KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

Mechanistic Explanation 163
Pure Reason, and c) present the reconciliation of mechanism and
teleology developed by Kant in §78.
Mechanistic Explanation
As early as the announcement of the antinomy of judgment in
the first section of the Dialectic Kant pointed out that the necessity of
the two regulative maxims (i.e. that which makes their possible conflict
a "natural dialectic") has its basis in the nature of our cognitive
powers (B312; CJ, 266). At the end of §73 Kant gives the first indication
of his solution to the antinomy; there he mentions "the character
and limits of our cognitive powers" (B328; CJ, 277). In contrast to
the discussion of the regulative use of the ideas of reason in the
Critique of Pure Reason, where he argues that the limited or finite
character of our understanding forces us to use regulative principles
in empirical research, the discussion here centers not only on
the quantitative limits but also on the quality (constitution) of our
faculty of knowledge. "Faculty of knowledge" is used here in the
broadest sense, and in the "Comment" (§76) Kant deals with the
peculiar relations within the mind among reason, understanding,
and sensibility. Section 77, however, deals with the peculiarity of a
particular faculty, namely, the understanding, indeed of specifically
human understanding. The problem dealt with is thus not the
potentially universal difficulties based on the fact that reason must
rely on understanding and understanding on sensibility; it is the
understanding alone that makes us mechanists.
In his presentation Kant seems at first to be alluding to the
difference between understanding and judgment in a manner similar
to that of the arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason which
made use of the distinction between understanding and sensible
intuition. Understanding must rely on judgment since the objects of
experience (the particular) are underdetermined by the concepts of
the understanding (the general), at least as far as finite understandings
are concerned. With regard to a certain universal, particular
objects always have something accidental about them which can
provide the occasion for teleological judgments, in as much as purposiveness
is taken to be the necessity of the contingent: If an object
of experience is underdetermined by (contingent in light of) the