purposiveness

The great philosopher and historian of philosophy Etienne Gilson sets out in this book to show that final causality or purposiveness is an inevitable idea for those who think hard and carefully about the world, including the world of biology.

ID/Evolution 2009

Because this representation of purposiveness does not involve the ascription of an end, Kant calls the purposiveness which is represented

Kant's Aesthetics and Teleology Ginsborg, Hannah 2005

But Kant also allows for subjective material purposiveness, which is the kind of purposiveness exhibited by an agreeable object, i.e., one which pleases our senses (FI VIII, 224); and for objective formal purposiveness, which is exhibited by geometrical figures in virtue of their fruitfulness for solving mathematical problems (§62).

Kant's Aesthetics and Teleology Ginsborg, Hannah 2005

A further important distinction is that between objective material purposiveness which is inner, and objective material purposiveness which is merely outer or relative; this distinguishes the kind of purposiveness possessed by organisms from that in virtue of which one natural thing or process stands in a means-end relation to another.

Kant's Aesthetics and Teleology Ginsborg, Hannah 2005

There has been disagreement among commentators about whether there is any underlying philosophical unity to Kant's notion of purposiveness, and, in particular, whether the notion of purposiveness which figures in the aesthetic context is the same as that which figures in Kant's account of organisms.

Kant's Aesthetics and Teleology Ginsborg, Hannah 2005

Section 2.2; for more on the notion of purposiveness, see

Kant's Aesthetics and Teleology Ginsborg, Hannah 2005

But the notion of purposiveness also applies more broadly, and Kant distinguishes various different kinds of purposiveness applying not only to organisms and artifacts, but also to beautiful objects, to nature as a whole (both in so far as it is comprehensible to human beings, and in so far as it is a system of ends standing in purposive relations to one another), to the functioning of our cognitive faculties in aesthetic appreciation and empirical scientific enquiry, to geometrical figures, and even to objects that are useful or agreeable to human beings.

Kant's Aesthetics and Teleology Ginsborg, Hannah 2005

It were easy to multiply quotations which should prove that the denial of "purposiveness" is commonly conceived to be the inevitable accompaniment of a belief in evolution.

Evolution, Old & New Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, as compared with that of Charles Darwin Samuel Butler 1868

His solution is found in the examination of the notion of 'purposiveness'.

Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2008

In addition to being responsible for aesthetic judgments, and to supplying the concept of purposiveness which is required for teleological judgments, reflecting judgment seems to be ascribed the following cognitive tasks: the classification of natural things into a hierarchy of genera and species; the construction of explanatory scientific theories in which more specific natural laws are represented as falling under higher and more general laws; the representation of nature as empirically lawlike überhaupt; and the formation of empirical concepts überhaupt.

Kant's Aesthetics and Teleology Ginsborg, Hannah 2005