Auguste Nahas, Carl Sachs (2023), Synthese 201(4), article 142 — DOI-10.1007/s11229-023-04147-w
Key takeaways
- Debates over organism-centred (“naturalized”) teleology run together two projects with different success criteria — a scientific one (improving biological description and explanation, which needs operationalisable concepts) and a philosophical one (how teleology changes our picture of nature and ourselves, which needs truth, not usefulness) — and separating them dissolves some disputes and suggests pluralism about accounts.
Seeded from the abstract and a skim, before the reading in NOTE-094. What follows is what the work says about itself.
Recent teleological naturalism treats organisms as intrinsically goal-directed. The authors argue that both its supporters and its critics have missed that the view is used to address quite different problems. One problem is biological: whether an organism-centred account of teleological ascriptions would improve biological descriptions and explanations. The other is philosophical: how naturalized teleology would change our conception of nature and of ourselves as natural beings. Neglecting this metatheoretical difference has produced confusion, which the paper tries to clear up.
Standing in the record
Filed from the 2026-09-26 sweep of the papers-feed tracker for philosophy: 45 seconds of active reading over 2 sessions. It was filed Deferred, unread. NOTE-094 is the close reading of 2026-09-26, and it placed the work: Active — worth reading as a compact map of organism-centred teleology (the Organizational Approach, Deacon, Walsh, McShea) and for one reusable move, asking which problem an account of goal-directedness is meant to solve. Its positive pluralism is only suggested (“tempting to suggest”, §5), and it is shown on a single dispute.
When seeded, before the reading in NOTE-094, the entry gave a priority for a deeper reading: medium — moderate engagement (t = 45 s, 2 sessions); the skim captures the thesis, but it is a good map of the teleology literature for the agency topic.
What the seeding asked a deeper reading to check (NOTE-094 is that reading):
- A useful meta-level move for any record material on agency and goal-directedness: ask which problem an account of purposiveness is supposed to solve.
- Links to reciprocal causation and organism-centred evolutionary theory (LIT-110, LIT-156) through Walsh.
- Check whether the science/metaphysics split is sharper than the authors allow, given naturalism’s demand that metaphysics answer to science.
Access when seeded: The Springer article is paywalled (the Wayback snapshot shows only the abstract and notes); read the authors’ accepted manuscript (Word file headed “Please cite published version in Synthese”) from a Wayback snapshot of PhilArchive (philarchive.org/archive/SACWAS), by section. Online date from Crossref. The captured author order (Nahas, Sachs) matches Springer; PhilPapers lists Sachs first.