KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

34 Analytic of Teleological Judgment
Kant calls heuristic research maxims of this kind "logical
principles," which however make a "transcendental presupposition."
If we use, for instance, the concept of the systematic unity of
nature regulatively, attempting to reduce different events to a common
underlying regularity, we cannot prescribe to nature that it
must have this unity. However, in as much as we proceed methodically,
prescribing this rule to ourselves, we presuppose that nature
does in fact possess this unity.
It is, indeed, difficult to understand how there can be a logical principle by
which reason prescribes the unity of rules, unless we also presuppose a
transcendental principle whereby such a systematic unity is a priori
assumed to be necessarily inherent in the objects. (B678-679)
Although such regulative principles "seem to be transcendental,"
they are not, and they cannot be given a transcendental deduction
(B691). They are useful for empirical research, but we must remember
that the presuppositions that we make when using them are not
constitutive for nature and may turn out to be wrong. The particular
examples of such general principles that Kant discusses in the section
are all taken from the philosophical tradition.
The figure of argument of regulative principles of reason (for
the understanding) is Kant's major instrument for reappropriating
the ruins of the traditional metaphysics demolished by his critique.
As far as the presentation in the Critique of Pure Reason is concerned,
the need for the regulative employment of the metaphysical
principles destroyed by the Dialectic does not arise from empirical
research itself. At least primarily, the point is not empirical concept
formation but rather a sort of metaphysical recycling: the sensible
reuse of a traditional corpus of general principles. The basic postulates
of rational psychology, cosmology, and speculative theology,
which Kant has rejected as metaphysical assertions may be applied
as heuristic maxims in empirical research. In the Critique itself
Kant deals only with cases in which the general principle (rule, concept)
is already available and attempts to show that the rule, which
one already has, is "admitted as problematic only" (B674).
The most important of the regulatively recycled metaphysical
principles is according to Kant the speculative or deistic concept of
God. "Thus the transcendental, and only determinate, concept
which the purely speculative reason gives us of God is in the
strictest sense deistic" (B703). The deistic watchmaker God ("omnipotent
Author") is introduced as a regulative principle in order to be