KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

Introduction 55
Such an illusion whether intentionally (B86) or unintentionally
(B353) introduced, is based merely on some sort of misleading similarity
to a logical rule. It disappears as soon as it is exposed:
Logical illusion, which consists in the mere imitation of the form of reason
(the illusion of formal fallacies), arises entirely from lack of attention to the
logical rule. As soon as attention is brought to bear on the case that is
before us, the illusion completely disappears. (B353)
However, there is not only a logical illusion but also a transcendental
illusion and accordingly also a transcendental dialectic,
"a critique of understanding and reason in respect of their hyperphysical
employment" (B88). But transcendental illusion does not
disappear, even when it has been exposed. There exists, according
to Kant, a necessary illusion, a "natural and inevitable illusion"
that can ultimately be traced back to problems anchored in the basic
conceptual equipment of our faculty of knowledge.
There exists, then, a natural and unavoidable dialectic of pure reason — not
one in which a bungler might entangle himself through lack of knowledge,
or one which some sophist has artificially invented to confuse thinking
people, but one inseparable from human reason, and which, even after its
deceptiveness has been exposed, will not cease to play tricks with reason
and continually entrap it into momentary aberrations ever and again calling
for correction.(B354-5)
The antinomies are one aspect of this dialectic.
According to Kant, four antinomies or apparent contradictions
arise in the attempt to answer some of the basic questions of
cosmology. The conflicting answers which he examines correspond
roughly to positions actually taken by empiricist and rationalist
metaphysics. At one point Kant summarizes these questions:
whether the world exists from eternity or has a beginning; whether cosmical
space is filled with beings to infinitude, or is enclosed within certain limits;
whether anything in the world is simple, or everything such as to be
infinitely divisible; whether there is generation and production through
freedom, or whether everything depends on the chain of events in the natural
order; and finally whether there exists any being completely unconditioned
and necessary in itself, or whether everything is conditioned in its existence
and therefore dependent on external things and itself contingent. (B509)
Kant orders the answers to these questions according to the basic
scaffolding of his system. Each of the four classes of categories
(quantity, quality, relation, modality) receives it own proper antinomy;
the antinomies are divided, in accordance with the system,
into two pairs: mathematical antinomies (1 and 2) and dynamical