Teleology beyond explanation

Teleology

Beyond the Rational Explanation

In this paper, we generalise recent work on reconstructing an agent’s epistemic state from observations about what it believed after receiving a series of revision inputs. We do so by also allowing to take into account information about what the agent did not believe after each

From Teleology to Evolution Bridging the gap between rationality and adaptation in social explanation

This paper focuses on the uneasy alliance of rational choice and evolutionary explanations in modern economics. While direct evolutionary explanations of “optimality” rule out "purposeful" rational choice by assuming zerointelligence and pure rational choice explanations leave no room for "selective" adaptation the indirect evolutionary approach integrates both perspectives. Subsequently we go ...

beyond propaganda to explanation in war historigraphy

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Natural selection and the conditions for existence: representational vs. conditional teleology in biological explanation.

Human intentional action, including the design and use of artifacts, involves the prior mental representation of the goal (end) and the means to achieve that goal. This representation is part of the efficient cause of the action, and thus can be used to explain both the action and the achievement of the end. This is intentional teleological explanation. More generally, teleological explanation ...