An externalist teleology
An externalist teleology
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DOI：
10.1007/s11229-021-03181-w
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发表时间：
2021-05-08
期刊：
影响因子：
1.5
通讯作者：
McShea, Daniel W.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Babcock, Gunnar;McShea, Daniel W.
目的论在生物科学中有着复杂的历史。一些人认为，达尔文的理论让生物学摆脱了目的论的解释。其他人则满足于保留目的论，并将其视为隐喻，或者试图用目的论等问题较少的概念来取代它。还有一些人试图以一种与19世纪的生命论保持距离的方式将其自然化，重点放在功能在目的论解释中所起的作用。在这场辩论中似乎没有达成共识的可能。本文采用了一种不同的方法。它认为目的论是一个完全可以接受的科学概念，但这场辩论在大约2300年前出现了一个令人遗憾的失误，从那以后一直令人困惑。这一失误出现在亚里士多德的物理学之初，当时区分了两种类型的目的论解释。一种类型与构件有关，而另一种类型与自然实体有关。对于亚里士多德来说，人工制品是由外部的东西来引导的，人的意图，而自然实体是由内在的自然来引导的。我们的目的是证明，事实上，只有一种合法的目的论解释，亚里士多德会认为这是人工产物模型的变体，其中实体由外部场引导。我们首先分析这两种解释之间的差异。然后，我们考察了亚里士多德生物学著作中的一些证据，这些证据表明，在他对自然-人工区别的描述中，他在试图提供自发生成的目的论解释时遇到了困难。我们证明，通过目的论的人工产物模型的更健壮的版本，换句话说，使用外在论的目的论，有可能解决这些困难。这就是麦克谢的模型，在该模型中，以目标为导向的实体由一系列嵌套的上层字段指导。为了解释目的论行为，这个解释只引用了外部物理力量，而不是神秘的内在本质。然后，我们考虑场论与其他将目的论自然化于生物学的努力有何不同。最后，我们展示了这种解释如何使我们能够处理某些棘手的案例--基因和意图--在这些案例中，即使在当今的生物学中，假设内在本性的诱惑仍然强烈。
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 explanation. No consensus has seemed possible in this debate. This paper takes a different approach. It argues that teleology is a perfectly acceptable scientific notion, but that the debate took an unfortunate misstep some 2300 years ago, one that has confused things ever since. The misstep comes in the beginning of Aristotle's Physics when a distinction is made between two types of teleological explanation. One type pertains to artifacts while the other pertains to entities in nature. For Aristotle, artifacts are guided by something external to themselves, human intentions, while natural entities are guided by an internal nature. We aim to show that there is, in fact, only one type of legitimate teleological explanation, what Aristotle would have considered a variant of an artifact model, where entities are guided by external fields. We begin with an analysis of the differences between the two types of explanation. We then examine some evidence in Aristotle's biological works suggesting that in his account of the natural-artifactual distinction, he encountered difficulties in trying to provide teleological accounts of spontaneous generation. And we show that it is possible to resolve these difficulties with a more robust version of an artifact model of teleology, in other words, with an externalist teleology. This is McShea's model, in which goal-directed entities are guided by a nested series a of upper-level fields. To explain teleological behavior, this account invokes only external physical forces rather than mysterious internal natures. We then consider how field theory differs from other efforts to naturalize teleology in biology. And finally, we show how the account enables us to grapple with certain difficult cases-genes and intentions-where, even in biology today, the temptation to posit internal natures remains strong.