Source
Nahas & Sachs (2023), “What’s at stake in the debate over naturalizing teleology?”, LIT-192 (Synthese), read in full in NOTE-094 from the accepted manuscript. The version of record was not seen.
What was actually shown
An informal metatheoretical argument; no formal or empirical method.
- Two orientations (§§3.1–3.3). One is scientific: does an organism-centred account improve biology, given the limits of the Modern Synthesis? It needs operationalisable models, which may trade truth for usefulness (Potochnik, Wimsatt). The other is philosophical: does organismal teleology reshape the liberal-versus-scientific naturalism debate about mind in nature? It needs claims “broadly true”, not “concretely useful”, and “incurs no obligation to operationalize its terms” (§3.3).
- The demarcation dispute, in the scientific context (§4.1). For models, telling organisms from candle flames and tornadoes is “unavoidable and not particularly problematic”. Closure of constraints, as a model, is unlikely ever to meet Cusimano and Sterner’s objectivity criterion, and need not. McShea and Babcock’s field theory, which applies equally to bacteria and heat-seeking missiles, is charged with “pernicious reification” for treating a model’s silence on intrinsic and extrinsic purpose as a fact about the world.
- In the philosophical context (§4.2). García-Valdecasas prefers Deacon’s teleodynamics to the organisational approach because it yields a beneficiary individual. On the authors’ reading that preference rests on an Aristotelian conception of teleology, which “would need to be argued, rather than assumed”, and not on biology.
- The conclusion (§5). Accounts that look like rivals may be compatible answers to different questions. A plurality is “tempting to suggest”.
What could have come out otherwise: the two critiques and the field theory’s claim might each have held within one project. The paper shows, for one dispute, that each crosses the two.
What this does not say
- That the debates in general dissolve. Only the demarcation dispute is worked, in two contexts (NOTE-094, corrections).
- Where the two projects divide. They are called “relatively autonomous”, but the relation is conceded to be “far more complex” (fn. 19), and closure could serve either role (fn. 16). How the criteria interact when they conflict is not said.
- That no single account can serve both. The authors are “admittedly skeptical” and leave it open (§3.3).
- That Deacon is right for naturalism, or Walsh and the organisational approach for biology. These are suggested without argument; Walsh and the organisational approach “remain largely untested”.
- That there are only two projects. Normative uses of teleology (welfare, moral status) and individuation are not separated out.
- Anything about artificial systems. The paper does not discuss AI. That a graded, field-relative measure applies to artefacts by design, and so would not settle intrinsic agency, is NOTE-094’s extrapolation.
Connections
- THEORY-072 answers the demarcation question metaphysically: organisms differ from dissipative structures by several constraints that produce one another at different time scales. THEORY-071 states minimal agency as individuality, interactional asymmetry and self-generated normativity. On this account each should say which project it serves.
- Bruckner (THEORY-699) uses loose autopoiesis for a third, normative project: grounding welfare. Its success criterion, fit with considered welfare judgements, is neither of the two named here.
- Baedke (LIT-167) objects that persister criteria are too permissive to individuate organisms, which is arguably a further project again.
- The thermodynamic accounts of life (THEORY-532, THEORY-492, THEORY-679) sit on the dissipative side of the line this paper discusses.