KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

Resolution 161
of reason to their transcendental presuppositions. Consider the two
constitutive principles:
[C1] Thesis: All production of material things is possible in terms of
merely mechanical laws.
[C2] Antithesis: Some production of material things is not possible in
terms of merely mechanical laws. (B314-5; CJ, 267)
The content of these statements can be understood either constitutively
as dogmatic assertions or merely regulatively as subjective
maxims guiding research. We can use them regulatively (logically)
without taking as a constitutive principle the "transcendental presupposition"
that we thereby make. Just as in the Transcendental
Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason, the Critical Philosophy can
save the dogmatic postulates of pre-Kantian philosophy as heuristic
maxims of research. If we interpret the constitutive principles (C1,
C2) as merely regulative in the sense of the Transcendental Dialectic,
then they do in fact express merely different cognitive interests
and do not come into conflict.
However, there is no regulative interpretation of the conflicting
constitutive principles (C1, C2) that can produce the two
maxims R1 and R2 in which the antinomy consists. A regulative
interpretation of the constitutive principles does not make them
necessary, but the antinomy subsists between the general necessity
and the occasional impossibility of merely mechanistic judgment.
Between regulative principles an antinomy can occur only if the
conflicting maxims are in some sense "indispensible." Recall
Kant's original announcement of the antinomy: "Now between these
necessary maxims of reflective judgment a conflict may arise, and
hence an antinomy" (§69, B312; CJ, 266). The antinomy arises not
merely because Kant takes up the dogmatic postulates of his predecessors
as regulative principles, but rather because in the case of
natural purposes (and only there) these regulative principles must
be employed.
3.5 The Resolution of the Antinomy
The resolution of the antinomy of judgment consists in the
appeal to a "peculiarity of our understanding" (as it is expressed in