KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

50 Analytic of Teleological Judgment
i.e. a means that we use to acquire knowledge about the thing. 33 The
whole that the parts comprise must be such that we can conceive its
concept as its cause; and we must be able to judge the efficient
causes (the parts) as themselves effects of final causes.
3) Finally, every part must be able to be viewed not only as the
purpose or final cause of the others but also as the efficient or real
cause of the production of the others, "as an organ that produces the
other parts", so that a natural purpose is an "organized and selforganizing
being" (B292; CJ, 253). Kant compares the natural
purpose with a clock, whereby the major difference between the two
lies in the fact that the parts of the clock may be conceived as final
causes of one another with reference to the understanding that
made the clock but not as efficient causes of one another. They do not
give rise to one another and need not be so judged. An organized
creature is more than a mere machine, because it has the power to
form its parts and to transfer this formative power to the
"materials," so that the parts can mutually bring one another forth.
Kant then points out that the analogy between artifact and organism
is not worth much and even asserts that "strictly speaking,
therefore, the organization of nature has nothing analogous to any
causality known to us" (B294; CJ, 254).
It can thus be ascertained that the causality that distinguishes
organization consists in an interaction between parts and
whole. All determinations of the concept of natural purpose that
Kant introduces have to do with the relation of part and whole. It
becomes quite clear that the causal dependency downwards and
upwards, mentioned earlier, referred to the relation of part and
whole: "downwards" means that the properties of the whole are
traced back to those of the parts; "upwards" designates the dependency
of the parts on the whole or on the other parts. This will be
presented in detail in the next chapter in the analysis of the Second
Antinomy of the Critique of Pure Reason. I would, however, like to
emphasize here the rather paradoxical circumstance, that the
central problem of the organism and the fundamental difference
between organism and machine is seen by Kant not to lie in a teleological
relation at all, but rather to lie in the fact that a peculiar kind
of efficient causality seems to be effective in the organism, and that
33 On the concept of "Erkenntnisgrund" cf. Kant, Logic, §§7&8 (Ak 9,95-6;
W 3,526; and "Progress of Metaphysics," (Ak 20,393; W 3,630).