This book is a major contribution to the current theory of liberalism by an eminent political theorist. It challenges the views of such theorists as Rawls, Dworkin, and Ackerman who believe that the essence of liberalism is that it should remain neutral concerning different ways of life and individual conceptions of what is good or valuable. Professor Galston argues that the modern liberal state is committed to a distinctive conception of the human good, and to that end has developed characteristic (...) institutions and practices - representative governments, diverse societies, market economies, and zones of private action - in the pursuit of specific public purposes that give unity to the liberal state. These purposes guide liberal public policy, shape liberal justice, require the practice of liberal virtues, and rest on a liberal public culture. Consequently the diversity characteristic of liberal societies is limited by their institutional, personal, and cultural preconditions. (shrink)

According to the “adequacy-for-purpose” view of data evaluation, data should be evaluated as better or worse relative to a given research purpose and corresponding research context. In this paper, I apply the adequacy-for-purpose view to a novel case study—concerning the use of paleoecological data to make predictions about coral reef response to contemporary climate change—and then use the case study to suggest two extensions to the adequacy-for-purpose view. First, I argue that we can evaluate research purposes (...) according to their productivity (how well these research purposes serve other, more ultimate purposes). Second, I argue that we can also evaluate research purposes according to their plausibility (including whether we have access to data that are adequate for these research purposes). The relationship between data evaluation and purpose setting should be seen as an iterative one, in which both data and purposes are refined in concert over time. (shrink)

Euteleology is a metaphysics according to which reality is inherently purposive and the contingent Universe exists ultimately because reality’s overall telos, the supreme good, is realized within it. This book provides an exposition of euteleology and a defence of its coherence. The main aim is to establish that euteleological metaphysics provides a religiously adequate alternative to the ‘personal-omniGod’ understanding of theism prevalent amongst analytic philosophers. The quest for an alternative to understanding the God of the Abrahamic traditions as an omnipotent, (...) omniscient, morally perfect personal being is motivated by criticizing the religious adequacy of this conception of God. This criticism deploys a ‘normatively relativized’ version of the ‘logical’ Argument from Evil: it is argued that an omnipotent personal agent would unavoidably be responsible for a morally flawed relationship with human beings caught up in horrendous evils. Reasons are given for preferring a ‘non-personalist’ account of theism, and the religious adequacy of a euteleological theism is then defended against two main objections—first, that it faces a problem of evil that threatens its coherence, and, second, that it cannot make good sense of the practices of prayer and worship that are essential to theist religion. An important theme is that, though God is not a personal being, nor any kind of ‘being amongst beings’ in basic euteleological ontology, God-talk may be understood as resting on a radical analogy that is apt for enabling right human responses to ultimate divine reality. (shrink)

The controversy between teleologists and deontologists, whether under these names or in other guises, is one of the long-standing disputes of ethics. In different branches of philosophy the perennial nature of a dispute may point to different things: in some, for example, it may properly incline one to say “a plague on both your houses” and thereafter to look for some way of disposing of the whole problem around which the philosophical problem has raged; in ethics, on the other hand, (...) root-and-branch methods of excision are to be deplored, for here a perennial issue usually draws attention to points of view which have somehow to be reconciled if the problems underlying them are to be overcome. The deontology-teleology controversy seems to me a case in point. Here, if anywhere in ethics, a reconciliation must be effected; and in the present paper my primary aim is to induce deontologists and teleologists to abandon their mutual hostility. 1 I shall attempt to carry out this mission of philosophical good will through examining the ways in which we justify imperatives. In the first section of the paper I shall say something about the controversy itself, making it clear that I consider that it has roots which it would be inconvenient to expose at this stage of the inquiry; in the second I shall study the justification of a number of typical non-moral imperatives; in the third I shall apply the findings of the second to the justification of moral imperatives; and finally, in the fourth section I shall return to the deontology-teleology controversy and attempt to elucidate how it arises, to point out the two levels on which the same dispute can be found, and to suggest a way in which the essentials of the rival views may be accepted and combined. (shrink)

This essay has two goals. The first is to define the behavioristic study of natural events and to classify behavior. The second is to stress the importance of the concept of purpose.Given any object, relatively abstracted from its surroundings for study, the behavioristic approach consists in the examination of the output of the object and of the relations of this output to the input. By output is meant any change produced in the surroundings by the object. By input, conversely, (...) is meant any event external to the object that modifies this object in any manner. (shrink)

This study investigated the effects of internal and demographic variables on civic development in late adolescence using the construct civic purpose. We conducted surveys on civic engagement with 480 high school seniors, and surveyed them again two years later. Using multivariate regression and linear mixed models, we tested the main effects of civic purpose dimensions (beyond-the-self motivation, future civic intention), ethnicity, and education on civic development from Time 1 to Time 2. Results showed that while there is an (...) overall decrease in civic engagement in the transition out of high school, both internal and social factors protected participants from steep civic decline. Interaction effects varied. Ethnicity and education interacted in different ways with the dimensions of civic purpose to predict change in traditional and expressive political engagement, and community service engagement. (shrink)

Two familiar worldviews dominate Western philosophy: materialist atheism and the benevolent God of the Abrahamic faiths. Tim Mulgan explores a third way. Ananthropocentric Purposivism claims that there is a cosmic purpose, but human beings are irrelevant to it. Purpose in the Universe develops a philosophical case for Ananthropocentric Purposivism that it is at least as strong as the case for either theism or atheism. He draws on a range of secular and religious ethical traditions to conclude that a (...) non-human-centred cosmic purpose can ground a distinctive human morality. Our moral practices, our view of the moral universe, and our moral theory are all transformed if we shift from the familiar choice between a universe without meaning and a universe where humans matter to the less self-aggrandising thought that, while it is about something, the universe is not about us. (shrink)

This book discusses the development of Edward Tolman's purposive behaviourism from the 1920s to the 1950s, highlighting the tension between his references to cognitive processes and the dominant behaviourist trends. It shows how Tolman incorporated concepts from European scholars, including Egon Brunswik and the Gestalt psychologists, to justify a more purposive form of behaviourism and how the theory evolved in response to the criticisms of his contemporaries. The manuscript also discusses Tolman's political activities, culminating in his role in the California (...) loyalty oath controversy in the 1950s. Tolman was involved in a number of progressive causes during his lifetime, activities that drew the attention of both state legislators in California and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It treats Tolman's theoretical and political activities as emanating from the same source, a desire to understand the learning process in a scientific manner and to apply these concepts to improve the human condition. (shrink)

I argue that addiction is not a chronic, relapsing, neurobiological disease characterized by compulsive use of drugs or alcohol. Large-scale national survey data demonstrate that rates of substance dependence peak in adolescence and early adulthood and then decline steeply; addicts tend to “mature out” in their late twenties or early thirties. The exceptions are addicts who suffer from additional psychiatric disorders. I hypothesize that this difference in patterns of use and relapse between the general and psychiatric populations can be explained (...) by the purpose served by drugs and alcohol for patients. Drugs and alcohol alleviate the severe psychological distress typically experienced by patients with comorbid psychiatric disorders and associated problems. On this hypothesis, consumption is a chosen means to ends that are rational to desire: Use is not compulsive. The upshot of this explanation is that the orthodox view of addiction as a chronic, relapsing neurobiological disease is misguided. I delineate five folk psychological factors that together explain addiction as purposive action: strong and habitual desire; willpower; motivation; functional role; and decision and resolve. I conclude by drawing lessons for research and effective treatment. (shrink)

Kagawa Tyohiko, who was a well known Christian leader and social reformer, is re-evaluated from the perspective of a public philosophy, and as an example of the possibilities for collaboration and conflict between science and the religious humanities in East Asia. His last book, Cosmic Purpose, which appears to be a kind of natural theology, is analyzed from the perspective of the hidden topic of human evil. By considering Kagawa's deep religious sensibility and conscience, the book can be interpreted (...) to reflect on the wrong directionality selected by modern Japan's leaders that resulted in the tragic war. (shrink)

What are the purposes of education and what is the relationship between educational research and policy? Using the twin lenses of Visible Learning and educational philosophy these are among the many fascinating topics discussed in extended conversations between John Hattie and Steen Nepper Larsen. This wide-ranging, and informative book offers fundamental propositions about the nature of Education. It maps out in fascinating detail a coming together of Hattie's empirical data and world-famous Visible Learning paradigm with the rich heritage of educational (...) philosophy. As well as exploring the inevitable questions of the purpose of education and the development of students in a learning society. Part clash of cultures, part meeting of minds, always fascinating and illuminating, this intriguing book will inspire teachers, students and parents at all levels of the educational system - from kindergarten through school to university. Conversations include: What is the purpose of education? Does educational data speak for itself? What is the role of the teacher? Is learning a visible phenomenon? Is it important to teach and learn specific subjects? What is the role of Neuroscience research? What is the relationship between educational research and educational politics? What is the role of the state in education? (shrink)

A Principle of fundamental importance, if it is valid, for the interpretation of the Pentekontaetia is laid down by the authors of A. T.L. iii in its most rigorous terms: it is that Thucydides has set events ‘in proper order … without any deviation whatever’. The conclusion appears to the present writer to be founded ultimately on a false assumption about Thucydides' purpose in these chapters, namely that he set out to write an outline history of the period of (...) fifty years to which he refers in 118.2 and, in effect, in 97. An examination of these passages reveals that it is not the outline of a period as a period that is offered, but rather the account of a particular theme or process falling within the period: his purpose in presenting the theme there defined is to be seen from the setting of the excursus as a unit in Bk. I rather than from the statement in 97.2: the due significance of this last, and of the demarcation of a period in 118. 2, is to be seen only in this wider context. (shrink)

Some understand the evolutionary process as more or less predictable; others stress its contingency. I argue that both Christian evolutionists who have assumed that the purposes of the Creator can be realized only through more or less predictable processes as well as those who infer from the contingency of the evolutionary process to the lack of purpose in the universe generally, are mistaken if the Creator escapes from the limits imposed on the creature by temporality, as the traditional Augustinian (...) account supposes. The notion of “purpose” must itself be reinterpreted in such a case. It makes no difference whether the appearance of Homo sapiens is the inevitable result of a steady process of complexification stretching over billions of years, or whether it comes about through a series of coincidences that would have made it entirely unpredictable from the (causal) human standpoint. Either way, the outcome is of God's making, and from the biblical standpoint may appear as part of God's plan. (shrink)

In the second part of the Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant provides a transcendental analysis of the bases of our right to employ teleological conceptions in biology. A living organism exemplifies the conception of a natural end insofar as the organization of the parts to form a whole is the result of a process in which the organism is both cause and effect of itself. Kant’s analysis of the concept of a natural purpose is guided, in part, by his (...) general theory of logic. By examining the manner in which the logical modes of relation are used as a basis for analyzing the concept of a natural purpose, I hope to accomplish two goals: to compare Kant’s analysis of the category of community to the analysis of the concept of a natural purpose; to evaluate some of the strengths and weaknesses ofKant’s account of community and natural purpose; to consider one criticism of Kant’s use of the logical form of the disjunctive as a basis for the analysis of these conceptions that is developed by Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce indicates that Darwin’s theory of biological evolution was one of the primary causes that led him revisit Kant’s logic and his analysis of the categories of relation. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to re-emphasise that the purpose of formal systems is to provide something to map into and to stem the tide of unjustified formal systems. I start by arguing that expressiveness alone is not a sufficient justification for a new formal system but that it must be justified on pragmatic grounds. I then deal with a possible objection as might be raised by a pure mathematician and after that to the objection that theory can (...) be later used by more specific models. I go on to compare two different methods of developing new formal systems: by a priori principles and intuitions; and by post hoc generalisation from data and examples. I briefly describe the phenomena of “social embedding” and use it to explain the social processes that underpin “normal” and “revolutionary” science. This suggests social grounds for the popularity of normal science. I characterise the “foundational” and “empirical” approaches to the use of formal systems and situate these with respect to “normal” and “revolutionary” modes of science. I suggest that successful sciences (in the sense of developing relevant mappings to formal systems) bare either more tolerant of revolutionary ideas or this tolerance is part of the reason they are successful. I finish by enumerating a number of ‘tell-tale’ signs that a paper is presenting an unjustified formal system. (shrink)

Nietzsche subjects traditional philosophical causality to a skeptical critique. With the moderns, he rejects form as superficial. Against the moderns, he findsphysical laws and their ground in a free consciousness equally superficial, and he thinks that the principle of utility is ultimately life denying. However, Nietzscheis not a skeptic, and he has his own doctrine of causality centered on the noble power of the philosopher. The philosopher has the ability to impose new purposes, and this power is the culmination of (...) nature and history. The philosopher believes himself to be a kind of exemplar cause, the consummation of the whole. His is not an instrumental good but one sought for its own sake. (shrink)

This paper proposes a philosophically informed decision-making methodology, inspired by Aristotle, that encourages constructive discussions amongst employers and employees; is directed towards shared higher-level goals; is consistent with planning frameworks already in place in many businesses; can be amended over time without disruptive disputes; and accounts for the particularities of each industry, enterprise, workplace, and job. It seeks to establish a more fundamental basis for discussions about remote vs. in-person office work: specifically, the purpose and nature of the work (...) of those affected. If these matters can be decided, then subsequent discussions might be focused more upon the shared outcomes to which stakeholders are committed and less upon individual preferences and ‘hunches.’. (shrink)

A brief, accessible history of the idea of purpose in Western thought, from ancient Greece to the present Can we live without the idea of purpose? Should we even try to? Kant thought we were stuck with purpose, and even Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which profoundly shook the idea, was unable to kill it. Indeed, teleological explanation—what Aristotle called understanding in terms of “final causes”—seems to be making a comeback today, as both religious proponents of intelligent (...) design and some prominent secular philosophers argue that any explanation of life without the idea of purpose is missing something essential. In On Purpose, Michael Ruse explores the history of the idea of purpose in philosophical, religious, scientific, and historical thought, from ancient Greece to the present. Accessibly written and filled with literary and other examples, the book examines “purpose” thinking in the natural and human world. It shows how three ideas about purpose have been at the heart of Western thought for more than two thousand years. In the Platonic view, purpose results from the planning of a human or divine being; in the Aristotelian, purpose stems from a tendency or principle of order in the natural world; and in the Kantian, purpose is essentially heuristic, or something to be discovered, an idea given substance by Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection. On Purpose traces the profound and fascinating implications of these ways of thinking about purpose. Along the way, it takes up tough questions about the purpose of life and whether it’s possible to have meaning without purpose, revealing that purpose is still a vital and pressing issue. (shrink)

The article analyses whether it is correct to extrapolate the concept of "meaning in life" developed by Thaddeus Metz to the doctrines of ancient philosophers, including Thomas Aquinas. Is Metz’ concept of "purposes" that make "human life" meaningful analogous to Aquinas’ concept of "ultimate goal of man"? Significant points of Metz’ conception of "meaning in life" in our article are described and compared with Aquinas’ conception of "ultimate goal of man." As it turns out, these conceptions are only superficially similar. (...) In fact, they are profoundly different: (1) Aquinas is talking about the "goal of man", which implies objective teleology incompatible with Metz’ "naturalism", and is not talking about "meaning in life" (and even "purpose of life"); (2) "ultimate goal of man", for Aquinas, is intended to provide salvation and eternal life for man, not to make life "significant" in this world. -/- Thus, Metz and Thomas not only use different terminology, but also address different problems. They deal with different questions, not just give different answers to the same question (about the "meaning in life"). Metz’s extrapolation may be correct, when viewed as a kind of rational reconstruction. However, Metz does not make appropriate reservations and groundlessly unifies heterogeneous problems. The article shows that more historically oriented methodology avoids impropriety in the exercise of rational reconstruction of "meaning in life" in the field of ancient and medieval philosophies. (shrink)

In a recent essay Professor Taylor criticizes the criteria used by Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow in 1943 to distinguish purposeful from non-purposeful behavior. He also criticizes our definition of behavior, our concept of the vague as opposed to the general, our use of the word correlation, and our statement that a system may reach a final condition. Indeed, there seems to be little, if anything, in our paper to which he does not emphatically object.He maintains that the notions of (...) class='Hi'>purpose and teleology are not only useless for the understanding of mechanical behavior, but wholly incongruous when applied to this behavior. He further affirms that our use of the term purpose “bears no similarity whatever to the meaning which is ordinarily attached to it.” He does not state, however, his own notions of purpose and teleology; and the meaning which he considers to be ordinarily attached to the term purpose. This omission weakens his criticism considerably. (shrink)

In this chapter, we follow Edward Craig?s advice: ask what the concept of knowledge does for us and use our findings as clues about its application conditions. What a concept does for us is a matter of what we can do with it, and what we do with concepts is deploy them in thought and language. So, we will examine the purposes we have in attributing knowledge. This chapter examines two such purposes, agent evaluation and informant-suggestion, and brings the results (...) to bear on an important debate about the application conditions of the concept of knowledge?the debate between contextualists and their rivals. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for a strong continuity between the transcendental deduction of the principle of purposiveness of nature and the transcendental deduction of the ideas from the first critique. On these grounds, I provide an interpretation of the transcendental deduction of the principle of purposiveness of nature in which I argue that: 1) the necessity of the principle of purposiveness of nature does not derive from its role in solving some specific philosophical problem but from its relation to (...) a cognitive goal; 2) the representation of nature as conforming to the maxims of judgement is a direct, immediate consequence of a certain cognitive goal that the necessity of the empirical laws mentioned by Kant in the transcendental deduction of the principle of purposiveness of nature is not so much their nomic necessity, but their necessity as consequences of higher laws. (shrink)

A collection of essays investigating key historical and scientific questions relating to the concept of natural purpose in Kant's philosophy of biology.

Rachel Zuckert - The Purposiveness of Form: A Reading of Kant's Aesthetic Formalism - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 599-622 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents The Purposiveness of Form: A Reading of Kant's Aesthetic Formalism Rachel Zuckert In the "critique of aesthetic judgment," Kant claims that when we find an object beautiful, we are appreciating its "purposive form." Many of Kant's readers have found this claim one of his least interesting (...) and most easily criticized claims about aesthetic experience. Detractors hold up his aesthetics as a paradigmatic case of narrow formalism; and even many admirers of Kant's aesthetics take Kant's claims about form to be problematic, but argue that they are inessential to his aesthetics . Though these critics come to differing evaluations of Kant's aesthetics as a whole, they agree on two points. First, interpretively: that when Kant claims that it is the "form" of an object we find beautiful, he means that in aesthetic appreciation, we find certain spatial and/or temporal properties aesthetically pleasing—and that such properties are exclusively responsible for an object's beauty. Second, evaluatively: that Kant is wrong, at least about this. In this paper, I shall propose that we need not endorse either claim. I shall argue that one may interpret Kant's.. (shrink)

There has been considerable debate in legal philosophy about how to attribute purposes to rules. Separately, within cognitive science, there has been a growing body of research concerned with questions about how people ordinarily attribute purposes. Here, we argue that these two separate fields might be connected by experimental jurisprudence. Across four studies, we find evidence for the claim that people use the same criteria to attribute purposes to physical objects and to rules. In both cases, purpose attributions appear (...) to be governed not so much by original intention or by moral value as by current practice. We argue that these findings in the cognitive science of purpose attribution have implications for jurisprudential questions involving purposivist legal interpretation. (shrink)

Kant’s analysis of the concept of natural purpose in the Critique of judgment captured several features of organisms that he argued warranted making them the objects of a special field of study, in need of a special regulative teleological principle. By showing that organisms have to be conceived as self-organizing wholes, epigenetically built according to the idea of a whole that we must presuppose, Kant accounted for three features of organisms conflated in the biological sciences of the period: adaptation, (...) functionality and conservation of forms..Kant’s unitary concept of natural purpose was subsequently split in two directions: first by Cuvier’s comparative anatomy, that would draw on the idea of adaptative functions as a regulative principle for understanding in reconstituting and classifying organisms; and then by Goethe’s and Geoffroy’s morphology, a science of the general transformations of living forms. However, such general transformations in nature, objects of an alleged ‘archaeology of nature’, were thought impossible by Kant in the §80 of the Critique of judgment. Goethe made this ‘adventure of reason’ possible by changing the sense of ‘explanation’: scientific explanation was shifted from the investigation of the mechanical processes of generation of individual organisms to the unveiling of some ideal transformations of types instantiated by those organisms. (shrink)

This paper examines the effects of employees’ sense that they work for a purpose-driven company on their workplace sustainability behaviors. Conceptualizing corporate purpose as an overarching, relevant, shared ethical vision of why a company exists and where it needs to go, we argue that it is particularly suited for driving employee sustainability behaviors, which are more ethically complex than the types of employee ethical behaviors typically examined by prior research. Through four studies, two involving the actual employees of (...) construction companies, we demonstrate that purpose drives the sustainability behaviors of employees by causing them to take psychological ownership of sustainability. In addition, we show that the sustainability-enhancing effect of purpose is stronger when employees perceive that they have higher autonomy in enacting their sustainability actions and for those employees for whom being moral is more central to their sense of self. (shrink)

Are evolution and creation irreconcilably opposed? Is 'intelligent design' theory an unhappy compromise? Is there another way of approaching the present-day divide between religious and so-called secular views of the origins of life? Jacob Klapwijk offers a philosophical analysis of the relation of evolutionary biology to religion, and addresses the question of whether the evolution of life is exclusively a matter of chance or is better understood as including the notion of purpose. Writing from a Christian point of view, (...) he criticizes creationism and intelligent design theory as well as opposing reductive naturalism. He offers an alternative to both and an attempt to bridge the gap between them, via the idea of 'emergent evolution'. In this theory the process of evolution has an emergent or innovative character resulting in a living world of ingenious, multifaceted complexity. (shrink)

What is your purpose in life? This simple question motivates some of our most life-altering decisions, deeply-held beliefs, and profound emotions, as well as the choices we make every single day. How we derive meaning from our existence is crucial to finding happiness, developing relationships, and building societies. In On Purpose, Paul Froese brings together data from large national and international surveys with interviews that illuminate the ways in which people from all walks of life grapple with their (...) continuous search for reason, truth, sense, success, happiness, and-ultimately-transcendence. Froese argues that the desire to connect with something larger than oneself is a universal urge, manifested most directly, but far from solely, in religious communities. Written in vivid, accessible prose, On Purpose takes the reader on a journey through the complexities and consequences of life's most important question. From the start, Froese admits that the answer to the question is deceptively simple: our purpose is whatever we imagine it to be. But what we imagine our purpose to be depends on innumerable factors beyond our control: our wealth, race, education level, upbringing, past experiences, and community. Froese argues that one's surroundings serve as a kind of soil that can either nurture purpose or foster meaninglessness. Framing the book around six key questions, Froese refuses to collapse the meaning of life into a single authoritative answer, as self-help gurus do. Instead, he deconstructs each question to reveal the social pathways that guide people to distinctive answers.Through lively, engaging storytelling that mixes data and analysis with literary and historical examples of the quest for purpose, Froese sheds new light on a timeless and all-too-human quandary. The moral of the book is not that life has some ultimate meaning or no meaning at all, but rather that creating a purpose-driven life has always been a collective project. (shrink)

Why do counsellors and psychotherapists practice? What is the purpose? What real benefit does the client gain and what benefit accrues to society as a whole? Do liberal and postmodern values leave counselling and psycho-therapy vulnerable to being devalued by consumerism, individualism and relativism? This unique text subjects counselling and psychotherapy to a proper and thorough moral and ethical analysis. Using radical new theories, the author opens up the field of counselling to rational debate, giving it a thorough analysis (...) that is political, sociological and philosophical in outlook. Drawing on the communicative ethics of Habermas, he provides a new basis for understanding the purpose of counselling and psychotherapy. Using an argument that is both challenging and stimulating, the liberal and postmodern approaches are decisively investigated and rejected. Of interest to specialists and non-specialists alike, this work offers a new vision for counselling, which is both appealing and soundly argued. (shrink)

: T. L. Short's Peirce's Theory of Signs offers a strong interpretation of semeiotic, advocating a developmental and naturalistic position. This commentary examines some of the main features of Short's approach, raising a number of critical questions concerning the growth of Peirce's thought and the problem of anthropomorphism. First, two possible weaknesses in Short's account of the development of semeiotic, connected to the treatment of the "New List of Categories" and the role of the index, are noted. Next, the menace (...) of anthropomorphism is placed in the context of Peirce's startling affirmation of this point of view. Finally, the article draws attention to Short's bold claim that Peirce's theory of signs needs to be modified in order to accommodate a plurality of final interpretants in view of varying purposes. (shrink)

T. L. Short's Peirce's Theory of Signs offers a strong interpretation of semeiotic, advocating a developmental and naturalistic position. This commentary examines some of the main features of Short's approach, raising a number of critical questions concerning the growth of Peirce's thought and the problem of anthropomorphism. First, two possible weaknesses in Short's account of the development of semeiotic, connected to the treatment of the "New List of Categories" and the role of the index, are noted. Next, the menace of (...) anthropomorphism is placed in the context of Peirce's startling affirmation of this point of view. Finally, the article draws attention to Short's bold claim that Peirce's theory of signs needs to be modified in order to accommodate a plurality of final interpretants in view of varying purposes. (shrink)

Kant’s analysis of the concept of natural purpose in the Critique of judgment captured several features of organisms that he argued warranted making them the objects of a special field of study, in need of a special regulative teleological principle. By showing that organisms have to be conceived as self-organizing wholes, epigenetically built according to the idea of a whole that we must presuppose, Kant accounted for three features of organisms conflated in the biological sciences of the period: adaptation, (...) functionality and conservation of forms..Kant’s unitary concept of natural purpose was subsequently split in two directions: first by Cuvier’s comparative anatomy, that would draw on the idea of adaptative functions as a regulative principle for understanding in reconstituting and classifying organisms; and then by Goethe’s and Geoffroy’s morphology, a science of the general transformations of living forms. However, such general transformations in nature, objects of an alleged ‘archaeology of nature’, were thought impossible by Kant in the §80 of the Critique of judgment. Goethe made this ‘adventure of reason’ possible by changing the sense of ‘explanation’: scientific explanation was shifted from the investigation of the mechanical processes of generation of individual organisms to the unveiling of some ideal transformations of types instantiated by those organisms. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 (2006) 599-622 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]The Purposiveness of Form: A Reading of Kant's Aesthetic FormalismRachel ZuckertIn the "critique of aesthetic judgment," Kant claims that when we find an object beautiful, we are appreciating its "purposive form." Many of Kant's readers have found this claim one of his least interesting and most easily criticized claims about aesthetic experience. Detractors hold up his (...) aesthetics as a paradigmatic case of narrow formalism; 1 and even many admirers of Kant's aesthetics take Kant's claims about form to be problematic, but argue that they are inessential to his aesthetics (which includes more interesting, defensible claims). 2 Though these critics come to differing evaluations of Kant's aesthetics as a whole, they agree on two points. First, interpretively: that when Kant claims that it is the "form" of an object we find beautiful, he means that in aesthetic appreciation, we find certain spatial and/or temporal properties (such as proportion, line, shape) aesthetically pleasing—and that such properties are exclusively responsible for an object's beauty. Second, evaluatively: that Kant is wrong, at least about this.In this paper, I shall propose that we need not endorse either claim. I shall argue that one may interpret Kant's formalism as a claim that in aesthetic experience 3 [End Page 599] we appreciate the object as an individual, as comprising all (or indeterminately many) of its sensible properties as inextricably interrelated or unified to make the object what it is; in other words, we appreciate what has been called an object's 'individual form.' This reading, I shall suggest, allows us not only to understand Kant's aesthetics as intimately connected to his project in the Critique of Judgment (hereafter, CJ) as a whole, but also to see Kant's aesthetics, in general, as providing a richer, more plausible description of our aesthetic engagement with an object, or as less narrowly subjectivist than is frequently believed.I shall proceed by presenting Kant's claims about form, and the standard criticisms thereof, and then turn to defend this alternative reading. Before I do so, however, I wish to make some preliminary remarks about aesthetic formalism in general. Contemporary discussion of formalism often takes aesthetic formalism to be instantiated by the views of the twentieth-century art critics, Clive Bell and Roger Fry, 4 and Kant's formalism is often implicitly equated with theirs (or the kind of position attributed to them). I wish to resist that equation in this essay; to that end, I start here by giving a wider sense of what formalism might be, drawing especially on historical positions that were available to Kant. 5Broadly speaking, "formalism" is the view that, in aesthetic appreciation of an object (usually a work of art), we do and ought to pay attention not to the object's representational content, emotional expressiveness, historical, institutional, or social context (whether conditions for the production of the object or its effects), but only to its form. Formalism is characterized in some sense, then, by what it excludes, viz. considerations taken to be external to the object. But it does specify positively (if vaguely) that the form of an object is what makes it beautiful. 6'Form,' however, can mean a number of different things, all of which (in some sense) are the design or arrangement of an object's parts, often of its sensible properties. I wish to draw attention to three somewhat distinct ways in which one may understand such form or arrangement of properties, which I shall call 'property-formalism,' 'kind-formalism,' and 'whole-formalism.' Property-formalism is the view that the form of an object can be described in terms of a set of specific spatial or temporal properties that characterize the relations that hold among different parts of the object, and that these properties are responsible for the beauty of the object. Hogarth's view that the serpentine line is the most beautiful line, responsible... (shrink)

This paper aims to shed light on the role played by purposefulness in Peirce’s account of thought by means of a comparison with Kant’s regulative principles. Purposefulness, as an orientation toward an end involved in a thought process, is distinguished from purposiveness, as conformity to an end. Peirce’s architectonic, cosmology, and theory of natural classes are briefly analyzed in light of these concepts. Then, a comparison between Peirce’s esthetic ideal and regulative hopes and Kant’s regulative ideas and principle of purposiveness (...) is undertaken. This comparison, while allowing us to find a solution for some difficulties, especially some regarding Peirce’s esthetics, shows how purposefulness is far more important for the American thinker. Thus, purposefulness and purposiveness turn out to be primarily regulative principles of our thought. As such, they allow us to identify a transcendental level in Peirce’s philosophy, avoiding the inconsistencies that have been attributed to Karl-Otto Apel’s account. (shrink)

The mismatch between goals and means is a major cause of crisis in labour law. The regulations that we use - the legal instruments and techniques - are no longer in sync with the goals they are supposed to advance. This mismatch leads to a problem of coverage, where many workers who need the protection of labour law are not covered by it, as well as a problem of obsoleteness, as labour laws are not sufficiently updated in light of dramatic (...) changes in the labour market. Adopting a purposive approach to interpretation and legislative reform, this volume addresses this crisis of mismatch. It first articulates the goals of labour law, both general and specific, through an in-depth normative discussion and a consideration of critiques. The book then proceeds to reconsider our means, asking what we need to change or improve in the laws themselves in order to better advance the goals. Some of the proposed solutions are at the level of judicial interpretation, others at the legislative level. The book offers several examples for the way a purposive analysis should be performed in concrete cases. It also recommends institutional structures that are suited to ongoing adaptation of the law to ensure that our goals are advanced even when circumstances frequently change. Finally, in response to the crisis of enforcement in this field, which frustrates the achievement of labour law's goals, several proposals to improve compliance and enforcement are considered. (shrink)

Lithuania had a different experience in legal regulation of private property. There were periods when right to private ownership was denied and on the other hand – the periods when right to private ownership was respected and protected. Authors wanted to review today’s status of rights to private property in retrospective. The main purpose of the article is to reveal functions of private property in Lithuania. The article analyzes peculiarities of legal regulation of private property in Lithuania during different (...) stages of the state’s development. The authors have analyzed the social significance of the right to private property, how it changed and how it has been reflected in Lithuanian legislation and the case law of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania, paying a particular attention to entrenchment of the right to private property in the Constitution of Lithuania. The authors evaluate the compliance of the national legal regulation and Article 1 of the First Protocol with the European Convention on Human Rights, and the case law of the European Court of Justice. (shrink)

Selected-effects theories provide the most popular account of biological teleology. According to these theories, the purpose of a trait is to do whatever it was selected for. The vast majority of selected-effects theories consider biological teleology to be introduced by natural selection. We want to argue, however, that natural selection is not the only relevant selective process in biology. In particular, our proposal is that biological regulation is a form of biological selection. So, those who accept selected-effects theories should (...) recognize biological regulation as a distinctive source of biological teleology. The purposes derived from biological regulation are of special interest for explaining and predicting the behavior of organisms, given that regulatory mechanisms directly modulate the behavior of the systems they regulate. This explanatory power, added to the fact that regulation is widespread in the biological world, makes the idea that regulation gives rise to its own form of teleology a substantial contribution to the debate on biological teleology. (shrink)

Teleosemantic theories aspire to develop a naturalistic account of intentional agency and thought by appeal to biological teleology. In particular, most versions of teleosemantics study the emergence of intentionality in terms of biological purposes introduced by Darwinian evolution. The aim of this paper is to argue that the sorts of biological purposes identified by these evolutionary approaches do not allow for a satisfactory account of intentionality. More precisely, I claim that such biological purposes should be attributed to reproductive chains or (...) lineages, rather than to individual traits or organisms, whereas the purposes underlying intentional agency and thought are typically attributed to individuals. In the last part of the paper I suggest that related difficulties are also faced, despite appearances, by accounts of intentionality relying on alternative organizational approaches to biological teleology. (shrink)