KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

Natural Purpose 47
believe, organisms are such things), then the concept of natural
purpose, too, has objective reality, i.e. instantiation in experience;
but we can never know this definitively, since our ability to conceive
of particular objects of experience as non-intentional may change
with time and the progress of science.
In the central section of the Analytic (§65) Kant attempts to
explain what exactly a natural purpose is supposed to be. He begins
with the remark that the concept of natural purpose as something
that "relates to itself as cause and effect" "is still not quite appropriate
and determinate and still needs to be derived from a determinate
concept" (B289; CJ, 251). Kant's "derivation" of this notion is
extremely problematical, and what he must have meant by it cannot
be fully explicated at this point in the analysis. I shall however quote
and analyze this derivation here in order at least to make it as intelligible
as possible at this stage:
1) A causal connection, as our mere understanding thinks it, is one that
always constitutes a descending series (of causes and effects): the things
that are the effects, and that hence presuppose others as their causes,
cannot themselves in turn be causes of these others. This kind of causal
connection is called that of efficient causes (nexus effectivus).
2) But we can also conceive of a causal connection in terms of a concept
of reason (the concept of purposes). Such a connection considered as a
series, would carry with it dependence both downwards and upwards: here
we could call a thing the effect of something and still be entitled to call it,
as the series ascends, the cause of that something as well.
3) This sort of causal connection is easily found in the practical sphere
(namely in art). For example, although a house is the cause of the money
received for rent, yet, conversely, the representation of this possible
income also caused the house to be constructed. This kind of causal connection
is called that of final causes (nexus finalis).
4) Perhaps it would be more appropriate to call the former causal
connection that of real causes, the latter that of ideal causes, since these
terms would make it clear at the same time that there cannot be more than
these two kinds of causality. (B*289-290; CJ, 251-52; emphasis and
numbering PM)
Already in the first sentence there are unclarities: for
instance, what does Kant mean by "as our mere understanding
thinks"? Every kind of phenomenal causality, even "ideal" causation,
is thought by the understanding. The causality of final causes
is precisely the causality of an understanding, as Kant often
stresses. The sense of the reference to our mere understanding in
this restriction will only become clear in the resolution of the antinomy
at the end of the Dialectic. But other than this, the thrust of