sphere of human action, of
sanctioning the employment of teleological modes of thought in
the social and life sciences, while avoiding the erection of any
methodological or metaphysical barriers between these subjects
and the physical sciences, while nevertheless sustaining the Comtean
conviction of the conceptual and methodological unity of the
sciences in their advanced stages, at any rate. Twentieth century
philosophy of science's traditional suspicion of teleological modes
of thought, and its commitment to the universal applicability of
physical methods clearly betray its Comtean proclivities, while its
compatibilist attempts to render consistent these two apparently
different conceptual networks reflects its tendency to preserve
the Comtean picture in the face of apparent counterexamples.
Although no currently active philosopher of science pays any
allegiance to Comte, much of the motivation for and some of
the details in the treatment of the issues surrounding teleology
can best be understood in terms of a Comtean tradition.
54 A. Rosenberg

Traditionally, it is of course the teleological statements' refer-

ence to future states which, it purports, somehow determine past
ones, that has rendered its claims suspect. The suspicion often
rests, however, on a number of controversial and exegetically
complex assumptions. Among these is the supposition that the
only sort of natural determination admissible is causal determi-
nation; that causal determination can only proceed from earlier
to later, or at least never from later to earlier; that the only per-
missible species of scientific explanation is causal explanation,
and that teleological statements are advanced in order to provide
scientific explanations of the phenomena they describe. Chief
among the exegetical problems which these assumptions reflect
involve the notion of causation. For both the tenability and the
meaning of these claims turns on how the reference to causation
and to causal explanation is understood. Indeed, philosophers
(especially continental ones) who reject the concept of causation
as one superseded in the course of scientific advance and just as
unacceptable as teleological notions, are likely to shrug the entire
issue off as a dispute about two equally obsolete notions. Such a
view of the problem of teleology would, however, be superficial.
For despite the prominence which expressions like 'causation'
and 'causal explanation' have in the discussions of teleological
statements and their analysis, these terms really serve as covers
for more general and perhaps less ambiguous notions. In par-
ticular, when the language of causal connection is used in this
context, what is meant is the nomological relation between dis-
tinct events, states, and conditions that modern physical science
countenances. This relation can sometimes be described as one of
causation, sometimes as a form of mathematically functional
dependence, but it is one whose paradigm example is to be found
in the mechanical interactions of Newtonian physics. And the real
issue facing any treatment of teleological statements is not whether
such claims are compatible or not with one or another philosopher's
analysis of causality, but whether they are compatible with the
kind of relations between events characterized by the laws of
physics. Similarly, appeals to the general applicability of causal
explanations are really to be understood as commitments to the
adequacy of the deductive-nomological model of scientific expla-
nations either as a regulative ideal or an apt description of the best
scientific practice.
 Causation and teleology 55

Although the last ten years have seen interest in and analysis
of teleological notions generated at an accelerating rate, almost
all of the discussions are based on ground broken by philosophers
of science in the late nineteen forties and early nineteen fifties.
Therefore, in order to report on development in the current period
it will be necessary to review these earlier discussions.

1. TELEOLOGY AND GOAL DIRECTION

It was in R.B. Braithwaite's 1946 paper, 'Teleological Explanation,'

and in his sustained treatise in the philosophy of science, Scientific
Explanation, that the nature of teleological statements and their
explanatory force was taken up in the context of a systematic
empiricist account of science. Braithwaite established the pattern
for much of the ensuing discussion. The ostensible problem with
which he began is that of future causation. A teleological state-
ment asserts that a particular state of affairs obtains in order to
enable some item to attain a goal, and a teleological explanation
of such a state of affairs proceeds by citing the as yet unattained
goal. Plainly the unattained goal cannot explain the state of
affairs in virtue of being its cause, for such a claim would involve
a commitment to unacceptable retrocausation; on the other hand,
the citation of the goal cannot be held to explain the occurrence
of the state of affairs in question in a non-causal way, for there
are no acceptable non-causal explanations for the occurrence
of contingent events and states. Braithwaite's aim is to give an
account of the nature of teleological explanation which will
resolve philosophical difficulties about the apparent determination
of the present by the future that such explanations seem to
countenance, without contravening the usual determination
principles of science. According to Braithwaite, there are no
special difficulties involved in the apparent teleology of human
behavior, for in these cases of goal-directed activity, the goal-
directed behavior is caused, and explained, not by the goal, the
fmal cause, but by the idea of the goal, which functions as a
conventional prior or simultaneous efficient cause. But while
explanations in terms of reasons, desires and beliefs prove no
problem, the attribution of goal-directedness to non-conscious,
56 A. Rosenberg

and indeed non-sentient, systems cannot be understood in this

way, for such systems do not manifest beliefs and desires. The
attribution of goal-directedness to such systems, Braithwaite
claims, can be accounted for in terms of what he calIs the plasticity
of their behaviour, where 'plasticity' can be given an entirely non-
teleological characterization: Given a system b, in initial internal
state e and external field conditions f, assume that the goal toward
which system b's behavior is directed is a particular event or state
of type T. Insofar as this state is a physically possible one, it is a
link in one or more physically possible causal chains of the con-
ventional sort. Now, the 'variancy' 4> with respect to system b,
internal state e, and end-state T, is that set of chains involving
varying field conditions f, anyone of which, together with b's
being in state e, constitute a link in one of the causal chains
eventuating in a T-event. In short, the variancy is determined by
all the different circumstances under which it is physically possible
for b in state e to eventually, or immediately, attain goal T. If this
set of chains in the variancy has more than one member, then b's
behavior is said to be 'plastic,' because its behavior will eventuate
in T under a variety of external circumstances. Indeed, b will
attain T even in the face of variations in its external environment,
just so long as that environment remains within the variancy. Thus,
a system characterized by plasticity may be said to be persistent
in that its behavior will continue to move it in the direction of
its goal. Behavior which is plastic in the specified sense is what,
according to Braithwaite, we should understand by goal-directed
behavior. Thus we may explain the occurrence of behavior teleo-
logically by citing its goal or end-state, and stipulating that the
system manifesting the behavior is a goal-directed one, meaning,
one which exhibits plasticity, i.e., one whose current state and
external conditions jointly constitute a non-unique member of a
variancy of causal chains with respect to the goal state. Concluding
his account of goal-directed behavior and systems, Braithwaite
noted that often in biological contexts especially, behavior is
manifested not for the sake of some future state, but for ends
which are as much present as future. For example, the heart is
more properly accorded the function of maintaining occurrent
blood circulation, than the goal of attaining future blood circu-
lation. In later years much would be made of this distinction, but
 Causation and teleology 57

Braithwaite clearly thought the difference between goal-directed

behavior and behavior with a function to consist simply in the
temporal differences in the ends of the behaviors.
Braithwaite's theory focuses on teleological behavior which
can be described as targeting or aiming behavior, and one of the
arguments often mooted in favor of the assimilation of animate
and botanical goal-directed behavior to the behavior of purely
physical systems is the fact that a guided-missile's target seeking
behavior can be shown to be goal-directed in the sense of satisfying
Braithwaite's strictures. Another sort of goal-directed behavior,
equilibriation, attracted the attention of the next important
analysis of teleological behavior. Beginning with his 1953 paper,
'Teleological explanation and teleological systems.' Ernest Nagel
offered an account of such behavior that in many ways compli-
mented and filled out some of the details of Braithwaite's treat-
ment. Nagel's work on this subject was extended in a subsequent
paper, 'The Formalization of Functionalism,' and in Chapter 12
of his classic work, The Structure of Science. Nagel's concern
here is whether the appearance of teleology in biological science
and its absence from the physical sciences entails any absolute
autonomy of the former subjects from reduction to the latter.
Nagel answers this question in the negative by providing a general
description of teleological or goal-directed systems which is
neutral with respect to assumptions about purposes in nature,
which does not involve the dynamic operation of the goals of
a process as instruments in their own realization, and whose
operation can be explained in wholly physical terms. Consider
a system, S, for example the human body, which is composed at
least in part of a set of related parts or organs, whose physico-
chemical processes are causally relevant to the occurrence in S of
some property or mode of behavior G; for instance, maintenance
of body temperature within a specified range about 37°C. For
convenience, suppose these processes are three in number, A, B, C.
For example, values of A may be the state of the peripheral blood
vessels, B the state of the thyroid gland, and C the state of the
adrenal glands. Thus the conjunction of the values of variables
A, B, C at any given time t, jointly determine the occurrence of
GinS. It is important that the values of these variables at tare
causally independent of one another at t, and that the variables
58 A. Rosenberg

can only take on a restricted range of values, Ka, Kb, Kc, while
still generating the occurrence of GinS. So, in the case of tem-
perature regulation, there are physiologically minimum and maxi-
mum limits to the dilation and constriction of blood vessels, the
secretion of thyroxin, and to the secretions of the varying pro-
ducts of the adrenal glands; and what the values of anyone of
these three variables are at any time is independent of the others,
in the sense that it is nomologically compatible with values other
than the actual ones for the collateral variables at time t. Now,
suppose S is in a G-state at time to. S is a goal-directed system
under the following conditions: A change in anyone of the state
variable's values at to will take S out of G. If this change results
in the variable taking on a new value within its G-permitting range,
Ka, Kb, Kc, call such a change a 'primary variation.' A primary
variation in A at to causes changes at a later time, til in the values
of variables B, and C, of such a magnitude that although they
remain within Kb and Kc respectively, had they occurred alone,
S would no longer be in a G-state. But, together with the new
value of A, the new values of Band C which it caused, jointly
causally determine that S is in a G-state, after all, at ti. These
changes in Band C induced by a primary variation in A, are called
'adaptive variations.' So long as the component parts of S causally
interact in this manner S will remain in its G-state. And of course,
if changes in the values of A, B, and C are produced by variations
in the external environment of S, then S will exhibit the same
plasticity and persistence which, in Braithwaite's analysis, goal-
directedness is constituted by. In a sense, Nagel's account expands
on the notion of internal state of a goal-directed system that
Braithwaite's model remained silent about. And while the latter
found the hallmark of goal-directedness in the multiplicity of
causal chains generated by variations in external conditions
whereby a system can attain a goal, Nagel describes how a purely
causal, non-teleological internal structure could respond to these
changes in Braithwaite's 'field conditions,' and thus insure the
maintenance or the attainment of the goal state. It also seems to
account for the goal-directedness of systems that fail to reach
their goal, by explaining this failure in terms of field conditions
producing variations in the values of the system's states and pro-
cesses which transcend the limits required to causally generate
the goal state.
 Causation and teleology 59

Nagel also explicitly applied his account of goal-directedness to

the nature of teleological explanation, and in particular functional
e~planations; in fact Nagel does not distinguish between teleo-
logical and functional statements and explanations. On his view
to explain the occurrence or presence of an item in a system or
in its behavior by appeal to its causal consequences (instead of
its causal antecedents) is, despite appearances an explanation of
the conventional causal form which accounts for the behavior
of a system by asserting that it is goal-directed, and that the item
whose presence is to be explained is causally necessary for the
attainment or maintenance of the goal. Thus, to explain the
presence of chlorophyll in green plants in a functional way, one
would claim that the function of chlorophyll in such plants is
to enable them to perform .photosynthesis. This implicity means,
according to Nagel, that when a plant is provided with water,
carbon dioxide, and sunlight, it manufactures starch only if the
plant contains chlorophyll. The statement also tacitly assumes
that in the absence of starch the plant cannot manifest activities
like growth and reproduction, and that, further, plants are goal-
directed systems in the explicated sense with growth and repro-
duction their goal states. 'The function of A in a system S with
organization C is to enable S in environment E to engage in pro-
cess Px' can be formulated more explicitly by 'Every system S
with organization C and in environment E engages in process P;
if S with organization C and in environment E does not have A,
then S does not engage in P; hence S with organization C must
have A,' where C is a goal-directed organization.
Thus, Nagel concludes, 'every statement about the subject
matter of a teleological explanation can in principle be rendered
in non-teleological language, so that such explanations together
with all assertions about the contexts of their use are translatable
into logically equivalent non-teleological formulations.'

2. FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS AND EXPLANATION

Teleological descriptions, and functional explanations, are not

limited to the life sciences, or even to them aQ.d purposive accounts
of individual human action. They have also bulked large in the
60 A. Rosenberg

explanatory strategies of macro sociology , psychoanalytic theories

of human behavior, anthropology and political science. It was
with a view to assessing this employment that Carl G. Hempel
wrote his influential paper, 'The Logic of Functional Analysis,'
in 1959. Hempel's general aim was to determine to what extent
the explanation of some typically recurrent activity by appeal to
its contribution to the preservation or development of an item
satisfies the standards of deductive-nomological explanation.
He begins by asking what a statement of the following form
means: 'the heartbeat in vertebrates has the function of circulating
blood through the organs.' Hempel notes that 'function' cannot
merely mean 'effect' in this context, or else we should have to
assent to the allegedly false statement that 'the heartbeat has the
function of producing heart sounds,' since it obviously has that
effect. Clearly, an item's function is one of an item's effects, but
it is not just any or each of an item's effects that we denominate a
function, and we need to add something further to our analysans
in order to capture the sense of 'function.' This further item is
added and the result more formally expressed as a 'basic pattern
of a functional analysis: the object is some item i, which is a
relatively persistent trait or disposition ... occurring in a system s;
and the analysis aims to show that s is in a state or internal con-
dition Cj. and in an environment representing certain external
conditions Ce such that under conditions Cj and Ce (jointly to be
referred to as c) the trait i has some effects which satisfy some
'need' or 'functional requirement' of s, Le. a condition n which is
necessary for the systems remaining in adequate, or effective, or
proper, working order.' The trouble with explanations that trade
on this sort of functional analysis is that as arguments they are
likely to be either unsound or invalid. Invalid because the con-
clusion that the trait i is present in s at some time t, will not
follow from the facts cited, since i is not described as a necessary
condition for the satisfaction of need n, and this means that the
general requirement of deductive-nomological explanation, that
the explanans gives good reason to show that the explanandum
phenomena obtain, is not satisfied by explanations of this scheme.
The invalidity can be avoided, but only at the cost of unsoundness,
that is, the deductive validity of such explanations can only be
purchased at the cost of making the premises false. In particular,
 Causation and teleology 61

if i is assumed to be not only sufficient for the satisfaction by s of

n, given c, but also necessary for it, then the functional analysis
will imply the presence of i, but generally it is false that an item
whose presence is functionally explained is necessary for the
satisfaction of its associated need. Thus, in the case of the human
body, there are many organs which have an agreed upon function,
but whose operation is not necessary to the adequate functioning of
the body because of built-in redundancies. This problem that items
with functions are usually not causally necessary for actual effects
must be distinguished from the first problem of distinguishing
function from effect in general. The present difficulty is in part
one about the correct analysis of the notions of cause and effect,
and whether when we cite causes, we cite conditions causally
necessary or sufficient or some combination of these for their
effects. The former problem is that of distinguishing among those
events for which an item's presence is causally necessary, the
subset which also constitutes its function. Both issues broached
first by Hempel generated considerable subsequent discussion.
In the face of this failure to satisfy deductive-nomological
strictures on explanation, Hempel suggested that functional
analysis might be construed as a very weak form of deductive
explanation, in which the claim that the particular trait to be
explained is necessary for n, to be replaced by a premise to the
effect that there is a class of causally sufficient conditions for
the satisfaction of need n, given s in condition c. From this osten-
sibly true premise it follows that some member of this class is
present is s at t, although the presence of no particular member
of it follows. As such the explanation that a functional analysis
proffers is valid and usually sound, therefore formally unobjec-
tionable. But it is unfortunately trivial, except in the presence of
considerable knowledge about the membership of class I, which
is usually lacking. The weakness of such explanations is par-
ticularly apparent in respect of predictive power. For, if Hempel's
account is correct, given the information contained in a functional
analysis, we cannot predict how a particular system will satisfy a
given need, i.e. what member of I will obtain in s, unless we know
so much about s that a functional analysis of s's behavior becomes
otiose. Moreover, functional analyses may be vitiated by the use
of key terms like 'need' and 'adequate functioning' in a non-
62 A. Rosenberg

empirical manner, thus rendering the premises of a functional

explanation untestable, even if we could surmount the problem
of vagueness in prediction. In effect the absence of such empirical
characterizations for the key terms of functional analyses represent
obstacles, in Hempel's view, to their legitimate use, and it is clear
that Hempel considers that these characterizations will have to
proceed in the direction Nagel, for example, indicates, towards
the ultimate elimination or at least eliminability of teleological
language from properly scientific discourse. Hempel's paper is
laden with examples drawn especially from the writings of the
structural-functionalist school of sociology and anthropology, and
his aim was clearly to offer useful suggestions to social scientists
as much as to propound a particular account of teleological notions.
As such, it had considerable influence beyond the confmes of the
philosophy of science. Within the philosophy of the social sciences,
it made the nature of teleological explanation a principal battle-
ground between proponents and opponents of the empiricist
approach to the explanation of human action.

3. DIVIDED FOell

As we approach the period of philosophical activity directly of

interest here, the problems of teleology seem to acquire divided
interest and attention. On the one hand, a group of philosophers
begin taking up Braithwaite's and Nagel's claims as they bear on
biology alone, without considering any wider consequences
beyond those of the methodological autonomy of this subject
from the physical sciences. Indeed, this very question is not one
directly addressed much among the parties to the discussion at all.
They are ostensibly interested rather in the details of biological
language for the sake of understanding biology, as opposed to
assessing what I have called Comtean claims about the unity of
science. On the other hand, another group of philosophers begins
about this time to dispute among themselves the bearing of claims
like Braithwaite's, Nagel's, and Hempel's for the wider issues of
the unity of science, especially in connection with the methodo-
logical and conceptual status of the social sciences. It is perhaps
a sign of philosophical progress that, by the end of the period
 Causation and teleology 63

under examination here, these two groups, between which there

was at first little discussion, had come very much together, in
the sense that the separate results found a degree of synthesis
uncommon in contemporary philosophy of science.

4. TELEOLOGY AND HUMAN ACTION

Although there has been among philosophers a long tradition of

asserting the conceptual and methodological autonomy of the
social sciences, and of denying the applicability of empiricist
research strategies to the successful pursuit of these subjects,
this tradition comes directly into contact with the present subject
only as recently as 1964, in Charles Taylor's Explanation of
Behaviour. Taylor's work is a sustained argument to the conclusion
that as a matter of empirical fact, it is more likely than not that
human behavior is different in kind from that of inanimate objects,
and cannot be accounted for, even in principle, by appeal to
considerations of the kind which explain the operation of inani-
mate phenomena. It is important to remember what is frequently
overlooked in assessments of Taylor's claims, that his conclusion
is not declared to be a conceptual truth, but an empirical one,
and that while its falsehood is conceivable, it is in Taylor's view
very highly improbable. This conclusion separates Taylor's work
from that of many other philosophers who have argued that
human behavior is as a matter of logical necessity, different in
kind from natural phenomena. The argument commences with the
empirically well-justified premise that human behavior seems to
be purposeful, has meaning, reflects order, consciousness, and
direction; that is, it seems to reflect the operation of teleological
laws or principles, which, as we have seen affect the explanation
of the behavior by citing the goal for the sake of which it is said
to occur. The second premise of Taylor's argument is that such
teleological principles, and the explanations in which they figure
are, as a matter of conceptual or logical considerations, not
reducible to causal laws of the ordinary type familiar in physical
science, that their employment in the explanation of any event
is inevitably one that competes with causal explanations, as
opposed to complimenting them, and that such laws are basic
64 A. Rosenberg

in the sense that where they are held to apply, there can be no
other, more fundamental, explanations, and that further inquiry
into the nature of the phenomena they govern is excluded as
logically inappropriate or mistaken. These two premises taken
together should be sufficient to establish Taylor's conclusion
that human behavior is different in kind from the behavior of
inanimate objects, and that the disciplines which study it must
be irreducible to those which treat purely physical phenomena.
It is plain that the thrust of Taylor's argument is diametrically
opposed to the Comtean program with respect to teleology, and
this of course is his intention. Explanation of Behaviour is divided
into two parts. In the first part, Taylor attempts to establish the
conceptual claim about the autonomy of teleological ptinciples
and explanations. In the second part, Taylor launches a detailed
examination of behaviorist or peripheralist experimental psy-
chology, and especially its attempts to account non-teleologically
for the behavior of animals much simpler than humans and other
primates. He purports to show that none of the available non-
teleological theories of their behavior are empirically adequate,
and that the only empirically plausible hypotheses that will explain
their behavior are teleological in character. Since human behavior
is vastly more complex than the behavior of laboratory animals,
it is even more plausible, Taylor claims, that it must, as a matter
of empirical fact, be explained teleologically. Thus he establishes,
in the second part of his book, the first premise of his argument.
Our discussion will concentrate on the philosophical arguments in
the fIrst half only.
Suppose we wish to explain why a certain sort of behavior B is
emitted by a system, S, on a given occasion. If S is a purposive
system, then the appropriate form of the required explanation is
in part the stipulation of initial conditions that S had a particular
golll, G, in an environment of kind E, and a teleological 'law' to
the effect that, T, whenever a system of S's type in an environ-
ment of E's type has a goal of G's type, behavior of B's type
occurs. Taylor claims this sort of explanation is deductive in form,
and that instantiations of its covering law (schema) are testable
generalizations of indubitably nomological force. The law, how-
ever, is not itself explainable in terms of the operation of any
more fundamental non-teleological generalizations. That is, there
 Causation and teleology 65

is no possible non-teleological characterization of S together with

its environment E which figures in a number of causal laws relating
these variables on the one hand to the production of B, and on
the other hand to the occurrence of G-attaining events, so that
from these laws, the teleological law could be deduced. Such non-
teleological descriptions of the causal determinants of B, Taylor
calls 'intrinsic,' and while he does not deny that every event,
including bits of human behavior, is individually causally deter-
mined, he does appear to deny that there are any general laws
governing this causal determination of behavior simple enough,
or small enough in number, to actually affect the deduction of
the teleological law in question. He argues, specifically against
Nagel's account of goal-directed systems, 'We have no guarantee
a priori that we shall discover an 'intrinsic' description that will
apply to all cases [the antecedent conditions] of T, and which
will never apply to a case not followed by B. Of course we might
be able to discover a disjunction of such descriptions, ... but
there is no reason why this list should be finite ... if this is not so,
we cannot be held to have replaced the teleological law.' Notice
that this conclusion is too weak for Taylor's purposes, for it
allows the logical possibility of replacement, and only casts
doubts on our ability to discover a finite number of disjunctive
prior conditions, each of which is sufficient and all of which are
jointly necessary for the emission of B in circumstances where G
is attained. If Taylor's opponent be granted appeal to a principle
of causal determinism, he may argue that such a list must exist,
since every event is causally determined by other events earlier
than or simultaneous with it. Be that as it may, Taylor infers
from the irreplaceability of such laws that they are basic to the
explanation of purposive behavior in the sense that there are no
other laws which apply to a more general class of phenomena
that includes purposive behavior as a special case, and which
provide us with the conditions in which teleological laws will
apply or not, and thereby explain their operation.
In the subsequent discussion of Part One of Taylor's book,
more arguments for the irreducibility and basicality of teleo-
logical explanations and laws are deployed. These involve appeal
to the logical connection between conscious, intentional states
of agents that are cited in the description of their goals, and in
66 A. Rosenberg

their relations to the environment in which they emit purposeful

behavior, and the behavior itself. Such connections cannot be
causal or physical, because they are logical, so the laws that relate
them cannot be causal laws, nor can they be explained by appeal
to neurophysiological laws that identify mental states with brain
states. Nor can these psychological state descriptions be trans-
lated into propositions about behavior or dispositions to behave.
All these considerations reinforce Taylor's claim that the choice
between teleological descriptions of human behavior and causal
descriptions is exhaustive and exclusive. Together with his argu-
ments in Part Two of Explanations of Behaviour, they lead Taylor
to the conclusion that irreducible teleological explanations are
unavoidable in the explanations social sciences must offer, and
this fact makes a difference in kind, a metaphysical difference
between animate and inanimate objects.

5. TELEOLOGY AND REDUCTION

Subsequent discussions of Taylor's work has focused largely on its

earliest chapters, and in particular on the argument he advanced
against a reduction of teleological laws to physical laws d la Nagel.
In 'Charles Taylor on Teleological Explanation,' David Noble
attempted to show that this argument undercut Taylor's own
claim that his teleological laws were unreducible yet empirically
testable general truths, which were explanatorily basic. Noble
began by noting that the environment cited in a teleological law
must implicitly include not only the external conditions in which
behavior B is manifested, but also the interior states of the system
S which produces B in order to attain goal G. Otherwise, Taylor's
argument that there need be no causal regularity between the
occurrence of E and the emission of B is trivialized: no one doubts
that different internal states together with the same environment
will produce different behavior, given the same or different goals,
and no one suggest that causal laws are available which connect
external circumstances to purposive behavior without a detour
through the system's internal states. But, Noble alleged, adding
this qualification vitiates Taylor's argument for the basicality of
teleological laws. For Taylor's argument requires it be possible for
 Causation and teleology 67

two systems with the same conjunction of external and internal

states SE to produce different behaviors, B., and B2, in order to
attain the same goal G, in accordance with two different tel eo-
logical laws Tl and T 2. But if Tl claims that SE is such that Bl is
required for G, and T 2 requires that SE is such that B2 is required
for G, the two SE states cannot be identical. Otherwise, given
the numerical diversity of Bl and B2 , the only decisive evidence
available for choosing between T 1 and T2 would be the occurrence
of B., or B2, the events to be explained. On the other hand,
were Taylor to deny the possibility which leads to untestability
for conflicting teleological laws, he would be committed to the
assertion that a given conjunction of internal and external states
of a system are nomologically consistent with only one possible
type of behavior, and not two. But this commitment is tantamount
to embracing the reducibility that Taylor denies, and rejecting the
basicality he claims for teleological laws. This conclusion represents
a serious dilemma for a position like Taylor's, one to which he
quickly responded in 'Teleological Explanation: A Reply to David
Noble.' Taylor agrees that the environment E must include refer-
ence to the teleological system's internal states, but he denies the
validity of most of Noble's other claims. He fIrst notes that his
argument for the explanatory basicality of teleological laws in
the arena of purposive behavior does not rest on showing that such
laws are not deducible from non-teleological laws, in large part
because he does not seem to accept the deductive-nomological
model of explanation; rather the basicality of such laws rests
on an alleged incapacity to provide an orderly, and manageably
small number of non-teleological laws that will explain any teleo-
logical one. Taylor agrees that the case Noble outlines, in which
two instantiations of the same set, SE, give rise, in the face of the
same goals, to different sorts of behavior, is impossible, but he
does not admit that underwriting this leads to the reducibility
conclusions he seeks to avoid. He recognizes that denying this
case, commits Taylor to the existence of a finite set of causal
conditions, SEt. SE 2 , ••• ,SEn each of which is causally suffIcient
for behavior of the same purposeful kind, in a given goal situation;
but he suggests, the generalizations that describe these connections
will exhibit no intrinsic order, and will not enable us to predict
what will happen in a situation, SEn+t. that in fact leads to the
68 A. Rosenberg

same sort of behavior. Whereas, the teleological law associated

with these sets of SE's, B's, and G's, will enable us to predict the
occurrence of B in the contest of SEn + h and G. In this case we
have a teleological explanation in the absence of a non-teleological
one. And this is the sense in which Taylor claims such laws are
basic with respect to explanation: they are acceptable in the
absence of any known non-teleological connections, and thus
tenable independent of the presence of such connections, known
or unknown. More than tenable, however, Taylor supposes that
this also shows them to be irreplaceable by such sets of laws when
discovered. I write 'when' discovered, instead of 'if,' because the
existence of fInite sets of SE's members of which are individually
suffIcient, and disjunctively necessary for B-type behavior is
insured by assumption of universal physical determinism, and this
is an assumption no analysis of teleology should be logically incon-
sistent with, as Taylor himself allows. It is just this point that
Noble seizes on in his rejoinder to Taylor, 'The Conceptual View
of Teleology,' where he notes that whether there is a fmitely large
set of causal laws lining SE's with B's is at issue in the problem of
reduction, and not whether this set is small enough and orderly
enough to be manageably useful in predicting and explaining
particular teleological phenomena. Provided it exists, each and
every case of teleological behavior is nothing but the operation
of some known or unknown non-teleological law, which is just
Nagel's point.
What is more, as T.L.S. Sprigg points out, in his 1971 discussion
of Taylor's work, 'Final Causes,' not only will there be, on Taylor's
account of teleological law, one or more non-teleological laws
'covering' the same phenomenon, but every non-teleological law
about any process whatever, has a teleological dual, just in case
the cause can be described as the event which brings about sub-
sequent behavior that is in accordance with the law in question.
The key point here is that cause is described in terms which refer
to future events, and to the cause's role in bringing them about.
The cause's goal of course is the holding of the non-teleological
law, and the relation between it, its effect, and the holding of the
law can be expressed in a form indistinguishable from the form
Taylor attributes to a teleological law. Finally, it should be noted
that the general relation between assertion of the autonomy of
 Causation and teleology 69

teleological descriptions from non-teleological nomological gen-

eralizations and the hypothesis of thorough-going causal deter-
minism was forcefully emphasized by Larry Wright in his 1968
contribution, 'The Case against Teleological Reductionism,' in
which it was suggested that attempts to translate teleological
claims into non-teleological ones fail just because the latter reflect
a substantial presupposition that is absent from the former: viz.,
the assumption of determinism. But although Wright seemed to
suggest that this fact undercuts the program of philosophers like
Nagel and Braithwaite, in fact it is one shared by both sides of
the controversy, at least in the sense that no analysis of teleology
should be incompatible with this principle. On the other hand,
exponents of non-teleological reduction certainly do feel free to
offer analyses of teleology which are incompatible with the
denial of causal determinism. This is of course is simply a reflection
of the fact that the falsity of this assumption would destabilize
the whole empiricist program for the analysis of and correct
methodology in non-teleological natural science. It should be
noted that causal or nomological determinism is to be understood
as that species of determinism of which the most well entrenched
principles of physics are reflections. If nomological determinism
on the quantum level is an invariable relation between probability
distributions, as opposed to a relation between particular events,
then, subject to interpretation and aggregation, this is the sort of
determinism to which non-teleological theories are commited.
Causation in these contexts, is always a cover-word for whatever
determination physical science commits us to.

6. TELEOLOGY AND ADAPTION

While a lively debate about the autonomy of social science and

its teleological commitments was being pursued in the context of
Taylor's claims, philosophers of natural science continued to focus
on the apparently more tractable and less controversial problem
of the analysis of explanation in the biological sciences. Initially
controversy over the adequacy of analyses of teleological behavior
in terms of plasticity or Nagel's directive organization focused on
counter examples involving the problems of 'goai failure' and of
70 A. Rosenberg

'multiple goals.' In I. Scheffler's 'Thoughts on Teleology,' and in

his full length study of the philosophy of science, Anatomy of
Inquiry, Scheffler noted that it was a problem for Braithwaite's
theory that many systems fail to reach their target or end-state,
and thus fail the latter's criteria for goal-directedness, even though
they are paradigm teleological systems by Braithwaite's own
standards. Moreover, in the causal chains which lead to a goal,
any link prior or subsequent to the goal-state which is common
to all the causal chains in the so-called 'variancy' also satisfy
Braithwaite's conditions, even when they are clearly not goals,
and behavior is not directed towards them. The problem of goal
failure seems amenable to a treatment of goal-directedness that
employs legitimate ceteris paribus clauses to rule out interferring
and intervening factors, and that properly emphasizes the counter-
factual force of the causal claims into which it translates teleo-
logical claims. This indeed was the strategy of John Canfield's
paper 'Teleological Explanations in Biology,' and Hugh Lehman's
'Functional Explanation in Biology.' But the principal object of
each of these papers was to criticize and not defend Nagel's,
Braithwaite's and, to a lesser extent, Hempel's claims about these
issues. It is within the compass of these two papers that a firm
insistence of a distinction between teleological and functional
descriptions or explanations was first manifested, and previous
writers condemned for failing to draw it. This point was made in
considerable detail by Rolf Gruner in 'Teleological and Functional
Explanation' as well. The point is simply that there are teleological
phenomena which involve nothing that can strictly be called a
goal, and in particular such phenomena are to be described in
terms of functions of organs, processes, substances, subsystems,
etc. Although Nagel, for instance, used the expressions teleological
and functional interchangeably, these philosophers focused on
his claims and Braithwaite's as they bore on functional statements
and explanations only. Lehman interpreted the purport of Nagel's
doctrine for functional attributions in these terms: according to
Nagel, the function of some item i in a system s is to perform f
if and only if (I) i's presence or operation is causally necessary for
f, and (2) s is a goal-directed system. Although in subsequent
discussion this attribution to Nagel was widely shared, it should
be noted that he nowhere explicitly adopts, approves or otherwise
has committed himself to it.
 Causation and teleology 71

Both Lehman and Canfield focus on solving the problem for

condition 1 of Nagel's account, first noted by Hempel, that an
item's functions are but a subset of its effects, and this latter set
must be suitably restricted if we are to analyze functional attri-
butions in terms of an item's causal consequences. Hempel pointed
out that many restrictions that have been proposed are vague, or
of doubtful empirical content. In effect, Canfield and Lehman
each set out to solve this problem. Their separate results are
however quite similar. Canfield's proposal takes the following
form: 'A function of I (in system S) is to do c' means 'i does c;
and if, ceteris paribus, c were not done in a system of S's type,
then the probability of S's surviving or having descendants would
be smaller than the probability of an S in which c is done surviving
and having descendants.' In other words, items have functions if
they are causally necessary for survival and reproduction. Lehman
says much the same, and relates it explicitly to an attempt to
specify sharply the notion of 'adequate functioning' that Hempel
stigmatized as imprecise in his paper. This is where Canfield and
Lehman part company, however, for the latter approves Hempel's
analysis of functional explanation (and its defects) as a species of
deductive-nomological explanation, even when an item's functions
are individuated as those among its effects which are conducive
to survival and reproduction. By contrast, Canfield claims that
Hempel's criticisms are based on a misunderstanding of the actual
explanatory employment of functional attributions. In biology,
according to Canfield, such statements are not cited to explain
the occurrence, existence or persistence of an item or its activity,
rather they are cited to explain what it is there for, what it does,
or how it contributes to survival and reproduction. As an expla-
nation of why, for instance, the thymus is present in the human
body, attribution to it of increasing resistance to diseases is ad-
mittedly of dubious explanatory force, but Canfield insists,
biologists do not cite such statements for this purpose, but in
order to explain what the thymus does in the human body. As
such, functional explanations are irreproachable, and, moreover,
translatable into non,"functional ones of the covering-law sort,
in accordance with Canfield's analysis of their meaning.
Although this sort of account has obvious attractions for the
empiricist, and seems to accord well with some aspects of bio-
72 A. Rosenberg

lo~ical usage, it was soon subject to serious objections. Among

these most forceful were those of H. Frankfurt and B. Poole,
whose 'Functional Analyses in Biology,' was explicitly 'directed
at Canfield. They begin by noting that consistency with biological
theory requires a number of modifications in Canfield's proposal;
among them, for 'descendants' in the original analysans, we must
substitute 'fertile descendants in the optimum range' of popu-
lation. So much is obvious, since sterile descendants, or descen-
dants too large or too small in numbers lead to extinction, and no
item whose operation leads to an organism's species' distinction,
could on Canfield's view, be one with a function. More seriously,
they point out that for current biological theory the survival of
the individual organism is secondary to the survival of its species
in the sense that it will treat as a useful item, with a biologically
accepted function, any item which though it leads to the destruc-
tion of the organism, enhances the probability of the survival of
the species of which it is a member. Accordingly, Canfield's
account is not consonant with contemporary biological language.
Furthermore, they complain that Canfield's theory will not
account for the meaning of functional attributions current before
the advent of Darwinian theory, and its recognition of the im-
portance of survival and reproduction. But unless it can be shown
that the advent of Darwinian theory marked a change in the
meaning (as opposed to the grounds or the truth-conditions) of
functional statements, the analysis in question is inadequate. Most
devastating, however, among Frankfurt and Poole's objections, was
a counterexample which turns on premises that Canfield explicitly
embraced: in particular the assumption that although the pro-
duction of heart noises is an effect of the operation of the heart,
it is not among its functions, by contrast with, fon example,
circulating the blood. But since heart noises can be a source of
diagnostic findings which determine medical practices, and since
these practices may increase survival and reproductive chances,
it follows on Canfield's account that such noises are among the
heart's functions. Accordingly, Canfield's analysis is incompatible
with one of the intuitions about biological usage with which he
began. Of course it is open to Canfield or his defenders to simply
admit that the original claim that the production of heart noises
is not a function of the heart was mistaken. But although this
 Causation and teleology 73

draws the teeth from Frankfurt and Poole's argument, it may not
avail against an even more serious, though more fanciful counter-
example, produced by R. Sorabji in 'Function.' He invites us to
consider an organic mechanism with the feature that it is activated
only by the infliction of a lethal injury on its containing system,
and when activated prevents the lethal damage from producing
any pain. Since the mechanism operates only after the organism
has suffered a lethal injury that effectively terminates its evo-
lutionary role, its prospects for future survival and reproduction,
or enhancement of the evolutionary prospects of its species, its
behavior cannot be described as increasing the survival prospects
of anything. Yet, Sorabji insists, it seems quite in order to describe
the specified effect of this mechanism as its function. Sorabji
concludes that survival and reproduction are thereby shown not
to exhaust the ends which are sub served by a functional subsytem.
Minimally we must include the absence of pain, or discomfort,
and perhaps other ends or 'goods' as well.
Sorabji's imaginative counterexample did not significantly
deflect the discussion of biological functions away from their
connection with evolutionary matters, in part because it is clear
that the existence of such a mechanism, without adaptive sig-
nificance, represents at best an evolutionary dead end. That is,
although the appearance of such a mechanism through mutation,
for instance, is compatible with biological theory, its expansion
throughout an interbreeding population is incompatible with the
theory of natural selection; indeed, insofar as it decreased the
aversion to painful injury, the existence of such a mechanism
over the long term is incompatible with the theory. For similar
reasons, Frankfurt and Poole's complaint that accounts like
Canfield's could not account for pre-Darwinian functional attri-
butions fell on deaf ears, just because philosophers of biology
and biologists came to insist that such claims are only legitimate,
not to mention true, when sustained by evolutionary consider-
ations. Characteristic of such views are the claims of the dis-
tinguished biologist Ernst Mayr, in 'Footnotes in the Philosophy
of Biology,' and by F. Ayala, who explicitly claims in 'Teleological
Explanation in Evolutionary Biology,' that teleological mechanisms
in living organisms are just biological adaptions that have arisen
through the operation of natural selection.
74 A. Rosenberg

Thus, despite serious problems, the account of functions in

terms of biological theory continued to gain adherents, who ex-
tended, deepened, and provided detailed applications of accounts
like Lehman's and Canfield's. One of the more succinct and
sophisticated of these was Michael Ruse's discussion in 'Functional
Statements in Biology,' and in his subsequent book, The Philos-
ophy of Biology. Ruse accepts Lehman's attribution to Nagel, but
instead of focusing on the first of its two conditions, he finds
inadequacies in the second, in the claim that the goal-directedness
of the system is a necessary part of the meaning of functional
characterizations of its components. Nagel's view is falsified,
claims Ruse, by the facts that (I) long hair on dogs harbors fleas,
(2) dogs are goal-directed systems, but (3) it is false that the func-
tion of long hair on dogs is to harbor fleas. The key to Nagel's
error, and to a correct account of functional statements, is to
notice that if fleas or fleabites conferred a selective advantage on
long-haired dogs, not available to short-haired ones, then the
claim that their function was to harbor fleas would be true. This
leads Ruse to claim that 'the function of x in z is to do y' means
that 'x does y in z, and y is an adaption.' An 'adaption' is to be
understood something that aids in the survival and reproduction
of z, or z's offspring, or z's con-specifics, or in the case of func-
tions of components of sterile organisms, y is like adaptions in
fertile organisms that are otherwise like z.
Other philosophers propounded analyses of functional state-
ments during this time which were substantially similar to Ruse's.
Among them was Morton Beckner, 'Function and Teleology,'
and The Biological Way of Thought, and William Wimsatt, 'Teleo-
logy and the Logical Structure of Functional Statements.' But
while analyses of functional language in terms of adaption seemed
to be converging, these same authors continued to differ markedly
about the nature and acceptability of the application of such state-
ments in the explanation of the existence, or persistence of an
item functionally characterized. Thus, Beckner rejects the sugges-
tion that functional attribution explains the existence of the item
thus characterized, for reasons much like Hempel's. By contrast,
Ruse finds such explanations acceptable, though significantly
different from conventional explanations of the deductive form,
and others like Wimsatt embrace the possibility of functional
 Causation and teleology 75

explanation, while denying that its purpose is to explain the

existence of the item characterized.

7. CONVERGENCE OF THE PROBLEMS

By the last few years of the period under examination at least

some philosophers began to see in the alleged defects of the
analysis of functions as adaption, and in the alleged compatibility
of teleological and mechanical causation, the possibility of a
unified analysis of both sorts of concepts, despite the original
claims that teleology and functionality had to be sharply dis-
tinguished. Most prominent among these philosophers is Larry
Wright. Wright began by focusing on Ruse's proposal, and then
extended his criticism to a full-blown account applicable both
to teleological phenomena of the sort that interest Taylor, and
to functional relations ubiquitous in biological theory. In 'Com-
ments on Ruse's Analysis of Functional Statements,' Wright
notes the similarities to Canfield's original proposal and suggests
that objections to the earlier view remain unanswered in the
later one. These objections purport to show that survival value
of an item or its effects is not necessary for functional attribution.
Wright now invents a case to show that it is not sufficient either.
Suppose a fortuitous anatomical peculiarity in a particular indi-
vidual were to protect him against an unusual though typically
fatal injury. Then such a peculiarity would increase the individual's
chances of survival and reproduction, even though Wright insists,
it would be false to say that the peculiarity had any function
whatever. The case described is obviously like that of a favorable
mutation, which certainly does not exist, in the first generation,
because of its advantages, and which cannot be explained in terms
of its effects, and therefore is doubtfully something with a func-
tion. The defect of the analysis, according to Wright, is that like
most others, it does not fmally solve Hempel's original problem
of rightly distinguishing functions from other beneficial and
incidental effects of an item. Moreover, Wright complains, the
account is applicable only to biological cases, and it is desirable
that any analysis of functional statements be equally applicable
to the uses of this concept in the description of artifacts, and
76 A. Rosenberg

their functions. Finally, because the analysis offered by Ruse

leans so explicitly on appeal to the theory of natural selection,
its applicability is not only limited to biological contexts, but
fails to explain what Wright claims is the inherent explanatory
force of functional attributions, quite independent of any par-
ticular theory in the natural sciences. Although Ruse responded
to these charges, in "A Reply to Wright's Analysis of Functional
Statements,' Wright undertook a program of erecting a new
account of teleological and functional language which avoided
these alleged defects.
Wright's earliest intervention on this discussion had been a
defense of Taylor against the claims of Nagel and Braithwaite.
But although he continued to find merit in Taylor's theory of
teleological explanation, in 'Explanation and Teleology' Wright
purported to show that its virtues were quite compatible with
a purely causal understanding of teleology, Subsequently, in
'Functions' and in his book, Teleological Explanation, Wright
expanded his treatment of Taylor into an analysis of both sorts
of concepts which he claims bridges all the gaps between them
while doing justice to biological, artifact ural and intentional
phenomena to which these terms apply. According to Wright,
the virtue of Taylor's schema is that it reflects the fact that
teleological processes have what Wright calls 'a consequence-
etiology.' That is, they are processes whose prior causal conditions
are related to and therefore specifiable in terms of the conse-
quences of the processes thus characterized. The distinction
between causal processes and teleological ones is a distinction
among etiologies: in particular, teleological etiologies are "require-
ment-etiologies,' they eventuate in states or events with certain
apparently 'required' properties, which arise just because they
have such properties. The underlying mechanism for this may
be natural selection or human intention, operant shaping or any
other conventional causal mechanism whose earlier states can be
described in ways that involve natural, reasonable, non-superfluous
mention of states subsequent to and causally requiring the teleo-
logical process. With this characterization in mind Wright accepts
the following version of Taylor's account of teleological behavior:
 Causation and teleology 77

S does B for the sake of G if, and only if,

(i) B tends to bring about G.
(ii) B occurs because (i.e. is brought about by the fact
that) it tends to bring about G.

The notion of 'tends to' is intentionally vague, and is supposed to

avoid traditional problems in the analysis of causal relations, as
well as circumventing the problems of goal failure and multi-
plicity, while retaining the suggestion of conventional nomological
connections characteristic of physical science. Thus if the occur-
rence of a particular bit of behavior depends on the environment
and the state of the system in action being such that the behavior
has a goal-producing property, G, then the behavior is 'directed'
towards G, where the notions of 'depends on,' and 'produce' have
their ordinary causal reading. The claim of basicness for teleo-
logical explanations that Taylor makes is rendered by Wright as
the notion that teleological phenomena can always be explained
by the citation of consequence-etiologies, that such a consequence-
etiology is always compatible with an indefinitely large number of
antecedent-etiologies, which are usually unknown, and that the
former sort of etiology is always acceptable in the explanation of
teleological. phenomena, and never available in the case of non-
teleological ones. Wright illustrates this sort of basicality by
attempting to draw the force of a potential counterexample,
a physical phenomenon with a consequence-teology that no one
would suppose to be teleological: the behavior of electrons in
accordance with the Pauli exclusion principle. The interaction
behavior of an electron is governed by the regularity that it shall
not manifest an energy-level already attained by another electron.
This exclusion represents a consequence to which we naturally
appeal in describing an electron's earlier behavior. Wright is willing
to grant that electron behavior may be teleological, and that the
Pauli principle may be a basic one beneath which there are no
non-consequence-etiologies. More importantly, he believes the
counterexample shows that teleological characterization represents
no grounds for metaphysical and methodological distinctions of
the sort Taylor purports to substantiate.
Having propounded a theory of teleological characterization,
Wright went on to extend this same idea of consequence-etiologies
78 A. Rosenberg

to functional characterizations as well, hoping thereby to show the

unity of teleological language. On his view:

The function of X is Z if, and only if,

(i) Z is a consequence (result) of X's being there
(ii) X is there because it does (results in) Z.

The chief difference between this model and Wright's account of

teleological characterization is the elimination of the 'tends to'
locution introduced to avoid problems of goal failure that do
not arise in functional relations. Otherwise here too we have a
consequence-teleology in which the second clause may be fulfilled
through the operation of natural selection and adaption, or
human atrifacing. The expression 'being there' is supposed to
cover either or both the location and the form of the item func-
tionally characterized. The account clearly avoids the objectionable
features of counterexamples Wright and others raised for the
Lehman-Canfield-Ruse tradition, while incorporating the evident
fact that functional attribution in current biological theory rests
on evolutionary considerations. It provides a way of ruling out
Sorabji's pain-elimination mechanism without a question begging
appeal to evolution, simply by enabling us to insist that there is
no consequence-etiology, evolutionary or otherwise, that gives
rise to it. It avoids the consequence of having to credit every item
with a beneficial effect on its containing system or system's
successors with a function, again just in case there is no conse-
quence-etiology for the appearance of the item. Finally, on
Wright's view, his unified account shows why functional and
teleological characterizations are inherently explanatory, i.e.,
why their explanatory power is packed into their semantic content.
This power is reflected in the place that concepts like 'because'
have in the analysans of both of these notions. Wright's analyses
are conspicuously vaguer than his predecessors; and employ
notions that are themselves open to conceptual controversy, but
he is at pains throughout his presentations to explain why he has
employed them, and what sense is to be attached to them to
avoid conflating problems about causation, or about deductive-
nomological explanation, with the problem of teleology.
During the time that Wright was publishing the papers that
 Causation and teleology 79

eventuated in his book, Andrew Woodfield completed a book-

length treatment of teleology and functional ascriptions which
also claimed to synthesize fmdings both from goal-directed and
functional phenomena into a single unified account. In Teleology,
after reviewing many of the views here examined, and offering
both derivative and original criticism Woodfield came to the con-
clusion that the core of teleology involves those human intentions,
desires and beliefs which most philosophers party to these issues
have considered unproblematic in their teleology or irrelevant to
the distinctive problem of accounting for the scientific usage of
these notions. Woodfield's claim is that the use of teleological
forms of description beyond the bonds of human contexts reflects
a 'metaphorical extension' to be justified by the detection of
internal states of the teleologically described non-sentient systems
that 'resemble' the representation of goals that govern human
action. What these internal representations of goals have in com-
mon seems to be either the belief that or analogical commitment
to the intrinsic or extrinsic utility or goodness of some particular
state, condition, event, etc. This of course enables one to credit
Sorabji's pain eliminator with the function of eliminating the pain
of lethal injuries, since the elimination of such pain is an evident
good. However, when we consider the fact that this desirable
mechanism may well be evolutionary disadvantageous, our in-
tuitions about whether it has this function become cloudy; and
the fact that there are many useful quirks and accidents in nature,
reflecting the coincidence of independent causal chains, may tend
to weaken further the notion that these processes are individuated
by and distinguished by appeal to their happy consequences.

8. LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

The subject of teleological characterization, and its assimilability

to causal descriptions, shows no signs of losing interest among
philosophers. Although there seems to have been considerable
convergence among active workers in this field, many problems
remain outstanding. Indeed, some might say that more problems
have been uncovered by devotion to the original questions than
have been resolved. One example suffices to illustrate this re-
80 A. Rosenberg

markable situation. In a recent paper, 'Functional Analysis,'

Robert Cummins isolates two assumptions, to be found at the very
outset of the history of this subject, in the writings of Hempel
and Nagel, in particular, which according to Cummins, have been
assumed, though unargued, by every contributor to the discussion
since its inception, and both of which reflect fundamental mis-
understandings about the nature and employment of functional
analyses. The assumptions naturally enough are (A) that the point
of a functional characterization is to explain the presence of the
item thus characterized (this does indeed seem to have been em-
braced by all sides to the controversy, with the explicit exception
of Canfield), and (B) to perform a function is to have effects
which contribute to the activity or condition of the system which
contains the functioning item. Cummins' complaint about (A)
mirrors Hempel's original one that because a function can be
fulfilled in more than one way, a functional explanation must
either be deductively invalid (since the function of an item is not
a sufficient condition of its existence), or valid but false in its
claims about the necessity of the item explained for the activity
it discharges. Cummins argues that functional explanations of
existence or presence of an item are appropriate only in the case
of artifacts. Moreover, biological explanations in which functional
characterizations figure, neither can nor do exemplify (A). The
philosopher's mistake is to suppose that the function of citations
of natural functions is to explain existence, when in fact its pur-
pose is to explain the behavior of the systems which contain the
item thus characterized. The assertion that functionally charac-
terized items exist figures in inferences to the best explanation
of how their containing systems behave, and this justificatory
inference of biologists has been mistaken by philosophers for
an attempt to explain the existence of the item involved. The
problems of assumption (B) are different, for here Cummins
claims traditional analyses are led by (B) into vicious circles,
infmite regresses or plain falsehoods. Thus contributing to well-
being or adequate self-maintenance of the containing system
becomes circular, for it turns out that these states mean nothing
more than fulfilling its (the system's) functions, or they are under-
stood in terms of the evolutionary adaption of the system, or its
species. But this will not explain functional characterization of
 Causation and teleology 81

vestigial or phylogeneticallly homologous items, nor does it answer

the allegedly inevitable question of what function such evolutionary
adaption serves. For (B) and its associated accounts, Cummins
substitutes the following suggestion. Functional attributions imply
dispositional statements; thus 'the function of x in s is to ifJ' implies,
among other things, 'x has the disposition to do ifJ in s.' That is, s
is subject to a regularity in its manifestation of ifJ, which regularity
is in turn to be explained by citing the precipitating conditions
for ifJ-ing. The description of these conditions will either involve
subsumption of s's manifestation of ifJ under more general laws
which include the behavior of systems that do not ifJ, or it will
involve an analysis of this disposition into a 'programmed mani-
festation' of sub-dispositions, ifJh ifJ'}., ••• ,ifJn manifested by s or
its components. Such analytically explained dispositions are
known as capacities, and functional analysis involves the expla-
nation of the biologically significant capacities of an organism
by analyzing them into subsystems and their dispositions, until,
presumably, at the level of physiology, for instance, subsumption
takes over the explanatory tasks. It is clear that this proposal is
a sharp departure from the previous pattern of discussion, and as
noted above produces at least as much work as it claims to put
an end to. For instance, even if, as Cummins purports to show by
examples, this fresh doctrine accounts as much for the biologist's
actual intuitions as other accounts, it requires a much fuller
discussion of programs and their operation in functioning systems
than he provides in this paper. The expectation that this will be
provided has already in part been satisfied, but no doubt Cummin's
suggestive departure will be one of the touchstones of work in
this area over the next period.
The last words to which this report of developments will accord
a place are those of one of the earliest and certainly the most
influential figure, not to say target, in the controversies at hand:
Ernest Nagel. In two papers published in 1977, 'Goal Directedness
in Biology,' and 'Functional Explanations in Biology,' Nagel
responded to criticisms and developments that appeared in the
twenty-five years since his first essay on these issues. He focused,
naturally enough, on some of the latest views, and sought to show
that his own accounts had well withstood the test of critical
scrutiny. First, Nagel divides the questions into those surrounding
82 A. Rosenberg

teleology, and those surrounding functions, something he was

criticized for failing to do in earlier papers. Taking up teleology
first, he condemns Woodfield's suggestions as being inapplicable
in most areas of biology, and as involving dubious and imprecise
claims about analogical representations in non-sentient systems
of conscious states. He instances the teleological process whereby
tadpoles become frogs as one which shows the special strains of
Woodfield's theory. This criticism is extended to a discussion of
the suggestion that teleological processes are governed or directed
by a program, which mayor may not answer to Woodfield's
needs. This suggestion, advanced by Ernst Mayr, is rejected on the
grounds that programming is not a sufficient condition for a
process to be goal-directed, for programmed processes may lack
the required persistence, nor is the detection of a program necessary
for identifying teleological processes. Nagel eventually opts for
the analysis of goal-directedness that he offered originally (cf.
Section I above), and defends it against subsequent criticism. The
only serious objection which this account has faced in Nagel's
view results from ignoring one of its essential features. It has
frequently been noted that systems whose states are a function
of the interaction of a number of variables, like gases for instance,
seem to satisfy Nagel's account, even though they are not goal-
directed. Nagel argues that this counterintuitive conclusion is the
result of neglecting his requirement that the independent variables
be causally independent of one another at any given moment. This
suffices to show that, for example, since pressure, temperature and
volume are not instantaneously independent of one another, the
thermometric state of a gas is not a goal towards which the gas's
behavior is directed. Having defended his original account, Nagel
restates his claim that so construed, goal direction can be cited
in teleological explanations that satisfy all the requirements of
the covering law model, while explaining a system's behavior in
terms of its effects. This leads him naturally to take up Cummins'
charges that Nagel's and others' treatment of functional expla-
nation reflects the mistake of treating it as a causal explanation
of causes by the citation of their effects, when it is in fact an
inference from effects to causes. This latter Nagel claims is no
more legitimate than the former, and so if Cummins' predecessors
are guilty as charged, Cummins is hoist by his own petard.
 Causation and teleology 83

In the second of his two papers, 'Functional Explanations in

Biology,' Nagel distinguishes a functional statement from a func-
tional explanation on the ground that the latter does not explicitly
ascribe a function to anything, but accounts for its presence by
reference to the contributions it makes to its containing system.
In discussing various accounts of such explanation since his own,
Nagel again begins with a view like Woodfield's which he criticized
in the first paper, and which he also ascribes to Wright, as the
claim that functional characterizations are to be understood on
analogy with the core notion of conscious function and share
with it a consequence etiology. This view is in a way one embraced
by Cummins as well, with the proviso that so understood func-
tional explanations are inappropriate in biology. Wright of course
claims that in non-conscious cases the mechanism that generates
functionally explained items is natural selection, but Nagel points
out that the latter sort of characterizations are frequently offered
in total ignorance of selective forces, as for instance in Harvey's
17th century descriptions of the heart, and more importantly,
because functions are frequently accorded to particular items,
like individual hearts, neither conscious nor natural selection
plays any role in the appearance of particular hearts. What is more,
such an appeal to the theory of evolution fails to reflect the
importance of mutation and variation as the active agents of
evolution, by contrast with selection, a passive agent, quite dis-
analogous to conscious choice. Nagel finds more plausible the
analysis of functional explanation first offered by Hempel, with
its attendant notion that functions contribute to 'welfare' of
individuals, or species. However, Nagel dissents from Hempel's
methodological condemnation of functional explanations thus
construed on the grounds that they can be filled out in a way
that avoids the dilemma of invalidity or falsity that Hempel
detects in most formalizations of this sort of explanation. Again,
Nagel recognizes that Hempel leaves unspecified the notion of
'welfare' or 'proper function' required by his analysis. Naturally
enough he then turns to Ruse's criticism and alternative. He does
not so much dispute Ruse's conclusions as blunt the claim that
the account Ruse and so many other ascribed to him is really one
for which he argued. In particular, he notes that his claim required
a function ascribed to an item contribute to the realization of
84 A. Rosenberg

some goal or the goal directive system, and this well-nigh rules out
the flea-bitten shaggy dog counterexample to his account. But he
does admit that on his account every item with an effect that
contributes to maintenance of some goal or other will have to be
accorded a functional characterization. But in the end Nagel
seems more eager to accommodate the adaption-account of
functional explanation, than to reject it.
Nagel's general conclusions are indeed those Comtean claims
noted at the beginning of this history: 'goal ascriptions can be
explained in a manner that is structurally identical with expla-
nations in the natural sciences ... and ... functional statements,
as well as the presuppositions of functional ascriptions can also
be rendered without using functional concepts; and functional
explanations can be shown to have the same structure as expla-
nations in physical sciences.'
This is a conclusion from which few among the participants in
the debate have demurred; and the debate's main aim has been
that of attempting to establish these two conclusions on the
soundest footing. Having done so to his satisfaction Nagel ex-
presses the magnanimous though decidedly un-Comtean conclusion
that, because of our success in reducing teleological and functional
characterizations to those characteristic of physical science, 'teleo-
logical concepts and explanations do not constitute a species of
intellectual constructions that are inherently obscure and should
therefore be regarded with suspicion.'

Bibliography

The list which follows is by no means complete and reflects only

works cited in the paper, my only excuse being that the paper at
least mentions what I hope is every influential contribution to
the discussion of teleology published in English-speaking academic
journals over the period under examination. I have concentrated
on journals both because they are less accessible than books,
and because they provided the forum in which the active debate
was pursued. The limitation to journals written in the English
language reflects the author's belief that the subject has been
pursued at this level of technicality and with this close attention
to narrowly scientific concerns largely in this language, in spite
 Causation and teleology 85

of the interest in related issues that has been manifested par-

ticularly among French and Soviet philosophers of science. These
issues involved considerations related to structuralism in linguistics
and social science, and to materialist interpretations of the findings
(as opposed to the methods) of biological science. Touching on
them in this context would simply take the present report too
far afield.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ayala, F. Teleological Explanation in Evolutionary Biology. Philosophy of

Science 37 (1970): 1-15.
Beckner, M. Biological Way of Thought. Berkeley 1968.
- Function and Teleology. Journal of History of Biology 2 (1969): 151-169.
Braithwaite, R.B. Teleology. Proceedings of Aristotelian Society 47 (1946).
- Scientific Explanation. Cambridge. 1953.
Canfield, J. Teleological Explanation in Biology. British Journal for Philos-
ophy of Science 13 (1963): 285-295.
Canfield, J. Purpose in Nature. Englewood Cliffs 1966.
Cummins, R. Functional Analysis.Journal ofPhilosophy 72 (197 5): 741-765.
Frankfurt, H., and Poole, B. Functional Analysis in Biology. British Journal
for Philosophy of Science 17 (1966): 69-72.
Gruner, R. Teleological and Functional Explanation. Mind 74 (1966): 516-
529.
Hempel, C.G. Logic of Functional Analysis. In Gross (Ed.), Symposium on
Sociological Theory, New York 1959. Reprinted in Aspects ofScientific
Explanation, New York 1965.
Lehman, H. Functional Explanation in Biology. Philosophy of Science 32
(1965): 1-20.
Mayr, E. Footnotes on the Philosophy of Biology. Philosophy of Science
36 (1969): 197-202.
Nagel, E. Teleological Explanation and Teleological Systems. In Ratner (Ed.),
Vision and Action. New Brunswick, N.J. 1953.
- A Formalization of Functionalism. Logic Without Metaphysics. New York
1956.
- Structure of Science. New York 1961.
- Goal Directedness in Biology. Journal of Philosophy 74 (1977): 268-279.
- Functional Explanation in Biology. Journal of Philosophy 74 (1977):
280-301.
Noble, D. Charles Taylor on Teleological Explanation. Analysis 27 (1966):
96-103.
- Conceptionalist View of Teleology. Analysis 28 (1967): 62-63.
86 A. Rosenberg

Ruse, M. FWlctional Statements in Biology. Philosophy of Science 38 (1971):

87-95.
- Philosophy of Biology. London 1973.
- Reply to Wright's Analysis of Functional Statements. Philosophy ofScience
38 (1972): 515-517.
Scheffler, I. Thoughts on Teleology. British Journal for Philosophy of Science
9 (1959): 265-284.
- Anatomy of Inquiry. New York 1963.
Sorabji, R. FWlction. Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1964): 289-302.
Sprigg, T.L.S. Final Causes. Proceedings of Aristotelian Society, Supple-
mentary Volume 45 (1971): 149-170.
Taylor, C. Explanation of Behaviour. London 1974.
..,... Teleological Explanation: A Reply to Noble. Analysis 27 (1966): 141-143.
Wimsatt, W. Teleology and the Logical Structure of FWlctional Statements.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 3 (1972): 1-80.
Woodfield, A. Teleology. Cambridge 1976.
Wright, L. The Case Against Teleological Reductionism. British Journal for
Philosophy of Science 19 (1968): 211-223.
- Explanation and Teleology. Philosophy of Science 39 (1972): 204-218.
- Comments on Ruse's Analysis of FWlctional Statements. Philosophy of
Science 38 (1972): 512-514.
- Functions. Philosophical Review 82 (1973): 139-168.
- Teleological Explanation. Berkeley 1976.