The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts: Excerpt from the Re-issue

On June 1, ARU Press published a new edition of Harry Binswanger’s The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts. First released in 1990, the book has been out of print and not easy to find. We are happy to make it available again to readers in paperback and kindle, with audiobook to be released soon.

Based on Dr. Binswanger’s 1973 doctoral dissertation at Columbia University, the book explores an important issue in the philosophy of biology: how to understand the concept of “goal,” especially as it applies to the world of biological processes beyond conscious human purposes. In the mid-twentieth century, many philosophers of science despaired of trying to understand how we explain the action of living things by reference to goals (e.g., that plants turn their leaves in order to catch the sun). The work consciously builds on Ayn Rand’s philosophy (both her value theory and epistemology) and the author’s own study of biology to help solve a puzzle that had stymied philosophers of the day.

Dr. Binswanger, who retired from ARI’s board of directors in 2024, teaches philosophy in our education program, ARU. The following excerpt is taken from chapter 1.

Despite the technical nature of some teleological concepts, such as “goal-directed action,” the use of teleological terms to describe various natural processes is a commonplace. English has such common teleological concepts as “goal,” “purpose,” “end,” “aim,” etc., and besides these there are many teleological phrases as well. We say, for example: “He studied diligently in order to pass the examination”; “He placed the dictionary on the desk so that it would be within easy reach”; “He takes daily walks for the sake of his health.” (In each case the teleological phrase could be replaced by a teleological concept: “The goal of his diligent study was to pass the examination”; “His purpose in placing the dictionary on the desk was to have it within easy reach”; “The aim of his walks is to maintain his health.”)

In fact, it is only at a relatively advanced stage of knowledge that some natural processes are viewed from anything other than a teleological perspective. Both primitive man and young children adopt an animistic attitude toward nature. They view all natural processes — both living and inanimate (in our terms) — as the expression of some conscious purpose. When a river rises, the primitive man explains this event in terms of the will of the river or of the river-god; when a storm occurs, its cause is held to be the anger of the clouds or of the cloud-god; a rock falling down a hillside may be seen as striving to get closer to the valley where it will “feel more at home.”¹

This animism is a natural consequence of a primitive stage of knowledge. We are directly familiar with human behavior, and it is only natural to assume that everything else in the world operates according to the same type of causation. The primitive man is aware that when people are angry, they make loud noises, violent movements, and become menacing. When, at this rudimentary level of understanding, he witnesses a thunderstorm, he assumes that the storm expresses the anger of the clouds. At this stage, he simply does not know enough about the nature of clouds and of man to appreciate the vast differences in their forms of action.

Even before primitive men have grasped the concept of “purpose” explicitly, they project the purposeful character of their own behavior out into the world. It is only as their knowledge advances that men grasp the idea of a cause that is not psychological in origin — or, more precisely, that they draw the distinction between psychological and physical causation.

The idea of physical causality — of actions caused by the physical nature of an entity without the intervention of conscious purpose — was not given explicit statement until the Greeks. The significance of the statement attributed to Thales, “Everything is water,” lies partly in the fact that it is the earliest recorded expression of a naturalistic, non-animistic conception of the world.²

It seems, then, that teleological causation is the first form of causation to be understood. Teleological concepts originally derive from the experience of purposefulness which attends our own conscious, deliberate actions. These teleological concepts are then secondarily applied (correctly or incorrectly) to other kinds of processes. In applying teleological language to other entities, one is holding, by implication: these entities operate on essentially the same terms as man does. Thus, teleological concepts have as their original and paradigm case the purposeful behavior of man; it is a man’s knowledge of his own purposefulness that gives rise to the wider idea of teleological causation.

Living Action vs. Inanimate Processes

As man’s knowledge about nature grows, as he becomes increasingly aware of the differences between human purposeful action and other natural processes, the area to which he attributes teleological causation narrows. Historically, the first step in the movement away from animism probably came with the recognition that some entities in the world are alive and others are not. The distinction between the living and the non-living may have had its origin in the striking difference between the living and the dead, as Hans Jonas has suggested.³  The most conspicuous feature of living organisms which isolates them as a class from both the dead and the inanimate is their power of self-produced movement. The two vital processes of growth and reproduction each involve self-produced movement. Dead bodies and other inanimate objects do not move themselves in this sense. . . . 

Another readily observable distinguishing feature of life is its conditionality. By conditionality. I refer to the fact that the organism’s existence is conditional upon its actions: the possibility of death is always present, and survival is a positive achievement that must be continuously won and re-won by the organism. Accordingly, living organisms have needs — i.e., conditions which must be satisfied by positive action on the part of the organism, if the organism is to remain in existence. Inanimate objects do not, in this sense, have needs; the existence of inanimate objects is not in general dependent upon their performance of specific courses of action (apparent counterexamples to this generalization will be considered in later chapters). It is readily apparent that living organisms will perish if they fail in their self-sustaining actions, whereas inanimate objects can ordinarily remain in existence in a state of total, inert passivity. Living organisms maintain themselves by a ceaseless process of action to derive needed energy and materials from the environment and utilize them for self-maintenance.

These two features, self-produced movement and conditionality, ground the early distinction between the living and the non-living.

Vegetative vs. Conscious Action

Continuing the progression to a non-animistic worldview, a further distinction is made within the realm of the living between conscious and vegetative actions. This distinction must be discussed in some detail. By “conscious actions” I mean those actions of a living organism which are initiated and directed by the organism’s consciousness. In contrast, by “vegetative actions” I mean those actions of a living organism which are not initiated and directed by the organism’s consciousness. A clear example of a conscious action would be the action of a dog chasing a rabbit. The dog’s action is initiated and directed by its perception of the rabbit. If the dog had not seen or smelled the rabbit, the chase would not have been initiated; the dog, once losing sight and scent of the rabbit cannot continue to follow the rabbit’s path. A clear example of a vegetative action would be the healing of a wound in the human body. The process of wound-healing is clearly neither initiated nor directed by one’s consciousness — the process will occur just as readily when one is asleep or unconscious. . . .

Goal-Directed Action vs. Purposeful Action

Although primitive man regards all processes in nature as similar to his own purposeful actions, modern man distinguishes firstly all living actions from inanimate processes, and secondly conscious from vegetative living actions. How do these distinctions affect the area of behavior one considers to be teleological?

A conscious action can be, under certain circumstances, teleological: our own purposeful actions fall into this category. As we have seen, human purposeful actions are in fact the original source of our teleological concepts.

The precise features constituting the purposefulness of man’s conscious actions will be identified in chapter 3. At this point, it is necessary only to note that I take the term “purposeful” to be much narrower than some other teleological concepts, such as “goal-directed.” I am assuming that “purpose” and “purposeful” apply only in the case of conscious actions — that is, in the case of actions in which the agent has an “end-in-view.” According to this usage, a “non-conscious purpose” is a contradiction in terms. . . .⁴  

The teleological concepts derived from the case of our own purposeful action can be straightforwardly applied to some of the conscious actions of other animals. For instance, a dog eats in order to satisfy its hunger, or for other motives, such as to enjoy a food it happens to like. Of course, there are very important differences between the purposeful actions of man and those of the higher animals. When a man eats, he has an implicit or explicit conceptual awareness of what he is doing and of the end it is to serve.

Moreover, human ends, being abstract, are much more complex than those of a higher animal. One may eat in order to maintain his health, to please a host, to sample a new food, or as part of an experiment in nutrition. To say that a dog eats purposefully to satisfy its hunger, we need recognize only that the dog feels hungry (without having the conceptual identification of that state as hunger), sees or smells the food (without having the conceptual identification of it as food), associates the sight or the scent with the pleasure of satisfying hunger (again without having conceptualized knowledge of the relationships involved, but merely a perceptual association based on memory), and goes to eat the food.

Accordingly, even though the level of conscious direction and motivation differs profoundly in the action of the man and the dog, both actions qualify as “purposeful” in the sense of that term I am using. The differences in the types of conscious action involved warrants a distinction between conceptual purposes and perceptual purposes.

In other words, there is no objection to talking of teleological ends, goals, etc., where there are, in Dewey’s phrase, “ends-in-view” — whether this “view” is perceptual or conceptual. Again, the factual question of just which other organisms have conscious purposes is not the issue: if an organism acts toward an “end-in-view,” no special philosophic problem arises in describing that action as teleological.

At the other extreme are the inanimate processes occurring in nature. Once a natural process is recognized as inanimate, it is regarded as non-teleological. Once it is realized that the storm clouds, for example, are purely physical phenomena, governed neither by life nor mind, the teleological explanation of the thunderstorm is abandoned. To recognize a natural process as inanimate is to see it as so different from one’s own purposeful actions that the application of teleological concepts to it becomes absurd. . . .

It is specifically with the class of vegetative actions that the problem of teleology comes into sharp focus. The other two kinds of process have been preliminarily classified: conscious action can be teleological; inanimate natural processes, being clearly different in their mode of causation, are classified as non-teleological. The classification of vegetative actions, however, is not easily settled. Are the vegetative actions of living organisms teleological? Are vegetative actions closer in their mode of causation to inanimate processes or to purposeful voluntary actions? This is the central issue, and its proper resolution will provide the basis for a new and deeper understanding of teleology.

To read further, you can purchase a copy of Dr. Binswanger’s book here.

1. See H. and H.A. Frankfort, Before Philosophy (Baltimore, 1949), p. 24.
2. Aristotle reports Thales to have said also that everything is full of gods, but Thales may not have meant this in the animistic sense: “It seems likely, therefore, that in saying things are full of gods, Thales was not making a theological statement. Paradoxical as it may sound, he was tacitly denying divine causality. He meant that things, in order to be moved and to change, do not require force applied to them from the outside by the gods but move of themselves, by a natural [non-conscious?] force within them.” ((W.T. Jones, A History of Western Philosophy (New York, 1952), p. 34.
3. Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life (New York, 1966), pp. 7–8.
4. I leave aside the issue of subconscious purposes in the psychologist’s sense.