KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

Mechanistic Explanation 169
by us. Both sides of the conflict could be right. In any case since the
concept of natural purpose at least does not contain a contradiction,
it is a possible concept. Thus the title of §77 reads: "On the peculiarity
of the human understanding that makes the concept of
natural purpose possible for us." The antinomy is resolved through
the introduction of a non-constitutive peculiarity of our understanding
which we cannot, however, overcome. Our natural science
is reductionistic, it decompounds a whole into its parts and assumes
that one could reconstruct the whole again out of the parts. It cannot
allow that the parts lose by this separation any essential properties
(dependent on the whole), which would then not be available for the
production of the whole: "for we have complete insight only into
what we can ourselves make and accomplish according to concepts.
But organization, as an intrinsic purpose of nature, infinitely surpasses
all our ability to exhibit anything similar through art" (§68,
B309; CJ, 264). But this inability of ours cannot guarantee that in
nature (even as a phenomenon) such a dependence of the parts on
the whole is not possible. And the organism seems to demonstrate
that this kind of causality is even real.
Intuitive and Discursive Understanding
Both figures of argument that Kant introduces in §77, the
peculiarity of our understanding and the intuitive understanding,
(which is supposed to clarify our peculiarity) are quite problematical.
Both figures were already used in the Critique of Pure Reason
but in a somewhat different sense. The problems that arise respectively
from the reuse of these two terms are of quite different seriousness.
The reintroduction of the "intuitive understanding" leads to
merely terminological problems as to what Kant presumably means
by the term; these can be clarified philologically without much difficulty.
The mechanistic peculiarity of our understanding, on the
other hand, raises problems of substance for the Critical Philosophy
which are not so easy to dispose of. I shall deal first with the merely
terminological problems and then turn to the more serious philosophical
questions.
Kantian philosophy is inhabited by a rich multiplicity of various
species of the genus understanding. However, all of these vari-