Teleology

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Andreas Muller - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

Kostas Kampourakis - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • implicit associations of Teleology and essentialism concepts with genetics concepts among secondary school students
    PLOS ONE, 2020
    Co-Authors: Florian Stern, Kostas Kampourakis, Marine Delaval, Andreas Muller
    Abstract:

    In this article, we present the development and validation of an implicit association test for measuring secondary school students' associations between genetics concepts and Teleology concepts on the one hand, and between genetics concepts and essentialism concepts on the other hand. In total, 169 students from 16 school classes took part in the study, from January 2018 to May 2018. We investigated the strength of the aforementioned associations and the influence of various covariates such as gender, age, school class, or previous learning of biology on the association of Teleology or essentialism concepts with genetics concepts through an analysis of covariance and a multi-level analysis. We found moderate associations between genetics and Teleology concepts, as well as between genetics and essentialism concepts. These results might reflect a tendency of students of different ages and with various backgrounds to think about genes in terms of goals (Teleology) and stability (essentialism), which should be investigated further in future research.

  • development and validation of a questionnaire measuring secondary students genetic essentialism and Teleology get conceptions
    International Journal of Science Education, 2020
    Co-Authors: Florian Stern, Kostas Kampourakis, Marine Delaval, Andreas Muller
    Abstract:

    In this article, we describe the main phases in the development and validation of a questionnaire measuring secondary students’ Teleology and essentialism conceptions in the context of genetics. Th...

  • Students’ “teleological misconceptions” in evolution education: why the underlying design stance, not Teleology per se, is the problem
    Evolution: Education and Outreach, 2020
    Co-Authors: Kostas Kampourakis
    Abstract:

    Teleology, explaining the existence of a feature on the basis of what it does, is usually considered as an obstacle or misconception in evolution education. Researchers often use the adjective “teleological” to refer to students’ misconceptions about purpose and design in nature. However, this can be misleading. In this essay, I explain that Teleology is an inherent feature of explanations based on natural selection and that, therefore, teleological explanations are not inherently wrong. The problem we might rather address in evolution education is not Teleology per se but the underlying “design stance”. With this I do not refer to creationism/intelligent design, and to the inference to a creator from the observation of the apparent design in nature (often described as the argument from design). Rather, the design stance refers to the intuitive perception of design in nature in the first place, which seems to be prevalent and independent from religiosity in young ages. What matters in evolution education is not whether an explanation is teleological but rather the underlying consequence etiology: whether a trait whose presence is explained in teleological terms exists because of its selection for its positive consequences for its bearers, or because it was intentionally designed, or simply needed, for this purpose. In the former case, the respective teleological explanation is scientifically legitimate, whereas in the latter case it is not. What then should be investigated in evolution education is not whether students provide teleological explanations, but which consequence etiologies these explanations rely upon. Addressing the design stance underlying students’ teleological explanations could be a main aim of evolution education.

  • biological Teleology the need for history
    2013
    Co-Authors: James G Lennox, Kostas Kampourakis
    Abstract:

    Teleology is a mode of explanation in which something is explained by appealing to a particular result or consequence that it brings about, and it has its roots in the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle defended a natural Teleology, free of the Platonic idea that the natural world is the creation of a divine, rational being of some sort, with a plan for his creation. The philosophical debate over teleological explanation in natural science during the Scientific Revolution was primarily between those who, under Platonic influence, defended theistic, creationist Teleology and those who, for a wide variety of reasons, opposed the use of any sort of Teleology in natural science, while the effective scientific use of Aristotelian teleological explanation was bearing fruit in the disciplines of anatomy, physiology and medicine. This analysis leads to a crucial distinction between two types of teleological explanations: (a) teleological explanations based on design, which suggest that a feature exists for some purpose because it was intentionally designed to fulfill it, and (b) teleological explanations based on a natural process which explains a feature’s presence in a population by appealing to that feature’s beneficial consequences for an organism. In this chapter, we describe a framework that can be implemented in order to help students be able to distinguish between design-Teleology and selection-Teleology. In doing this, an interesting connection is revealed: two major types of explanations found in conceptual development literature, animism and creationism, are identified as different types of Teleology. Implications for science education research are discussed.

Florian Stern - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

Philippe Huneman - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • revisiting darwinian Teleology a case for inclusive fitness as design explanation
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2019
    Co-Authors: Philippe Huneman
    Abstract:

    This paper elaborates a general framework to make sense of teleological explanations in Darwinian evolutionary biology. It relies on an attempt to tie natural selection to a sense of optimization. First, after assessing the objections made by any attempt to view selection as a maximising process within population genetics, it understands Grafen's Formal Darwinism (FD) as a conceptual link established between population genetics and behavioral ecology's adaptationist framework (without any empirical commitments). Thus I suggest that this provides a way to make sense of teleological explanations in biology under their various modes. Then the paper criticizes two major ways of accounting for Teleology: a Darwinian one, the etiological view of biological functions, and a non-Darwinian one, here labeled "intrinsic Teleology" view, which covers several subtypes of accounts, including plasticity-oriented conceptions of evolution or organizational views of function. The former is centered on traits while the latter is centered on organisms; this is shown to imply that both accounts are unable to provide a systematic understanding of biological Teleology. Finally the paper argues that viewing Teleology as maximization of inclusive fitness along the FD lines as understood here allows one to make sense of both the design of organisms and the individual traits as adaptions. Such notion is thereby claimed to be the proper meaning of Teleology in evolutionary biology, since it avoids the opposed pitfalls of etiological views and intrinsic-Teleology view, while accounting for the same features as they do.

Martin Krygier - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.

  • the rule of law legality Teleology sociology
    Social Science Research Network, 2008
    Co-Authors: Martin Krygier
    Abstract:

    The concept of the rule of law is no new coin. It has long been the stuff of legal cliche, but also of extensive conceptual analysis and scholarly debate. The concept has a strong presence in legal theory and in traditions and branches of political theory. It has been less noticed or analyzed by social theorists, however, which is odd. That neglect is unfortunate, for some of the central questions about the rule of law are sociological ones. So my suggestion is that we would do well to explore a hardly existent sociology, the sociology of the rule of law. I provide nothing like that here, only some reasons to seek it. The argument is briefly this. The proper way to approach the rule of law is not to offer, as lawyers typically do, a list of characteristics of laws and legal institutions supposedly necessary, if not sufficient, for the rule of law to exist; let me call that the anatomical approach. Rather, one should begin with Teleology and end with sociology. That is, I suggest we start by asking what we might want the rule of law for, by which I mean not external ends that it might serve, such as economic growth or democracy, but something like its telos, the point of the enterprise, goals internal to, immanent in the concept. Only then should we move to ask what sorts of things need to happen for us to achieve such a state of affairs, and only then move to ask what we need in order to get it. That third question, the bottom line, as it were, will of course involve legal institutions but it cannot be answered without looking beyond them to the societies in which they function, the ways they function there, and what else happens there which interacts with and affects the sway of law. For the rule of law to exist, still more to flourish and be secure, many things beside the law matter, and since societies differ in many ways, so will those things.

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