Abstract
Thought experiments (henceforth TEs) de facto play many different roles in biology: economical, ethical, technical and so forth. This paper, however, is interested in whether there are any distinctive features of biological TEs as such. The question may be settled in the affirmative because TEs in biology have a function that is intimately connected with the epistemological and methodological status of biology. Peculiar to TEs in biology is the fact that the reflexive, typically human concept of finality may be profitably employed to discover mechanical-experimental causal relations in all living beings—with the obvious caveat that we do not hypostatise and interpret this concept as an ontological quality, since this would land one in an implicitly animistic, pre-Galilean view of nature. From a methodical point of view, the concept of finality is an essential assumption as well as a powerful heuristic tool in the practice of biology, that is, in the investigation of living beings in an intersubjectively testable and reproducible way.
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Notes
Cf. the well-known characterization of mechanism offered by Machamer, Darden and Craver: “Mechanisms are entities and activities organized such that they are productive of regular changes from start or set-up to finish or termination conditions” (Machamer et al. 2000, 3). The other dominant conception of mechanism, due to Glennan, makes no important difference to the present argument; cf. for example Glennan (2002, p. 344): “A mechanism for a behavior is a complex system that produces that behavior by the interaction of a number of parts, where the interactions between parts can be characterized by direct, invariant, change-relating generalizations”. It might be objected that “mechanism” is not to be equated with “machine”, but the important thing to remark here is that it is impossible to build a coherent concept of both machine and mechanism without taking into account their connection with finality, as the main tendency of mechanistic philosophy would have it. It is no accident, for example, that Glennan (2010), who exploits the mechanism concept to understand explanation in history and in the human sciences, gives no attention to the analysis of such concepts as teleology, purpose, aim or end (he does not even mention them). For a discussion of the mechanistic approach, see especially Woodward (2002, 2011), Psillos (2004), Tabery (2004), Braillard (2010) and Nicholson (2012).
Polanyi (1958/1962, 378) (cf. also 344). According to Polanyi, however, the difference between a machine and a living being consists in what he calls “the inventive powers of animal life”: “while the animal’s machinery embodies fixed operational principles, this machinery would be impelled, guided and readapted by the animal’s unspecifiable inventive urge”. On this point, I disagree with Polanyi because this claim interprets teleology as a real property of living beings without attributing any methodical value to it.
See Kant, CPR: B xiii–xiv.
In accordance with the view I have been advocating is Peter Janich’s ‘fundamental argument’ against empiricist epistemology (cf. Janich 1998, pp. 100–101). As he noted, drawing on Dingler’s philosophy of science, we cannot distinguish between what is and what is not a clock on the basis of a natural law, since broken clocks too work in accordance with what scientists call ‘natural laws’. To make a distinction, we need also the indication of a human purpose, which the broken clocks do not satisfy (Janich 1992, 194 and 205).
The same point could be made by considering the manipulative or experimentalist theory of causality, which, pace Woodward (cf. Woodward 2003, p. 123), presupposes a tacit teleology, namely our free intervening in the surrounding world according to some intentional goal. For a detailed discussion and rejection of the Woodward’s charge of anthropomorphism, see Buzzoni (2014) .
Cf. for example Gardner (2013, 789): “the essential quality of ultimate explanations seems to be that they relate specifically to the design-generating action of natural selection, and not simply to any mechanical process that has operated in the evolutionary past”. Cf. also Burnham and Johnson (2005, 124–125), who understand the distinction in question as that between “the physiological mechanism” and “the evolutionary ‘goal’” of a certain behaviour.
Mayr (1988, 53). Cf. also Mayr (1961, 1503): ultimate causes “have a history and […] have been incorporated into the system through many thousands of generations of natural selection”. Among the most recent scholars who share in the main this point of view, cf. also McShea (2012), who situates the teleological question within the context of the theory of compositional hierarchies. Thus, he gives some fresh insights into Mayr’s perspective, but does not change the substance of its solution.
Cf. Nagel (1977, 270–271): “it would be pointless to explicate the notion of being goal-directed, if all processes […] said to be goal-directed did not differ in some identifiable respect from processes not so characterized. […] One of his [sc.: Mayr’s] examples of a teleomatic process is the behavior of a rock dropped into a well; and one of his examples of a ‘programmed’ (and presumably teleonomic) process is the behavior of a clock built to strike on the hour. […] However, since the clock’s behavior is also the consequence of relevant laws of nature conjoined with a number of boundary and initial conditions, it is difficult to see why this behavior should also not be described as teleomatic, and as reaching its recurrent end states automatically. I do not know how to escape the conclusion that the manner in which teleomatic and teleonomic processes are defined, does not provide an effective way of distinguishing between processes in biology that are goal-directed from those which are not”.
In my opinion, Rosenberg’s “Darwinian Reductionism” is not very different from Mayr’s position and suffers from the same shortcomings. Rosenberg holds that even biology’s proximate explanations presuppose further ultimate explanations because—following Dobzhansky’s dictum that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution—they refer at least implicitly to the theory of natural selection. However, the genetic code programs development without carrying information, in the same way in which computer software carries neither information nor intentionality (cf. Rosenberg 2006, Chapter 3). For this reason, even though the behaviour of very simple living beings “cries out for description in intentional terms”, this description can always be substituted “with a detailed non-intentional” one (Rosenberg 1985, 247). As we shall see, however, this latter description is not possible in principle without a previous description which is genuinely intentional, at least in one important sense. Even though there is not space in this paper to examine the nature of intentionality at the length it deserves, I should add that here lies the main difference between my point of view and that of Dennett’s ‘instrumentalist’ account of intentionality, which rejects any distinction between original and derived intentionality (cf. Dennett 1987).
Even though these two senses of ‘teleology’ are intimately connected with each other, the main purpose of this paper consists in explicating the methodical-experimental value of the second.
In my opinion, strictly speaking, what is untenable from a Kantian point of view is not the fundamental principle common to all empiricist positions, according to which all knowledge must in the end be reduced to experience, but only the radically naturalistic claim that empiricism and its fundamental principle may be justified by appealing to experience. From a Kantian point of view, the validity claim concerning empiricism and its fundamental principle may be vindicated only from a non-naturalistic point of view, which could be named pre-operational and which Kant called “transcendental”. For more details on the distinction between the pre-operational or reflexive-transcendental level and the empirical-scientific level, cf. Buzzoni (2008, 103–105, 109–110), and Buzzoni (2012).
Lennox (2005, 90). In some connection with the main thesis of this paper is the fact that TEs seem to abound in biology though not in chemistry. Why? Is this a mere accident, or can it be explained? According to Snooks (2006), this depends upon the fact that chemistry “does not exhibit laws in the form of universal assertions and it does not lend itself to advancement by a priori reasoning” (Snooks 2006, 256). This is not entirely convincing. Just like chemistry, biology does not possess laws as general as the laws of physics. If there is, as I believe, a difference between physics on the one hand and biology or chemistry on the other, it can only be a difference in degree, not a qualitative one (on this point, cf. above all Mitchell 2000, with whom I essentially agree). From my viewpoint, the fact that TEs abound in biology though not in chemistry is easily explained: it is just what we should expect if there is an intimate connection between TE and the methodological and epistemology status of biology. A further aspect of the relationship between biology and TE—which cannot be discussed here—is the reinterpretation of Mach’s empiricist view of TEs (cf. Mach 1905) within evolutionary epistemology: see for example Sorensen (1992), Maffie (1997) and Genz (1999, 25–29) (according to this view, the presuppositions and modal intuitions used in TEs were impressed in our minds by evolution).
Resnik (1995) also stressed that “functional statements can support and suggest heuristic strategies for proposing hypotheses” (cf. above all 126–130, where Watson and Crick’s work is examined in this light), but according to Resnik heuristics are only one of the four ways in which functional language can play a role in biological language. Heuristics are only one element of a taxonomy; and they are therefore not intimately connected with the epistemological and methodological status of biology.
This idea underlies also Darwin’s well-known analogical extension, from the techniques of the domestic breeder of plants and animals, to the ‘mechanism’ of natural selection. This move can be fully understood only through the counterfactual ascription to nature of the notion of purpose (or final cause). From the point of view of any evolutionary theory, the crucial question is what means living organisms could successfully use in their struggle for existence and survival. This question assumes teleology hypothetically and counterfactually (as regards the actually believed facts) in order to conceive the mechanism on which the evolution of organisms was really based.
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Acknowledgments
This paper has greatly profited from two research stays at the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Essen-Duisburg (Germany), in January 2010 and in July 2011, supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Previous versions of this paper were presented as talks at the University of Duisburg-Essen (“Teleologie und Kausalität in der Biologie”, January, 2010, and “Die Grenzen der ‘Evolutionären Wissenschaftstheorie’ und das Problem des wissenschaftlichen und methodologischen Status der Biologie”, July, 2011) and at the 39th annual philosophy of science conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia (April 16–20, 2012). The ensuing discussions were helpful for honing some of the theses presented in that occasion and now upheld in this paper: Dirk Hartmann, his excellent scientific staff and his graduate students, and all those who contributed to the discussion of my paper at the conference in Dubrovnik, deserve particular thanks. Thanks to Mike Stuart for helpful comments and suggestions. I am also very grateful to three anonymous referees for a number of useful criticisms and suggestions.
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Buzzoni, M. Causality, Teleology, and Thought Experiments in Biology. J Gen Philos Sci 46, 279–299 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-015-9293-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-015-9293-9