Teleological-functional explanations account for objects by reference to their purpose. They are a fundamental aspect of adults' explanatory repertoire. They also play a significant role in children's reasoning although prior findings indicate that, in contrast to adults, young children broadly extend teleological explanation beyond artifacts (e.g. chairs) and biological properties (e.g. eyes) ...

In his teleological antinomy in the Dialectic of the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment, Kant presents two competing views of the explanatory power of causal mechanism for a science of origins. Kant expresses both the positive (thesis) view and the negative (antithesis) view in the guise of merely “regulative principles for the reflecting power of judgment”. The regulativity of thes...

Teleology is a central concept in Hegel's philosophy, but, as is too common in his writing, exactly what he understands under that concept, what role within his philosophy it plays, and how he defends his position remain obscure. Hegel did not come to his position on teleology in a vacuum; it was a topic of major concern to his predecessors as well. Then as now, debate focused both on the quest...

A fundamental aspect of adult thought is the 'teleological' tendency to assume that objects exist for a purpose. When seeing an unfamiliar artifact or strange anatomical part on an animal, the first question an adult will usually ask is 'what's that for?' - a query that assumes that the object can be teleologically explained in terms of its function. Current debate focuses on the origin and sco...

This paper explores the minimal representational and processing requirements for teleological and mentalistic inferences. These inferences are already present in 6- to 12-month-old infants when they judge the goals of moving agents like inanimate shapes, without any cue about human body motion. This precludes the mirror system as a potential explanation for these early inferences. I propose a r...

This paper aims at connecting two ideas that play a fundamental role in Robert Alexy’s theory of legal reasoning, namely, on the one hand the idea of a dialogue and on the other hand the idea of a value (a goal to be realised in the political and legal domain). In particular, I shall argue that goal-oriented (teleological) considerations can contribute to determining the structure of dialectica...

William Paley was an English churchman whose writings in defense of Christianity were widely read in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His most important work is Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the Appearances of Nature (1801). In this work Paley argues for the intelligent design of the universe based upon its similarity to objec...