The Modern Philosophical Resurrection of Teleology
The Modern Philosophical Resurrection of Teleology
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目的论的现代哲学复兴
DOI：
10.5840/monist20048711
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发表时间：
2004
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
M. Perlman
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
M. Perlman
世界上有很多东西都有功能。打字机是打字用的。开罐器是用来开罐头的。割草机是用来割草的。这就是这些东西的用处。世界各地的人们每天都将功能归因于物体。一些具有功能的物体是活着的有机体的器官或部分。心脏是用来泵血的。眼睛是用来看的。不计其数的生物学著作解释了“……的形式、功能和进化”。从蜜蜂跳舞到象牙再到熊猫的拇指，应有尽有。在心理学、社会学、经济学、医学研究和神经科学等不同领域，许多科学解释都依赖于对事物或系统的功能和/或故障的呼吁。他们谈论人类和其他有机体或其部分是如何工作的，它们的功能是什么，它们为什么存在，不同的情况将如何影响它们，它们将如何反应。追溯到亚里士多德，哲学家过去常常慷慨地使用函数来描述对象、有机体、它们的相互作用，甚至作为伦理学和形而上学的基础。然而，自启蒙运动以来，谈论自然物体的功能，远景！功能，开始被怀疑，因为世界的机械模型取代了旧的亚里士多德模型。从宗教的观点来看，过去很容易看出自然界中的物体如何具有自然功能，因为据说上帝在整个创造过程中通过设计灌输功能。但哲学家们变得越来越(而且明智地)不愿援引上帝来解决每一个棘手的哲学问题，也变得不愿沉迷于这种对电视的宗教解释
Many objects in the world have functions. Typewriters are for typing. Can-openers are for opening cans. Lawnmowers are for cutting grass. That is what these things are for. Every day around the world people attribute functions to objects. Some of the objects with functions are organs or parts of living organisms. Hearts are for pumping blood. Eyes are for seeing. Countless works in biology explain the "Form, Function, and Evolution of ... " everything from bee dances to elephant tusks to pandas' 'thumbs'. Many scientific explanations, in areas as diverse as psy chology, sociology, economics, medical research, and neuroscience, rest on appeals to the function and/or malfunction of things or systems. They talk of how humans and other organisms or their parts work, what their functions are, why they are present, and how different situations will affect them and how they will react. Philosophers, going back to Aristotle, used to make generous use of functions in describing objects, organisms, their interactions, and even as the basis of ethics and metaphysics. And yet, since the Enlightenment, talk of the function of natural objects, tele ologica! function, began to be viewed with suspicion, as the mechanical model of the world replaced the old Aristotelian model. From a religious standpoint, it used to be easy to see how objects in the natural world could have natural functions, for God was said to instill functions by design throughout Creation. But philosophers became increasingly (and wisely) reluctant to invoke God to solve every difficult philosophical problem, and became unwilling to indulge in such religious explanations of tele