So last time, we talked about teleo-essentialism, contrasting it with the modern philosophy. While the teleo-essentialist believes things have knowable essences with purposes, the bongo (the advocate of modernist philosophy) believes there exists no essences or purposes. The modernist view is obviously false for the previously given reasons, but is the alternative equally flawed? In this essay, I hope to defend the teleo-essentialist worldview.
Ur-Platonism Against the Modern World
I recently had the pleasure of listening to an excellent talk by Father James Brent at the Thomistic Institute’s Student Leadership Conference called
“Responding to Contemporary Atheism.” Truly, it could have easily been titled “Responding to the Modern Philosophy.” Father Brent argues that we ought to adopt the framework of philosophy professor Lloyd P. Gerson as a way of understanding modern secularism and the conflict between secularism and traditional religion. Of course, the question of whether God exists is an important one, but it’s not the only difference between religious traditionalists and modern secularists. The typical Dawkinite “lack of belief” atheist assumes a specific metaphysical worldview as much as their Bible-thumping fundamentalist counterpart.
The broad tent of worldviews of religious traditionalists is what Gerson calls “Ur-Platonism” or “big tent” Platonism. The Ur-Platonist worldview is defined by five things it rejects and seven key themes that are reinforced by the worldview.
The five things Ur-Platonism rejects are:
- Materialism: the belief that all things that exist are bodies and their properties.
- Mechanism: the belief that the explanations available to a materialist are adequate to explain reality.
- Nominalism: the belief that all that exists are individuals each individually situated in space and time.
- Relativism: the belief that the true is what is appears to me or my group or what is good is what is good for me or my group.
- Skepticism: the belief that necessary and universal knowledge is impossible.
The seven key themes of Ur-Platonism are:
- The universe has systematic unity.
- This unity reflects an explanatory hierarchy and in particular a “top-down” approach to explanation (as opposed to the “bottom-up” approach of naturalism), in which the simple is prior to the complex and the intelligible is prior to the sensible.
- The divine constitutes an irreducible explanatory category and is to be conceived of in personal terms.
- The psychological also constitutes an irreducible explanatory category.
- Persons are part of the hierarchy and their happiness consists in recovering a lost position within it, in a way that can be described as “becoming like God.”
- Moral and aesthetic value is to be analyzed by reference to this metaphysical hierarchy.
- The epistemological order is contained with this metaphysical order.
Now, I will not be defending all of these ideas in this essay. However, I do want to shed a light on how vastly different my worldview is from the modern one. The modern philosophy is characterized by its embrace of most (if not all) of the five things Ur-Platonism rejects, most prominently mechanism and nominalism. In fact, I argue that mechanism and nominalism represent the root of the philosophical problem of modernity, and it is the teleo-essentialist worldview I will define and defend in this essay.
Teleo-Essentialism Defined
First, what is teleo-essentialism? Simply put, teleo-essentialism is the combination of essentialism and intrinsic teleological realism. For the definition of these things, I will refer to
David S. Oderberg’s Real Essentialism and
Edward Feser’s “Teleology: A Shopper’s Guide.”
Essentialism is, in the words of philosopher David S. Oderberg, the proposition that there are real, knowable essences. Essentialism is meant to explain how unity could exist in a world of multiple things. Now there are two levels to this unity. On the one hand, multiple individuals can fall under the same kind of thing; Fido and Rover possess a unity of a different sort to the unity possessed by Fred and Wilma and vice versa because the former pair are dogs and the latter pair are humans. On the other, there is unity in within a concrete entity; there exists objects that display a unified, characteristic repertoire of behavior, operations, and functions indicative of a single, integral entity that persists through change. For instance, you may have the thoughts you have now, and they may be
your thoughts, but you could have easily had different thoughts. This would have been a change, but you still remained yourself.
Essentialism neatly explains this unity-in-multiplicity by pointing to essences. But essentialism not a mere philosophical posit; the existence of essences is as certain as existence itself. Because for everything that exists, it must be possible to say what it is, what it could not be, and why it is as it is. Essences themselves are not mere bundles of essential features. My sense of humor is an essential property of myself, but it is not a part of my essence; rather, my essence is what’s necessary to explain why I have a sense of humor in the first place. For example, my having a sense of humor flows from my essence of
rational animality.
We learn of the essences of things
a posteriori supplemented where necessary by
a priori metaphysical reflection concerning such things as classification, structure, explanation, causation, unity, specificity and generality, and so on. But to say the essences of material objects are knowable through everyday and scientific observation isn’t the same as saying there should be an empirical test for essence. There is no magic test, no piece of metaphysical litmus paper, that we can apply so as to know in all common cases – let alone uncommon ones – what the essence of something is. Nevertheless, we do know of essences by general observation and reasoning. We ask questions like “if I took away this or that quality of the thing in question, would its nature remain the same? Would it continue to display the same characteristic properties, functions, operations, and behavior that it does when it possesses the quality that I remove in thought?” It is through this method that we come to understand whether a quality is either an essential quality or an accidental one.
Essentialism stands in stark contrast to nominalism, which necessarily holds that this unity-in-multiplicity is a mere illusion. Nominalism taken to its logical conclusion can be found in the works of post-modernists like Jacques Derrida. If you want an excellent but simple explanation of this, I would check out
this video by Cuck Philosophy.
Postmodernism is, in many ways, the fulfillment of nominalism – positing that these eternal categories of male/female, life/death, civilization/nature, etc. are, in fact, illusory. They are merely “social constructs,” products of our social and historical context that can be done away with at a whim, not real things. Essentialism stands in contrast to this worldview.
Another concept rejected by modern philosophers is the idea of
telos. The
telos of a thing or process is the end or goal which it points.
Edward Feser divides teleology into five different levels.
- Basic causal regularities: If cause A regularly generate some effect or range of effects B rather than C, D, or no effects at all, then we can say that the telos of A is the generation of B. So, if opioids regularly cause people to go to sleep, we can say that the telos of opioids is to induce sleep.
- Complex inorganic processes: Certain causal chains happen regularly enough to be referred to as “cycles,” (i.e. the rock cycle and the water cycle). The telos of each stage in the cycle is the next stage in the cycle (for example, the telos of condensation is bringing about precipitation).
- Basic biological phenomena: Within living things, there is a kind of immanent causation, a form of causation in which a part acts for the good of the whole it is a part of. These parts each have their own ends which are for the good of the organism. For example, the telos of the heart is to pump blood throughout the creature.
- Distinctly animal life: Unlike other types of organisms, animals are capable of sensation, appetite, and locomotion. These activities entail a kind of conscious goal-seeking different in kind than the basic biological phenomena.
- Human thought and action: Human thought has a conceptual structure foreign to other animals; rational thought has intentionality and purpose in the fullest sense.
Now, in modern discourse, the debate about teleology resides primarily at the third level (biological phenomena) and is fought between evolutionists and defenders of Intelligent Design (ID). The evolutionists believe that teleological descriptions of biological phenomena are either false or, if true, reducible to descriptions cast in nonteleological terms. The ID theorists, by contrast, hold the teleological descriptions to be true in an unqualified way. Furthermore, they would argue that the existence of this teleology in nature is evidence of God. In other words, teleology is the result of an intelligent creator imposing his will extrinsically on material substances that would otherwise not have a
telos. Plato held a similar view of teleology, but believed it to be the work of the demiurge, not God.
The Aristotelians and the Scholastics, by contrast, held an intrinsic realist view of teleology, rejecting both of these options, and it is this view that I hold to be true. Intrinsic Teleological Realism (as Edward Feser calls is) holds that things in nature have a
telos or purpose that the objects point to, and that that
telos is inherent to the nature of that substance. This is not to say that this teleology does not have its origins in God’s mind, or that there is no such thing as extrinsic teleology. Rather, this position holds that the
telos present in natural things is largely intrinsic to the nature of those things.
To see the contrast in the three views of teleology, let us take the example of an acorn. The
telos or goal of an acorn is to become a tree. The evolutionist might say that the acorn’s goal can be reduced to a description of how the organism evolved or is otherwise illusory. The ID theorist might say that the acorn’s goal is irreducibly real but exists intrinsic to the acorn itself. The intrinsic teleological realist would hold that the acorn’s goal is intrinsic to the acorn itself.
Essentialism and Intrinsic Teleological Realism, taken together, holds that, in nature, there are real, knowable essences that have an end or
telos inherent to them. Such is the defining feature of the teleo-essentialist worldview.
Teleo-Essentialism Defended
Teleo-essentialism, on its face, seems to be undeniable. Can we not say what a thing is and what properties it constitutes? However, postmodernists and other followers of the modern philosophy rightfully point out that classifications are much harder than one would expect. Take the difficulty of classifying soup. There are many things that are called “soup,” and it appears they have little in common except that they are a type of food that we call “soup.” Sure, we could define soup as a “hot, liquid food prepared from meat, fish, or vegetable stock combined with various other ingredients and often containing solid pieces,” but there are always exceptions. If soup is hot, then are cold soups not soup? If soup is supposed to be liquid, then are solid soups not soups? If soup is supposed to be made of vegetables and meat, then are dessert soups that are primarily made up of fruit no soups? And so on.
In fact, you could do this for any category. If the man/woman dichotomy is determined by chromosomes, what about those with XXY chromosomes? If it’s determined by behavior, then where do tomboys or effeminate men fit in? If it’s determined by reproductive function, then what about sterile people? And if something as basic as biological sex could be reduced this way, then why not everything else?
This line of thinking was largely influenced by the Darwinian theory of evolution. Darwinism posited that, through macro-evolution, amoeba-like creature could eventually become men if given billions of years to evolve. If this was plausible, then how could we say that each kind was of creature had its own essence? Darwinism seemed to blur one kind of creature into another. Things that were once thought of as strict dichotomies are blurred, and all that is left are individuals that belong to no group.
But as Oderberg writes:
Real Essentialism said:
One does not need to be a professional zoologist to note essential differences between elephants and tigers, birds and fish, bacteria and archaea, toads and bacteria, zebras and monkeys, Bonobos and orangutans, horses and panthers, palm trees and tomato plants, spiders and worms, funnel web spiders and redback spiders, hyenas and gazelles, earthworms and pigs, porcupines and platypuses, and so on ad nauseam, to be convinced that there are, of course, essential differences between species. And by ‘species’ we include not just the infima species, which is what systematists usually mean by species, but all of the species/genera that metaphysics and systematics recognize in the tree of life, however that tree be constructed, e.g. whether as a metaphysical Porphyrian Tree, a Linnaean hierarchy, or a phylogenetic genealogy.
Contrary to the claims of modern evolutionists, Darwinism does not entail the kind of infinite variation required for a biological anti-essentialism. Darwinism does not postulate variation in mammalian species with respect to being warm-blooded and breathing air with lungs or with tigers with respect to being land-dwelling or in black rats with respect to not navigating by echolocation. The mistake, Oderberg claims, lies in thinking essences are nothing more than property clusters. Properties are indicators of essence, but even the simplest creature will have an incredibly long list of necessary characteristics, some of which may be unlistable in principle. But an essentialist does not have to list all of the (what may be) infinite characteristics of a creature to be able to enable at least a provisional judgment as to the substantial form of an organism.
Furthermore, the essence is the entire point of specific classification in the first place. Organisms exhibit stability, the capacity to develop and maintain a well-functioning individual that is typical of its kind. This stability is achieved through the very plasticity Darwinian anti-essentialists point to in their arguments. How can one understand the stability or plasticity of a species if one cannot understand their nature?
Another argument against essentialism is the argument of the “universal accidental.” We have no way of distinguishing between essential and non-essential properties that are universally possessed by the members of some kind K for which the question of its essential properties arises, whereby “universally” means “for all times and all places.” What could possibly distinguish an essential property and an accidental property that just so happened to exist in all times and places?
One mistake this argument makes is confusing essences and essential properties. The essence of a thing explains why a thing has its essential properties. My capacity for humor is an essential property I possess which flows from my essence. But my essence, that of a rational animal, is not an essential property; it explains why I have such essential properties. In this case,
rationality implies a capacity for abstract thinking, with which I could form a combination of concepts in my head that that shows the various kinds of dissonance with everyday life. And
animality implies a capacity for passion, for finding things surprising. Taken together, these capacities allow me to judge various things or possible things as “humorous.” The capacity for humor is therefore an essential property because it flows from what it means to be a human, and no human could fail to have such a characteristic.
Additionally, while an essentialist can acknowledge the existence of some universal accidental property, it must be admitted that such a thing is an exception, not the rule. In nearly every case, universal characteristics – those found in kinds of a thing everywhere and all times – are nearly always essential. Methodologically speaking, there’s nothing wrong with assuming a universal characteristic is also an essential one.
Finally, as mentioned above, when it comes to the true essence of a thing, not just its essential properties, the essentialist is able to make the leap from universality to essentialness without holding either there must be some empirical test for essence or holding all essentialist judgments to be certain on all occasions. Consider the following example:
Real Essentialism said:
Suppose I am walking through a field and come across a creature that has a vaguely human shape, is supported by two planks of wood, and has a torso consisting of a sack stuffed with straw, from which protrude two more bits of wood. On top is something that looks a little like a human face, only it too is wood, with pebbles for eyes, a twig for a nose, and two more twigs protruding from either side. Is it a human being? Of course not, I realize – it’s a scarecrow. How do I know? Well, because human beings are essentially animals and this thing is not even alive. But how do I know humans are essentially animals?
For the real essentialist, there is nothing intrinsically impossible about the sort of reasoning that goes into establishing such a proposition, whatever the epistemological difficulties when it comes to particular kinds of thing. We all know what counts as a paradigmatic human being, or a stereotypical human, to use Putnam’s terminology. Human beings have natures, as I have already argued in respect of things in general. When a thing displays a range of characteristic operations and behaviour, a characteristic set of functions, and we are able to observe a range of similarities and differences between it and other things, and thereby to classify it, no matter how approximately, within a taxonomic scheme that ascends in increasing generality and descends in increasing specificity – then we are justified in ascribing to it an essence or nature, even if we don’t know what that essence or nature is; or, though we do know part of the essence, yet we do not know the complete essence.
Though the essence of a thing can only be known through observation, there needn’t be some sort of repeatable empirical test for essence, just as there needn’t be a single, codified empirical test for the real essence of a thing. So, essentialism is definitely true.
But is there such a thing as teleology? Are things in nature “directed” towards some other thing? Many of the moderns disagree, but their disagreement often comes from their misunderstanding of what teleology is. To them, teleology always involves either a process with stages (as in the development of an acorn into an oak tree) or a part working for the good of a whole (as with a human heart). But as we discussed before, the only thing essential to teleology is an inclination towards an end, such as the tendency of an ice cube to cause its surroundings to grow colder. The ice cube has this tendency as opposed to a tendency to warm its surroundings or cause them to become toxic or not affect anything at all.
Thus, the moderns’ attempt to explain away all instances of teleology in nature by way of Darwinian evolution because evolution itself causes certain outcomes rather than others, and, therefore, is pointed towards some end. Even if we were to say that hearts pump blood only because creatures without hearts did not survive the evolutionary process, evolution itself is a process pointed towards certain outcomes rather than others and is itself an instance of teleology.
Besides this, the reality of teleology is rationally inescapable. Suppose we were to say that there are no purposes, functions or goal-directed forces of any kind. If that were the case, then our intellect isn't purposed toward the attainment of truth because it couldn't be purposed towards anything at all. But if this were the case, then all rationality and rational discourse would be impossible. For rational thought depends on inherently goal-oriented inferences aimed at producing true conclusions, and a person can only be rational if they follow teleological norms such as "we ought to believe what is true and reject what is false." Teleological realism must be true in order for arguments to be made at all!
Conclusion
The teleo-essentialist worldview, far from being “debunked” by modern science, is actually vindicated by human reason and every day experience, as this essay and the previous one have demonstrated. Someone who wishes to defend the modern worldview has to overcome the obstacles I’ve laid out.
But why is this view so maligned by modern philosophy? Part of this is simple ignorance. Many people, including philosophers who should know better, create elaborate and ridiculous strawmen to obfuscate what teleo-essentialists actually believe. They would claim that essentialism amounts in believing that some sort of “spirit” inhabits every object to make them what they are. Or they would make teleology out to be saying that God has imbued rocks with some grand purpose in the same way the human heart’s purpose is to pump blood.
Often, many of these people use non-sequiturs to defend their positions. For instance, they would associate teleo-essentialism with medieval superstition and the modern philosophy with modern science and technology, and then say “if you reject modern philosophy, you must reject its fruits!” But as I pointed out in my previous essay, the modern sciences are, in fact, undermined by the modern philosophy in several key ways. Besides that, this is a blatant non-sequitur; even if modern philosophy were necessary for our technological and scientific advancements, it would not prove it to be true.
Another non-sequitur used is how the modern philosophy underpins the findings of modernity. They would claim “if the modern philosophy fails, then our justifications for liberalism, for secularism, for naturalism, for [insert whatever faddish political project the speak likes] will be for naught, and we’ll regress to the dark ages!” But this, too, is a non-sequitur; even if teleo-essentialist thinking would cause us to “regress to the dark ages,” it would not prove it false.
And if the truth holds within it a reactionary imperative that threatens the modern project? Then so much the worse for that project.