KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

156 Heuristic but Necessary Principles
how the antinomy of judgment can be conceived as an apparent contradiction
within Kant's critical philosophy. This distinction forces
Kant to reconsider the seemingly self-evident character of the presuppositions
underlying the Second Antinomy in the Critique of
Pure Reason.
Necessary Maxims
In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant had shown how differing
interests of reason could lead to conflicting demands on the understanding;
but so long as they are only regulative principles, there is
no genuine opposition. The regulative ideas of reason introduced in
the Critique of Pure Reason applied to phenomena in general: one
ought, for instance, to collect species into genera and divide genera
into species. These were general heuristic principles to be applied at
different times for different purposes. In the Critique of Judgment,
on the other hand, we are dealing with regulative principles for the
faculty of judgment not for the understanding, and these principles
are to be applied to a particular object — possibly at the same time.
With regard to the concept of natural purpose, we are not dealing
with two merely heuristic maxims expressing two different cognitive
interests, such as for instance: dissect the anatomical structure,
consider the ecological context. With regard to a natural purpose,
both conflicting maxims are, according to Kant, necessary to
acquire knowledge about the object at all. Thus it must be explained
in what sense the two (heuristic) maxims are said to be necessary.
If the first maxim (R1) were only supposed to assert that
everything should be considered as causally determined, there
would be no difficulty in showing its necessity. Only that which is
causally determined can be an object of experience at all. It would be
a necessary maxim but not one of reflective judgment; it would be a
constitutive principle of determinate judgment. As a regulative
principle its purported necessity must receive a special explanation.
If mechanism is not identical to causality, then the supposed necessity
of the maxim of mechanism needs special justification.
The same explanation of the necessity of mechanism is given
a number of times in the course of the Dialectic. In §70 after the
formal presentation of the antinomy, Kant writes: