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Teleology And Purpose In Recent Anglo-American Philosophy

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Teleology And Purpose In Recent Anglo-American Philosophy

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Content TELEOLOGY AND PURPOSE IN RECENT
ANGLO-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY
by
William Tecumseh Stafford, Jr.
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Philosophy)
January 1964
UNIVERSITY O F S O U T H E R N CALIFORNIA
GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES 7, CALIFORNIA
This dissertation, written by
_ W i l l i arn _ T e c.um s e h . Stafford.! J r ..............
under the direction of his.....Dissertation C o m
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by the Graduate
School, in partial fulfillment of requirements
for the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
Dean
*
Date.... J a n u a r y . 1 . .9.6.4.............................
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
PREFACE
No one can live in the contemporary world very long
without discovering the confusion among thoughtful people
about the ends of human life; and no one can study phi
losophy very long without recognizing how fundamental are
the relations between the sciences which deal with the
observable and quantitative aspects of man's experience and
the axiological disciplines which deal with the data and
criteria of his ethical development. It is the basic pre
supposition of this study that man's experiences somehow
reflect an underlying unity in his nature and in the world
which supports his existence. The need to formulate this
unity in terms of scientific facts and coherent thought
about values is the reason for this study.
In accordance with this aim, the scope of this
study has been restricted to the works of three recent
evolutionary thinkers in whose thought the results of
science and the requirements of philosophical truth have
been of primary importance. As the study progressed,
ii
it became obvious that a reformed view of teleology and pur~
pose is now possible, and the attempt to state this view
has resulted in the hypothesis of axiological teleomechanism
proposed in this dissertation.
The writer of this dissertation is greatly indebted
to the School of Philosophy of the University of Southern
California for excellent counseling and opportunities to
work in his chosen area. The members of his dissertation
committee he would mention especially for their encourage
ment and competent advice. Dr. William H. Werkmeister, his
chairman, has generously given of his time and guidance
throughout the preparation of the manuscript. Dr. Wilbur
Long, another member of the committee, has materially aided
the writer in grasping the theory of value which impelled
him to study the teleology of evolution; and Dr. Robert
Brackenbury of the School of Education, and also a member
of the committee, has for several years helped the writer
pursue the philosophical study of education.
Members of the staff of the University Library have
been unstinting in their efforts to help the writer locate
needed materials.
iii
To my wife, Mrs. Jane Stafford, I owe a debt of
real gratitude for her years of encouragement, her many
suggestions on how to make philosophy more meaningful in
its practical applications, and, finally, for her help in
getting the final manuscript into acceptable form.
It is hoped that this study will help to reformu
late and modernize the teleological world-view in the light
of the interdependence of facts and values.
iv
/
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
PREFACE........................................... ii
Chapter
I. INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM OF TELEOLOGY ... 1
The Purpose of This Dissertation
The Justification of the Problem of This
Study
The Organization of This Study
The Sources of Data and the Method of
Procedure Used
II. TELEOLOGY AND PURPOSE ON THE PHYSICAL
LEVEL........................ 28
The Nature of Matter
Levels of Inorganic Structure
The Nature of Material Substance
Physical Substance and Causality
Points of Agreement
The Continuities and Discontinuities
of Matter
Metaphysical Implications
The Nature of Va.lues in Morgan, Smuts,
and Sellars
General Summary
III. THE TELEOLOGY OF ORGANIC L I F E .......... 106
The Nature of Organic Life
Points of Agreement on the Nature
of Life
v
Chapter
The Origin of Life in Evolutionary Philosophy
Summary and Conclusions
The Characteristics of Organisms
The Teleology of Organic Functions
Points of Agreement and Disagreement
General Summary
IV. TELEOLOGY AND PURPOSE ON THE LEVEL OF MIND . .
The Nature of Mind
Summary and Conclusions
Specific Characteristics of Mind and
Their Teleological Functions
Summary of Agreements and Disagreements
Final Comment and Conclusions
V. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS .......................
Physical Existence and Value Experiences
Continuity and Discontinuity of Physical
Levels
The Graded Scale of Causality and Value
Potentials
The Teleomechanical Interpretation of
Matter
The Teleology of Organic Adaptation
The Teleomechanical Explanation of Organisms
The Teleology of the Psychological Processes
Final Conclusions
APPENDIX. The Definition of Terms Unique
to This Study .........................
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM OF TELEOLOGY
The Purpose of this Dissertation
The purpose of this study is to compare the views
of three recent philosophers--one English, one South Afri
can, and one American— on the place of teleology and pur
pose in the philosophical explanation of evolution. The
philosophers are: C. Lloyd Morgan, General Jan Christian
Smuts, and Professor Roy Wood Sellars. The heart of the
problem lies in the determination and criticism of the
relative philosophical merits of the concepts of purpose
and teleology as applied by these three thinkers to the
interpretation and explanation of the evolution of natural
systems as described by modern empirical science. These
particular authors have been chosen as representatives of
modem evolutionism because each of them has given serious
and prolonged thought to the philosophical analysis of
modem evolutionary science and to the place in nature
1
which it assigns to the adaptive and purposeful activities
of man. In accordance with this intention, this study is
therefore restricted to a consideration of empirical
teleology and purpose characteristic of natural systems and
processes. As stipulated in the appendix of this study,
"teleology" designates the observed tendency of a natural
whole toward activities--either intended or unintended
consciously--which satisfy the conditions of its integrity,
growth, and need-reduction; and "purpose" names the con
scious awareness and seeking of outcomes of action appro
priate to the needs of the natural whole. At this point,
I wish to refer the reader to the appendix for the meaning
which special words have in this study.
Each of the authors chosen for this study has a
sound knowledge of both the scientific and the philosophi
cal elements of modem evolutionism; each has sought to
achieve a philosophical explanation of the data of evolu
tion; each of them has been a life-long student of science
and philosophy; and, finally, each of them has had a dis
tinguished career, particularly in philosophy.
Morgan and Sellars spent their working lives as
university professors of philosophy, while General Smuts
devoted a long life to public service in which his
principal aim was to help bring into the confused moral
and political conditions of this century a more beneficent
form of political order through a democratic international
law. His services to South African unity, the British
Commonwealth of Nations, the first League of Nations, and
to the founding of the present United Nations Organization
were signal and of far-reaching effect. But unity and
wholeness were also aims of his philosophical thought as
well as of his political leadership. From the beginning of
his active life to the very end, he dedicated his efforts
to what I shall call a more beneficent legal organization
of the political life of the first half of the twentieth
century. Regardless of what one may think of the merits
and implicit dangers of his work, General Smuts did have
a world-wide vision and he did expend his energy in the
service of a humanely organized world peace.
Professor Morgan spent his life as a teacher of
biology, psychology, and philosophy in England and South
Africa. His larger philosophical views will be found to
incorporate much of these professional interests, but his
more strictly constructive concepts were derived to a large
extent from reading and meditating on the works of Spinoza
and S. Alexander.
Professor Sellars spent his active life as a teacher
of philosophy at the University of Michigan, where he first
began to work out his philosophical views in connection
with a course in the philosophy of science. Very early in
his career, he adopted the mechanisms of stimulus-response
psychology and physiology as basic elements of his philo
sophical thought; and he has never deviated fundamentally
from this position.
All three men are heavily indebted to the sciences
of biology, physics, and psychology, and to the hypothesis
of evolution as expounded by Charles Darwin and his fol
lowers. By way of preliminary comment, one can fairly say
of them that the primary object of their thought was the
organization of the natural world as described by the em
pirical sciences, and that the traditional religious needs
and experiences of mankind were at the periphery rather
than the center of their concern. It should not be pre
sumed, however, that any one of them has really left the
religious and spiritual values altogether out of his philo
sophical reckoning. Each man does acknowledge these needs
and values but gives them a weight and character consistent
with his overall system of philosophy. Whether their
actual treatment of these matters is correct, it is relevant
to my problem of integrating ends and means; accordingly,
I shall have to deal with it in so far as it relates to
the exemplification of empirical teleology in the develop
ment of natural wholes.
The Justification of the Problem of this Study
Perhaps a word or two about the reasons for my
choice of the problem of this study as the subject of a
dissertation may not be amiss at this place. These reasons
fall into two groups, the personal and the systematic.
I shall state my personal reasons first.
It seems to me that from my earliest memory I have
been somewhat painfully aware of the absence of a systematic
and convincing coordination of the knowledge, the technol
ogies, and the real values of human life. This situation
has always appeared to me to be remediable; for I have
always believed in the validity and truth of knowledge, the
effectiveness of inner resolution and personal purpose, and
in persistent application of intelligence and good-will as
the correct means to the realization of human capacities.
Coming as I did from a religious but thinking family, I
early saw that some men often hold with the most admirable
conviction opinions which seemed to me to be tragically and
pitiably mixed with error and cruel delusions; and I have
for many years looked forward to the kind of opportunity
offered by this dissertation to explore these matters care
fully. From my earliest memory, 1 have also felt that
insight, understanding, and knowledge are naturally good--
indeed, necessary— things for beings like men, who, in any
case, cannot avoid some kind of thought and responsible
action; and that, as a matter of observation and experience,
the truer thought generally accompanies the more humane and
ethical kinds of behavior among men. These beliefs seemed
to create a tension in my thought which has predisposed me
to become a seeker after more insight and understanding as
essential requirements of human growth in value experience.
Thus, a vaguely understood connection between knowledge and
human development in the value areas motivated me to choose
philosophy as a life work and teleology as a crucial area
of study.
But, unfortunately, few persons within my acquaint
ance could correlate, to my satisfaction, the fields of
knowledge, the virtues, and the values men need. And so
I have found myself forced to choose between working this
problem out for myself or remaining in ignorance. On first
becoming acquainted with philosophy, I saw at once that
it is the discipline best adapted to handle problems about
these ultimate concerns. After some years of reading and
thinking, I now find myself more dissatisfied than ever
with the prevalent diremptions, loose-endedness, and un
organized condition of the various theoretical formulations
found in the special sciences and schools of philosophy.
They each and all, so it seems to me, belong together as
aspects of man's one life of experience; they one and all
do appear within our one experience of nature; their
appearance in experience and their limited validity and
truth cannot seriously be questioned. Yet who but a phi
losopher even seeks to show their unity and coordination?
Indeed, who else even bothers himself about these urgent
ultimates of thought and action? Since experience grows,
even the boldest philosophers have failed to achieve a
really adequate integration of partial truths. Yet, some
how or other, we need to see all things steadily and whole.
When we are told that one of these sciences or
philosophical schools is the voice of God to our generation,
we cannot help wondering about what is to be done with all
the other excluded things and truths that are left out
of it. I think it more consistent with the growing unity
of experience that the many voices we hear are calling out
stories of appearances, in different languages, with dif
ferent perspectives, and in different chapters, all offer
ing some limited message from the One reality working in
them all.
At any rate, 1 have said enough here to indicate
the orientation and direction this study will take: meta
physics and cosmology in some form cannot be avoided; hence,
I shall not pretend to be doing some special science or
even to be applying the peculiar methods of a science to my
subject matter. Instead, I shall seek to elicit the meta
physical implications of the concepts of natural order
found in my three sources end to criticize them from my own
philosophical point of view.
The systematic reasons for this study of teleology
and purpose arise from the present uncoordinated state of
man's goals and methods of knowing. If one assumes that
the special subject matters of the various disciplines are
aspects of one organized world of reality, then it can be
asserted that one of the tasks of philosophy is to co
ordinate these aspects into a unified view of reality as a
whole, and just this has long been recognized as a peculiar
trait of the philosophical enterprise. This point of view
will be used in this study, and it carries the logical
implication that the special aspects of reality must be
formulated in mutually complementary propositions which are
not in contradiction with each other. Hence, all true
propositions belonging to the special disciplines are
simultaneously assertible together in an adequate phi"
losophy of nature.
When it is understood that the sciences now recog
nize mechanical, organic, and mental levels of order in the
whole of reality, it is no longer possible logically to
characterize the whole of reality by ascribing to it only
those kinds of order found on a given level. To proceed in
metaphysics in this way would be to fall into the fallacy
of composition. Thus, if different kinds of teleological
and purposive order are found on the different levels, then
the older wholesale ascriptions of the characteristics of
one level to the whole must be avoided by distinguishing
the natural kinds of telic order and confining them to
areas where they truly apply. By following this procedure,
I shall, in the constructive part of this study, seek to
reform the older forms of teleological explanations in
terms of modem knowledge.
When it is seen that every thinker, whether he is a
scientist, a philosopher, an artist, or just plain citizen,
10
Is a person with organic, moral, and physical as well as
specialized intellectual needs, it is necessary to recog
nize the efficacy of purposes and values in his behavior.
Furthermore, when it is seen that knowledge of fact affects
the satisfactions and frustrations of human needs, it is
morally imperative to come to a true understanding of the
relation of facts and values. If these statements are
true, we can conclude from them that the special aspects of
reality are integral to the whole of reality, and that
value as well as fact is integral to at least that portion
of reality which is human life. Therefore, the bifurcation
of human experience into two systematically unrelated
dimensions--facts and values— results in a false view of
the whole of experience; and, in addition, the independence
of knowledge of fact and knowledge of values reflects a
false reading of the integrity of human experience. One
implication of these widely accepted statements is that the
problem of teleology and purpose is not that of denying
their existence but rather that of carefully discriminating
the specific nature and scope of those purposes and values
which operate— often in a hidden way— to guide man's
special cognitive functions.
11
Ancient and medieval teleologists obscured the
actual particular adaptations of nature by ascribing to
nature as a whole, or to its Creator, the kinds of purpose
found on the human level of existence, an obvious fallacy
of composition. From this fallacious reasoning, they drew
the conclusion that indeterminate and contingent matter,
not the design of the Creator, was the source of specific
evils, maladaptations, and frustrations. Modem science
has shown matter to be determinate and regular in its
activities, a stable condition of values as well as of dis-
values, depending on its specific relationship to the
developmental needs of structures like organisms and minds.
Thus, in the absence of this ancient fallacy, we can now
think of teleological adaptations in nature in terms of
specific kinds of order correlated with appropriate kinds
of function. Teleology is thus not excluded by the results
of modem empirical science; indeed, it is rendered more
intelligible and relevant to our theory of natural exis
tence. Therefore, since modem physics has abolished the
Aristotelian concept of matter, we need no longer describe
actual adaptations and dysteleologies in terms of a wholly
external design existing outside the material world. By
no means does this imply that adaptations are non-existent.
12
Hence, teleology Is an open possibility.
In the view of classical physics, Newton placed all
physical events on the same level of order so far as value
and reality are concerned. The older distinction between
the determinate and the indeterminate, between the perfec
tion and the imperfection of physical events, was abolished
by Newton; and, for him, physical explanation came to be,
not the subordination of matter to form nor of the par
ticular to the universal, but rather the correlation of
observed data according to the types of mechanical uni
formity they exhibited.^ In this view, teleology came to
be thought of as the design or plan according to which God
wound up the universal machine of nature at its first
creation and after that never interfered with it but
allowed it to run indefinitely according to strictly me
chanical principles. After his initial act of creation,
God made manifest his design only in the uniformity and
adaptation of the parts of the universal machine to each
other. The main point here is that Newton discriminated
types of mechanical uniformity in nature but left types of
telic order undiscriminated from each other.
^Sterling P. Lamprecht (ed.), Knowledge and Society
("The Century Philosophy Series"; New York: D. Appleton-
Century Company, Inc., 1938), p. 315.
13
In 1728, Christian Wol£f invented the term "tele
ology" to oppose the view that a whole is simply the addi
tive sum of its interacting parts, but the concept was much
older than the term he invented. But, since Wolff lacked a
detailed knowledge of natural processes, his concept of
teleology failed to point up the actual interdependence of
specific structures, functions, and value outcomes in con
crete instances. Thus, these interdependencies could not
be known in detail until after the special sciences had
done more work in their limited fields. But now that some
of this work has been done, we are in a better position to
discriminate and coordinate the types of adaptation which
the processes of natural existence exhibit. And this task
is precisely the constructive problem of this study.
It is against this mechanical concept of the or
ganic and psychic whole that Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars
have reacted by pointing out that the wholes of nature
exist on specifically different levels of organization and
that their functions are adapted to the satisfaction of
internal needs forced to operate under the demands of en
vironmental circumstance. This new departure was, for all
of them, stimulated by Darwin*s work on organic development
and the work of modern physics and chemistry in bringing
to light the details of the natural processes involved in
organic and psychic growth. Since the characteristics of
need and satisfaction are now recognized on the organic and
mental levels, the problem of the relations between func
tioning structures and their life-sustaining satisfactions
has become urgent for our present understanding of life and
mind. In consequence of these developments, teleology and
purpose have come to be recognized features of actual adap
tations on the organic and super-organic levels of nature.
Our problem, then, grows out of the actual situation in the
knowledge of the present time; and its solution requires the
use of empirical methods to describe actual instances of the
interdependence of structural characteristics, appropriate
functions, and the sustaining or dystelic outcomes which
accompany these functions. Since the older teleologies
lacked the modern methods of science, they could only gener
alize human types of purpose and ascribe them to the whole
of the world in terms of an abstract design or the lack of
it. It is now the time to re-think the whole problem. An
attempt to reform the concept of teleology in terms of con
temporary knowledge will, therefore, be our task in this
study.
15
In carrying out this task, I shall assume that the
life of man is unavoidably intellectual, unavoidably ethi
cal, and unavoidably compelled to reconcile fact and value
in action and thought. I shall seek to show how the goals,
needs and ends of life are related to the known structures
and processes of nature; for, as both of these elements are
given and received together in man's experience, so they
must also be conceived together in his philosophical compre
hension of his experience as a unified whole. Man's every
experience is a thread in a larger pattern of experience.
However dimly this larger pattern may be apprehended, no
situation and no response of man's complex nature escapes
this pattern, which constitutes his actual being. Whatever
purpose he may pursue, whatever line of endeavor he may fol
low, man will find that it leads his thought quite naturally
to this larger pattern of his life and being. Whatever con
cept he may adopt, he will find it leading him into a larger
context of thought. Whatever value he may set at the pin
nacle of his style of living, it will elude his intellectual
comprehension and practical realization unless he sees it as
belonging to the larger context of all the other values pos
sible to human living. And whatever ultimate of metaphysics
he may find most convenient as the key to his world, he will
16
find It also leading him to acknowledge other and comple
mentary principles as being keys to the world o£ experience
and to reality. Now, If all these propositions have some
degree of truth in them, then one cannot avoid the conclu
sion that all the elements of experience and thought somehow
belong together in a reality which is of one piece and one
plan; that is to say, they belong to a reality which, in
spite of its variety and diversity, is, nevertheless, some
kind of a unity. To find this unity in terms of the rela
tions between ends and means, purposes and mechanisms, is
the real problem that is being undertaken here; for all ex
perience shows the inherent relatedness of the elements of
experience— beings, natural systems, mechanisms, processes,
purposes, and values— in the one larger context of reality;
and this unity is very real, however clearly the prosecution
of man’s special human purposes may dictate specialization
among the different studies devised to state and answer dif
ferent relevant questions about the world in which he finds
himself. This, at least, will be my basic theme in this
study.
What follows is intended to be a study in the phi
losophy of natural order as developed by certain recent
thinkers of evolutionary persuasion. In the course of my
17
study, X shall have recourse to personal experience and to
some of the special disciplines of science, but in no funda
mental sense will this be a study in science itself. My
intention is philosophical rather than scientific. More
specifically, I shall state and criticize the concepts of
teleology and purpose found in the writings of my sources.
In its expository portions, this dissertation will set forth
the actual views of these writers; and, in its critical por
tions, I shall compare these views and reduce them to some
fundamental teleological principle of natural order which
can be considered their lowest common denominator with a
general application to every level of the organized world.
Notice that this is the purpose of the study, not its guar
anteed outcome! The final conclusion will seek to formulate
some kind of intelligible integration of both the exposition
and the criticism, and to show that the principle of inte
gration is one of a teleological character which we may
regard as a tentative but helpful perspective upon our own
human experience and upon the world in general. If, per
chance, I should be successful in establishing an improved,
modernized form of metaphysical teleology, parallel in some
ways to the newer forms of metaphysical materialism, I
should be content that I had at least done some service
18
toward the re-orientation of thought around man's values as
well as around his sciences. My ultimate purpose can per
haps be better expressed by saying that I envisage a new
integration of value experience and cognitive experience in
terms of an improved form of teleology.
The Organization of this Study
This dissertation is divided into five chapters,
each dealing with a restricted aspect of the fundamental
problem of teleology and purpose in the natural world. The
content of each chapter is made up of the teleological
features of the various aspects of this one problem as
found on the major levels of natural order. The first
chapter, therefore, consists of a statement and justifica
tion of the entire study, a brief sketch of the organiza
tion of the study, and a statement of the sources consulted.
These sources will be treated by the method of contrast and
comparison supplemented by the writer's critical inter
pretation, which is recognized as hypothetical only. The
writer will make a determined effort to be faithful to his
sources and to offer a creative interpretation of their
meaning for a reformed teleological view of reality and
experience.
19
The second chapter contrasts and compares the views
of Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars on the teleological adapta
tions and mutual dependencies on the level of physical
organization. Since such physical structures and their
characteristic patterns of action are without consciousness
and purposeful goal-seeking, they are regarded as hetero-
telic conditions necessary to the later emergence of con
scious value experiences on the higher levels of natural
order.
The third chapter examines, in a similar manner,
the teleological interdependence of structures, functions,
and valuative outcomes on the level of living organisms.
In that chapter, it is indicated that the integral whole
ness of each living organism involves the existential
inseparability of structures, appropriate functions or
activities, and organic outcomes normally beneficial to the
welfare and further growth of the organisms involved. Since
some of the higher, but subhuman, organisms possess low
degrees of consciousness, they will be found to be auto-
telic in so far as their values are sought and felt, though
they are still largely heterotelic conditions relative to
the emergence of definitely goal-seeking systems like men.
20
In the fourth chapter, the teleological adaptations
and consciously goal-seeking characteristics of the defi~
nitely psychical organisms will be treated. On this level
are to be found the mental distinction between the present
and the future, the projection of plans for the deliberate
guidance of present conduct toward need reduction, and the
conscious enjoyment of achieved values. Significantly,
this level is peculiar in its manifold devices for securing
truth and utilizing knowledge in the calculated pursuit of
values; yet, even on the mental level, the interdependence
of detailed structures, appropriate activities, and values
is not completely known at the present time; although it
exists in intensified forms. Hence, the autotelic functions
of minded organisms, or persons, only slowly come to self-
consciousness through the development of suitable scienti
fic and normative disciplines.
The fifth and final chapter summarizes the data and
arguments of the previous chapters; it also interprets and
explains those data and arguments in terms of the projected
scheme of teleological categories which is proposed in the
introduction. In conclusion, it offers the hypothesis of
axiological teleomechanism as a reformulation of teleology
21
to round out and complete scientific knowledge of the organ*
lzation of nature.
In order to formulate the teleological significance
of the material covered in this study, it will be necessary
to stipulate the special senses in which certain terms are
to be used in this discussion. These stipulations are
given in an appendix with the proviso that they are offered
as tentative and hypothetical only; hence, no claim is made
that they are adequate for the purposes of a final reforma
tion of teleological thought about nature. Since I have
been forced to forge some of them for my own purposes, I
merely suggest them for the purposes of this particular
study; hence, they are intended to be understood in the
context of this study regardless of meanings they may have
in other discussions. In no sense are the theoretical pos
sibilities suggested by them to be taken as establishing
matters of fact; that can come only from forthright employ
ment of empirical method. Consequently, the conclusions of
my study will be philosophical suggestions for providing a
reformed teleological perspective as a possible philosophi
cal explanation of the reciprocity of structure, function
and value in the natural world. Whether such a view is
true is therefore a matter of its agreement with the facts
22
which I shall use to illustrate it; whether it is worth
offering is a matter of its possible fertility in suggest
ing further studies in this field. Although I believe that
the teleological approach has merit, I disclaim the final
adequacy of these stipulations for its development.
The Sources of Data and the Method
of Procedure Used
The data for this study are taken from all the
writings of Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars; in securing them,
the writer has carefully read what these men have said in
their books and periodical articles, as well as what they
have said about each other's work. These books and articles
have appeared over the period beginning about 1890 and end
ing, approximately, in 1961, when the last writings of
Sellars appeared. The bibliography at the end of the study
indicates their titles, dates and places of publication,
and the names of publishers.
The procedure followed in this study has been that
of comparing and contrasting the statements of the sources
relative to the specific points at issue in the study; how
ever, no attempt has been made to reproduce here all that
these authors have said about subjects not germane to the
23
problem o£ this study, although even this has been read by
the writer. A further methodological procedure Involved In
carrying out this purpose has been the writer's introduction
to a scheme of categories needed to reformulate the doctrine
of teleology and to elicit the least common denominator of
the various teleological meanings which are partially im
plicit in the sources. This scheme of concepts and its
application to the data are the specific points at which
the writer has attempted to be creative in some degree.
Since the general problem of my study is to ascer
tain, to compare, to contrast, and to integrate the con
cepts of teleology and purpose found in the writings of the
three authors, I shall follow an outline natural to the
divisions of the problem itself. Since the final chapter
will conclude the study with a comparison and criticism of
the views brought forward in the earlier chapters, it is
the tasks of statement and criticism for which I wish to be
held responsible in this particular study. The best re
formulation of teleology and purpose, in line with modem
knowledge, may take additional years of effort in logical
analysis of philosophical concepts of explanation. At
present, my effort is to state the concepts of the authors
relevant to my problem, to deduce their consequences for
24
this problem, and, finally, to reformulate these conse
quences as mutually supporting, complementary factors in a
modernized teleological ontology or theory of the essential
nature of real things described by the empirical sciences
as occurring in the evolutionary processes of the natural
world.
The truth of such an ontology will become the basis
of a derivative philosophy of nature which deals with the
fundamental laws, processes, and divisions among the
evolved entities of nature as illustrations of the prin
ciples of natural evolution. Since I shall^seek to employ
the empirical approach to all questions of natural fact,
I shall throughout make the effort to identify the actual
experiential locus of each particular concept of teleology
and purpose, and the source in experience of each philo
sophical concept. Although intellectual purposes are
crucial here, I shall stipulate that all my philosophical
concepts have at least some degree of application to actual
facts of experience.
In treating the material taken from my sources,
I shall first consider each level of the evolutionary pro
cess in order to determine each writer's views concerning
its teleological and purposive aspects. Next, I shall
offer my own criticisms and evaluations relative to these
views before continuing with a similar treatment of the
succeeding level. Since my primary aim is to learn as
precisely as possible the exact character of the teleologi
cal and purposive factors seen by these authors in nature,
I shall move, in this way, through the basic levels of
natural existence as understood by these evolutionary
thinkers. Each philosopher will be allowed to speak for
himself; and, where his meaning is not clear, he will be
allowed to speak through several quotations to provide the
reader with sufficient material to form a fair estimate of
the meaning intended. These quotations will be taken from
works representative of all periods of his life and develop
ment; and, wherever possible, a consistent underlying con
cept will be sought in a series of apparently conflicting
statements, if such statements cannot be avoided.
Finally, I shall seek to state each man's general
doctrine of teleology and purpose and to show how he
applies this doctrine to the various levels of existence.
This, of course, will require a determination of his con
ception of evolution in general and of his conception of
the status and role of teleology and purpose in the overall
26
economy of the natural world. After these matters have
been disposed of, I shall bring out my own final reformula
tion of the purposive and teleological factors in nature
and human nature. This final reformulation will, it is
hoped, be consistent with itself and with the telic factors
in human behavior which are correlated with the special
disciplines and functions expressive of the integration of
man's personality and social needs. The heart of this
problem lies in the way in which we reformulate our concept
of the natural whole as the fundamental metaphysical unit
of reality.
Although I do not wish to be identified with any
traditional school of thought— for I think my final formu
lations will differ from all of them— I shall take the
structures and goal-oriented constitution of man as an
acceptable illustration of the inner cosmological principle
of nature which is found on all the levels. For all natural
beings would seem to have both mechanical and teleological
characteristics, either or both of which may be freely em
phasized according to the thinker's effective purpose in
studying them.
The introductory chapter consists of a statement of
my own purpose and plan of procedure. The first footnote
to each source will be a full citation; later references
will mention the author’s name and the title in shortened
form. A bibliography as nearly complete as it has been
possible to make it will close the dissertation.
CHAPTER II
TELEOLOGY AND PURPOSE ON THE PHYSICAL LEVEL
In this chapter we shall consider what Morgan,
Smuts, and Sellars have to say about the teleological sig
nificance of the emergence of values from the material
structures of the physical level of reality. It is neces
sary to do this because, within the context of this dis
sertation, there are at least three reasons why matter must
be understood in relation to values. In the first place,
Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars all agree that teleology is to
be ascribed to the material level of nature; and that
matter, as described by current physical science, consti
tutes a real and important part of the universe in which
values are undeniably present. From this basic agreement,
which will be demonstrated by what follows in this chapter,
it is evident that for these writers man's value (i.e., the
satisfactions of his needs) cannot be realized without
understanding and control of the material processes of
nature.
28
29
In the second place, evolutionary thought accepts
the conviction that values arise from the activities of
natural structures and that therefore they depend upon
material structures (see Appendix) for their very exis
tence. If this is true, then there arises for evolutionary
philosophy the task of interrelating the material and value
aspects of entitles on all levels of reality and finding
one comprehensive scheme of categories which will truly
characterize the world as an organized whole.
Despite all the diversities of level found in
nature we have, therefore, to face the problem of working
out this overall picture before we can achieve a total
philosophical understanding of the world in evolutionary
terms. Starting from the facts of physical organization as
the necessary condition and medium of the higher aspects
of value, we are therefore compelled to develop an analysis
of the teleological and purposive relationships between
these two pervasive aspects of reality: ordered structure
and experienced value.
In the third place, man appears in the framework
of evolution (see Appendix) as a responsible person who has
evolved to the point where he can accept some degree of
responsibility for directing his moral and social life in
30
terms of his knowledge of the teleological and purposive
processes of nature. By accepting this responsibility, man
brings his own knowledge into the purposive context of
deliberate striving for values. For this reason, it be
comes quite clear that the teleological relations between
matter and values are of crucial importance to both theo
retical knowledge and practical life. These relations are,
therefore, an appropriate subject of concern to anyone
seeking to understand the reality of moral growth in evolu
tionary terms.
The Nature of Matter
The existence of matter had, of course, been
accepted long before the rise of nineteenth century con
cepts of evolution. But, as the evolutionary concept of
development led philosophers to recognize levels of emer
gent structure in nature, and as the physical sciences
revealed ever more clearly the specific properties of dif
ferent kinds of matter, the speculations of the older
dogmatic materialism found less and less acceptance in the
minds of such thinkers as Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars.
Hence, as I shall show, these men found the old one-level
concept of matter to be obsolete and out of date in the
31
new situation introduced by the modem doctrine of evolu
tion and the new insights of physical science. The inte
gration of concepts of matter into a wider concept of
nature, which was also to include other levels of emergent
organization, had become a basic task of their philosophy.
The principles of evolution and the results of the newer
physics were to be the means of accomplishing a new under
standing of the nature and role of matter in the one system
of the universe.
Matter, as the lowest level of natural organization
known to science, is genetically prior to life and mind—
on this Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars agree. As the atom is
genetically prior to the cell, so the cell is prior to the
emergence of tissue; tissue is prior to the organ, and the
organ is prior to the organism. Priority here is not a
temporal one; rather, it means that simpler structures are
existential conditions involved in the constitution of more
complex structures. Hence, physical, chemical, and organic
properties co-exist in the organism. Yet such genetic
continuity as is found in nature holds among levels of
physical organization whose properties are logically dis
continuous in the sense that, from the properties of any
given level, one cannot deduce the properties of any
32
other level. From this fact it is evident that the special
properties of each kind of matter can only be discovered by
specific empirical investigation.
The position envisioned here would imply that, for
Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars, matter, as the inorganic level
of emergent order, is the oldest form of existence yet
discovered by science. As Morgan sees it, this situation
is as follows:
If we take the world as we find it, there are now
"in existence" atoms, molecules, crystals; gases,
liquids, solids; matter, life, mind. Evolution offers
an interpretation of their natural genesis expressed
in a comprehensive generalization. Emergent evolution,
or the advance through new modes of organization to
further novelty in organization, is a supplementary
hypothesis recently placed on trial at the bar of
scientific inquiry.
Morgan here carefully indicates his conviction that in
organic matter is the lowest form of existence now known;
but he goes on to say that still earlier forms may have
once existed on earth although they are no longer present.
Smuts agrees with Morgan that the earliest forms
of matter may no longer be present; for those properties
known to belong to matter now could very well be emergent
^C. Lloyd Morgan, The Emergence of Novelty (London:
Williams and Norgate, Ltd., 28-30 Little Russell Street,
W. C. 1, 1933), p. 59.
33
novelties which arrived long ago but some time after the
earliest existence of matter. Smuts says of the first
emergence of living things from matter, that "a great leap
o
may have taken place" when the organic emerged from forms
of matter no longer present.
But, on the point of matter, as now described by
physics and chemistry, constituting the foundational level
of nature there is no disagreement; hence, the question
as to what matter was like in times gone by is merely a
hypothetical one whose only interest here arises from the
possibility of the general hypothesis of emergence. But
it is worth noting that this hypothesis leaves the question
open for the three men.
As to what matter now is, Smuts contends that "the
fixity of the atom has followed that of the species into
3
the limbo of the obsolete," because Holism as the active
principle in all evolutionary emergence "from the inorganic
4
beginnings to the highest levels of spiritual creation"
o
Jan Christian Smuts, Holism and Evolution (New
York: The Macmillan Company, 1926), p. 58.
3Ibid., p. 22.
4Ibid.» P* v*
34
means that nothing is permanently static and fixed in
nature. Hence, for Smuts, the forms of matter could have
arisen from something more like energy than what we now
call matter.
Sellars, as has been indicated, accepts the ele
mentary particles of atoms as the lowest level of existence
now known; but he insists that these electrical particles
cannot be derived from a non-material principle like Holism,
for he says, "the cosmos is material in nature and exists
in its own right,and "to assert this is to deny the con
tingency of the world.On this point of matter being the
foundational level of nature, as known at this time, we can
conclude from the preceding quotations, that the three men
are in complete agreement.
In their efforts to understand the actual nature of
matter, Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars agree as to the correct
method to be used and the results to be accepted. These
methods and results, they all insist, are those of current
physical science. There is complete agreement that phi
losophy has no other method to take the place of those used
5 ” '
Roy Wood Sellars, "Reformed Materialism and
Intrinsic Endurance," The Philosophical Review. LIII
(1944), 361.
6Ibid.
in detailed scientific investigation.
For Sellars, matter is the fundamental metaphysical
reality of all existence; it is the source, however, of two
cognitively different manifestations in our experience;
namely, intuition, or direct awareness, of the inner being
of that highly organized portion of matter in our own
bodies and, more specifically, in our brains; and the
quantitative properties and relations in terms of which
physics describes matter from the non'personal point of
view. For both of these sets of manifestations, it is true,
according to Sellars, that "the characteristics of things
must be an expression of their ontological nature."^ Con
tinuing the discussion on the basis of this assumption, he
goes on to point out that matter is inherently self-active
and self-directive throughout all levels of its develop
ment.
Smuts clearly agrees with Sellars on this point of
the inherent activity and self-direction of matter, for
he states, in this connection, that:
"Selectiveness" . . . seems an inherent and funda
mental property of matter. Electro-magnetism is
^Roy Wood Sellars, The Philosophy of Physical
Realism (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1932), p. 307.
a striking instance of that phenomenon; so is the very
constitution of matter, whose ultimate forms of struc
ture depend on inherent affinities and selectivities
of still smaller structures or units. . . . In the
selectiveness of matter we seem to meet with an ulti
mate property for which no accounting on further more
ultimate grounds is possible.
It must be understood that, for Smuts, this "selectivity is
9
an inherently holistic attribute or quality," which is
due, in the final ontological sense, to the principle of
Holism. It is here that Sellars and Smuts go their sepa
rate ways.
Morgan views matter in two different perspectives.
First, in the natural or scientific perspective the activi
ties of matter are seen purely in terms of observed ante
cedence and consequence; for this point of view questions
of teleology and value have no relevance. Secondly, Morgan
adopts the perspective of Causality and sees events arising
in a dramatic way from the actions of a Divine Being who
acts with deliberate purpose in all that happens in nature.
In this perspective, questions of "why?" and of value are
relevant; and thus it is here that teleological and pur
posive factors in evolution are to be sought, not as ob
served events but as the supernatural explanation of all
O
Smuts, Holism, pp. 161-162. 9Ibid.. p. 162.
natural events.
According to his version of causation as a purely
natural affair of observed sequence, Morgan can say of the
activities of matter that naturalism accepts any entity
"on the evidence as 'a going concern,' . . . existent and
in being. Therefore, within the context of natural
science, Morgan sees no place for teleology and purpose.
He insists that we loyally accept "as existent (a) the go
of events, and (b) such going together as we find. We
accept also as subsistent (c) the determinate plan of their
11
going together."
In the light of the preceding discussion, it must
be conceded that, for Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars, matter is
inherently self-active, dynamic, and the necessary condi
tion of all the forms to emerge later in the process of
evolution. Matter bears a teleological relation to every
thing that emerges from it. We can describe it as the
heterotelic condition and medium of all post-inorganic evo
lution (see Appendix). Matter is, then, the well-adapted
Lloyd Morgan, Life. Mind, and Spirit (New
York: Henry Holt and Company, 1926), p. 279*
38
preparation £or continued emergence of novelties. Hetero-
telic (see Appendix), in this context, designates the con
tribution of one whole or level to others.
Levels of Inorganic Structure.— The positive result
of this agreement as to the dynamic properties of matter
and the emergence of the more complex from the less complex
kinds of physical structure was developed in somewhat dif
ferent ways by Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars in their efforts
to reform the concept of matter. Each of the three men has
sought to bring our understanding of matter in line with
the general doctrine of emergence and the recent results of
physics. Just how they accomplished this reformation of
the concept of matter will now be explained.
In his Emergent Evolution. Morgan distinguishes
between resultant and emergent properties, and argues that
the latter cannot be inferred from the former taken either
singly or in combination. He there contends:
Let there be three successive levels of natural events,
A, B, C. Let there be in B a kind of relation which
is not present in A; and in C a kind of relation, not
yet present in B or A. If then one lived and gained
experience on the B-level, one could not predict the
emergent characters of the C-level, because the rela
tions, of which they are the expression, are not yet
in being. Nor if one lived on the A-level could one
predict the emergent character of b-events, because
ex hypothesi. there are no such events as yet in exis
tence. What, it is claimed, one cannot predict, then,
39
is the emergent expression of some new kind of related-
ness among preexistent events. One could not foretell
the emergent character of vital events from the fullest
possible knowledge of physico-chemical events only, if
life be an emergent chord and not merely due to the
summation, however complex, of constitutent a-notes.
Such is the hypothesis accepted under emergent evolu
tion. I*
In connection with hie' emergent hypothesis, Morgan
points out that his doctrine of the emergence of novel
properties and relations on each level of reality is one
long protest against the older materialistic dogma which
sought to reduce all kinds of matter to one level only and
then attempted to calculate mechanistically the properties
and behavior of later levels from a mathematical summation
of the properties and behavior of the postulated single
level (see Appendix). Since, in his view, this is what
classical nineteenth century materialism tried to do,
Morgan rejects both its ontological commitments and its
13
method of calculation "by algebraical simulation only.”
And it follows from the facts of physics and chemistry, the
facts of the Periodic Table of Elements, that Morgan is
certainly more nearly correct on this point than was the
12
C. Lloyd Morgan, Emergent Evolution (New York:
Henry Holt and Company, 1926), pp. 5-6.
13Ibid.. p. 7.
40
position he is criticizing. He illustrates his point by
saying that when carbon and sulphur are combined, for
example, not a mixture, but a new compound with new proper
ties is formed, namely, carbon-bisulphide. Its weight
(a resultant property) can be predicted by adding the
respective weights of the components; but its emergent
properties cannot be predicted in this way. They are
novelties which can only be discovered by observation and
accepted as an instance of "the natural plan of evolu-
14
tion." It is evident that this theory of novelties
emerging from what already exists at a given time entails
the conclusion that the adaptive interrelation of the
various aspects of the earlier levels is conducive to the
emergence of the later levels; and this adaptiveness is one
of the meanings we assign to teleology. Therefore, in this
sense at least, we find Morgan able to hold a teleological
view of inorganic evolution.
Smuts and Sellars are also led to similar views
of matter by considerations of the kind that influenced
Morgan. They formulated their views, however, in slightly
14Ibid.. p. 3.
41
different terms. Smuts begins his exposition with a cri
tique of pre-evolutionary materialism, which, he believes,
held that matter is all of one kind, and that "mathematical
summation"*’ ’ * is the only allowable method of arriving at
the concept of new physical properties. But, he contends
against this view, one important fact is overlooked here:
if two or more elements retain their identity in the new
property, then there has been no emergence of novelty.
Viewing this problem from the perspective of his own holis
tic position, he says:
For me the great problem of knowledge, indeed the great
mystery of reality, is just this: how do elements or
factors a and b come together, combine and coalesce to
form a.new unity or entity x different from both of
them?16
For Mechanism, the factors in combination retain their
separate identities as parts; . . . and the activity
of the system is the mathematical summation of their
activities. That is the essence of the idea of Mecha
nism- -a system or combination whose action can be
mathematically calculated from those of its component
parts.17
Instead of the simple mathematical process described in
the preceding quotation, Smuts avers that the creative work
Smuts, Holism, p. 148.
16Ibid.. p. 147. 17Ibid.. p. 148.
42
of holism takes into the emergent substance the elemental
factors and so transforms them in the new unity that they
lose their separate identities and activities; then the
new whole has a unique character and individuality of its
own, "a unique identity and an irreversible orientation
which distinguishes it from everything else and is the very
18
essence of wholeness."
Starting from this new synthetic whole, and in
direct opposition to the mechanistic concept of causation,
Smuts argues that cause and effect cannot be equated with
each other; for, according to the facts of chemistry and
the principle of holism, ’ ’the effect comes to contain the
iq
new and therefore to transcend its cause." 7 The important
point to notice here is that, for Smuts, matter in all its
forms of relatedness and activities is never inert, pas
sive, and uncreative; rather, it is constantly bringing
forth novel structures with their own peculiar tendencies
and activities. On this point, he agrees with Morgan and
Sellars. A further point of agreement with them is his
acceptance of current scientific method as the only correct
way to discover and determine the nature of physical
18Ibid., p. 140. 19Ibid.. p. 138.
43
structures and activities. For all three men, the mecha
nistic conception of physical reality was, at best, a human
abstraction which had the effect of promoting detailed
studies of the simpler properties of the physical world,
but, nevertheless, an abstraction which could not fully
bring to light the concrete nature of matter. Up to this
point, we have seen that Smuts and Morgan agree that the
simpler grades of material organization in nature are pre
paratory to the emergence of more highly organized grades;
and that the simpler are, in this sense, teleologically
preparatory to the higher grades; for, without the actual
existence and activities of the lower, further novelties
could not emerge.
It is evident from Sellars's statements about the
emergent structures of matter that he sees primitive
matter as the starting point of all later synthesis. For,
in accordance with the thesis of evolutionary naturalism,
he tells us that we must assume that "the tendency to
complex organization under favoring conditions must have
been there to push nature's experiments and growths. And
so, after countless efforts, life was formed and pushed
44
blindly upward."^® Sellars himself is convinced that the
electrical elements of primitive matter are the indestruc
tible "continuants which may change and enter into new
21
relations with other continuants." This primary material
substance is, he says, "ontologically real, is existent in
its own right. And I shall think it in terms of the cate-
22
gory of substance." It is fair to conclude from these
statements that, for Sellars also, primitive matter is
teleologically preparatory to all that comes later in
evolution. But by what process does he think the later
emerges from the earlier? Sellars formulates his answer
to this question by saying that we begin with our experi
ence of ourselves as continuing things confronted by ex
ternal things which endure and continue to retain their
identity in our experience. Both the self and the things
confronting it he calls creative syntheses of self-active
matter. And, in support of this position, he argues that:
20
Roy Wood Sellars, The Principles and Problems
of Philosophy (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1926),
p. 289.
^Sellars, Physical Realism, p. 274.
22Ibid., p. 278.
45
By creative synthesis is meant the possession by a
whole of qualities not possessed by the parts, that is,
these qualities cannot be derived additively from those
of the parts. . . . The notion of logical discontinuity
is the logical statement of this empirical generaliza
tion. It asserts the undeducibility of chemical laws
from physical laws and of biological laws from chemical
laws. Each science is autonomous and not simply an
imperfect form of a more abstract and fundamental
science. 3
According to this view, creative synthesis is the process
which brings into emergent wholes on the various levels of
reality those primitive forms of matter with their inherent
and eternal tendencies to organize themselves through the
course of evolution. From primitive matter, therefore, all
the emergent continuants of nature have come through a
process of creative synthesis of new wholes with novel
properties.
For Sellars, emergent wholes are "secondary con-
24
tinuants" whose properties and relations differ from
level to level of reality. But for the purposes of quanti
tative science (which, he thinks, gives us our only genuine
knowledge), their relevant characteristics are: size,
massiveness, composition, and structure, all of which
23
Roy Wood Sellars, The Essentials of Philosophy
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1917), pp. 275-276.
24
Sellars, Physical Realism, p. viii.
we perceive, measure, and formulate in equations. But,
as Sellars views perception, our sensory apparatus is not
able to perceive the corresponding characteristics of
primary matter; although, in our self-consciousness, we are
directly aware, in intuition, of the organized activities
of the matter in our own bodies, and more especially of
those in the brain. Summarizing this discussion, he says,
"Back of pomp and circumstance, back of love and beauty and
tragedy and happiness, lies--matter. In short, the physi-
25
cal is but another name for being, for existence." This
quotation proves that Sellars parts company with Morgan and
Smuts on the ontological ultimacy of matter. Whereas
Morgan derives matter from God’s Purpose, and Smuts derives
it from the principle of holism, Sellars simply holds it
to be altogether underived, existing a se and never ab alio
in any sense.
But, even according to Sellars's view of the rela
tions among the levels of physical reality, the lower level
always is teleologically preparatory to the higher and the
higher always re-orients the manner of action found in the
lower. Therefore, the lower forms of physical structure
^ Ibid.. p. 6.
47
persist as later ones are added. Thus, for example,
spatial, gravitational, and chemical patterns of structure
persist in the organism even though new patterns are also
present. In his effort to explain this genetic relation**
ship among levels, Sellars says:
The evolutionary thesis would hold that things of dif-
ferent orders behave differently and that the laws
which formulate this behavior are not deducible from
one another. This conclusion is frequently expressed
by saying that the laws of nature form a hierarchy in
which the different levels are discontinuous. This
logical, or deductive, discontinuity, does not at all
conflict with the genetic continuity of orders of
things in nature. But it does mean that there are
"junctures" in nature at which critical arrangements
occur with the origination of novel properties.
Genetic continuity is not smooth but mutative, as it
were. What nature does we must accept. . . .*6
According to this quotation, the differentiation of the
levels of nature is a fact which we must accept in all its
experiential givenness. It is Sellars's conclusion, then,
that "organization is cumulative. We may put this meta**
27
phorically by saying that time packs space."
The discussion, up to this point, has demonstrated
the agreement of Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars on the genetic
continuity of the various levels of physical organization;
26
Sellars, The Principles, pp. 364-365.
27Ibid.. p. 372.
48
it has also shown that they agree on the further point that
the defining characteristics of each level are logically
discontinuous with each other in the sense that, by de
ductive reasoning alone, we cannot pass from one level to
another but must seek the empirical facts in every case.
The final comment to be made in this section is that, aside
from disagreement as to the origin of matter, Morgan, Smuts,
and Sellars all accept the existence of matter and its
organization on various levels as these levels are de
scribed by the special sciences. As we noted their agree
ment on the preparatory, heterotelic relation of lower
forms of matter to higher, we also noted their agreement
that the higher forms of organization re-direct the activi
ties and bring into actual existence the potentialities of
the lower. From these shared concepts of matter, I con
clude that teleology in this sense is, for the three men,
to be ascribed to physical nature.
The Nature of Material Substance
An important problem of this section on the nature
of matter and its teleological significance is that of
determining as exactly as possible the concept of physical
substance held by Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars. For, as
will be shown in the course of this discussion, several
important teleological and purposive consequences follow
from the dependence of activities and values upon the
substantial forms of physical organization. For our own
concept of substance as a natural whole in which structure,
function, and valuative outcomes are interdependent aspects,
the reader is referred to the Appendix. In the same place
we also stipulate "interdependence" of aspects as meaning
the existential inseparability of the aspects of substances.
Since matter, for our three authors, now exists in
those specific forms of order revealed by chemistry and
physics; and, what is even more relevant to our problem,
since values can never occur outside some context of physi
cal structure, the real nature of each physical substance
must be understood from within, and its essential aspects
must not be seen in abstraction from its total being.
Emergent evolution, in the axiological side of its teach
ing, means that the potencies and energies of matter, under
definite conditions, become actualized in life, mind, and
values. Hence, no serious evolutionary theory of value
can avoid the subject of matter which is a sine qua non
of value.
50
Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars agree that physical
substances are real; they differ In their analysis and
formulation of the nature of these basic natural entitles.
Sellars approaches the problem of substance from
the standpoint of ontological materialism. It is his con
viction that:
The ontological situation, as I see it, is analo
gous to what the logicians call entailment. It is as
though substance were a superordinate category which
found implication and expression in subordinate ones
such as causality, activity, potentiality, space, and
time. In other words, these subordinate categories
are adjectival in nature and expose the dynamic and
structural nature of substance.
In this quotation, Sellars states his doctrine that sub
stance is the ground of activity and is therefore teleo-
logically prior to all that happens in the world. It is
here that his materialistic interpretation of substance
separates him most sharply from Morgan and Smuts. In con
trast to Sellars, Morgan holds that matter and mind are
two different phenomenal expressions of one underlying
ultimate substance, the Divine Purpose, the other phenome
nal expression being a psychical dimension. Thus, modes of
each expression are present in every emergent substance.
28
R. W. Sellars, "Causality and Substance," The
Philosophical Review. LII (1943), 5.
51
Substance, as Morgan Interprets it, Is ontologically a
"new kind of relation, Intrinsic to some new entity, like
the atom, the molecule, the thing, the organism, the per-
29
son," for which he coins the rather awkward name, "sub”
30
stantial gotogetherness."
Within each emergent substance, there are, for
Morgan, both qualities and properties. Qualities express
the intrinsic relations of the factors involved in the
constitution of the new substance; while properties express
the extrinsic relations of this substance to other sub
stances. Despite the fact that all the component elements
31
"co-exist inseparably in concrete fact," we can distin
guish them for purposes of analysis. The awkward term
"gotogetherness" is coined by Morgan to indicate the fact
that the substantial structure and relations of an entity
cannot in reality exist or be conceived apart from the
concrete totality of its being and activities. Hence, for
him, substances are integral wholes constituted by the
arrangements of the units involved within the substance;
just as a family is constituted, as an integral whole,
29
Morgan, Emergent Evolution, p. 64.
3QIbid.. p. 194. 31Ibid.. p. 64.
52
by the father, the mother, and the child in the family
relationship; or, as the molecule of water is constituted
by the presence of the elements in the arrangement indi
cated by the chemical formula H20.
Morgan and Sellars agree that physical substances
now in existence are constituted by empirically ascertain
able units involved in empirically ascertainable forms of
relatedness. Since it is agreed by the two men that both
the units and the forms of arrangements must be present to
constitute a physical substance, we can say that substance
involves teleology in the sense that the substance brings
into existence the potentialities of these preparatory
factors.
Whereas Morgan calls substances forms of "substan-
oo
tial gotogetherness,Sellars calls them "secondary con-
33
tinuants" to indicate their impermanence as contrasted
with the indestructibility of primary matter. But both men
agree that physical substances emerge by processes of
creative evolution from simpler forms of matter which are
taken up into the new forms of structure which, in turn,
32Ibid., p. 194.
33
Sellars, Physical Realism, p. viii.
53
can enter into still more complex forms of organization,
thus serving the teleological purpose of making possible
the advance of matter into ever more highly organized
forms.
An important point for us to remember here is that,
according to the general hypothesis of emergent evolution,
we can never definitively determine the characteristic
units of material substance and its special forms of whole
ness, because every substantial, physical whole is un
finished and still in the process of development; and it
will continue to be so at all future stages of evolution.
This point has great importance for the problem of tele
ology and purpose; for, since the actual characteristics of
substantial forms of physical relatedness determine the
possible functions and values they serve, the appropriate
uses of matter in the future are now unpredictable. The
best we can do on this problem is to base present uses of
matter on the present characteristics and functions as
determined by science. For it must be conceded that,
according to the view of the advance of organization in
matter set forth here by Morgan and Sellars, the actual
advance of matter into specific forms is something we can
only wait for and investigate as it takes place.
54
Keeping in mind the preceding discussion of physi
cal substance by Morgan and Sellars, we shall next consider
Smuts's conception of physical substance and bring out the
points in which it either agrees or disagrees with those
discussed.
It will be remembered that for Smuts the only per
manent characteristic of matter is its activity; for, he
thinks, matter is really energy, not indestructible par
ticles as nineteenth century materialism held. That Morgan
and Sellars agree with this doctrine has already been
shown. Before we can understand what Smuts means by
matter, we must grasp the four different meanings which he
assigns to his term Holism. Holism, he tells us, means
(1) the universally creative factor operative in all growth
or increment of new structure; (2) the regulative factor
which controls functions and directs them toward well-being
and other values through the exercise of specific struc
tures; (3) the source of all realizable values and ideals
toward which small natural wholes move; and (4) the concept
or theory which asserts that reality consists of the small
natural wholes existing on different levels of organization
within the inclusive context of nature as an organic field.
55
As a theory, Holism sees the truth about reality as de
scription and explanation of wholes and their creative
activities in terms of fundamental categories derived from
the ultimate concept of the organic irtiole. Smuts then
claims that primordial matter is the earliest stage of
Holism about which we can only speculate at this time;
whereas Sellars holds that it is underived and eternal
being. In discussing this point, Smuts says, "holism is
matter and energy at one stage; it is organism and life at
another stage; and it is mind and Personality at its latest
34
stage." Emergence on all levels of reality proceeds in
accordance with the principle of Holism; even primordial
matter was an emergent with novel characteristics unlike
those of preceding conditions. Holism is, therefore, for
Smuts, the ultimate creative factor "basic to the uni-
35
verse." And, since matter is activity, the kinds of
physical substances in the world differ, not in kind, but
36
as "different kinds of activity." In direct opposition
to the older view of matter as inert and passive, Smuts, in
agreement with Morgan and Sellars, contends that his new
3^Smuts, Holism, p. 320.
35Ibid.. p. 321. 36Ibid.. p. 36
56
view of matter narrows the gulf between physical substance
and life and mind. They all become, in his view, levels
of holistic activity.
The category of physical substance is discussed by
Smuts in terms of wholeness, by which he understands the
arrangements and patterns in which we find matter existing.
This theme is taken up by him in connection with the emer
gent structures of nature, as indicated by the following
statement;
the structural character of matter indicates that it
is also creative, not of its own stuff, but of the
forms, arrangements and patterns which constitute all
its value in the physical sphere, . . . not merely to
humans, but in the order of the universe. But for its
dynamic structural character matter could not have
been the matter of the universe. 7
According to this version of substance, it is really the
holistic factor in matter which makes for the structure of
the emergent small wholes, those "small natural centres or
oo
empirical wholes such as we observe in nature." At each
level of reality, the whole (see Appendix) is the parts
existing and functioning in their concrete unity. In this
unity, Smuts believes, the parts and their functions are
coordinated, regulated, and unified toward the fulfillment
38Ibid.. p. 111.
57
of the potencies of the substance as a whole. Holism is,
therefore,
the ultimate synthetic, ordering, organising, regula
tive activity in the universe which accounts for all
the structural groupings and syntheses in it, from the
atom and physico-chemical structures, through the cell
and organisms, through Mind in animals, to Personality
in man. The all-pervading and ever-increasing charac
ter of synthetic unity or wholeness in these struc
tures leads to the concept of Holism as the fundamental
activity underlying and co-ordinating all others, and
to the view of the universe as a Holistic Universe.*9
According to this statement, we see that, for Smuts, sub
stances are composites which are made up by their internal
parts and structure; and that this structure is the ground
of their special functions and values. Since they function
toward realization of the value-potentials in their consti
tution, they cannot be mere mechanical systems. Speaking
of this coordination of functions toward the realization of
value-potentials, Smuts says:
The parts so co-operate and co-function towards a
definite inherent inner end of purpose that together
they constitute and form a whole more or less of a
distinctive character, with an identity and an ever-
increasing measure of individuality of its own. ®
The teleological significance of the coordination of parts
and functions is here explicitly stated; for the "inner end
39Ibid.. p. 317. 40Ibid., p. 107.
58
of purpose"^* is what directs the activities of the sub
stance. Smuts concludes that: "We thus envisage the
physico-chemical structures of Nature as the beginnings or
earlier phases of Holism, and 'life1 as a more developed
phase of the same inner activity.As we have found with
Morgan and Sellars, so we also find in the thought of Smuts
the teleological concept of the dependence of values upon
physical structure and activities.
To the concept of physical substance as a whole,
;
Smuts adds the concept of a field of physical influence
radiating outward from the sensible boundaries of the sub
stance; and of this field he says, "The essential point is
that the physical field is an extension of the active energy
system of the thing beyond its sensible outlines. . . .
The forces operating in fields provide the bridge over the
gaps among substances and therefore constitute the con
tinuities of nature by which all things are made inter
dependent .
41
Ibid.
43
Ibid., p. 113.
42
Ibid., p. 146.
59
The chemical substances, in his view, are seen as
forming "species, genera, families, and orders"44 just as
organisms do; and, in radioactivity, the "concepts of
descent, of genetics, of natural selection apply to them
45
no less than to living organisms." And, if the facts
involved in chemical change are as he here describes them,
the old concept of the indestructible atom with its ex
ternal pushes and pulls is swallowed up in "the universal
flux of Evolution."4^ As Smuts sees it, physical sub
stances are really emergent forms of energy through which
the ends of evolution are achieved. Only its forms arise
and disappear, very much as they do in the thought of
Sellars and Morgan. On this point, Smuts is in agreement
with Sellars and Morgan that the secondary continuants and
the emergent modes of physical relatedness are not perma
nent.
If what has been said in the preceding discussion
is correct, then Smuts's concept of the whole shares cer
tain close resemblances to Morgan's concept of "substantial
A /|
J. C. Smuts, "The Nature of Life," Discussion
before The British Association, The Cape Times (Cape Town,
July 25, 1929), p. 5.
45Ibid. 46Ibid.
60
gotogetherness"^ and Sellars's concept of "secondary
48
continuants." The three men agree (1) that material
substances are Inherently self"active, (2) that these sub
stances are formed from primitive matter and differ among
themselves according to their structural characteristics,
and (3) that from the individual structural characteristics
of these substances arise the activities, relations, and
values which give the physical world its teleological and
purposive significance in relation to human needs.
The final comment to be made concerning the tele
ological significance of material substance is this: we
have found Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars in agreement on the
point that matter in its various forms is both a condition
and a medium for the emergence of values in nature.
Physical Substance and Causality
Concerning the problem of causation, Sellars
asserts, "I . . . believe in the emergence of various levels
of immanent teleology founded on structural patterns and
47
Morgan, Baergent Evolution, p. 194.
48
Sellars, Physical Realism, p. viii.
61
49
their directional activities." Thus, if specific struc
tural patterns are the grounds of the specific activities
of material substances, we should conclude that the hier
archy of substantial patterns corresponds to a hierarchy of
behavioral activities. And, of course, this is exactly
Sellars’s conclusion, as we shall show.
Smuts agrees with Sellars that the substantial
unity of each emergent whole is the real source of the
causal capabilities of that unity; in this connection,
Smuts says:
The whole, therefore, completely transforms the
concept of Causality. When an external cause acts on
a whole, the resultant effect is not merely traceable
to the cause, but has become transformed in the pro
cess. The whole seems to absorb and metabolise the
external stimulus and to assimilate it into its own
activity; and the resultant response is no longer the
passive effect of the stimulus or cause, but appears
as the activity of the whole. This holistic trans
formation of causality takes place in all organic
stimuli and responses. The cause or stimulus applied
does not issue in its own passive effect, but in an
active response which seems more clearly traceable to
the organism or whole itself. In fact the physical
category of "cause" undergoes a far-reaching change in
its application to organisms or wholes generally. The
whole appears as the real cause of the response, and
49
R. W. Sellars, "Can a Reformed Materialism Do
Justice to Values?" Ethics, LV (1944), 29-
62
not the external stimulus, which seems to play the
quite minor r6le of a mere excitant or condition.^0
From the preceding quotation, it is clear that Smuts agrees
that the individual form of organization present in each
substance is the causal factor which transforms the stimuli
and determines the responsive individual activities of that
substance. To finish establishing this point, I shall
offer this final statement by him: "The concept of cre
ativeness . . . flows from that of the whole. ... It is
wholes and wholes only that are creative, . . . both of
new individuals and their peculiar responses, and of new
levels of new individuals.
According to this position, the inner coordinating
work of the whole is the source of novelty in bringing out
further structure and activity; just as for Sellars the
substantial form of each continuant performs the same work.
In addition, the specific structure and activities of
wholes differ according to the level of organization on
which they exist; for wholes are constituted by the unity
of their internal organization in which each part functions
for the good of the entire structure. Since values are
*^Smuts, Holism, p. 119. ~^Ibid.
63
determined by the specific activities of wholes, we can say
that, for Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars, the kinds of value
will be as variously differentiated as are the kinds of
wholes to which they accrue. Therefore, teleological rela
tions also differ in different contexts of causality.
Morgan distinguishes natural causation from Divine
Causality. Natural causation, for him, consists in the
patterns of antecedents and consequents observed in nature.
But this type of causal relationship has its ultimate
ground in the active Causality of the Divine Purpose which,
however, is of no concern to descriptive science. Accord
ing to natural causation, we are to seek the immediate
source of the activities of each substance in its own par-
52
ticular "substantial gotogetherness," because this form
of organization is the source of the activities of the sub
stance. Here, again, teleology is present in this relation
ship; for, without these substantial forms, events in nature
could neither occur nor be understood.
If these statements are true, then Morgan agrees
with Smuts and Sellars that substances on each level of
^^Morgan, Emergent Evolution, p. 194.
64
reality are sui generis with respect to three important
aspects: structure, activities, and values. Because of
the unique character of substances on each level man is
able to develop autonomous sciences, each science restrict
ing itself to the experienced structures, activities, and
values of one level. But, in the perspective of philosophy,
the special teleological feature to which Morgan calls our
attention at this point is the fact that the higher forms
of substantial relatedness supervene upon the lower by in
volving the latter in the more complex novel forms and
thereby redirecting all aspects of their being to the
peculiar ends of the supervenient forms. Teleology, accord
ingly, characterizes the relations between the lower forms
which enter, as parts, in the higher forms and the higher
forms themselves which could not be what they are without
the lower, involved forms. In developing this concept,
Morgan says:
Each higher entity in the ascending series is an
emergent "complex" of many entities of lower grades,
within which a new kind of relatedness gives inte
gral unity. 3
33Ibid.. p. 11.
65
Now, if we may say that an essential feature of
causation may be expressed thus: Given a field of
effective relatedness that which observably happens
tinder the existent go of events is an expression of
the nature of the field and the nature of this or that
which lies within it; then it is clear that the higher
we ascend in the evolutionary scale the more complex
are the concrete problems of causation.
From this statement it is clear that Morgan is in agreement
with Smuts and Sellars regarding the functions and values
of a substance as arising from its substantial form.
Points of Agreement.--The purpose of this discus
sion of physical substance and its dependent functions and
values has now been completed. We have examined the views
of Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars on the nature of matter and
its emergence as organized substances on the various levels
of physical reality. Morgan said that the earliest form
of physical existence may be some form of electricity, and
both Smuts and Sellars agreed on this point. Morgan then
went on to define physical substances which, as we now
experience them, are emergent forms of physical related-
ness. These forms are the kinds of atoms, molecules, and
crystals known to chemistry; their entire scale is tele-
ological in the sense that the earlier are preparatory
to the later levels. And, as we have shown for Morgan,
54Ibid.. p. 278.
66
each substance is teleological in the further sense that
its form is the ground or source of the activities and
values which come from its operations. But, we must remem
ber, purpose as conscious goal-seeking is not character
istic of the physical level; although physical substances
can enter into the controlled activities of supervenient
conscious beings and thereby serve purposive goal-seeking.
Smuts said that primitive matter is the earliest
stage of Holism. Then he went on to describe such matter as
electrical energy which, through the activity of the whole-
making tendencies of Holism, was formed into the atoms,
molecules, crystals, cells, organisms, and minds found by
science in nature. Agreeing with Morgan, he held that
matter is now structured in substantial wholes whose emer
gent forms are the sources of all activities and values in
nature. He, also, regarded the levels of nature as being
teleologically related to each other in the two senses
accepted by Morgan; that is, lower levels are preparatory
to the higher as existentially involved in the latter; and
the structure of each substance is the source of its activi
ties and values. However, Smuts— and he is alone in this--
did insist that each physical whole exists, in attenuated
form, in the fields of influence which extend beyond
67
the sensible boundaries of its surface. Furthermore, he
ascribed causal agency and creativeness to the whole in
each substance. In agreement with Morgan, he restricted
purpose as conscious to the higher levels of emergence.
Sellars said that matter, in its primitive form of
electricity, is inherently self-active and eternally exis
tent a se. Hence, for Sellars, matter is indestructible
primary substance, not a stage of Holism or an expression
of Divine Purpose. He went on to say that the inherent
tendency of matter to self-organization is the real cause
of the secondary continuants which constitute its emergent
forms. Since the process of evolution involves the emer
gence of the new out of the old, he pointed out that second
ary continuants lack eternal endurance. Nevertheless,
while they exist they are the sources of all the change,
activity, and motion in nature. For him, as for Morgan and
Smuts, this carries the implication that we must seek to
understand events through discovering the physical sub
stances from which they arise. In his thought, too, the
lower levels are preparatory to the later; and the activi
ties and values served by each physical substance arise
from, and are appropriate to, the structure present. There
fore, the teleological significance of matter, in these
68
two senses, is a shared conviction of the three men.
Their most important agreement, from the point of
view of teleology and purpose in physical nature, lies in
their common acceptance of the graded scale of entities in
the hierarchy of evolution. This is most important to
this study because it indicates an end-means relationship
between any two given levels. Their agreement that the
constitution of a substance involves both structure and
function in a relation of appropriateness and mutual deter
mination will be crucial to this dissertation. The general
conclusion of this discussion of physical substance is that
such substances are, for all three men, emergent entities
on the lowest level of evolution but that they are prepara
tory to the emergence of organisms, minds, and persons
whose conscious purposes can be fulfilled, to some extent,
through understanding and controlling the properties and
activities of matter. Therefore, we have found agreement
on the points that the evolution of matter has made pos
sible the emergence of the moral, goal-seeking person; and
that matter lends itself to the understanding and direction
of man.
69
The Continuities and Discontinuities
of Matter
If it is admitted that matter exists on different
levels of organization, as the previous section has demon'
strated that it does for Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars, then
there arises the problem of the similarities and dissimi
larities among the properties of the various levels. It
remains now to determine the doctrines of each of the three
men on this point, to bring out their agreements and dis
agreements, and to show what bearing these results have on
their concept of the teleology of matter.
In accordance with his doctrine of creative syn
thesis, Sellars maintains that the
evolutionist must hold that genetic continuity admits
both identity and difference. . . . The identity, in
this case, is the objective significance of organiza
tion. The differences consist in the rise of kinds
and orders of organization. It is with this that we
must correlate new properties.^5
As Sellars sees the process of creative synthesis, nature
proceeds from stage to stage, and the human mind can dis
cover the characteristics of each stage only by empirical
55
Roy Wood Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism
(Chicago— London: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1922),
p. 332.
70
methods. Because of this limitation of method, there is
no way to deduce the properties of one level from those of
another. For creative synthesis means that the emergent
properties are genuinely novel, determinate sets of "organ
ized complexes"^ such that "each such complex has proper
ties and executive capacities of a determinate sort."**7
Consideration of the impossibility of logically
deriving the properties of one level from those of another
leads Sellars to assert:
The notion of logical discontinuity is the logical
statement of this empirical generalization. It asserts
the undeducibility of chemical laws from physical laws
and of biological laws from chemical laws. Each
science is autonomous and not simply an imperfect form
of a more abstract and fundamental science.^
In this connection, Sellars insists that his re
formulation of materialism, unlike the older one-level
materialism of pre-evolutionary days, is not repugnant to
diversity of emergent forms, activities, and values.
Instead, he sees discontinuous levels differing in proper
ties but genetically continuous with each other. Thus,
■^Sellars, Physical Realism, p. 390.
57Ibid.
eg
Sellars, The Essentials of Philosophy.
pp. 275-276.
change in time means creative synthesis which packs space
with substances of greater complexity of organization and
function. It follows from this doctrine that the genetic
continuity of emergents lies in their enrichment with new
forms. But— and this is the important point for us--every
new level must be prepared for by preceding levels. Hence,
in this sense, the earlier are teleologically necessary for
the emergence of the later, which must involve them.
The theory of Morgan likewise conceives of the pro
cess of emergence as one in which new forms of relatedness
enrich previously existing ones. In this regard, he is in
essential agreement with Sellars, as the following discus
sion shows. The advance into novelty through the processes
of emergent evolution means, for Morgan, that natural
entities acquire "new qualities within their own proper
59
being" and "new properties in relation to other enti
ties. For him, as for Sellars, the determination of
just what these novel qualities and properties are is a
problem to be left to the special sciences concerned, as
he makes clear in the following statement where he says
59
Morgan, Emergent Evolution, p. 19.
72
that, regarding
any given stage of emergent evolution the questions,
then, are: What is the new kind of relatedness that
supervenes? What are the new terms and what the rela
tions? What intrinsic difference is there in the
entity which reaches this higher level, and what dif
ference is there in its extrinsic relatedness to other
entities?61
Morgan agrees with Sellars that, in the process of emer
gence, new kinds of relatedness supervene to increase the
complexity of integral systems or substances. The more
which is new is not merely an additive resultant of pre
vious elements but is a genuinely new organization of ele
ments in such a way that real discontinuity of qualities
and properties is introduced. Therefore, according to
Morgan, since both stuff and substantial organization in
crease in richness with the emergence of novelty, "the
62
richer cannot be interpreted in terms of the poorer."
In this interpretation we also find a place for autonomous
sciences dealing with discontinuous sets of properties and
qualities. Prediction is, therefore, restricted to re
current structures similar to those already known in ex
perience.
61Ibid., pp. 19-20. 62Ibid., p. 204.
73
63
Whereas Sellars speaks of the "genetic continuity"
of the higher with the lower level, Morgan speaks of the
dependence of the lower upon the higher for its new form of
organization and guidance, as he contends that:
The new relations emergent at each higher level guide
and sustain the course of events distinctive of that
level, which in the phraseology I suggest depends on
its continued presence. In its absence, disintegration
ensues. . . . In a physical system wherein life has
emerged, the way things happen is raised to a higher
plane.
It follows from this statement that both the new relations
and their activities have a teleological significance for
the course of events which takes its rise from the new
entity, for they redirect what happens there.
Continuing this discussion, Morgan points out that,
for him, there is no evolution of the new without involu
tion of the old which is taken up into the new; for he says
that the presence in an event on one level of "concurrent
events at lower levels"^ means that there can be "no mind
without life; and no life without 'a physical basis.*"^
In this sense, he agrees with Sellars that the lower levels
63
Sellars, The Principles, p. 364.
54
Morgan, Emergent Evolution, p. 17.
65Ibid.. p. 15. 66Ibid.
are involved in, and genetically continuous with, the
higher levels; and that therefore there is a two-way de
pendence between them--the higher depend upon the lower for
their existence, and the lower depend upon the higher for
their guidance and direction. In relation to this problem,
Morgan goes on to say that the world of matter is "succes
sively enriched through the advent of vital and of con
scious relations"**7 which give new directions and outcomes
to it. That the outcomes of events on one level prepare
for events on a higher level is a valid implication of this
doctrine; and this implication clearly carries with it the
conclusion that teleology, if not conscious purpose, is to
be ascribed to the relation between the levels.
Smuts approaches the problem of the continuities
and discontinuities of matter from the standpoint of his
doctrine of Holism. For him, as for Morgan and Sellars,
reality is a self-differentiating process of emergent
levels with their sui generis structures and activities.
In viewing the various sets of discontinuous properties
brought to light by the special sciences, he says:
67Ibid.. p. 16.
75
We seem to pass from one level to another In the evolu
tion of the universe, with different units, different
behaviors, and calling for different concepts and laws.
Similarly, we rise to new levels as later on we pass
from the physical to the biological level, and again
from the latter to the level of conscious mind. But—
and this is the significant fact--all these levels are
genetically related and form an evolutionary series;
and underlying the differences of the successive levels,
there remains a fundamental unity of plan or organisa
tion which binds them together as members of a genetic
series, as a growing, evolving, creative universe.
Here, as in Morgan and Sellars, we recognize a genetic con
tinuity running throughout the entire series of levels in
the pyramid of evolution. But, at each level, we also
recognize distinctive characteristics with their special
properties, behaviors, laws, and values. Therefore, on all
these points, Smuts agrees with Morgan and Sellars.
It will be remembered that Morgan and Sellars held
that higher forms of structure re-direct the activities
of lower forms by taking them up into a higher kind of syn
thesis. That Smuts holds an identical, or at least a
similar, view is shown by the following statement:
Instead of the animistic, or the mechanistic, or the
mathematical universe, we see the genetic, organic,
holistic universe, in which the decline of the earlier
68
J. C. Smuts, "The Scientific World-Pietlire
Today," Nature. CXXVIII (1931), 527.
76
physical patterns provides the opportunity for the
emergence of the more advanced vital and rational
patterns.^
Since the levels are logically discontinuous, Smuts would
agree with Morgan and Sellars that novel properties cannot
be deduced from any amount of knowledge of other levels.
For him, also, each level will require its own special
science, because: "Evolution is nothing but the gradual
development and stratification of progressive series of
wholes, stretching from the inorganic beginnings to the
highest levels of spiritual creation."7® On this view,
Creative Evolution synthesises from the parts a new
entity not only different from them but quite tran
scending them. That is the essence of the whole. It
is always transcendent to its parts, and its character
cannot be inferred from the character of its parts. *
On this assumption of discontinuity, Smuts concludes that
the main levels of natural organization--which are the
physical, the chemical, the organic, the mental, and the
personal— are, therefore, teleologically (and, on the
higher levels, even purposively) related to each other;
for the higher level in every case re-directs without
69Ibid.. p. 529.
7®Srauts, Holism, p. v. 71Ibid.. p. 341.
77
destroying the lower levels. He makes this clear in this
statement:
In this grading-up the earlier structures are not
destroyed but become the basis of later, more evolved
synthetic holistic structures; the character of whole
ness increases with the series and the elements of
newness, variation and creativeness become more
marked. 2
Each thing has its own wholeness, "a unique identity and
an irreversible orientation which distinguishes it from
73
everything else and is the very essence of wholeness."
The process of grading-up is a teleological one; for the
earlier make possible the later; and, on the human level,
the knowledge and control of the levels of nature make pos
sible the highest values of human life.
Metaphysical Implications.--In concluding this sec
tion, we can say that we have reviewed the ideas of Morgan,
Sellars, and Smuts on the continuities and discontinuities
of matter; and that they are all in essential agreement.
Sellars has contended that the lower levels are necessary
to the existence of the higher ones, thus giving the lower
72Ibid., p. 145. 73Ibid.. p. 140.
78
a teleological significance for the higher. In addition
to the dependence of the higher upon the lower for exis
tence, the lower depends upon the higher for its emergent
structure and characteristic modes of operation.
Continuing this discussion, Morgan pointed out
that, in philosophical regard, the \rtiole pyramid of evolu
tion takes its rise in the Divine Purpose of God and is
therefore teleological throughout its entire being; but
that, in scientific regard, it is seen to consist in the
emergence of new forms of relatedness whose qualities and
properties differ according to level. He said that the
advance into novelty means that each entity acquires new
qualities and properties which grow, teleologically, out of
previous ones. Morgan agreed with Sellars that deductive
procedure from level to level is impossible.
When we examined the views of Smuts on the continu
ities and discontinuities of nature, we found that he held
similar views. Beginning his discussion with the meta
physical postulate that evolution takes its rise in the
Organic Field of all reality, he went on to say that Holism
synthesizes entities on lower levels into entities on
79
higher levels; and that, although all levels are geneti
cally continuous with each other, their special properties,
relations, functions, and substantial wholes are discon
tinuous. We, therefore, found that Smuts also denied the
possibility of deducing the characteristics of one level
from those of another. Therefore, we found that for all
three men the cognitive purpose of knowing as well as the
moral purpose of controlling nature for human welfare is
teleological in the sense that human achievement here re
quires the adoption of the relevant scientific methods.’
Experimentation and logic are, then, complementary methods
of philosophical advance in this evolutionary perspective.
The transformation and re-direction of the old by
the new, not the destruction of the old, involve teleology
for Smuts; because, he believes, the old is given new
direction and adapted to new processes and purposes through
its transformation in new wholes.
We found their principal disagreement to lie in
their different concepts of the ultimate source of evolu
tion as a whole. For Morgan, this source is the Divine
Purpose of God which he did not further define or charac
terize. For Sellars, it is the inherent self-organizing
tendencies of an eternally self-existent matter; and,
80
for Smuts, it is an Organic Field whose executive agency
lies in an immanent factor of whole-making. It is impor
tant to recognize that, for all three, the concept of the
I
ultimate is a metaphysical postulate adopted to explain the
facts of physical organization.
The most significant agreement brought to light
in this section is the acceptance by Morgan, Smuts, and
Sellars, of teleology as a real characteristic of all levels
of physical structure. This is true in the following
senses: (1) the lower structures provide the materials
and possibilities of the higher emergents; (2) the higher
structures transform and re-direct the activities of the
lower; and (3) the outcomes and values of physical pro
cesses are dependent upon, and appropriate to, the indi
vidual nature of substantial structures. Hence, having
established this much, we are ready to go on and develop
further what the teleology of matter means to each of our
authors.
The Nature of Values in Morgan. Smuts, and Sellars.--
Since the teleology of matter concerns the dependence of
outcomes (see Appendix) on the activity of physical sub
stances, any consideration of the nature of values in the
thought of Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars makes it imperative
81
that we understand what each of them means by the term
"value." It will be remembered that for all three authors
the results of evolutionary emergence are substantial
entitles whose activities follow from their Individual
structures Interacting with other entitles In a common en
vironment. When such activities are related to outcomes
and values conducive to further growth, matter Is seen as
undergoing a process of teleosls (see Appendix) or develop
ment by which it serves higher and higher values as its
organization becomes more complex. Starting from this con
clusion, Sellars says of values that:
Values concern man's response to, and estimation of,
things. They are always guided by knowledge though
they contain other elements of a more affective and
volitional nature. Though they are conditioned
objectively by the nature of their objects, they are
yet primarily personal and social, that is, human. 1 ^
Intrinsic value is an experience and implies con
sciousness. Instrumental value involves two elements;
one, objective causal conditioning, and the other,
the intrinsic value of the result cast back upon the
cause.75
It is obvious that Sellars here distinguishes intrinsic
values as conscious from instrumental values as ascriptions
74
Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism, p. 342.
82
assigned to the objective means of conscious values. In
accordance with this analysis, he goes on to say that in
knowledge we comprehend "the structure and behavior of
things"7^ but that in valuing we consciously feel the
satisfaction of our needs and act as agents deliberately
pursuing our own interests, not some cosmic plan imported
from outside our own natures. To make the last point
clear, he adds, "the value of an object is what it signi-
77
fies in the economy of our lives." Since human life has
no meaning in relation to supernatural beings, the evolu
tionary naturalist holds that:
Value is not for him an universal metaphysical category
like space, time, causality and structure. The cosmos
is and has its determinate nature. As man values him
self and his works, he may rightly assign value to the
universe which conditions them and permits them to be;
nay more, which is made of stuff which had the poten
tial power to raise itself to self-consciousness in
him. Man'8 life is not adventitious, though it may be
transitory.™
As envisioned in this position, all values occur in some
natural context; because "there is no central, brooding
7^Roy Wood Sellars, Religion Coming of Age (New
York: The Macmillan Company, 1928), p. 229.
77Ibid.. p. 228.
78
Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism, pp. 342-343.
83
Will which has planned it all."79
Thus, for Sellars, value consists primarily in the
satisfaction of natural needs (see Appendix) which function
to motivate the organism to make up deficiencies required
for welfare and growth, or to direct the human self as a
socially conditioned organism to behavior leading to
survival and welfare. As consciously felt, these satis
factions are intrinsic values; but, as maintaining the
survival and further growth of the organism, these same
satisfactions are instrumental values. A further point is
that objective material conditions are instrumental values
in so far as they are conducive to human survival and wel
fare. A final quotation will substantiate this interpreta
tion of what Sellars says:
Man has wants and desires, and is led to measure his
freedom by the extent to which his environment co
operates or can be made to cooperate with him to their
fulfillment. This freedom has a transverse reference
to the setting of his action. The opposite of freedom
is bafflement and frustration; and these lead to the
emotional attitude of fatalism.®®
Since, for Sellars, structure, activities, and out
comes are inseparable on all levels of reality, the depend
ence of human activities and values on the human organism
79Ibid.. p. 343. 8QIbid.. p. 279.
84
and Its environment follows as a species of the general
relationship. Therefore, we can validly conclude that, for
him, there is a sense in which teleology characterizes the
dependence of human values upon human functions. The
functions and appropriate outcomes of every formed struc
ture in nature further its existence; and, in the case of
man and the higher organisms, this teleological relation
ship becomes consciously purposive in the sense that it is
felt and sometimes sought with deliberate action. Not only
is this true, but intrinsic values, through maintaining the
existence of the organism, become instrumental to further
life and satisfaction, and are accordingly teleological in
this sense, too. For Sellars, these end-means relation
ships characterize all reality; and, since teleology is
present wherever such relationships exist, matter is never
without some teleological aspect. But, it must be remem
bered, teleology is a property of organized matter; it is
never an external Mover or Creative Intelligence influ
encing matter ab extra from the outside.
Outcomes and values are wholly natural for, he
says, "the active economy of a substance expresses its
constitution; and its constitution depends upon the unified
85
81
togetherness of its constituents." Therefore, "the
general economy of a substance demands the essential in
separability of structure and function.Sellars, as we
have found, sees values as the conscious outcomes of the
functions of natural structures.
In contrast to Sellars, Morgan regards values as
having their first locus in the Divine Purpose. But, as
temporal, such values as truth, goodness, beauty "are
possessed by each individual self of enjoyment as the
83
centre from which reference goes forth" to their sources
in natural processes and in God. But when "not thus pos
sessed in some temporal sequence of mental processes, . . .
they have their ultimate being in God."8^ On this assump
tion, Morgan infers that the natural satisfactions which
result from the appropriate functioning of natural sub
stances are "manifestations of values which in Spiritual
OC
regard are eternal."
81
Sellars, The Philosophical Review. LII, 23.
82Ibid.
8^Morgan, Life, p. 311.
^Ibid. 85Ibid.
86
On his postulate that temporal sequences manifest
the Divine Purpose, Morgan can conclude on this premise
that a naturalistic axiology, rather than detracting from
the reality of God, actually presupposes and illustrates
it. Yet, without matter in its emergent forms, the Divine
Purposes could not be manifested. In science, he tells us
we must accept
a chain of scientific causation, in terms of ante*
cedence and sequence, a long way back in time, and
then when we have got as far back as ever we can, we
are urged to posit just one more antecedent as the
First Cause. But this antecedent is of a different
nature from all the rest. They are configurations
described in terms of matter and energy. This is no
such configuration.
But science is not philosophical explanation; therefore,
Morgan looks upon the observed chains of events in nature
as being explained by timeless possibilities entering into
the emergent structures of matter through the Agency of
God. He makes this clear with reference to the emergence
of values in this statement:
Spatio-temporal relatedness is carried up from below
and is involved in all that happens within the pyramid.
May one say that from above descend the logically
86
C. Lloyd Morgan, The Interpretation of Nature
(New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons; and London: The Knicker
bocker Press, 1906), p. 59.
87
timeless and spaceless universals which give "form" to
the "matter of empirical knowledge"? May one say that
those ideals that are of supreme value in the conduct
of human life, are not only "emergent" but also in
some sense "ingredient"? May we say that material
reality, within us under involution, is sub specie
temporis, and that Immateriality, no less within us
under ultimate Dependence, is also subsistent sub
specie aetemitatis? If so, emphasis must, I think,
be laid on the also. There should be no disjunctive
antithesis between the timeful and the timeless. They
are not to be regarded as incompatible contradictories.
Difficult as the task may be they oust, in some way,
be combined in a higher synthesis. '
The relevance of this passage to Morgan's view of
values is crucial; for it shows that, for him, values have
their origin in the Divine Purpose and their realization in
nature; and that, in order to attain realization, they
require the existence and activities of appropriate physi-
cal substances. Therefore, temporal substances become the
medium through which possible values become actual values.
Teleology is evident in the adaptiveness of material sub
stances to the requirements of value production. Since,
for Morgan, the individual constitution of each substance
is necessary to its functions (see Appendix), and since
each level of emergent reality is "preparatory to the
87
Morgan, Emergent Evolution, p. 63.
88
88
next," both the order of the parts and the order between
levels are of a teleological nature.
Despite the fact that the activities of every sub
stance are appropriate to the constitution and needs of the
active substance (as they are for Sellars and Smuts), it is
not till we reach the human level of personality that
Morgan sees these needs as being consciously felt and
deliberately satisfied through the guidance of action by
ends-in-view. Ends-in-view, when realized, characterize
the self of enjoyment, and are genuine values. Again, as
with Sellars and Smuts, satisfactions which maintain the
life of sub-human organisms are simply natural outcomes,
not values in the strict sense. But these natural outcomes
do for such substances in general what values do for human
agents: they meet their needs for survival and growth; and
this is definitely a teleological affair.
A very important point of agreement among our three
authors is just this: values and outcomes have a natural
basis and bring to teleological completion the ontological
nature of every existent. Morgan expresses this by saying:
88
C. Lloyd Morgan, The Animal Mind (London: Edward
Arnold find Company, 1930), p. 258.
"Determinism, whether In external nature or In human life,
Is the expression of purpose; purpose is that which finds
89
expression in determinate sequence." It follows from
this doctrine, therefore, that Morgan agrees with Sellars
in his identification of realized values with the con
sciously achieved and felt satisfactions of the needs of
the human person. Both men agree, furthermore, that below
the human level satisfactions are outcomes which meet un
conscious needs. These emergent outcomes and values arise
from the activities of substantial structures, and can no
more be predicted than can the properties which have not
yet emerged. Accordingly, levels or kinds of value are
as discontinuous as are levels of properties; disvalues
(see Appendix) and dystelic (see Appendix) functions are,
accordingly, characteristic of poor value realization.
However, analogy can offer some help here. For all
substances and their functions and values are appropriate
to the structures which make them what they are. Integrity
(see Appendix) of structure is a prime condition of auto-
telic (see Appendix) functions which are essential to fur
ther growth (see Appendix) and natural goodness (see Appen
dix) of integrated wholes. In the case of man, we have
89
Morgan, The Interpretation, p. 185.
a being who is both a thinker and a seeker after values.
He, by virtue of his rational nature, identifies and enjoys
those values which satisfy his needs and notes their appro
priateness to his own constitution. That is, man is as
naturally philosophical and moral as he is scientific. In
his quest to understand values and outcomes appropriate to
the constitution of other substances, he finds that by dis
covering the characteristic properties and modes of activity
of a given substance he can arrive at a knowledge of the
outcomes (or values) appropriate to that substance. As we
have seen, Morgan and Sellars hold views which make this
kind of understanding possible; and I mention it here
because it will be important among the results of this dis
sertation. The final comment to be made in this section is
that, for both Morgan and Sellars, all values and outcomes
grow directly out of the appropriate activities of sub
stances; in consequence of this conviction, they accept
a double sense of teleology for material things. First,
activities and outcomes depend upon the structures of sub
stance; and, second, the structures would not completely
become all they might become without these appropriate
activities and outcomes.
91
In order to account for values on the principles of
Holism, Smuts begins by relating activities and outcomes
to substantial structures, or wholes:
The whole is the ultimate category not only of organic
explanation, but also of organic adaptation and evolu
tion. And it is more than a category; as the creative
factor of inner structural and functional control
operative in all existence, it is the ultimate real
in the universe and the creative source of all reality,
whether organic or inorganic. Nay, more: Holism is
also creative of all values.
He goes on to support this view of the teleological charac
ter of Holism and all its products in nature with the
statement that mind, the third level of emergence, ulti
mately stems from the "inorganic affinities and organic
91
selectivities" of matter which becomes teleologically
necessary to the emergence of mental life. Here we find
Smuts in full agreement with Morgan and Sellars that matter
provides an essential condition for the emergence of values
and outcomes. In this connection, he goes on to say:
The universal realises itself, not in idle self
contemplation, not in isolation from the actual, but
in and through individual bodies, in particular things
and facts. The temple of the Spirit is the structure
of matter.^2
9®Smuts, Holism, p. 221.
91Ibid., p. 225. 92Ibid., p. 91.
If these statements are true, then Smuts regards the sub
stantial structures of matter as being the immediate active
sources of outcomes and values. Just as Morgan attributed
appropriate functions and outcomes to the "substantial
93
gotogethemess of each entity, and just as Sellars
attributed such functions and outcomes to the "organized
94
complexes" of the secondary continuants, so here Smuts
agrees that "this synthesis of whole and parts is reflected
in the holistic character of the functions of the parts as
well as of the whole.One of the key ideas in this
doctrine of purposiveness as a special form of "correlation
and unification of action towards an end, whether this is
consciously conceived or apprehended or not"^ is that
every emergent synthesis must adapt its activities to use
ful outcomes or perish.
Just how does Smuts define outcomes and values?
He does not define them explicitly at any place but makes
passing references to them which would indicate that he is
not out of agreement with Morgan and Sellars on this point,
^^Morgan, Emergent Evolution, p. 194.
94
Sellars, Physical Realism, p. 390.
^Smuts, Holism, p. 86. ^ Ibid.. p. 140.
93
as I shall seek to demonstrate by appropriate quotations.
Since It has already been shown that, for Smuts,
the functions and outcomes of every natural whole are
appropriate to the substantial constitution of the whole,
we can say that all wholes, whether high or low In the
scale of evolution, are analogous to each other In this re~
gard. For Smuts says that "physics and biology are thus
recognized as respectively simpler and more advanced forms
of the same fundamental patterns in world-structure."97
Therefore, what are recognized as values on the conscious
human level will bear a relation to human structure analo
gous to the relation of the outcomes of activity to the
structures of the lower levels. Speaking of the emergence
of human purposes and freedom of action, Smuts asserts that
individuality
emerges as a certain striving, a seeking, a conative-
ness, which, when attention has risen to the level of
consciousness, becomes purposive. Thereafter the
individual no longer floats forward on inorganic or
organic drifts, tendencies and appetites, but begins
to direct his course according to conscious voluntary
purposes. The individual makes his own plans and no
longer automatically follows Nature's plan. Conscious
ends emerge; things the individual strives after as
desireable and good attract him more than the uncon
scious organic urge behind, the vis a tergo. propels
97Smuts, Nature. CXXVIII, 525.
94
him; the pulls in front begin to dominate the pushes
behind. The desired things become the Values, which
intelligence illuminates and magnifies and emotions
suffuse and identify until they become the dominant
Ideals of action. We see the rise not only of new
mental activities but of new categories such as Pur*
pose and Value, which were not possible or necessary
on the organic level.
This statement makes it clear that, for Smuts also, the
rise of the new activities of intelligent purpose does not
destroy the organic and inorganic urges of the individual’s
lower nature in an ascetic repression; but that these emer
gent activities make possible "the development of the indi
vidual, of the self, of the Personality."^
From these statements we can infer that, for Smuts,
values are the conscious satisfactions of the active needs
of the individual as a whole. That values depend upon and
guide the activities of the whole is clearly his view; for
he goes on to say that
all structures are under the fundamental influence of
Holism, which is, faintly but perceptibly pulling all
structures in its direction. . . . The nature of the
universe points to something deeper, to something
beyond itself. The persistent over-balance in its
equilibrium shows that it is not self-sufficing. It
has a trend; it has a list. It has an immanent Telos.
^®Smuts, Holism, pp. 240-241.
^ Ibid., p. 241.
95
It belongs to or is making for some greater whole. And
the pull of this greater whole is enregistered in its
inmost structures. 00
What the structures of the future will be the prin
ciples of Holism cannot tell us. Hence, Smuts consistently
avoids characterizing them in detail. But he does indicate
what he considers present human aims ought to be. For he
says that men struggle through "passions and illusions"
toward "the Good, . . . human betterment, . . . the ideal
of a better, more secure life for themselves and for their
102
fellows." Because Holism has developed a world in which
the means of purposive living are available to men, Smuts
concludes that the universe is friendly and man's victory
is sure; for he says:
Its deepest tendencies are helpful to what is best in
us, and our highest aspirations are but its inspiration.
Thus behind our striving towards betterment are in the
last resort the entire weight and momentum and the in
most nature and trend of the universe.^
The ground of his optimism is evidently the holistic ad
vance of the universe toward the realization of appropriate
activities and outcomes for the structures of nature.
100
102
Ibid.. p. 179.
Ibid.
101
103
Ibid.. p. 344.
Ibid.. pp. 343-344.
96
This consideration leads him to claim that, despite all
temporary set-backs, man will eventually realize the satis
factions of all his needs; for according to his view:
The purposive teleological order is the domain of the
free creative spirit, in which the ethical, spiritual,
ideal nature of Mind has free scope for expansion and
development. The realm of Ends, as Kant has called it,
the realm of the great Values and Ideals is the des
tined home of Mind. And Holism it is that has guided
the faltering foot-steps of Mind from its early organic
responses and strivings and automatisms through the
most amazing adventures and developments until at last
it enters into its o w n .
Although Smuts does not define the key terms in this quota
tion, it is fair to take it in this context as giving mean
ing to what he conceives the present needs and capacities
of the human person to be. And this meaning is that the
mind is to guide the satisfaction of man's needs according
to a self-legislating morality to the chosen values. How
ever, it must be made clear that Smuts does not give us a
complete explanation of the exact nature and role of values
within the context of Holism.
The purpose of this sub-section on the nature and
role of values in the thought of Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars
104
Ibid.. p. 259.
97
has now been accomplished. We have examined their respec
tive views and arrived at some definite points of agreement
and disagreement.
In the first place, it has been found that all
three men agree that intrinsic values are the satisfactions
of the needs of self-conscious, self-directing persons.
All have agreed that such persons are highly developed
natural substances. Whereas Sellars holds that values are
satisfactions which objects or events signify "in the econ
omy of our lives, for Morgan the temporal satisfactions
of the needs of a substantial being are "manifestations
of values which in spiritual regard are eternal"in the
Divine Purpose. The important effect of these satisfac
tions is, for both men, the welfare and growth of the
individual having them. Both also agree as to the appro
priateness of the values and outcomes of activity to the
individual nature of the active substances: and this is a
point in which Smuts concurs, as we have shown. The major
disagreement found concerns the ultimate source of values.
^^Sellars, Religion Coming, p. 228.
^^Morgan, Life, p. 311.
98
Just as the source of substances differed for the three
men, so here Morgan finds the source of values ultimately
in the Divine Purpose and their immediate source in the
emergent substance and its activities; Sellars indicates
that the self-active tendencies of primary matter are the
ultimate source of values as of everything else and that
their immediate source is the structure of the active sub
stance; and Smuts finds their ultimate source in the self-
activity of the Great Organic Field of Holism and their
immediate source in the structure of the small active whole.
With respect to their agreement on the nature of the imme
diate sources of value, Sellars is expressing the view of
all three men when he says, "The general economy of a sub
stance demands the essential inseparability of structure
and function. " ^ 7 Therefore, it is fair to conclude that
Sellars, Morgan, and Smuts agree that values and outcomes
are satisfactions which result from the appropriate func
tions of natural substances; and that disvalues are fail
ures or frustrations of these appropriate outcomes and
values.
107Sellars, The Philosophical Review. LIT, 23.
99
Morgan is alone in his contention that values have
a being in the Divine Purpose prior to their achievement by
natural substances. Smuts and Sellars allow them no such
prior being, even as possibilities, in a supernatural Being
behind the natural process.
On the problem of the proper function of intelli
gence and deliberate moral action, all three men agree
that, prior to the emergence of intelligent organisms with
consciously felt needs late in the process of evolution,
the functions and outcomes of activity of natural sub
stances were impelled by purely inorganic affinities and
organic urges. Because of this late emergence of intelli
gence and self-direction, therefore, conscious goal-seeking
and appreciation of satisfactions must be restricted to
human beings and perhaps to some of the higher forms of
animal life. But, on the human level, the use of critical
intelligence and moral discipline become, for all three
authors, essential conditions of all the higher values.
Nevertheless, they do agree that there is a valid analogy
as to the appropriateness of values and activities to
substantial nature running throughout the entire pyramid
of evolved beings.
100
In the second place, since it has been agreed that
specific values accrue to the appropriate activities of
individual substances, we must understand that the value
potentials of each substance are also appropriate to its
constitution. Thus, a given individual can realize only
the value potentials of its own nature and never those of
any other nature; although, of course, its own value
potentials will embrace its instrumental value to other
substances. Therefore, the various levels of reality will
contain corresponding levels of potential values not all of
which can be appropriate to any one level; and this implies
that actualized values cannot be specifically the same for
any two substances on different levels of organization; for
values are as various as structures and functions, and the
higher values must await the higher structures.
In the third place, it must be recognized that what
we have said about the dependence of values upon structure,
activity, and needs provides only the general framework of
axiology in these evolutionary schemes of thought. In line
with this recognition, we have made no attempt to character
ize the specific qualities of value experience. To do
this, according to Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars, would re
quire a complete, detailed empirical investigation of
101
values on every level of structure; and this would be a
scientific, not a philosophical, study. It is sufficient
for our purposes to have explained the teleological and
purposive relations between values and structures. Every
kind of order expresses itself in appropriate activities
which, in turn, result in appropriate outcomes and values.
For the electron, a simple activity and a simple outcome
are appropriate; for the molecule, a more complex activity
and outcome are appropriate; and so on in the same way
until we arrive at the self-conscious human person for whom
appropriate activities and outcomes will be complicated by
ends-in-view, planned activities, and consciously appreci
ated values, and responsibility for the consequences of
action.
General Summary
Summarizing the results of this chapter on the
teleology and purpose of matter, we can say that we have
found Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars in agreement on the fol
lowing points: First, material structures are the imme
diate source of all realized outcomes and values. Second,
values come from the value-potentials resident within
material structures. Third, the facts of material struc
ture and the facts of value can neither be, nor be under
stood, apart from the mutual interdependence of values and
structure. Purposeful management of the processes of
physical nature for ethical and social ends, therefore,
depends on an active knowledge of this mutual dependence.
In consequence of this cognitive requirement, we can say
that teleology is a fact about the relation of value to
structure; and we can say that deliberate purpose is a fact
about the relation of man's knowledge to his concern for
values; for, if it is true, as Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars
all agree, that the order of physical nature makes values
possible, then its teleological significance is undeniable.
However, the adaptation of matter to the desired ends of
action is only one necessary telic condition of realized
values; deliberate, purposive investigation and control by
man are also necessary. Therefore, human values depend on
the unconscious teleology of physical nature being con
trolled by the purposeful activity of man.
Our authors all agree that the teleology of matter
lies in its adaptation to control for the purposes of human
welfare, but that these purposes cannot come to realization
without the emergent activities of life and mentality.
103
Therefore, the full ontological nature of matter cannot be
understood until its full development in life and mind has
been grasped. Thus, even the physics of emergent evolu
tion, taken by itself, constitutes only an abstract part of
knowledge. Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars have seen life and
mind as physically structured and goal-seeking; and in this
fact they have seen a direction, an irreversible natural
movement, evident, but not completed, in physical reality.
They have seen physical mechanisms as an illustration, not
a denial, of physical teleology. They have seen teleology
as including mechanism, for every emergent entity involves
its appropriate structure along with its goal-directed
activities; and this is precisely what is meant by the
teleology of matter.
They have seen each level of physical organization
as carrying forward into emergence the value-potentials of
all lower levels and preparing for later levels. In this
sense, also, they have agreed that a telic order pervades
the entire pyramid of evolution. The adaptive correlation
of parts, mechanisms, activities and outcomes is conducive,
for the three men, to the stability and existence of the
natural world as we know it; and this correlation is a kind
of teleology. Furthermore, the coordination of physical
104
organs and purposeful activities in man is teleological in
the sense that it makes possible his awareness of need, his
planning, deliberate activity, and his enjoyment of values.
Hence, the very constitution of man cannot be understood
without recognition of teleology in the organization of his
body and purpose in the exercise of his intelligence. As
we have seen in the preceding discussion, our three authors
have all pointed to the coordination of bodily structure
and consciousness of values as the real source of man's
moral duties. They have said that wherever there is physi
cal structure there is teleology; and that wherever there
is teleology there must be physical structure for it to
work through, or no outcomes can be realized.
Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars agree that philosophy is
a search for a total or inclusive view of human experience;
and that the denial of either teleology or mechanism re
sults in a vicious and abstract view of reality. They have
definitely agreed that such vicious abstractions character
ized pre-evolutionary views of physical nature, and that
the concept of levels must be introduced to avoid such
views in the future. I agree with them on this point and,
therefore, accept their rejection of the older view of
teleology as an external order and direction imposed upon
105
matter from without. However, I do think that It remains
to be seen whether they have adequately reformulated their
concept of the Immanent teleology of matter. In the con
structive and critical part of this dissertation, I shall
seek to work out an adequate and explicit concept of
the teleology of the inorganic level of reality by demon
strating an inherent and necessary relationship of mutual
dependence between the mechanical and the value aspects of
all levels of reality.
We have demonstrated that all three authors agree
that teleology is an immanent characteristic of matter; but
since, for them, matter is the lowest level of reality, we
shall have to examine their views on life and mind before
we can discover how the organization of matter contributes
to the emergence of higher levels. Our next chapter will
therefore concern itself with the problem of the teleology
of organic life.
CHAPTER III
THE TELEOLOGY OF ORGANIC LIFE
In this chapter we shall be concerned with the
teleological significance of the fact that organic struc
tures and biological satisfactions are interdependent.
Accordingly, our attention will be directed to relevant
characteristics of the organic level of emergent reality
where organic structures, functional mechanisms, and the
achievement of biological values highlight abstract aspects
of the organism as a whole. Starting from the facts of
biological organization as the necessary condition and
mechanism of organic values, we shall compare the views of
Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars on the teleological relations
among the structural characteristics, the activities, and
the survival and welfare of living things. As we shall
discover, Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars agree that the basic
problem of understanding organic life consists in finding
an adequate concept of the appropriateness and mutual
106
107
dependence of structure, function, and outcome in the life
of the organism as a whole. Since this appropriateness of
structure, function, and outcome Is teleological, the main
task of this chapter will be to show how each conceives of
the dependence of functions and values on organic struc
tures. Since these men approach the problems of organic
teleology from a philosophical standpoint, they do not
introduce into their writings a large quantity of detailed
biological data. But this omission does not bear directly
on the purposes of this study; it is mentioned here only to
warn the reader not to expect extensive details in the fol
lowing discussion.
The Nature of Organic Life
Living organisms constitute the second emergent
level to appear in the evolutionary advance of organiza
tion. Their properties involve, but, in novel ways, go
beyond the inorganic conditions which preceded their exis
tence. As to their nature, Morgan contends that every
living organism is "one organization"^ of "living units
^Morgan, The Animal Mind, p. 249.
108
o
. . . in biochemical fellowship.” This living entity is
a determinate unity of items of stuff in a new mode of
substantial relatedness, i.e., an organic substance. Its
life consists in the sequence of novel phenomena, not in
any unobservable, underlying entity either within or behind
these phenomena. Morgan insists that terms like "life” and
"vitality" are only "names that we give to the specific
kind of relatedness that obtains in this or that entity
3
under consideration." In the relational treatment of
science, accordingly, the term "life" means "an observable
4
sequence of phenomena."
From the quotations just given it is clear that,
for Morgan, Vital Force, Entelechy, and Elan Vital are not
needed by biological science which refers particular events
to the generalizations of pattern comprising them in terms
of observed antecedences and sequences. Yet, as we shall
see, he does think that biology needs teleological cate
gories of an empirical nature. For him, metaphysics alone
^Morgan, Mind at the Crossways (London: Williams
and Norgate, 1929), p. 16.
^Morgan, Emergent Evolution, p. 66.
4
Morgan, The Interpretation, p. 82.
109
explains why the facts are as we find them to be. Once
the distinction of purpose and method between science and
metaphysics is recognized, he thinks, neither science nor
metaphysics can be overthrown.
Morgan makes the preceding distinction explicit
when he asserts that if vitalism means only
that living matter has certain distinctive properties,
it may be freely accepted; but that if by it we imply
that these properties neither are nor can be the out
come of evolution, it should be politely rejected; and
further that, if by Vital Force we mean the noumenal
Cause of the special modes of molecular motion that
characterise protoplasm, its metaphysical validity may
be acknowledged, so long as it is regarded as immanent
in the dynamical system and not interpolated from with
out in a manner unknown throughout the rest of the wide
realm of nature.^
According to this argument, life is "an organised system or
fellowship of physiological processes."^ As an emergent
form of substantial relatedness, the organism will have
novel properties and capacities (and needs) not present in
the inorganic items of stuff involved in its constitution.
These properties and capacities will exist in the very sub
stance of the organism and will constitute the ground of
behavior and change for that organism. But, before this
5C. L. Morgan, "Vitalism," Monist. IX (1899), 196.
^Morgan, Mind at the Crossways, p. 52.
110
ground of change can be activated, the environment will
have to condition the organism; as, for example, when the
warmth of the incubator is added to "the intrinsic consti
tution of the egg,hatching is induced.
The details of specific organic constitutions and
their functioning must, Morgan believes, be left to the
appropriate special sciences; but, even with this proviso,
he contends that the organism is a teleological system in
the senses that (1) behavior expresses the individual con
stitution of the behaving organism so as to satisfy the
needs which drive the behavior; (2) there is provision in
the earlier stages of behavior for the later stages without
prevision on the part of all organisms; and (3) each stage
Q
of growth is "preparatory to the next." This pre-
conscious kind of teleology is contrasted with the fully
purposive and reflective act of teleology which "is car
ried into execution with an end in view; ... it leads to
some outcome which more or less closely accords with the
9
end in view." Only man and perhaps some of the higher
^Morgan, Emergent Evolution, p. 286.
®Morgan, The Animal Mind, p. 258.
9Ibid., p. 257.
Ill
animals are purposefully reflective in their planned be
havior; but all organisms teleologically adapt their
behavior to their needs.
In speaking of the place of life in the evolution
ary series, Morgan states:
I believe that throughout nature from bottom to top
evolution is a process of historical advance in the
course of which there occurs from time to time the
becoming, or uprising, or outspringing, or, as I ex
press it, the emergence of really new modes of being
hitherto not in being. This is applicable to all
organisms in the extended sense. . . . Any organic
whole is more than the sum of its parts. This "more
than” is emergent.10
This quotation makes it clear that, for him, the emergent
wholeness of the organism is one of its peculiar proper
ties. Of the relation of the whole to the involved items
of stuff, Morgan says, "Each higher entity in the ascending
series is an emergent 'complex' of many entities of lower
grades, within which a new kind of relatedness gives inte-
11
gral unity." If these statements are true, then the
integral wholeness of the organism is the source of its
directed behavior.
10Ibid.. p. 70.
^Hlorgan, Emergent Evolution, p. 11.
112
As a final point about the teleology of life*
Morgan expresses his conviction that naturalistic faith in
the ability of science to make a relational treatment of
life phenomena is based upon an effective purpose operating
throughout nature. In this connection, he asserts:
If determining purpose is a real factor in human
thought, then since that thought is, for naturalism,
a product of evolution which is essentially one and
continuous, it is only the final term of a purpose
that has been operative throughout the whole course
of that evolution. It is just because I believe that
all that science discloses is a manifestation of a
continuous purpose that I believe that the manifesta
tion is itself continuous, and that the origin of life
and mind are ideally capable of explanation in terms
of antecedence, coexistence, and sequence. 2
Morgan concedes, however, that the observational and metric
methods of science preclude a scientific treatment of the
purpose of nature, in the broad sense mentioned above; and,
from this recognition, he concludes that the biologist
should seek to describe the sequences of events presented
by individual and racial development; and, by generalizing
his results, reach a purely descriptive interpretation
of life.
In answer to the question, What is life?, Smuts
argues that:
^^Morgan, The Interpretation, pp. 175-176.
113
Life has appeared as a continuation on a higher plane
of the sort of structure which matter is on a lower
plane— a higher structure of the same material, and
therefore at bottom not something utterly alien to and
different from it.’
As this statement shows, Smuts is in agreement with Morgan
that life is an intermediate structure growing out of
matter.
Smuts, as will be remembered, is committed to the
doctrine of Holism which rejects the genetic discontinuity
of matter, life, and mind. For him, narrow concepts and
inadequate methods are responsible for the application of
vitalistic and mechanistic principles to organic phenomena.
The point of his argument is that the separation of matter,
life, and mind "does not arise from the facts either of
experience or of existence,"^4 but from wrong concepts.
He, accordingly, feels no need of separate entelechies or
vital forces to explain the properties of organisms. He
makes his agreement with Morgan clear by stating that:
"We thus envisage the physico-chemical structures of Nature
as the beginnings or earlier phases of Holism, and 'life'
as a more developed phase of the same inner activity.
13
Smuts, Holism, p. 179.
14Ibid., p. 3. 15Ibid., p. 146.
114
It follows, according to this doctrine, that the organism
Is neither a mechanism nor a body to which life force has
been added; "It Is just the organism In Its unique charac
ter as a whole.By substituting the concept of the
organic whole for that of mere life, Smuts seeks to relieve
the concept of life of that vagueness which has driven
biologists to reject it in favor of mechanism..
When Smuts says that "an organism ... is a natural
whole. It is self-acting and self-moving,from an in-
18
temal "principle of movement," he is in agreement with
Morgan's view that "any organic whole is more than the sum
19
of its parts." 7 For both men, organisms possess a unity
of parts so well coordinated in structure and function that
the organism as a whole is able to respond adaptively to
its environment, and survive in the struggle for existence.
Such response is executed through specific organs developed
by the entire organism. The inner principle of organic
wholeness develops a system of control, regulation, and
coordination which integrates all functions for the organic
values of survival, reproduction, and adaptation.
16Ibid.. p. 110. 17Ibid.. p. 101. 18Ibid.
^Morgan, The Animal Mind, p. 70.
115
That Holism is the organizing factor in organic
growth Smuts makes clear in this statement:
Stuff-like entities have disappeared and have been
replaced by space-time configurations, the very nature
of which depends on their principle of organisation.
This principle, which I have ventured to call holism,
appears to be at, bottom identical with that which per
vades the organic structures of the world of life.*®
On the organic level, this whole differentiates the struc
tures of the organism in the service of biological ends
and is teleological throughout. It follows, according to
Smuts, that:
A living individual is a physiological whole, in
which the parts or organs are but differentiations of
this whole for purposes of greater efficiency, and
remain in organic continuity throughout. . . . This
conception applies not only to individuals, but also
to organic societies, such as a beehive or an ant's
nest, and even to social organisations on the human
level.
That this differentiation of organs serves biological ends
is sufficient to make it truly teleological; although Smuts
would agree with Morgan that provision need not involve
prevision. However, both men agree that organic properties
are sui generis and emerge along with the telic functions.
Morgan advises the biologist that:
20Smuts, Nature. CXXVIII, 525.
21Ibid.. p. 526.
116
The advent of novelty of any kind is loyally to be
accepted wherever It is found, without invoking any
extra-natural Power (Force, Entelechy, Elan, or God)
through efficient Activity of which the observed
facts may be explained.22
This statement by Morgan is evidence that he agrees
with Smuts as to the unreality of the controversy between
mechanism and vitalism in biology. For both men, the
reality of the living organism consists in the wholeness
with which its parts co-exist and co-function for the good
of the whole. It follows, according to this argument, that
vitalism and mechanism, each in its own way, severs an
essential aspect of the organic whole and erects this ab
stracted part into an hypostasis which has no verifiable
relation to the concrete living whole. Whereas mechanism
identifies the organism with earlier, less-integrated
phases of its structural development, vitalism goes to the
opposite extreme and considers life a separate substance
added to the body. On these errors, Smuts says:
Thus arises the counter-hypothesis of Vitalism. Both
views as a matter of fact are one-sided and misleading;
the mechanistic view by ignoring the essentially holis
tic element in organic or psychical wholes; the vital-
istic view by misconceiving the vital or psychic
element in such wholes. The fundamental mistake is
^^Morgan, Bnergent Evolution, p. 2.
117
the severance of essential elements In a whole and
their hypostasis into independent interacting entities
or substances. Thus body and mind wrongly come to be
considered as two separate interacting substances. 3
Instead of creating insoluble problems by the hypostasis of
unreal abstractions as wholes, Smuts and Morgan would con
tend that life is to be understood as the emergent proper
ties of organic wholes in the sense that whole and proper
ties are interdependent in concrete actuality, and to be
abstracted only for purposes of theory.
The nature of life takes on aspects of peculiar
urgency in the reformed materialism of Sellars, for inte
gration of organic forms in the material world requires him
to modify the older concepts of both matter and life. Dis
cussing this problem from the scientific approach, he
insists that the term "life” is "only a term for certain
ways of acting and behaving on the part of certain physical
systems we call organisms.
The naturalism of Sellars, accordingly, conceives
of life in terms of a set of sui generis natural properties
and functions arising from organic substances. On this
^Smuts, Holism, p. 146.
^Sellars, Religion Coming, pp. 173-174.
basis, he asserts that "life is not a non-natural force
coming from outside, but a term for the new capacities
25
of which nature has found itself capable." He then con
tinues his argument by stating that, on the basis of the
natural growth of organization, the "new, experimental
process goes on which gradually achieves those capacities
26
of behavior which we call intelligent." Thus, the intel
ligence of the organism derives from the natural order of
matter, and not the other way around as idealism would have
it. He can be neither a vitalist nor a mechanist; for, as
he sees it, traditional
mechanism . . . meant external relations, so that each
event expressed a specific impact, or complex of im
pacts, upon some unit. For such an interpretation of
nature, a physical system was in no sense an actual
unity. Instead, it was a constellation of movements.
Since the older mechanism did not recognize levels of
organization, it led to an impossible theory of living
things because it could not accept the diversities of
organic structure. But, for Sellars, as for Morgan and
25
R. W. Sellars, "Realism, Naturalism, and Human
ism," in Contemporary American Philosophy: Personal State
ments, edited by George P. Adams and William P. Montague
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1930), II, 276.
27Ibid.. p. 275.
119
Smuts, levels of natural order are as diverse as experience
may reveal. He concludes that "the organism Is not a ma
chine because new patterns can be created and there is no
28
fixed cycle of return." The dogmatism of the older view
must give way to the empirical facts; and, when this is
done, novelty of structure, levels of efficient causality,
and an open-ended materialism will be recognized, he sug
gests. "We must accept the rise in nature of natural kinds
20
with specific properties expressive of the system." 7 It
follows, for Sellars, that uniformity of structure and
function is false as applied to organisms, and one-level
mechanism cannot provide a true description of organisms.
in
Just as Morgan rejects all "extra-natural Power" w in
biology, and just as Smuts rejects vitalism and mechanism
in biology because they involve the vicious abstraction of
31
the "essential elements in a whole and their hypostasis,"
so Sellars rejects vitalism because it involves "the appeal
28
Sellars, Physical Realism, p. 442.
29
Sellars, Contemporary American, p. 275.
30
Morgan, Emergent Evolution, p. 2.
31
Smuts, Holism, p. 146.
120
32
to a non-physical agency,” and he rejects the older
mechanism because it could not account for levels. He
does, however, recognize the service of vitalism in criti
cizing the pretensions of mechanism, and the service of
the older mechanism in encouraging detailed investigations.
On the whole, he prefers the older mechanism, for he says:
But there is this much truth about it, I think, that
the vitalist is always a dualist and the mechanist
a believer in the self-sufficiency of the physical
realm. Now let me frankly admit that I an a mechanist
if this is all that is meant by mechanism. *
The mechanism he accepts is not the older one-level mecha
nism but that of a reformed materialism which holds that
since the "specificity of physical systems is empirical
rather than mystical,then, as determined by science,
"these new physical systems have properties which are
35
functions of their organization."
Biological activities arise, for Sellars, as for
Morgan and Smuts, from the organizational features of the
organism as a whole. This is a point of basic agreement
32
Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism, p. 327.
33Ibid.
34
Sellars, Contemporary American, p. 275.
35Ibid., p. 276.
121
among the three men. Consequently, they are all convinced
that these activities involve physiological mechanisms and
patterns of behavior appropriate to the satisfaction of the
needs of survival and welfare. In his effort to explain
these teleological facts from a materialistic point of
view, Sellars insists that:
Certainly any ontological materialism of today must be
appropriate to the setting of evolutionary naturalism.
It must stress relations, organization, levels. It
must be willing to recognize new organic wholes with
correspondent capacities, properties, and activities.
In this sense it must be qualitative and permissive of
differentiation. ®
37
Organisms are "secondary continuants" which have "some-
38
thing like a self-maintaining pattern"; each is an "indi
viduality, coherence, an intrinsic unity, a natural unit"3^
of substantial structure on the level of organic life.
Points of Agreement on the Nature of Life.--As we
have seen, Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars agree that the traits
of organic life must be determined by the special sciences
36
R. W. Sellars, "Dewey on Materialism," Journal
of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Ill (1942-43),
392.
37
Sellars, Physical Realism, p. viii.
38Ibid.. p. 306.
122
and, as so determined, must be accepted as facts by phi
losophers. But, when philosophy accepts these facts for
what they really are, the teleological relation among.the
aspects of structure, function, and survival values becomes
unmistakably clear. In consequence of this relation, the
structures and functions of organisms are seen to be the
means which serve the ends of survival and welfare. In the
absence of the ends, the structures would perish and the
functions dependent on the structures would, and do, not
take place. It follows that, for Morgan, Smuts, and
Sellars, there is an undeniable teleological significance
in this relation, although we cannot say that it univer
sally involves conscious purpose.
We have also found these three men in agreement on
the proposition that the organism as a whole is the source
of the correlation and functional integration of the parts
and functions in meeting the needs of the whole. In conse
quence of this adaptation of parts and functions to the
biological ends of survival and welfare, we conclude that
a teleological organization and directedness characterize
all living things in the thought of Morgan, Smuts, and
Sellars.
123
We have found these men In agreement on the further
point that all organic phenomena rise, by a process of
creative emergence, from prior structures on the inorganic
level, thus further realizing potentialities resident in
physical nature. Not only is the relation of the organic
to the inorganic a teleological one, but the organic level
makes possible the later rise of the still more complex
structures of mind and personality. Accordingly, the tele
ological process is further illustrated by the emergence of
mental structures having more self-directedness and possi
bilities of action than are found on the merely organic
level; yet, without organic structures, the mental sub
stances could not exist.
But despite the agreement of Morgan, Smuts, and
Sellars on the teleological adaptation of organisms to the
ends of survival and welfare, each man goes his own way in
the ultimate accounting for this fact. As will be remem
bered, Morgan attributes this characteristic of life to
"the intrinsic constitution"^® of the individual as its
immediate cause. He has reiterated his position that
the organic constitution interacting with environmental
^®Morgan, Emergent Evolution, p. 286.
124
circumstances is the only ground of change that science can
consider in its relational treatment of life phenomena.
The result of this kind of treatment is an interpretat ion
of life in terms of observed antecedences and sequences.
But he then added that, in his system, the ulterior Cause
of all determinate sequences is God whose Divine Purpose
alone gives the metaphysical explanation needed in the
extra-scientific department of human inquiry. Stated dif
ferently, organisms are, for Morgan, teleological in two
distinct senses: they express the Divine Purpose, and
adaptation of parts and functions to biological ends is a
characteristic which conditions their very existence.
Smuts accepts only adaptation as the basic tele
ological characteristic of living things. He rejects what
Morgan calls the Divine Purpose and puts in its place the
organic field of Holism which is an unconscious cosmic
principle of creativity. Holism.is, for him, the inner
causal principle which constitutes and directs every
natural whole, including all organic wholes. But, once the
organic whole has been brought into existence, Smuts agrees
with both Morgan and Sellars that this whole, operating in
conjunction with environmental circumstances, is the source
of biological processes and behavior. Smuts insists that
125
every organism is "self-acting and self-moving"^ because
of its inner wholeness; this inner whole is, for him, the
source of that directedness and adaptation of means to end
so necessary to the survival of organisms.
Sellars agrees with both Morgan and Smuts in the
belief that the substantial constitution of the organism,
as conditioned by the environment, is the cause of its
behavior. Although, for Sellars, life is only a name of
the sui generis structures and capacities of structures on
the organic level, he holds, nevertheless, to the position
that these structures and capacities are the means used in
satisfying the needs of the organism, thereby insuring
survival and welfare.
Despite the agreement of Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars
on the position that biology should admit only empirical
evidence, each man nevertheless postulates an unobservable
source or principle of the universe as a whole, thus
violating the self-denying ordinance against extra-natural
entities, it would seem. For Morgan, this postulate is
God; for Smuts, the Organic Field of Nature which he calls
Holism; and, for Sellars, it is the inherent self-activity
Smuts, Holism, p. 101.
126
of a primordial self-existent matter. This divergence of
ontological opinion, however, does not prevent either of
them from recognizing the teleological facts of organic
life.
The Origin of Life in Evolutionary Philosophy
Since the emergence of living organisms is one of
the major creative advances in the evolution of novel
structures, some discussion of the origin of life from in
organic matter will amplify for us the teleosis of nature
as a whole.
In view of the lack of adequate evidence on this
point, Morgan contends that we do not know of any instance
of "the passage from the non-living to the living organ-
42
ism." From this state of ignorance, he concludes, there
fore, that we do not know whether organisms arose de novo
under past conditions of the earth no longer present.
According to this argument, abiogenesis must remain a mere
hypothesis because "no living being has been produced under
laboratory cqnditions or has been seen to arise de novo and
43
ab ovo." But we do know that determinate life-plans now
4^Morgan, Life, p. 75. 43Ibid.. p. 77.
127
exist above the inorganic level, regardless of how they
originated. And, in view of this fact, science must re
gard the constitution of nature as the sufficient ground
of the genesis of protoplasm— unless we resort, extra-
scientifically, to the metaphysics of Source in an alien
realm about which we have no scientific knowledge. Hence,
for Morgan, the creed of evolution as a scientific hypo
thesis implies that the totality of life phenomena can be
treated in terms of the observed chains of antecedence and
sequence. But when these chains are exhaustively described,
the origin of life will remain a mystery for the simple
reason that such descriptions will never reveal the Divine
Purpose behind phenomena. Accordingly, for naturalism,
"the riddle of life will remain unsolved and insoluble in
l \l\
these terms" of antecedence and sequence. For, even if
scientific information were complete on this point, it
would give us only the how, not the why, of the origin of
life; and the human mind cannot rest without understanding
the why, Morgan contends. When the evidence of organiza
tional advance is discussed on purely empirical grounds,
Morgan says, the "historical advance of all cosmic events
^Morgan, The Interpretation, p. 82.
may be plotted on an ascending curve"^ of increasing com
plexity. "Certain points"^ can be labelled "not - living,
and others, higher up the curve of ascending complexity,
the conditions under which life first appeared on earth,
we "cannot interpolate the sequential points which inter
present lack of knowledge, Morgan goes on to say that the
intervening points between the inorganic and the organic
must have occurred because the "acceptance of the curve as
a whole entails the acceptance of those intervening steps
of which we have no observational or experimental evi
dence. Morgan concludes that, for science, the facts
must be accepted just as they stand in the evidence without
raising any questions about the God behind them or extra-
natural entities within them.
Present evidence indicates that every bit of living
matter "is a fragment detached from some other bit which
/ ft
can be called "living organisms." Since we do not know
AQ
vened between the not-living and the living."
Despite these difficulties which result from our
50Ibid.. p. 61.
129
behaved In the same way. This Is the basal fact of the
51
continuity of organic evolution." Once in existence,
each organism assimilates materials from its environment
and grows until it reaches "in form, structure, and idio-
syncracies of behavior, the likeness of the organism— plant
52
or animal— from which it was derived." In this way, the
structure of the species is passed on from parent to off
spring through the continuity of the germinal substance,
quite independently of modifications in the parental tissue
cells or conditions present in the environment. The key
idea to Morgan’s position on the origin of protoplasm is
that this has happened although we do not know how.
He concludes his discussion of the origin of life
with the statement that the
complete sequence of all the appropriate stages of the
synthesis of living protoplasm is of the rarest occur
rence, may even have occurred only at a certain stage
of the earth’s history. That it has occurred is part
of the faith of the evolutionist; it is accepted as a
corollary from the ideal construction of naturalism
taken as a whole. * *
51C. Lloyd Morgan, Animal Behavior (2nd ed.;
London: Edward Arnold, 1920), p. 325.
52Ibid.
53
Morgan, The Interpretation, p. 83.
130
It will be useful to point out certain teleological
implications of this view of the origin of life. First,
it sees the inorganic environment as being favorable to the
origin and persistence of organisms. In the second place,
it sees the hereditary structures of living things as con
trolling the assimilation of environmental materials in
such a way as to result in the establishment of the parent-
species in the offspring. Finally, it sees the entire pro
cess of organic evolution as an expression of the Divine
Purpose of God, which, however, cannot count in the evolu
tionary interpretation of life phenomena because of its
unamenability to the observational and metrical methods of
science. Morgan assigns Divine Purpose to metaphysics, not
to science, for he contends:
Whether the whole of nature, including animal behavior,
is driven onwards to definite ends by an underlying
Cause, is a metaphysical question. It is not one on
which science has any right to express an opinion one
way or the other. Science deals with phenomena: the
causes of their being lie outside her province.*4
Thus, in spite of the facts of organic adaptations, we can
only speculate at this time about the factors involved in
their origin.
54
Morgan, Animal Behavior, p. 294.
131
In the view of Smuts, the origin of life must be
attributed to the activity of Holism working through the
selectivities of inorganic matter. This position is made
clear by his statement that Holism is the
ultimate synthetic, ordering, organising, regulative
activity in the universe which accounts for all the
structural groupings and syntheses in it, from the atom
and the physico-chemical structures, through the cell
and organisms, through Mind in animals, to Personality
in man. The all-pervading and ever-increasing charac
ter of synthetic unity or wholeness in these structures
leads to the concept of Holism as the fundamental
activity underlying and co-ordinating all others, and
to the view of the universe as a Holistic Universe.
Thus, for Smuts, Holism is a wider concept than those of
life or mind "and is the genus of which they are the spe
cies. And it enables all the evolutionary phenomena of
Nature to be co-ordinated tinder and traced to the same
operative factor." Here we find Morgan and Smuts in
disagreement about the origin of life. Although Morgan
thinks the origin of life resulted from the constitution of
nature, he offers no description of the actual processes
involved; but Smuts thinks life originated from the activi
ties of Holism working through inorganic structures and
^ Smuts, Holism, p. 317.
132
57
their selectivities by way of the "small increments" of
emergent variation. Smuts also offers no description of
the actual processes involved; for, with Morgan, he recog
nizes our ignorance on this point. In any case, Smuts
would prefer a gradual over a cataclysmic theory of genesis,
for he says:
The "creativeness" of evolutionary Holism and its
procedure by way of small increments or installments
of "creation" are its most fundamental characters,
from which all the particular forms and character
istics of the universe flow. 8
Consideration of the operative factor of Holism
leads Smuts to suggest that something far deeper than the
factors of variation, struggle for existence, and the sur
vival of the fittest, recognized by Darwin, is at work in
organic evolution; namely, the factor of Holism itself,
which, he thinks, is the cause in and behind Darwin's
factors. If this is true, then, of course, Holism is the
actual cause of evolution. But it remains to be seen how
its truth could be established.
Smuts argues that the word "creation"^9 has two
distinct meanings: (1) "absolute creation— creation, that
57Ibid.. p. 318.
59Ibid.. p. 128.
133
is to say, out of nothing,"^ which is unintelligible to
the human mind because "Ex nihilo nihil fit is a funda
mental principle of thought as well as of nature.And
(2) "creative . . . of structures and substances different
62
from their constituent elements or parts." Wholes alone
are creative in the second sense; and the creativity of
wholes "is the only creative activity of which we have
£ . O
knowledge." Smuts’s position is that the origin of life
must be sought in Holism; and, he adds, the processes of
reproduction, growth, metabolism, and nutrition are carried
on by organs correlated by the inner substantial whole of
each organism.
Smuts carefully distinguishes two senses of genesis;
the living cell, he thinks, can be accounted for only by
the second sense:
Two conceptions of genesis or development have pre
vailed. The one regards all reality as given in form
and substance at the beginning, either actually or
implicitly, and the subsequent history as merely the
unfolding, explication, evolutio, of this implicit
content. This view puts creation in the past and makes
it predetermine the whole future; all fresh initiative,
novelty or creativeness is consequently banned from a
universe so created or evolved. The other view posits
60rbid. 61Ibid.
62Ibid. 63Ibid.. p. 137.
134
a minimum of the given at the beginning, and makes the
process of Evolution creative of reality. Evolution
on this view is really creative and not merely ex
plicative of what was given before; it involves the
creative rise not only of new forms or groupings, but
even of new materials in the process of Evolution.
This is the view of Evolution to-day commonly held,
and it marks a revolution in thought. It releases the
present and the future from the bondage of the past,
and makes freedom an inherent character of the uni
verse .
As the principle of Holism works through the structures of
inorganic matter, the cell is the next "fundamental struc-
ture of the universe" to emerge after the electronic
atom. The cell is the simplest unit of plants and animals;
it consists of a nucleus, cytoplasm, and a cell wall or
membrane; it "contains complex chemical compounds in solu
tion or in the colloid state"^ about which little is
known. Its functions are as little understood as its
structure. On this point Smuts says, "Its functions are
even more mysterious, for they include practically all the
activities which we see in developed organisms— birth,
growth, breathing, feeding, digestion, self-healing, repro-
67
duction, and death." Smuts concludes that the cell arose
64Ibid., p. 85. 63Ibid.. p. 59.
67Ibid.
from the electrical processes of the inorganic atoms be
cause these processes acted under the coordinating influ
ence of Holism. The more complex forms of life which arose
from the cell continued the complex coordination of parts
of the cell for the good of the whole. Thus, for Smuts,
life was from the very beginning teleological because it
was a product of the goal-seeking Telos of Holism. For
Smuts, as for Morgan, the emergence of life brought into
existence some of the potentialities of inorganic matter;
furthermore, it made possible the later appearance of mind
and personality. But each man assigns his own metaphysics
the task of causal explanation. Morgan's sharp distinction
between metaphysics and science is not shared by Smuts;
for, to Smuts, philosophy is the study of the more general
empirical patterns of reality while science is the study of
68
the "concrete forms and structures" of nature. But, as
purpose has the necessary function of explanation in Mor
gan's thought, so Holism, with its coordinating, whole-
making tendencies, performs the same task in Smuts's system
of philosophy. But, for both men, science must seek the
68Ibid.. p. 85.
136
origin of life in the natural processes of inorganic
matter.
Sellars works out his theory of the origin of life
on the basis of physical realism. On this basis, he con
tends, biological categories must be found empirically; for
they
correspond to such characteristics as structure,
function, interdependence, plasticity, relative har
mony. The genetic is, then, simply this: Can we
think of these characteristics as having grown, or
developed, out of the simpler conditions which pre
ceded them? Our answer was in the affirmative. *
The grounds on which he rejects special creation by a
supernatural agent working on an inert, chaotic matter are
consistent with modern theories as to the inherent activity
of matter. In his opinion, people have distinguished
sharply between the organic and the inorganic because they
had a false view of matter and because they did not under
stand the gradual rise of organization which connects
organisms with simpler processes which "have disappeared
so that monumental heights reached stand out above the in
organic plane.These considerations lead him to con
clude that the gulf between the organic and the inorganic
69
Sellars, The Principles, p. 290.
7QIbid., p. 291.
137
has a "genetic bridge"7^ built of intermediate organiza
tional structures of a material nature. But, as to the spe
cific character of these links, he contends, the "details
72
must be left by philosophy to the relevant sciences."
This statement shows that Sellars agrees with both Morgan
and Smuts on the position that we do not now know how
organisms originated at the beginning of life. The lack
of evidence precludes an intelligent opinion. But, it must
be noted, Sellars sees inorganic matter as the indispens
able condition of life and of all the satisfactions pos
sible to organisms of whatever grade of complexity.
Despite the lack of evidence just mentioned, Sellars sug
gests that, perhaps, ultra-violet rays acting on non-living
matter during an earlier condition of the earth led to the
appearance of life which then "developed mechanisms of
73
protection and survival," an hypothesis which he credits
to Duclaux. But, regardless of such hypotheses, he states
that most
inorganic processes are entropic. that is, they lead
to a loss of free energy. But anabolic processes are
71Ibid. 72Ibid.
73Ibid.. p. 278.
138
and Involve a "stepping up" of potential energy. It
Is this kind of chemical process which Is so character
istic of living things.
As organic structures have increased the free energy avail
able, the properties and functions of organisms have per
mitted a larger freedom in adapting to the conditions of
life.
Morgan and Smuts that neither mechanism nor vitalism can
account for the origin of life; because both of these hypo
theses worked with outmoded and false concepts formulated
before evolution forced thinkers to take levels of organ
ization seriously. Relative to the mechanistic-vitalistic
controversy, he points out that:
In the meantime, thinkers of a more original and
creative type of mind have begun to take evolution
seriously and to view nature as a process from level
to level, each level characterized by organization
and new properties. The categories of biology lie
midway between those of chemistry and those of psy
chology. Knowledge of our world is displacing the
blanket-contrasts which relative and the
dualisms of traditional thought inuu<.cu.
Sellars, Morgan, and Smuts all agree that dualism is to be
overcome by recognition of levels, and that ignorance can
be removed only by detailed investigations.
It should be understood that Sellars agrees with
74
Ibid.. pp. 282-283. 75Ibid., pp. 287-288.
139
That Sellars also agrees with Morgan and Smuts in
the concept of the organism as an integrated whole of
structures and functions is made clear by the following
statement:
Integration, configuration and wholeness are more sig
nificant for nature than science was ready to admit.
Nature seems able to form systems which have a measure
of internal unity and are not mere collocations of
self-sufficient units. To apply this notion of life
involves the admission of something which may well be
called organicism. A living system differs in many
basic ways from an inorganic system and yet the ground
pattern, the fact of organization, is already present
in the more primitive and extensive field.'®
The fact that biological forms exist in many variations of
structure leads Sellars to argue that the more complex
forms must have appeared after the simpler ones. "Life did
not spring full-born from nature; rather must there have
been intermediate, hesitating phases of integration and
disintegration."77 Finally, "after countless efforts, life
78
was formed and pushed blindly upward." That there was
no Designer with a plan behind the emergence of life is the
implication which Sellars draws from materialism and the
lack of evidence. Hence, he is in agreement with Smuts,
76Ibid.. p. 288. 77Ibid.. p. 289.
140
but in disagreement with Morgan, on this point.
Sellars argues that the essential weakness of
79
"final causes or guiding ideals" in shaping the forms of
nature lies in their inability to be tested by observation
and experiment; for "final causes are by hypothesis in-
80
tangible." He is convinced that, in conformity with the
evidential requirements of science, Darwin introduced
natural selection, not entelechy or the choice of an ex
ternal Designer, to explain new structures. So long as the
spontaneous appearance of slight variations was accepted,
natural selection seemed to obviate the necessity of recog
nizing teleological factors in biology; but the discovery
of the dependence of functions and values on biological
organization has led to the re-instatement of design in the
sense of internal structure. Darwin, therefore, is
credited by Sellars with dealing the death-blow to both
external design and chance as the causes of those "admirable
81
adaptations" which are found among living things and are
82
to "be explained as the result of their survival value."
Since, for Sellars, they do not result from design or
79
Sellars, The Essentials of Philosophy, p. 272.
80Ibid. 81Ibid. 82Ibid.
141
chance, they must be accounted for by the survival value of
chance variations whose real causes were unknown to Darwin.
And, according to his metaphysical view, Sellars sees these
real causes as being the inherent tendency of matter to
create ever more complex organizations of itself.
The recent development of a reformed materialism
which recognizes empirically determined levels of organic
structure, with corresponding levels of effective causality
and organic behavior, will, Sellars contends, remove the
need in science of either the older mechanism or the "theo-
QO
logical types of explanation.’ ’ To discover the detailed
’ ’order and relations in nature"84 is a task, he concludes,
for an empirical science dedicated to evolutionary natural
ism. When this task is well advanced, he suggests, we
shall then find it "likely that we must equally reject
chance and design and substitute causally conditioned
85
growth" in "a genuinely scientific interpretation of
86
biological phenomena." With the resulting understanding
^Sellars, The Principles, p. 272.
84Ibid. 85Ibid.. p. 274.
86Ibid.. p. 273.
142
87
of the "texture of nature.” we shall no longer ’ ’need
external teleology, a designer, a Spirit of rational
order. . . . We have escaped both blind chance and an ex-
88
temal Orderer." Darwinism, Sellars says, lacked an
adequate theory as to the positive nature of growth.
Natural selection was a negative, environmental factor.
Now the evolutionary naturalist of to-day is laying
stress upon the significance of internal, selective
control by the trend of accumulated organization.
Nature becomes thick in the organism. Possibilities
are determined by this thickness of organization in
relation to external forces. ... It would seem that
such ideas as activity, spontaneity, drive are return
ing, though in each case they must be analyzed.
Thus, if organized matter is inherently self-active, and if
"function helps to determine structure, it is quite pos-
' Qfl
sible to conceive a non-vitalistic elan vital"7 as the
growing structure of the organism. In conclusion, Sellars
holds that Darwin failed to account for the emergence of
variations because he held incorrect views on the ability
of matter to organize itself in new ways to meet the func
tional needs of the organism.
87
Sellars, Religion Coming, p. 218.
88Ibid.. pp. 218-219.
89
Ibid.. p. 219.
90
Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism, p. 338.
143
Summary and conclusions.— The purpose of this sec
tion on the origin of life has now been completed. We have
examined the views of Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars on the
teleological significance of the emergence of living things
from the inorganic level of the evolutionary pyramid. The
three men agree that we do not now know the scientific
nature of the processes by which life emerged; and Morgan
expresses their common conclusion when he says that, as
yet, we do not know of any instance in which "the passage
Q1
from the non-living to the living organism" has been ob
served.
Despite this lack of scientific knowledge as to the
processes involved in the origin of life, Morgan neverthe
less accepts the fact that life-plans now exist; he attrib
utes all their antecedent conditions to the constitution of
nature. Such life-plans are teleological in two senses;
they involve the pursuit of life-sustaining satisfactions
through the activities of the organic structures, and they
utilize factors in their environment which favor their
survival. When Morgan leaves the plane of science and
enters upon that of metaphysics, he acknowledges that the
^Hforgan, Life, p. 75.
144
purposiveness and adaptation of both organic structures and
their environment are the expressions of a Divine Purpose
which, he contends, could only be the will of a Divine
Person since, in our knowledge, will and purpose arise only
from integral persons. Therefore, in the final analysis,
Morgan views the origin of life as the conscious, inten
tional act of God as Designer. The adaptations found in
organic life would, accordingly, be purposive from the
point of view of God and teleological from the point of
view of natural science.
Smuts and Sellars agree with Morgan that living
organisms are complex emergent substances raised upon the
basis of inorganic matter. Hence, there is no important
disagreement among them about the facts of life. Each,
however, has his own theory about the ultimate source of
living things; and, for each, this theory is consistent
with his metaphysical position. For Smuts, Holism is the
final metaphysical cause, which, by working through the
q 2
emergent "concrete forms or structures' of nature,
results in organisms whose parts and functions are so well
coordinated that survival, welfare, and new advance in
^Smuts, Holism, p. 85.
145
wholeness are brought about. Every phase of this advance
is, for him, teleological.
Sellars agrees with Morgan and Smuts that organisms
involve coordination of structures and functions for bio
logical ends. He further agrees that organic teleology
need not involve any awareness at all on the part of most
organisms. For him, the ultimate source of adaptations is
matter; and their immediate source consists in the material
structures directly preceding the emergence of life.
Hence, for Sellars, organisms grew out of matter; and he
thinks of their "characteristics as having grown, or de
veloped, out of the simpler conditions which preceded
93
them" on the inorganic level. He concludes that we shall
not know the actual processes involved in the origin of
94
life until science reveals the "texture of nature" in
this area of physical process.
In conclusion, the important point to remember
about the origin of life in the thought of these three men
is that they agree on the position that the answers must
be sought by scientific methods working on the actual
^Sellars, The Principles, p. 290.
^Sellars, Religion Coming, p. 218.
146
processes of physical nature. Hence, whatever the pro*
cesses through which life appeared, the preceding inorganic
level was such as to make organic emergents a fait accompli:
as the necessary condition of what is admittedly teleo*
logical and sometimes purposive, inorganic matter can cor
rectly be described as a means to the ends of life.
I agree with all three men that both organisms and
their environment are teleological in the senses indicated.
I further agree with them that the older views of vitalism
and mechanism were unable to explain, or even to describe,
living things. The objections which they raised about the
inadequacy of our present knowledge of the origin of life
seem to me to be quite valid ones. But these objections
are details of a philosophy of life which the progress of
science may remove. I think that the most difficult part
of their views on life has to do with their failure to
relate the value aspect of living with the structural
aspect.
The main advantage of the emergent theory of life
is that it avoids dualism and encourages the human purpose
of investigating exhaustively just what does take place
on the different levels of reality. When this is done, we
can hope that the values of life will stand out clearly
in their real relations to organic structures.
The Characteristics of Organisms
The purpose of this section is to state, to com
pare, and to evaluate the views of Morgan, Smuts, and
Sellars on the teleological significance of the character
istic structures of organic wholes, and more especially of
those characteristic structures which are directly involved
in the goal-seeking and need-reduction of organisms. My
reason for treating the subject-matter in this way is to
bring out the dependence of survival and welfare values
upon the development and activities of the organs and parts
which constitute the living organism. If this dependence
can be demonstrated as a fact, then the teleology of or
ganic characteristics will be established for the purposes
of this dissertation.
It will be remembered that I use the tern "teleo
logical" to mean the doctrine that natural (in this case,
organic) processes result in outcomes and values which are
appropriate both to the structures involved and the needs
satisfied. Among the organic characteristics most rele
vant to this study are organization, movement, growth,
148
metabolism, Irritability, adaptability, and reproduction.
All o£ these characteristics involve appropriate anatomical
structures, functions, and outcomes related to the needs
of the organism; and, as I shall show, Morgan, Smuts, and
Sellars agree that these characteristics and their functions
are the teleological means to the biological ends of sur
vival, welfare, and advance to new variations in structure.
But it must be kept in mind that the achievement of these
ends is carried out with consciousness only by man and per
haps a few of the higher species of animals.
Growth is a universally present feature of living
things. Each organism grows by the assimilation of nutri
ents from its environment. When the mature form of the
organism is reached, then, Morgan argues, the biologist can
use his understanding of the stage of maturity for under
standing the processes of growth as the means by which the
fully developed form is reached. Thus, for Morgan, the
stages of growth are seen in terms of "steps subordinate to
the reaching of some outcome,and "the whole sequence
of intervenient events between this phase and that can be
95
Morgan, Life, p. 69.
149
set forth in due order.The specific facts of growth
will, of course, vary with the different life-plans of the
different species. But, in all cases, the substantial
constitution of the organism, as it interacts with its
environment, is the fundamental determinant of growth pat
terns. Morgan gives his position on this point by stating
that: "It seems that in any integral system, set in a
field of physical influence, the course of events in that
system is partly intrinsically determinate from within, and
97
partly extrinsically determined from without." Although
the ground of change involves both the inner and the outer
factor, Morgan points out that, as we ascend the scale of
life, the life-behavior increasingly emphasizes "the deter-
98
minate ground of action"; that is, the more do the
"behavior and organisation of a living entity depend on
99
what it is." The important teleological fact about
growth is, according to this argument, that the growing
individual normally develops the organs needed for survival
and reproduction under the conditions of its habitat. In
maturation, all the organs develop in correlation with
^ Ibid.. p. 63.
^ Ibid.. p. 64.
150
each other so as to serve the organism as a whole. Hence,
we always find these vital organs existing together within
the unity of the whole organism and not apart from each
other. In their maturation, the organs are "part of and
one with the organisation"*®® of the growing organism as
a whole. That these processes of growth are subservient to
the needs of the organism is observed by the biologist; but
he should not think of them as being "under the conscious
guidance"*®* of the organism. Morgan denies that the
scientist has the task of offering extra-scientific expla
nation of why these observed facts are what they are. For,
he asserts, "the ultimate ground of all natural occur-
102
rences is, for science, the constitution of nature" as
observed. But despite this self-denying ordinance of
science, Morgan concludes that adaptation is, in the sense
indicated, an observed fact.
Careful study of the writings of Smuts indicates
that he has said little about the details of organic
*®®Morgan, The Animal Mind, p. 255.
101Ibid., p. 18.
102
C. Lloyd Morgan, Instinct and Experience
(2nd ed.; London: Methuen and Company, 1913), p. 142.
151
characteristics. Instead of presenting details, he has
emphasized the dependence of these characteristics on the
needs of the organism as an integral whole. In accordance
with this emphasis, he conceives of the mechanisms of life
as the means by which the living organism achieves its
maturation, reproduction, and survival. In describing the
functions of the organic characteristics, he says:
There is selection of ends and an adjustment of its
movements to the attainment of those ends. . . . This
power of self-direction is clearly only a particular
form or species of the more general power of selec
tivity . . . selectivity is an inherently holistic
attribute or quality.
It follows from this doctrine that organic maturation moves
towards ever more and deeper wholes. This is the
essential process, and all organic and psychic activi
ties and relations have to be understood as elements
and forms of this process. No explanation is possible
which ignores this active creative inner whole at the
heart of all organic and psychic structures; in the
light of this whole all apparent contradictions dis
appear.
Accordingly, on the basis of the control exercised over
organic characteristics by the creative, substantial whole
of the organism, Smuts argues that the "whole is the ulti
mate category not only of organic explanation, but also
^^Smuts, Holism, p. 162.
104Ibid.. p. 147.
152
of organic adaptation and evolution. It follows, for
Smuts, that: "A living individual is a physiological
whole, in which the parts or organs are but different!*
ations of this whole for purposes of greater efficiency,
and remain in organic continuity throughoutThe sense
organs and nervous system, for example, make possible the
sensitivity of the whole organism to appropriate environ*
mental factors which further or hinder the life of the
whole. But, it must be noted, for Smuts this sensitivity
can only operate through appropriate organs; for, he con
tends, "sensitivity to appropriate fields is not confined
to humans, but is shared by animals and plants throughout
organic nature."*®^ He agrees with Morgan and Sellars on
the point that, when a stimulus strikes the receptor
apparatus of the organism, a response follows which is more
than the mere mechanical effect on the organ involved;
rather the organism as a whole responds by means of appro
priate organs. The response is more than the mechanical
equivalent of the stimulus because the organism intervenes
105Ibid.. p. 221.
106Smuts, Nature. CXXVIII, 526.
^^Smuts, Holism, p. 341.
between stimulus and response and transmutes the cause into
a controlled effect. Thus, for Smuts, the organism as a
"whole appears as the real cause of the response, and not
the external stimulus, which seems to play the quite minor
108
role of a mere excitant or condition."
In accordance with the preceding statement, Smuts
attributes to the organism as a whole the unity, coordina
tion of functions, and control of all the organs and mecha
nisms needed for the "self-preservation of the organism as
109
a whole." These are precisely the characteristics which
constitute the organism a teleological entity.
In accordance with his general method of philosoph
ical explanation, Smuts assigns to Holism the functions of
being the creative factor which leads to the development
of the special organs of organic control and regulation.
Holism has the further function of being the "general organ*
ising, co-ordinating or regulating factor in organisms over
which it exercises a measure of guidance, direction and
control. There can be no doubt that he recognizes the
108
Ibid., p. 119.
109
Stauts, The Cape Times. July 25, 1929, 13.
^■^Stauts, Holism, pp. 142-143.
154
teleological character of the organs and their llfe-
sustalnlng functions. For, as he says, without the control
of these organs the needs of the whole could not be met and
the entire organic structure would disintegrate.
It Is Interesting to note that for Smuts, as for
Morgan and Sellars, Inner control for biological ends
deepens as organisms become more complex; for, he asserts,
the organism develops in such a way that the "final struc-
111
tures are far more holistic than its initial structures"
In a vein similar to Morgan's contention that intrinsic
determination increases, and environmental determination
decreases, as we ascend the tree of life.
The Teleology of Organic Functions
Since the preceding discussion has brought out the
agreement of Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars on the position
that organic satisfactions (i.e., outcomes and values)
could not occur without the activity of the organic struc
tures, it is necessary to determine their position on the
nature of those activities of structure which terminate in
adaptive outcomes. I shall call these adaptive activities
111Ibid.. p. 87.
155
the functions of the organism, and study them not primarily
as anatomical behavior but as the means of organic sur
vival, welfare, adaptation, and adjustment to the environ
ment. If it can be shown that these adaptive functions
must take place or the biological values could not occur,
then their teleological significance for the organism will
be undeniable. For, as we have already found, the organism
disintegrates when its survival needs are not met.
Although these writers did their work before the
development of cybernetics and the concept of feedback
mechanisms in automated control, they all recognize the
mind as a means of adaptive control of behavior in the
service of biological values. Since they hold the mind has
its physiological basis in the brain and nervous system,
the neural paths in the brain must be regarded as the
structural bases of adaptive functions. Hence, either
consciously or unconsciously psychic and organic processes
involve messages which enable the organism to regulate its
own behavior in terms of internal goals and needs. Feed
back mechanisms, would, then, in the terms of this study,
be the structural basis of internal teleology. The in
ternal directedness resulting from the activity of feedback
156
mechanisms means that behavior Is not random but directed
to organic situations better than those from which the same
behavioral processes started.
For Morgan, the survival of the parts of the body
depends on the functional cooperation of all parts within
the unity of the organism as a whole. Thus, for him,
functional harmony is the law of survival; and all be
havior, instinctive, intelligent, and rational, not only
depends on structure, but serves the ends of survival and
welfare. Natural selection has eliminated those in whom
the biological end of reproduction was not consonant with
the psychological end of satisfaction; and the same harmony
obtains between the activities of eating and pleasure.
Therefore, Morgan warns us against reifying our logical
distinction between the physiological and psychological.
Despite the fact that the science of psychology knows
nothing of the bodily structures involved in conscious pro
cesses, and physiology knows nothing of the psychological
values of pleasure and pain, Morgan asserts:
The two sets of values— survival values and satis
faction values— are, however, so often and of necessity
so predominantly consonant— their inter-relations are
so many and so close— that we are apt to forget that
they are logically distinct. ^
11?
Morgan, The Interpretation, pp. 134-135.
157
He continues his discussion by contending that innate tend
encies to adaptive behavior "come with the constitution; of
course the appropriate conditions must be there, but the
113
stress is on the constitution" of the organism as the
structural basis of its behavior. Hence, whenever we are
acquainted with the routine of behavior, we can interpret
the process of behavior as the steps leading from a condi
tion of need to a later condition of satisfaction and wel
fare on the part of the organism involved. But when new
supervenient kinds of relatedness emerge as fields of
effective relatedness, the characteristic behavior will
vary in specific ways yet always terminate in biological
values, under normal conditions.
For Morgan, the law of natural selection operates
through the behavior of organisms; for it is in their
behavior that either adjustment or failure takes place.
From this fact, he concludes that the law of natural selec
tion is itself of a teleological character. In his view:
Indeed, the more clearly one realises that all the
experimental work, Mendelian and other, which has
helped us so much, is based on selection, the more
one feels that there is some selective process
113
Morgan, Instinct, p. 95.
158
in nature, other than human choice— some purely
natural law in terms of which success or failure in
the battle of life may be interpreted. And this is
what we should mean by natural selection.
According to this position, selection means that the un
conscious choices of organisms, in so far as these choices
affect behavior, either promote or hinder the ends of
survival. Those organisms whose choices and "instinctive
dispositions were consonant with welfare would survive and
would transmit like dispositions"to their offspring.
Morgan concludes by asserting that adaptation depends on
"how far the behavior adequately meets the essential con-
116
ditions of the situation." He, therefore, leaves us in
no doubt as to his conviction that organic behavior is
teleological in the sense that the survival and welfare of
living things depend on adequacy of response.
In Smuts's theory of the organism, the inner whole
ness of structure controls the coordination of elements,
cells, and organs in functionally adaptive ways. Although
he does not elaborate the details of adaptive functions,
114
C. Lloyd Morgan, Eugenics and Environment
(London: John Bale Sons and Danielson, Ltd., 1919), p. 66.
115Ibid., p. 69.
^^Morgan, Animal Behavior, p. 2.
159
he does make the following statement about the cell:
The cell functions for other cells and for the plant
as a whole. One element In the cell functions for
other elements and for the whole cell organism. The
secretions formed In one cell are Intended to build up
other cells or to serve the plant as a whole. The
fibro-vascular cells carry liquid food from one part
of the plant to the other parts. . . . Indeed, all the
processes of Metabolism go to prove that the plant Is
one vast co-operative system, in which the individual
cells in their continuous functions and labours make
their contribution to the common effort, and work so
that other cells or the plant itself or the species to
which it belongs may live. The cell in its normal
structure and functions is the very type of co
operative action.
According to this statement, it is reasonable to infer
that organic functions serve biological ends and are tele
ological.
Despite some divergence in the terminology used,
we note that Smuts agrees with Morgan on the dependence of
satisfactions on organic functions. First, Smuts conceives
of the organism as a functional whole whose parts are
united in the service of needs. For Morgan, this func
tional union is the constitution or "substantial go-
118
togetherness" which makes the organism what it is and
117
Smuts, Holism, p. 78.
^^Morgan, Emergent Evolution, p. 194
160
119
is "the determinate ground" of its behavior. For Smuts,
this union of parts and functions is the* organism as a
whole which is "the ultimate category not only of organic
explanation, but also of organic adaptation and evolu-
120
tion." Smuts then goes on to attribute organic functions
to the need of "self-preservation of the organism as a
121
whole," thus explicitly recognizing their teleological
relation to biological ends.
For Morgan, the process of growth is one which the
122
biologist can "set forth in due order" as a progress
toward maturity. In like manner, Smuts thinks of the
maturation of organs in terms of "differentiations of this
123
whole for purposes of greater efficiency" in meeting
biological needs. Finally, Morgan and Smuts agree that the
organic characteristics function in all organisms, in
cluding man in a high degree, without being "under the
119
Morgan, Life, p. 63.
^^Smuts, Holism, p. 221.
191
Smuts, The Cape Times, July 25, 1929, 13.
^^Morgan, Life, p. 69.
123
Smuts, Nature. CXXVIII, 526.
161
124
conscious guidance" of the organism. But, for Smuts,
when conscious mind appears, it is a continuation of "the
system of organic regulation and co-ordination which
125
characterises Holism in organisms" below the conscious
level. In accordance with this argument, organic functions
are teleological; but, since conscious guidance arrives
long after life has been going on, we cannot say that they
are purposive.
According to Sellars, the organism is a "secondary
126
continuant" whose characteristic functions serve bio
logical needs. Metaphysically, he asserts, the organism is
127
a "self-maintaining pattern" with such organic charac
teristics as "structure, function, interdependence, plas-
128
ticity, relative harmony" all of which grow "out of the
129
simpler conditions which preceded them" on the inorganic
124
Morgan, The Animal Mind, p. 18.
175
Smuts, Holism, p. 224.
126
Sellars, Physical Realism, p. 307.
127Ibid., p. 306.
128
Sellars, The Principles, p. 290.
162
level; and the functions of these organs are to "be ex-
130
plained as the result of their survival value." It is
Sellars's contention that, to the trained biologist, who
is familiar with the whole series of stages of organic
maturation, living things seem to function in an internally
controlled way; they "act as though they carried a goal in
131
themselves." Since activity rises from organic struc
tures, Sellars concludes that organic "teleology is an
expression of organization. It follows that it has degrees,
and . . . we must not interpret the higher levels in the
132
same way that we do the lower levels." This argument
implies that differences between the degrees of teleo
logical control rise from, and correspond to, differences
of structure. Therefore, the internal structure of organ
isms becomes, through their specialized organs, a determi
nant of their responses to stimuli. It will be remembered
that both Morgan and Smuts made this same point, contending
that the more complex the organic structure the more ade
quate becomes the control of response. It should also
130
Sellars, The Essentials of Philosophy, p. 272.
131
Sellars, The Principles, p. 277.
132Ibid.. p. 377.
163
be noted that Sellars here agrees with Morgan and Smuts
on the view that the teleological response of organisms is
caused by their immanent structure as a whole and not by
external design.
Within the framework of directed response, the
needs of survival and welfare seem to act as causal agents
in the development of appropriate organs. On this point,
Sellars contends that the need of control and guidance
133
"leads to appropriate mechanisms to meet the need."
Sellars continues this argument in relation to the brain
and nervous system which, he contends, are organs of "rapid
134
communication and adjustment." Just as need gives rise
to appropriate structures, so organization is "objectively
significant and causally effective. Function and structure
go together at every level. Function is but the active
13S
phase of structure." As the organism develops new or
gans, each increment of structure makes "possible something
133
R. W. Sellars, "Levels of Causality: The Bner-
gence of Guidance and Reason in Nature," Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research. XX, No. 1 (September, 1959), 1.
13S
■'Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism, p. 334.
164
136
which before had been impossible.’ * According to this
argument, the organism
is a differentiated system whose parts are specialized.
What each part does is for the sake of the whole, and
yet there is no reason to assume purpose in it. It is
an order which presupposes the order with which chem
istry concerns itself and yet goes beyond it. And it
is this order, alone, which explains what happens in
the system.
From the quotation just given it is clear that, for Sellars,
what an organism does can be understood in two complemen
tary ways: first, its activities are carried on by putting
into operation its specialized organs, and the specific
character of these organs determine the possibilities of
action open to the organism; and, secondly, the same activi
ties can be understood as adaptive responses mediating
between need and satisfaction. In the latter sense, there
is no doubt in Sellars's mind about the teleological sig
nificance of what an organism does; for, without the satis
faction of the essential needs, the organic structure as
a whole could not endure.
If this view of organic functions is correct, then
138
the "general facts and concepts of the sciences" suggest
136Ibid., p. 335. 137Ibid.
138
Sellars, The Principles, p. 324.
165
to the biologist "that we are dealing with a high level of
evolution in which organisms have developed methods, organs
and functions of adjustment to, and control of, their en
vironment ." *39
For Sellars, the progress of evolution consists
in the emergence of new organic substances with more spe
cialized organs for meeting the needs of adjustment. This
natural growth of structure involves design in the sense of
functional structures. In this sense only does he think
that design is a fact of biology; but design in the sense
of an external designer he regards as a projection of the
ends-means pattern of human art which has no existence on
the pre-human level. He closes his argument on this point
by stating that the "internal working and even the behavior
140
of organisms" so order physiological processes "that
the welfare of the particular organism is furthered or the
survival of the species is aided.
This internal economy by means of which certain pro
cesses function in relation to others as means to end
139Ibid.
140
Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism, p. 336.
141Ibid.
166
may be called empirical teleology. It Involves both
a temporal and a spatial ordering. Each organ has its
function, or functions, which assists in the working of
the whole. There is interplay and interdependence.
The temporal ordering appears in certain cycles and in
the instincts where one act is the condition of
another.^
The impetus of physical organization, and not an external
designer, is, for Sellars, the cause of this directedness
of functioning toward the ends of survival and welfare. As
far as he is concerned,
This ordering is maintained by structural and
functional coordinations. And there is in it all the
appearance of Zweckmdssigkeit or directedness to an
end. The Greek word teleology has been adopted as
descriptive of this sort of ordered economy. Because
this teleological economy resembles the internal order
of the elements of a plan in which means are selected
as conducive to an end, it is sometimes called pur*- |
posive. But it would be wrong to forget that we have
only an analogy between two fields which are otherwise
dissimilar. We must not drop back unwarily into naive
anthropomorphism.
Our knowledge about the organism as a functioning
organization discloses an empirical teleology which
differentiates it from inorganic things. Here we are
confronted with a fact which cannot be ignored.
Despite Sellars's agreement with Morgan and Smuts on the
directedness of organic response toward useful outcomes,
he, nevertheless, attributes such response to the inherent
tendency of matter to organize itself in more complex forms.
|
143Ibid., p. 337.
167
On this point, he says:
I£ we speak of ends as governing organisms, as bio
logists constantly do, we must think of these ends as
incarnated in the structure and internal relations of
the organism. That which has a specified structure
cannot be neutral; it must have a set, a character
istic way of functioning. In this sense, and in this
sense only, ends are natural to the physical world;
but they are local and intrinsic to particular
thickened systems. With these qualifications in mind,
we can speak of biology as needing teleological cate
gories. Organisms have designed themselves because
design is natural to the physical world. But such
design is a growth design and not a planned design.
It is only machines which are planned designs.
In his insistence that physical structure is naturally
active, Sellars accounts for the urges and drives of living
things in terms of physical organization; he would not
allow us to reify them as ”attractive ends which exercise
a spell over the organism.
Points of Agreement and Disagreement.— We have now
examined the views of Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars on the
teleological significance of the dependence of biological
values on the appropriate functions of the various organs.
Morgan has said that survival and welfare depend on the
co-functioning of the organic structures; and Smuts and
^■^Sellars, The Principles, pp. 376-377.
145Ibid.. p. 376.
168
Sellars have agreed with him. They have agreed, further,
that it is the oreanism as a whole which is the source of
coordination and control over the specialized functions;
and that this control is normally exercised in the inter
ests of survival and welfare. The fact of disintegration
and death in the absence of such control is strong evidence
that teleology is involved in it. Appropriate and effi
cient functioning is, therefore, a biological necessity.
A second point of agreement concerns their shared
view that conscious purpose always involves teleology but
that teleology can be effectively present without purpose.
For them, purpose is a species of teleology having a set
iof differentia, such as consciousness, foresight, and
deliberate planning, which sets it off from all other
species of teleology. But even in man, in whom the pur
poseful traits are most developed, teleological organic
|functions take place without consciousness on the part of
the individual.
For Morgan, organic functions are expressions of
organic structure which, in turn, is an expression of the
Divine Purpose of God. While he restricts biological
interpretation of teleological facts to the observable
169
evidence, he nevertheless regards the determinate sequences
Involved In the evidence as expressions of God's purpose
acknowledged as a philosophical postulate.
Smuts has said that the organic functions have
their source In the organism as a whole and are the activi
ties of the organs which are In turn the "differentiations
of this whole for purposes of greater efficiency"in
satisfying organic needs. For him, as for Morgan and
Sellars, the directed functioning of the organism is un
conscious, except in the case of man and perhaps some of
the higher animals where consciousness is a factor.
Another important point to remember is that, for Smuts,
there is no Divine Purpose either behind or within emergent
structures.
Sellars agreed with Morgan and Smuts on all the
actual facts of coordination, adaptation, and the inter
dependence of functional efficiency and survival. But he
assigns the tendency of matter to self-organization as the
real cause of these teleological facts. He agreed to the
argument that survival value is the key concept in our
146
Smuts, Nature, CXXVIII, 526.
170
understanding of the coordinated functions of the special
organs. His point was that teleology on the organic level
147
Is "an expression of organization" on that level. Smuts
and Morgan agreed with Sellars that the driving needs of
the organism arise from Its physical structure and must be
considered In any adequate account of Its behavior.
A further point of agreement--one of crucial impor
tance to the purpose of this dissertation— had to do with
the appropriateness and mutual dependence of function and
outcome in organic behavior. This means that what each
organ does depends not only on the kind of structure it has
but also on the service it renders the organism as a whole.
An implication of this point is that the biology and phi
losophy of life must recognize the fact that organs
function unconsciously to help the organism satisfy its
needs; hence, these organs cannot be understood mechani
cally; in a sense, they are what they do for the needs of
the whole. This means that needs are of profound signifi
cance for our concept of organism. In terms used in this
dissertation, it means that the values and outcomes of
organic behavior are just as meaningful in the biological
147
Sellars, The Principles, p. 377.
categories as are the organs and functions. Indeed, it
means that organs, functions, and outcomes must be con
sidered synthetically and never in abstraction from each
other except for theoretical purposes. Some higher inte
gration, on the conceptual level, must be found by which
these abstracta can be seen in their natural relations.
I agree with all three men about the facts of
organic teleology; for every structure there is a dependent
function, and for every function there is an outcome which
is normally useful to the organism as a whole. But it
remains to be seen whether their views of the functional
teleology of organisms adequately integrates the struc
tural, the functional, and the value aspects of a total
life.
General Summary
Nobody has ever questioned the fact that living
things achieve their satisfactions by exercising their spe
cialized organs. But we shall never understand the pur
posiveness of life processes until our abstract knowledge
of organic structure, functions, and outcomes has been
integrated into an adequate concept of the living organism
172
as a whole. It is just this task which the special sciences
cannot perform because of their limited aims and methods.
The cue for a sound philosophy of organic life is clear.
Life must be seen as the functional integrity of the
aspects of structure, function, outcomes of welfare, sur
vival, and creative advance to new variations of structure.
When this is done in factual terms, the metaphysics of life
will curb the needless finality of abstractions.
Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars have agreed that organic
structures are the instrumental means through which organ
isms as wholes secure those satisfactions crucial to their
survival and welfare. That these ends depend on efficient
exercise of organs is a fact; and this exercise is pre
cisely what we mean by organic functions. Therefore, func
tion is the adaptive response which is the vital link
between organic needs and values. On its efficacy in
reaching the needed ends depends all further life in the
individual and all further advance in emergent structure.
It remains now to be determined how we are to conceive the
interdependence of structure, function, and vital outcomes.
It will be remembered that, in this dissertation,
I use the term ’ ’teleology" to describe processes which
could neither occur nor be understood without categorially
173
integrating structure, function, and vital outcomes. The
contrasting term "purpose" is reserved for describing this
situation whenever it involves awareness, by the living
organism, of the end-means relations involved in its total
life process.
For Morgan, the functional behavior of organisms
ug
"is a mode of bodily action" whose course is "directed
under i n f l u e n c e " from the external environment. Yet,
for him, the incoming stimuli from the environment are
transformed according to "the substantial unity that charac
terises an integral system"of the organism as a whole.
The resulting response is teleological in the sense of pur
posiveness and adaptation to organic ends but it need not
involve "reference to those acts which imply an end in view
on the part of some human being, or perhaps some animal,
who has reached the reflective level"^^ of consciousness.
Morgan uses the term "teleological" for the reflective
response only; below this level, there is, for him, only
instinctive behavior with "percipience, urge, awareness
^4®Morgan, Life, p. 35.
149Ibid.. p. 218. 15QIbid.t p. 220.
^^Morgan, The Animal Mind, p. 267.
174
in behaving, affective tone suffusing current experi-
152
ence," but no conscious planning. Although he identi
fies teleology with the conscious level which I have called
purposeful in this study, it must not be inferred that he
denies any of the facts of teleological adaptation. For
these tinconscious adaptations, he uses the term "functional
153
action" in referring to the adaptive activities of the
heart, lungs, the nervous system, etc. The term "purpose"
refers, for him, to the planned activities of men and God.
Adaptation characterizes organic functions amenable to
observation and scientific interpretation; whereas purpose
belongs to the context of metaphysical explanation where
the question why is being dealt with. For him, purpose has
genuine meaning for human inquiry, for "apart from God,
. . . nature would have neither being nor evolutionary be-
154
coming." We shall, therefore, keep this distinction in
mind as we seek to understand Morgan's view of organic
adaptation. In order to prevent misunderstanding on this
point, the following quotation is offered:
152Ibid., p. 257.
^^Morgan, Life, p. 38.
154Ibid., p. 34.
175
Purpose should be Imputed to nothing less than one who
has attained the status of a person. Hence I, who
accept this "principle," should not, and do not, im
pute purpose to an emotion, to an instinct, to life,
or to "nature," since I do not impute to any one of
these the status of a person. 155
The only point I am trying to establish here is that, for
Morgan, the acceptance of the facts of unconscious adapta
tion does not require us to accept the invalid inference
that all organisms act according to conscious purpose.
Smuts accepts the facts of biological adaptation
and accounts for their emergence, organization, and di-
rectedness in terms of the activity of the principle of
Holism. That conscious purpose emerges only at the higher
levels of structure he makes clear in his statement that:
We have seen in Chapter VIII that these variations are
not accidental or haphazard, but the controlled, regu
lated expression of the inner holistic development of
organisms as wholes. There is Selection, and thus
direction and control, right through the entire forward
movement, not only in the origin of variations but also
at the various subsequent stages of their "selection,"
internal and external. This organic holistic control
of direction, this inner trend of the evolutionary pro
cess is really all that is meant by the metaphor of
Purpose or Teleology as applied to Nature or Evolution.
To infer more is in effect to make the mistake of
spiritual Idealism and to apply later human categories
to the earlier phases of the evolutionary p r o c e s s . 5 6
■^Morgan, Mind at the Crossways, p. 257.
Smuts, Holism, p. 343.
176
This statement Implies that the general holistic trend
In nature "retains Its specific holistic character all
through"157 the creative structures of nature, but that it
produces purposeful entities only on the conscious human
level. In all cases of organic adaptation, functions
terminate in organic values; for
the general trend of organic advance ... is not ran
dom or accidental or free to move in all directions;
it is controlled, it has the general character of uni
form direction under the influence of the organic or
holistic field of nature.
And there is more. Behind the evolutionary move
ment and the holistic field of Nature is the inner
shaping, directive activity of Holism itself, working
through the wholes and in the variations which cre
atively arise from them.
The important point to keep in mind here is that
Smuts and Morgan agree that organisms could not survive
without the adjustment of their organs and functions to the
inner needs of the whole structure and to the outer demands
of the environment.
For Sellars, as for Morgan and Smuts, the teleo
logical significance of organic values is that they depend
on the functions of the organic structures; but, once
achieved, they promote the health and integrity of those
157Ibid.. p. 105. 158Ibid., pp. 342-343.
177
structures. But each level of organization corresponds to
Its own level of function and outcome.
Sellars carefully distinguishes merely adaptive
behavior on the pre-conscious level from purposive behavior
on the human level. Only on the latter level do we find
consciousness, fore-thought, and intelligently formulated
plans acting as internal stimuli to useful behavior.
Again, as in the case of Morgan and Smuts, we find Sellars
looking upon purposeful action as a species of the wider
genus of adaptive behavior. According to this version of
organic teleology, directed behavior is ’ ’the expression of
159
internal relations and system" as a living whole. Such
behavior is always teleological because "it displays an
ordering of action-parts in such a way as to lead to
results related to the needs of the organism, . . . adap
tive to an independent nature and satisfactory to the
160
organism." This quotation makes it clear that, for
Sellars, survival, and welfare are the outcomes of a func
tional teleology. He agrees with Morgan and Smuts that,
even on the human level, much behavior is pre-conscious;
15Q
Sellars, The Essentials of Philosophy, p. 278.
^^Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism, p. 340.
178
for, "purposive action is, then, only a species of em
pirical teleology.in a broad sense, therefore, we can
regard all activity in nature as being instrumental to
values; but, in a more restricted sense, purposeful action
is found only in the higher organisms.
Sellars agrees with Morgan and Smuts on the point
that the structure of the organism transforms stimuli into
more than mechanical causes; he contends that:
When bodies are highly organized they are capable of
responses to stimuli, responses which are by no means
adequately accounted for by the external stimulus or
shove. The push becomes essentially an occasion which
must unite with the capacities of the thing pushed in
order to account for the resultant action. And, as we
go up the scale of organization, the importance in
causality of that which is pushed becomes ever greater.
The living body adapts itself to the environment and
even modifies the environment. . . . It is because of
this that relative autonomy is a feature of the world.
Things are not passive and inert. Their nature and
properties determine results as truly as the forces
external to them which impinge upon them. Under the
same conditions, one plant will die while another plant
will flourish.162
The point of Sellars’s argument is that degrees of suc
cessful adaptation depend on degrees of efficiency in the
functioning of the vital organs. Therefore, for Sellars,
1 6 W
^^Sellars, The Principles, p. 375.
179
as for Morgan and Smuts, the biological values which insure
survival and welfare are the most important outcomes of
organic structure and function. The level of success
attained by any organism in the struggle for life will be
directly proportional to the functional efficiency of its
adaptive organs.
The purpose of this chapter is now completed. We
have found Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars in agreement on the
proposition that the life sciences need teleological cate**
gories in order to render an adequate account of life
phenomena; and that these teleological categories must be
derived from the evidence of experience, not from the
reification of concepts like vital force. They have, con
sequently, rejected the positions of vitalism and mechanism
in favor of a more empirically true theory of levels in
which structures function for vitally necessary outcomes.
Vicious abstraction and lack of evidence, they contend,
were the sources of the inadequacies of pre-evolutionary
biology.
When the biological facts are grasped, they all
agree, we shall find that organic values depend on organic
functions, and these in turn on organic structures; so that
values, functions, and structures must be seen together
180
in their real, concrete setting if we are to have a true
understanding of life processes. It is precisely in the
concrete inter-dependence of structures, functions, and
values, therefore, that the teleology and purpose of life
are to be found. This fact offers exciting possibilities
for the future growth of knowledge with all its implica
tions for moral guidance on the part of man.
Having established the fact that Morgan, Smuts, and
Sellars have accepted organic teleology on a basis of fact
and evolutionary theory, we shall, in our final comment,
reiterate their divergence of opinion as to the final meta
physical import of this shared position. For the Divine
Purpose of a Divine Person, an unconscious Organic Field,
and an inherently self-active matter would seem to provide
man with different orientations toward his world and its
problems despite the apparent fact that these positions are
equally consistent with the known facts of biology adduced
in this study.
/
CHAPTER IV
TELEOLOGY AND PURPOSE ON THE LEVEL OF MIND
The purpose of this chapter is to determine the
teleological and purposive significance of the mind in the
evolutionary philosophies of Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars.
In carrying out this task, we shall direct our attention to
the relevant characteristics and functions of the mental
level of natural organization where neural structures, men
tal functions, and conscious values are found in factual
correlation with each other. The facts involved in this
situation lead in a natural way to our consideration of the
relations present among them. Accordingly, we shall start
from the given facts of mental organization and function
as the existential pre-requisites of mental values; then
we shall go on to compare the views of Morgan, Smuts, and
Sellars as to the teleological implications of this inter
dependence. The unity of mental processes underlying the
distinction of their structural, functional, and value
181
182
aspects will be sought in each case.
Since Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars will be found to
agree on the teleological interdependence of the mental
aspects of structure, function, and valuative outcomes, a
precise statement of their diverse interpretations of this
accepted interdependence becomes a problem of basic impor
tance to anyone who wants to understand the status and
function of the mind in emergent evolution. If, therefore,
we can demonstrate that, within the context of thought here
considered, the mind is both an existential condition and
a causal agency of the emergence of conscious values, then
we shall have established its teleological character.
The Nature of Mind
Morgan points out that the mind emerges from the
organic level of reality and that it is constituted by the
unity of certain novel characteristics and processes. In
his theory, the term ’ 'mind” has two distinct meanings:
(1) Mind is a universal attribute of Nature or Substance
in Spinoza1s sense and, in this sense, is correlated with
every event that can be interpreted under the physical
attribute of Substance; it is not conscious, and ’ ’ does not
183
arise in the course of evolutionary advance; it is there
ab initio.**^ (2) Mind is "that level of mental develop
ment at which distinctively cognitive reference is in
2
evidence." In the second sense, mind is emergent and
first appears when there is "the dawn of expectancy with
3
prospective reference to coming events."
Cognitive reference is a late product of evolution;
it is a response to advenient influences impinging upon the
organism from the outer world and occurs in three modes:
percipient reference, perceptive reference, and reflective
reference. Cognitive reference, however, emerges out of a
more primitive kind of response, called sentience, in which
the lower organisms without sense organs react adaptively
to stimuli from the environment. On this level, sense
qualities are not present and there is no outward reference
by the organism to the sources of the stimuli.
In the primitive reference of percipience, there
is awareness of separate sense qualities without identi
fication of their external sources. When, however, the
organism becomes aware that the stimuli of sensory
Morgan, Life, p. 232.
2Ibid.. p. 125. 3Ibid.. p. 127.
184
qualities originate in definite objects, perceptive refer
ence is present; and the reactions and motions of the
organism are facilitated over larger areas of behavior.
Finally, there is reflective reference by the organism with
interpreting mind which develops and uses intellectual con
cepts to understand and respond in consciously controlled
ways to the objective world. On this last level only can
we speak of purpose, whereas purposiveness is a trait of
all the modes of mental response. Every level is teleo
logical in the broad sense of being useful to adaptation
and survival.
Morgan contends that all of these modes of response
involve appropriate mental structures. They converge upon
the same object like three kinds of arrows, facilitating
the activities of the enminded organism. The modes of
response, therefore, are functions of the psychical indi
vidual; and minding, like living, is an adaptive function
of the organic substance. Of this substance, Morgan tells
us that:
As living he is an organised system or fellowship of
physiological processes. That constitutes his life.
As minding he is an organised system or fellowship
of modes of awareness. That constitutes his mind in
185
subjective regard. My belief is that life and mind,
since they are inseparable, constitute one system of
natural events under concomitance.^
The relevant point of Morgan's argument about concomitance
is that conscious reference is "a terminal product of
evolution"'* which arose, not as a "transformation of influ-
g
ence into reference," but as an emergent mode of mental
relatedness to "be accepted under acknowledgement as cor
relative with influence in the very foundations of nature."7
He admits, of course, that below the level of conscious
reference, as in plants and the lower animals, conscious
ness and purpose are absent, although sentience and per-
cipience have been operative to facilitate the adaptation
of the organism from the very earliest emergence of life.
This consideration leads him to say that, "As I read the
evidence, in some behavior there is guidance under prospec-
8
tive reference," but prior to the emergence of conscious-
o
ness there is only "retention of organisation" which
"forms the basal foundation on which the superstructure
4
Morgan, Mind at the Crossways, p. 52.
^Morgan, Life, p. 232.
6Ibid. 7Ibid. 8Ibid., p. 50.
9
Morgan, The Emergence, p. 108.
186
of revival in remembrance, and of retrospective memory in
%
reminiscence, is reared.
Consistent with his view that all modes of mental
relatedness emerge with organic structures, Morgan is at
some pains to give his reasons for rejecting the animistic
doctrine that the ground of mental life is an immaterial
anima, or soul, which accounts for mentality and its con
trol of behavior. On this point, he asserts that: "The
ground of physiological integration correlative with that
of psychological integration is to be sought, I conceive,
not in some hypothetical summation centre, but in cortical
process as a whole.From this position he concludes
that we need not have recourse to a mysterious psychic
entity to account for the integrative activity of the mind.
To postulate such an entity would render impossible a
scientific interpretation of the body-mind relationship
because we can form no idea of how such an entity as the
anima could guide mental processes in their control of
bodily behavior.
10Ibid.. p. 108.
^"^Morgan, Instinct, p. 285.
187
Against the radical behaviorists, Morgan Insists
that their reduction of mental phenomena to the merely
physiological is an error since such a reduction would
imply that mental facts are unreal and therefore of no
efficacy in relation to the bodily processes. He holds, on
the contrary, that all modes of mental functioning are
really effective in relation to bodily behavior.
The preceding considerations lead Morgan to define
the emergent mind as the correlate of the highly developed
neural structures of the brain and nervous system. Hence,
mind and matter are not two substances; instead, they are
12
one substance regarded "under different aspects." In
psychological usage at this time, the terms neurosis and
psychosis are diagnostic categories referring respectively
to milder and more severe mental disorders having charac
teristic origins, courses, and symptoms, and implying a
pathological failure of normal functioning. Contrary to
these conventional usages, Morgan holds that neuroses are
any nerve actions in the brain; and that psychoses are the
normal subjective mental correlates of neuroses. Hence,
12
C. Lloyd Morgan, The Springs of Conduct (London:
Edward Arnold and Company, 1&92), p. 209.
188
we must remember that in Morgan's usage these terms do not
imply pathology. For Morgan, then, mental events which
do not attain consciousness are hypopsychoses correlated
with simpler neural processes. He sums up his theory of
the mind by saying that "mind is to be regarded as the sum
13
total of psychoses and hypopsychoses." Accordingly,
psychoses and neuroses are the two aspects of the mind as
one mental substance, and their correlation is just a fact
which we must accept. Of this factual correlation, he
tells us that:
There is just correlation of this attribute with that.
If it be a kind of relatedness, it is sui generis, and
stands alone of its kind. Within each attribute there
is a hierarchical order of involution and dependence;
but as between attributes there is just that one kind
of relatedness, at each given level, which I seek to
distinguish by the specialized use of the word "cor
relation.”14
In a similar vein, he goes on to assert that mind
includes
all that is objectively minded as well as processes of
minding. For me, therefore, the emergent stuff of the
mind is afforded by the distributive and peripheral
13Ibid., p. 190.
14
Morgan, Emergent Evolution, pp. 201-202.
189
items as minded; the substance of the mind is the psy
chical gotogetherness of all such peripheral -eds as
are on the tapis.^
In the subjective sense, "all substantial minding, all
emergent stuff as minded, is within the personal system" ^
of the individual whose experience is in question.
In human life, the teleological aspect of nature
becomes self-conscious; neural structure, constitutional
stability, and the dominance of ends over means become
conspicuous through the awareness of anticipated values.
Mental finalism, in the sense of conscious purposes, oper
ates through processes of thought. What actually happens
on this level is described by Morgan in this way:
That among the conditions, then and there actually
present, are certain anticipations of, or desire for,
a further development more or less clearly foreseen
as possibilities in the future; and that just in so
far as these are present we may speak of a purpose and
end and so-called final cause. Some form of at least
pre-perception, if not of definite anticipation, is
essential. If this and nothing more than this be
finalism, then we are all finalists in our interpreta
tion of human life. And there is nothing to differ
entiate the natural course of process in this case from
that in any other case, save only the presence among
the existent relationships of the psychological factors
which we name prospective significance and interest.
. . . And such conscious relationships count, really
15Ibid.. p. 194. 16Ibid.. p. 196.
190
count, every whit as much as any other natural rela
tionships. They are not merely epiphenomenal phos
phorescence; they are real conditions of the course of
process, both mental and bodily, ... a genuinely
teleological factor.^
The lack of evidence of "such conscious relationships in
the life of plants, in the development of the embryo, in
18
the reflex actions of the spinal animal" is Morgan’s
reason for rejecting a purposeful and "finalistic inter-
19
pretation of such processes." Hence, in these crude
creatures unconscious purposiveness only is present, but
not conscious reference; for the latter always involves
some degree of purpose. Man's behavior, he concludes, is
telic through the presence of the psychological factors of
consciousness and purpose which are constituent elements
of his novel mental substance. On the human level, the
errors of behaviorism and animism are, in consequence, more
disastrous than they are on lower levels. An adequate
human psychology, he feels, must determine these neural and
psychic factors by empirical investigation and not by
dogmatic speculation.
■^Morgan, Instinct, pp. 248-249.
18Ibid., p. 249. 19Ibid., p. 250.
191
He asks us to take the psychological world as we
find it, "and try to interpret it in terms of the relations
vrtiich we are able to distinguish; such as temporal, spatial,
physical, and, for us above all, mental relations,"2® which
are given together with, and not apart from, each other.
When the actual nature of the relationships consti
tuting a mind are known, Morgan points out that we shall
grasp the fact that: "A mind, as this word is used through
out our discussion, is an organic system of natural events
which stand in a distinctive kind of relationship as parts
21
within a whole." The mind, like all other emergent sub
stances, is, in Morgan's view, "part of and one with the
22
organisation of nature." It is to be interpreted scien"
tifically through observation and explained philosophically
through reference to its source in the Divine Purpose.
Since Morgan holds that mind, on the personal human level,
shares its purposes with God, it is relevant at this point
to mention his statement of this relationship.
When asked how he stands with reference to God as
the Source of natural relations, Morgan answers: "Without
2®Morgan, The Animal Mind, pp. 254-255.
21Ibid., p. 254. 22Ibid., p. 255.
192
hesitation I reply: I stand for One Source of all natural
relations and of their progressive organization in evolu-
23
tionary advance. But here I leave it at that.'
Like other substances in Morgan's thought, the
emergent mind is a unified form of relatedness, an integral
entity, in which mental events are the items of stuff which
go together in specific ways to constitute its substantial
unity. Just as electrons are items of stuff in the atom,
and atoms are items of stuff in the molecule, so discrete
and multiple psychic events— sensing, perceiving, reflect
ing, enjoying— go together to constitute the substantial
entity of the mind. Whereas the items of stuff are many
and discrete, their substantial unity is an indivisible
wholeness which interpenetrates and pervades the entire
integral entity. Thus, a mind just is its items of stuff
existing in this form of relatedness.
That he conceives both body and mind to be instru
mental to the achievement of values is made clear by the
following statement:
In the story of action this or that organ of the body
is in a broad sense instrumental within a system of
action under influence; in the story of reference
23Ibid.. p. 256.
193
the mental concomitants of action in this or that organ
of the body are subservient within a system of refer
ence.
This means, for Morgan, that bodily organs are instruments
of the physical brain in the context of physical influence;
while mental activities are subservient to the development
of the field of thought. On this basis, he maintains the
duality of body and mind yet holds them to be strictly
correlative and parallel in their development. It should
be recalled here that, in philosophical regard, Morgan
postulates the unrestricted correlation of psychical and
physical sequences of events; but that, in the context of
science, each series is interpreted in terms of its own
kinds of relatedness.
Yet, believing that guidance involves conscious
anticipation, he holds that "there is, for us, no guidance
till cognitive reference introduces the prospective
25
factor." And, to be effective in guiding behavior,
prospective reference in mind must be "concomitant with
26
some present mode of action in the body story." Mental
guidance of physical action, then, involves prevision
^Morgan, Life, p. 230.
25Ibid., p. 233. 26Ibid., p. 247.
194
accompanied by present bodily action. However, the tin-
restricted concomitance of physical and psychical cor
relates can only be acknowledged; it can, in no sense, be
proved. For Morgan, as for Spinoza, "substance thinking
and substance extended are one and the same substance,
comprehended now through one attribute and now through the
27
other."
The foregoing distinction implies that one knows
bodily behavior— his own or another*s— by observing it; and
one knows his own psychical life intuitively by being that
life. When events are observed and intuited under these
two attributes, Morgan holds that they can be correlated.
But all of this is a matter of scientific interpretation;
it has, for Morgan, no concern with the philosophical ex
planation of these events through reference to their unseen
Divine Source; for "the sole and sufficient ground of all
experience and all scientific knowledge is the order of
28
nature." Yet, in philosophical regard, "apart from
God, . . . nature would have neither being nor evolutionary
27Ibid., p. 249.
28
Morgan, Instinct, p. 156.
195
29
becoming." Stated in another way, this means that, for
Morgan, sensations, perceptions, and concepts involve
neural correlates, and "are also states of consciousness,
. . . integral parts of the same experience regarded from
30
different points of view." Therefore, psychology as a
science is concerned with correlating psychical with neural
events in patterns of antecedence and sequence quite apart
from their metaphysical sources. Such teleological rela
tions as are evident here must be purely empirical, and
science will give only an incomplete account of the data.
A complete explanation will, accordingly, involve both
scientific interpretation and philosophical explanation
through reference to Divine Purpose.
In the context of metaphysics, life is the integral
unity of organic events and mind is the integral unity of
psychical events or items of stuff; and this emergent unity
of enjoyment is the substantial unity of the enjoyer. As
emergent substances, neither is identical with spirit but
with "manifestations of spirit in an ascending hierarchy
29
Morgan, Life, p. 34.
30
Morgan, The Interpretation, p. 106.
196
31
of such manifestations/' under the conditions of space
and time. For, he tells us, "spirit is not a 'quality' at
the summit of the evolutionary hierarchy. It is that of
which all qualities, from lowest to highest, are manifesta-
32
tions under the conditions of 'time and space."' Spirit
in this context means the Creative Spirit of God which
Morgan acknowledges as the ultimate source of evolution,
the Final Substance. In spiritual experience, we human
beings by virtue of an emergent attitude of joy and re
sponsibility in seeking and enjoying values referred to
Divine Purpose, recognize ourselves as purposive beings who
can identify our ideals with the purposes of God. In this
human context, spirit as attitude is an item of mental
stuff, not a substance. On this assumption, Morgan con
tends :
We human folk are, in life and mind, integral parts of
that world-plan. We too are manifestations of Spirit
which is "revealed" within us. Each of us is a life,
a mind, and Spirit--an instance of life as one expres
sion of world-plan, of mind as a different expression
of that world-plan, of Spirit in so far as the Sub
stance of that world-plan is revealed within us.
3Hforgan, Life, p. 1.
32Ibid. 33Ibid., p. 32.
It follows, according to this argument, that the human soul
is not an immaterial anima belonging to a supernatural
order of being; instead, it is an emergent quality of our
experience "as distinctive of that level of mental develop
ment at which a concept of Spirit is within the field of
reflective reference." In this sense, even the advocate
of emergent evolution can accept the reality of the human
soul as a psychical attitude which is aware of God's Sub
stantial Nature as its Source and has an emergent spiritual
aspect in its own nature. This acceptable usage of spirit,
then, refers only to a concept of God as Source of values,
and an attitude of responsibility toward maximizing the
potentials in human nature. In this context, the important
point for us is that Morgan rejects the animistic concep
tion of the soul as violating his monistic hypothesis about
the world. In sum, mind is a substance and the spiritual
attitude is its highest item of stuff as emergent.
On the other hand, Morgan disagrees with the ma
terialistic position that psychoses are identical with, or
the products of, neuroses. Morgan’s unusual meanings for
34
Ibid., p. 35.
198
the terms neurosis and psychosis are made clearer on
page 187 of this dissertation, and the reader should keep
those special meanings in mind here. On the contrary, he
points out that:
What an external observer might perceive as a neurosis
in my brain, I should at the same moment be feeling
as a psychosis. The neurosis is the outer or objec
tive aspect; the psychosis is the inner or subjective
aspect. ^
What we can correctly say, on his assumption of the duality
of body and mind, is that neuroses and psychoses are differ
ent aspects of the same mental substance. Just as neuroses
have been evolved from "other and simpler modes of molecu-
36
lar motion," so psychoses have been evolved from "some-
37
thing which answers on the subjective side to motion,"
i.e., from some more primitive form of mental relatedness
below consciousness. Here, again, we must remember the
special meaning he attaches to the terms neuroses and
psychoses.
Since, on his postulate of the universal correla
tion of dual attributes, every form of molecular motion
33
C. Lloyd Morgan, Animal Life and Intelligence
(Boston: Ginn and Company, 1891), pp. 465-466.
36Ibid.. p. 466. 37Ibid.
199
is correlated with a mode of mental activity, when the
neural correlate assumes "the form of the molecular pro
cesses in the human brain, the metakinetic manifestations
38
assume the form of human consciousness." Since con
sciousness is the mental concomitant of the highly organ
ized matter in the human brain, we cannot say that all
matter is conscious; we can only say that some appropriate
form of mental events is correlated with every molecular
motion. That mind and matter are foundational aspects of
all substances Morgan makes clear in the following state
ment: "There is emergence in mind, and emergent develop
ment in this or that mind, yet there is no emergence of
mind from that which is nowise mental. That means that
there is no emergent step from the physical to the men
tal."39
To summarize his theory of the mind succinctly, we
can now say that, for Morgan, the emergent mind is a super
venient kind of relatedness, constituted as a mental sub
stance by its psychical processes which are correlated with
neural events. On the conscious level, it is aware of
38Ibid., p. 467.
39
Morgan, Mind at the Crossways, p. 172.
its needs and ideal goals and able to respond adaptively to
its environment in ways that result in satisfactions and
enjoyed values. It is "the richest reality that we know
. . . at the apex of the pyramid of emergent evolution up
40
to date." On the human level, the mind’s ideals of value
"are the emergent stuff of which the natural gotogethemess
at the level of deity is the substance."4^ In this sense,
deity would appear to be a functional coordination of man's
ideal values, a psychical, moral incarnation of God's Pur
pose at the human level! The teleological significance of
this concept lies in the fact that guidance depends on the
nature of the self at the moment of action, and the degree
to which choices are controlled by ideal goals and knowl
edge of the means employed. Hence, human values as goals
are expressions of God's Purpose but as enjoyed by men they
are achievements of the reflective mind. Thus, their in
trinsic worth is dependent on the distinctive unity which
we confer upon their going together in our lives. As goals
they are mere disparate items of stuff without enjoyed
worth. If this is true, then Morgan would say that God's
40
Morgan, Bnergent Evolution, p. 203.
41Ibid.. p. 205.
201
purposes for reflective persons are first given as tasks,
not as satisfactions, and that man's action conditions all
that he experiences of values.
Morgan contends that only when man becomes an in
telligent and responsible agent, does he also become a per
son. Man is, therefore, in this new view, both a product
of evolution and an actor who is
a creative agent in the conduct of affairs. But, on
this understanding, I submit that nothing less than
one who has ends in view and seeks means to their
attainment under control of conduct, takes Part in
the drama of existence as a creative agent. 2
Morgan defines the person as one who acts as an agent. An
interesting consequence of this view of the person is Mor
gan's contention that the various abilities and functions
of the person— instincts, impulses, sensations, reflections,
imaginings--do not act as creative agents; instead, they
are the developed means through which the agent as a whole
carries on his adaptive life processes. In Morgan's sense,
these special functions are the properties of the personal
substance through which that substance relates itself to
other substances in the external world.
[organ, Mind at the Crossways, p. 170.
202
Consistent with this definition of the person,
Morgan likens man to God by saying that neither can be
/ O
"less than a person." As man is a personal agent of
intelligent, goal-directed conduct, and is only sometimes
creative, so God as Spiritus Creator is a personal agent
behind and within "the progressive constructiveness in
44
nature" at all times. The actual existence of the emer
gent human personality is, therefore, Morgan*s clue to the
personality of God; for, he asserts: "My philosophical
creed is that any event, and the whole system of events,
may be interpreted in terms of evolution, and that any
event and the whole system of events may be explained as
due to the creative activity of God."43
Morgan can regard the human person as the highest
emergent manifestation of Divine Purpose because he sees
the person as a self of enjoyment which shares its values
with other selves and acknowledges God's Purpose as a per
sonal agency creative of all that emerges; thus the person
shares in the active causality of God when, in the spiri
tual attitude, it explains the emergence of values— truth,
43Ibid., p. 171. 44Ibid.. p. 172.
45Ibid.. pp. 169-170.
beauty, goodness— by believing that "to be emergent in some
human persons falls within Divine Purpose,"^ as best
exemplified by "the Unique Individuality of Christ, . . . "^
whose love sought to unite all persons— human and Divine—
in a fellowship based on shared values. Morgan does not
further explain the Divine Personality which he freely
admits is an acknowledgment of a nystical character which
is logically necessary to philosophical explanation. The
person as agent is a fact, a plain result of evolution, as
interpreted by science; but the given order of nature can
not be explained except on the belief in the creative pur
pose of God, nor can human plans be explained except on the
supposition of the personal agency of human beings. Hence,
we must conclude that for Morgan, there could be no ex
planation of reality without the postulate of God's Purpose,
and purpose always grounds itself in personality, as Morgan
has told us before. By supplementing sequential related-
ness with the planful activity of personal agents through
out the whole pyramid of evolution, Morgan seeks to draw
out the teleological explanation of all substances on all
levels. He does this by acknowledging a Divine Purpose.
^Morgan, Life, p. 313.
204
According to this thesis, Morgan holds that mind is
teleological in two senses: (1) mental processes are telic
in the sense of being observably adaptive; and (2) mental
processes are designed by God as means of realizing His
purposes through the development of animals and persons.
In his opinion, therefore, "it is the function of con
sciousness, represented in the flesh by the cerebral cortex,
to drill and organize the active forces of the animal body
... in directions that are useful for the purposes of
animal life."^8
That some degree of knowledge is essential to the
direction of behavior he makes clear by saying: "The
organism that profits by experience, avoiding this because
it has been found unsatisfactory, and choosing that because
previous trial has shown it to be good, exercises conscious
49
selection."
The following analysis shows how he thinks this
works out on the human level:
Given in restricted concomitance with certain
physiological events, say in the frontal cortex of
48C. Lloyd Morgan, Habit and Instinct (London:
Edward Arnold, 1896), pp. 144-145.
49
Ibid., p. 152.
205
the cerebral hemispheres, a schematic plan in mind with
anticipatory reference; and given foretaste in joy of
its prospective realisation; something happens. There
is, if all go well, what we speak of as attainment of
a reflectively envisaged end in view. Intervenient
between envisagement of end in view and attainment of
end-state there are a number of contributory events.
They may as yet in large measure elude our attempts at
analysis; but they afford in enjoyment a substantial
net result which the empirical psychologist may speak
of as impulse. If all this, and the like, fall under
the heading of human purpose, it cannot be said to be
ruled out.
At this point, we see that, for Morgan, the mental
and value-oriented character of emergent beings is never
absent; and that, at the higher human level, this teleo-
logical feature becomes consciously dominant and obviously
undeniable; for, on this level, it controls behavior
through mental plans. We should remember, however, that
Divine Purpose is quite beyond the limited methods of the
science of psychology, which, in consequence, can only
observe and report such factual interdependence of mental
structures, processes, and values as are empirically
available to it. Indeed, philosophical postulates, which
are neither provable nor disprovable by science, must be
acknowledged if one is to supplement psychological inter
pretation with philosophical explanation of mental life
50Morgan, Life, p. 283.
206
in terms of design. We find Morgan, therefore, duly
acknowledging God's Purpose as the final Source of mental
teleology, but making no effort to prove His existence.
In the case of the empirical purposiveness of mental life,
Morgan simply points to the facts of its existence and
effectiveness in the economy of animal life.
Relative to the nisus toward deity, Morgan starts
his philosophical explanation of emergence with the ack
nowledgment of Divine Agency present at all points in
evolutionary advance; hence, for him, God is not emergent.
He, therefore, disagrees with Alexander's doctrine that
deity is, to each level, the quality of the next level to
emerge. For Morgan, on the contrary, deity is a term for
the emergent spiritual attitude of those men who see their
existence and ideals as grounded in the omnipresent Divine
Purpose, and, in this way, come to share in God's Activity
by seeking those values which their nature prescribes to
them. In this sense Morgan would contend that deity is an
emergent form of mental relatedness in the person, very
much as the pursuit and enjoyment of truth, goodness, and
beauty are emergent mental functions. But, as for the
Divine Purpose, it is primordial and before all emergence,
though it is also concomitant with all advance whatever.
207
Hence, for Morgan, nisus toward deity is really the un
remitting Activity of God, a concept fundamental to meta
physics but quite useless in the program of empirical and
relational treatment of nature by science. It is precisely
with the directive power of these ideals, accepted in the
spiritual attitude, that Morgan identifies religion in
which alone, for him, the Divine Purpose becomes the ob
jective of emergent personal life.
Turning now to the holistic position of Smuts, we
find that Smuts thinks of the mind as a characteristic
function of emergent wholes on the third level of reality,
above the atom and the cell. Contrary to Morgan’s view of
mind as a psychical substance in which items of psychical
stuff (i.e., psychical events) are organized into integral
wholes, Smuts regards the mind not as a substantial whole
but as the controlling component of personality, which is
a substantial whole. By mind, then, Smuts never means a
universal attribute of nature, but only the emergent con
trol system of personalities. The mind is "not itself a
real whole, but a holistic structure, a holistic organ,
especially of Personality which is a real whole.
^Srauts, Holism, p. 224.
Genetically, the mind steins from earlier "inorganic affini-
52
ties and organic selectivities”; and, in the organism,
has its neural basis in the brain and nervous system. This
is the general characteristic of mind whose functions
appear in consciousness and rational activity; in indi
vidual instances, mind is thus a culmination of intense
individual processes which lead to personality. Since the
individual mind is nursed into existence by the organic
processes of life, it is not, for Smuts, to be credited
with the origin and self-regulation of organisms. It
arrived too late in the evolutionary process to be respon
sible for such facts. If this is the case, we can see at
the outset that Smuts rejects Morgan's view that mind, in
any sense, characterizes, or is, the ultimate source of
nature. For Smuts, therefore, mind, like matter and life,
is an emergent novelty, a species of the genus Holism.
Nevertheless, mind is the "most important and conspicuous
53
constituent" of the personality which has risen from the
basis of "the prior structures of matter, life, and mind."5^
That personality is not a self-existent phenomenon but
52Ibid.. p. 225. 53Ibid.. p. 261.
209
a novelty which involves body, life, and mind, Smuts makes
clear in his statement that:
Science has come to the rescue of the body and thereby
rendered magnificent service to human welfare. The
ideal Personality only arises where Mind irradiates
Body and Body nourishes Mind, and the two are one in
their mutual transfigurement.
Concerning the mechanist-animist controversy, Smuts
refuses to distinguish mind and body and then hypostatize
them as isolated entities, thus agreeing with Morgan that
the so-called body-mind relation is not a genuine problem.
However, Smuts does not follow Morgan in accepting the
■
distinction of two points of view in knowledge, one inter
pretative and the other explanatory, and then postulating
the correlation of their respective phenomena. But he
does agree with Morgan that the distinction and hypostasis
of body and mind grow out of the limitations of scientific
analysis and philosophical abstraction, both of which can
be fertile sources of pseudo-problems and false conclu
sions.
In Smuts’s theory, body and mind
are not independent reals; disembodied Mind and dis-
minded Body are both impossible concepts, as either
55
Ibid.
210
has meaning and function only In relation to the other.
. . . Mind does not so much act on body as penetrate
it, and thus to act through or inside it. "Peraction"
or "intro-action” would be preferable to "interaction"
as a description of the relation of Mind to Body.5°
The position here envisioned by Smuts would imply that:
Mind and Body are elements in the whole of Personality;
and that this whole is an inner creative, recreative
and transformative activity, which accounts for all
that happens in Personality as between its component
elements. No explanation will hold water which ignores
the most important factor of all in the situation, and
that is the holistic Personality itself.”
These considerations lead Smuts to conclude that psychology
has been too analytical, neglecting the holistic inter
dependence and co-actions of the different aspects of the
personality. An important result of this view is that
Smuts, like Morgan, rejects both animism and mechanism in
psychology. His own view is, essentially, that mechanism
identifies the personal whole with its elements, thus fail
ing to recognize the real unity of the person; and that
animism identifies the whole person with its higher mental
processes, cut off and isolated from its other elements,
thus introducing a different false view of the person. In
the increasing intensity of organization, through the
physico-chemical, the biochemical, and the psycho-chemical
57Ibid., pp. 261-262.
211
levels, Smuts agrees with Morgan that the earlier levels of
the mind continue to exist in the later, but are re-directed
by their new relations in the novel whole. He says of this:
In this grading-up the earlier structures are not
destroyed but become the basis of later, more evolved
synthetic holistic structures; the character of whole
ness increases with the series and the elements of
newness, variation and creativeness become more
marked.58
Since mechanism is a relative term for the looser degrees
of coordination characteristic of the lower levels of the
personality, it cannot account for the increasing integra
tion of the emerging personality. On this point, Smuts
contends that:
Mechanism is the type of structure where the work
ing parts maintain their identity and produce their
effects individually, so that the activity of the
structure is, at least theoretically, the mathematical
result of the individual activities of the parts. . . .
There is a measure of Mechanism everywhere, and there
is a measure of Holism everywhere; but the Holism gains
on the Mechanism in the course of Evolution, it becomes
more and more as Mechanism becomes less and less with
the advance. Holism is the more fundamental activity,
and we may therefore say that Mechanism is an earlier,
cruder form of Holism; the more Holism there is in
structure, the less there is of the mechanistic charac
ter, until finally in Mind and Personality the mecha
nistic concept ceases to be of any practical use.
58Ibid., p. 145. 59Ibid.
212
In defense of this holistic conception of per
sonality, Smuts points out that, for mechanism, mind and
volition become illusory and ineffective in relation to the
movements of the body. If this were the case, then, he
wonders, "how they could have arisen and grown in the
struggle for existence?"^ The facts, on the contrary, he
holds, show that "nothing can be more certain than that our
human volition issues in active movements and external
actions.His final conclusion on this point is that
mechanism is false in psychology.
Smuts next argues against the immaterial anima as
the inner nature of the personality, by contending that:
While science denies reality to life and mind, the
other side retorts by erecting them into vital and
mental forces with a substantiality of their own. Thus
arises the counter-hypothesis of Vitalism. Both views
as a matter of fact are one-sided and misleading; the
mechanistic view by ignoring the essentially holistic
element in organic or psychical wholes; the vitalistic
view by misconceiving the vital or psychic element in
such wholes. The fundamental mistake is the severance
of the essential elements in a whole and their hypos
tasis into independent interacting entities or sub
stances. Thus body and mind wrongly come to be con
sidered as two separate interacting substances.^2
60Ibid., p. 146.
62Ibid.. p. 146.
61Ibid-
213
For Smuts, accordingly, the £acts of integration
show that the personality is a developing whole whose psy
chic activities are integral aspects of its development.
Mind, with its selectiveness and direction of behavior, is
inherent to the personality. For Holism, mind is a phase
of personality growth, and a crucial phase, because, in the
mind, personality has a control system through which it
can know and intelligently seek conscious values. In this
fact, lies its teleological significance. Smuts formu
lates this fact by saying that mind is "the new system of
control which culminates in conscious rational Purpose as
63
a function of Personality." As the richest whole we
know, the personality cannot be accounted for by consider
ing only some of its aspects. Non-holistic concepts are
inadequate to deal with it; for, Smuts contends, "The cen
tral conception of Personality is that of a whole; it is
the most holistic entity in the universe, hence no other
category will do justice to it, and certainly not mecha
nism. 1,64
In disagreement with Morgan, Smuts holds that with
out mind the universe would have existed; but, in agreement
63Ibid.. p. 235. 64Ibid., p. 290.
with Morgan, he also holds that without the active presence
of the mind in the personality neither knowledge nor the
higher values could occur in human experience. For the
mind is the means through which the person is aware of him
self and of the world, is able to organize his behavior,
and is able to achieve those values which constitute his
self-realization. The teleological functions of the mind
are illustrated by all the value-oriented activities of the
person. Hence, each of the mind's functions contributes
something to the increasing wholeness of the person's self-
realization; the "intelligence or rational activity is
subordinate and instrumental--it has to discover and co
ordinate means to the end of self-realization"^ of the
whole person. By insisting that "purpose is the function
of Mind by which it contemplates some future desired end
and makes the idea of this end exert its full force in the
present,Smuts makes clear that his concept of mind is
telic and purposeful. In conception and conation, the mind
formulates its goals and strives to achieve them; and,
Smuts continues:
66Ibid.. p. 258.
215
Purpose marks the liberation of Mind from the domina
tion of circumstances and indicates its free creative
activity, away from the trammels of the present and the
past. Through purpose Mind finally escapes from the
house of bondage into the free realm of its own sover
eignty. All through its great adventure its procedure
is fundamentally holistic, and this can be shown by
reference to the various activities of Mind as analysed
by psychology. Free creative synthesis appears every
where in mental functioning, and not least in the
region of Metaphysics, Ethics, Art and Religion, which,
however, fall outside the scope of this work. ^
At every level, mind is teleological; and, at the human
level, it is also purposeful; for its activities lead
directly to "the development of the individual, of the
68
self, of the Personality." It follows from the doctrine
of holism that mind is neither matter nor a question mark
behind psychical activities; rather it is the organizing
element of the total personality. In asserting this
general conclusion, Smuts agrees with Morgan that we must
remember that the specific details of mental life are to be
sought through detailed scientific investigation. In con
clusion, Smuts makes it clear that when the mind formulates
its ideals and organizes the energies of the body in their
pursuit:
Purpose is the most complete proof of the freedom and
creative power of the mind in respect of its material
67Ibid., p. 226. 68Ibid., p. 241.
216
and other conditions, of its power to create its own
conditions and to bring about its own situations for
its own free activities. *
Considerations of the kind indicated in the pre
ceding statements lead Smuts, as they led Morgan, to con
clude that intelligent discrimination of values and
deliberate effort to realize them, on the level of per
sonality, are the highest functions of the mind; and that
these functions, along with all the subordinate functions
and activities involved in them, are definitely teleo-
logical and purposeful. The outstanding disagreement
between the two men lies in the fact that Morgan sees the
ulterior source of mind in a purposeful God whose designs
are expressed in mental evolution, whereas, for Smuts, this
source is the unconscious organic field of nature working
through the holistic principle of creativity.
For Sellars, the nature of the mind becomes the
crucial test of his reformed materialism; he must show, on
his naturalistic principles, how the mind, with its ack
nowledged complexity of structure and directed conscious
ness, can be understood in terms of organized matter alone.
Relative to his premises, it is his contention that the
69lbid., p. 258.
217
"mind is the relatively permanent organization of instincts,
tendencies, habits, and capacities which enable the animal
to act as a whole"7^ in relation to its organic needs and
external stimuli, "a fact which physical science is forced
71
to recognize." Although the mind is fundamentally sub
conscious or unconscious, it is nevertheless "the setting,
72
source and condition of consciousness," a highly organ
ized physical structure with the potentiality of conscious
ness whenever it functions in certain ways.
As Sellars sees it, the "mind is a terra for that
which controls responses, . . . expresses itself in and so
73
is revealed, to that extent, by consciousness," which,
in turn, is "a part of the nature of the brain when it is
74
functioning." From these statements, we can see at once
that, for Sellars, consciousness is not a substance; in
stead, it is an emergent quality of the functioning cortex
of the brain; and the physical brain is the organ of adap
tation. Mind, as emergent quality of the functioning brain,
is "an internal process of interpretation and adjustment
^Sellars, The Essentials of Philosophy, p. 248.
71Ibid. 72Ibid., p. 250.
73Ibid., p. 264. 74Ibid.
218
characteristic of the . . . organism, "a part of nature
and, therefore, with the same categorial structure as
nature."78 It is an emergent construct of the physical
world agreeable in nature to "the principles of science
which assert that the physical world is a closed uni
verse."77 If what has just been said is true, then the
mind is that complex of active brain structures which co
ordinate the adaptive responses of the behavior of the
organism. Hence, for Sellars, consciousness is "but a
78
variant within" the brain where it "can act as the focus
79
and instrument of functional adjustment." There can be
no doubt that the words quoted here indicate a teleological
view of both brain and consciousness; nor that, in
Sellars's mind, consciousness can develop the plans and
direct the behavior appropriate to purposeful living on the
part of the organism.
In Sellars’s opinion, the unconscious activity of
the brain is as important to psychology as is its conscious
ness; for, he asserts, "we may define psychology, then, as
^Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism, p. 312.
78Sellars, Physical Realism, p. 398.
77Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism, p. 314.
78Ibid.. p. 313. 79Ibid.
219
the science of the conscious and unconscious processes
80
essential to intelligent behavior." Consequently, so
long as behavior involves adjustment, just so long will
psychology be forced to take account of it along with con
scious processes.
This emphasis on behavior, however, does not lead
Sellars to conclude that consciousness is either unreal or
ineffective in relation to bodily behavior. Thus, for him,
consciousness is not a shadowy epiphenomenon of physical
activities. Instead, it is the most complex emergent func
tion known to us, for in our "consciousness we are on the
inside of these events; we are the events . . . inside of
81
reality." Perception and referential thought are two
ways in which we become aware of the events constituting
what we are. In our conative response, we use the mental
functions of perception, memory, reasoning, and attention
which have "developed with the needs and structure of the
82
organism." Our conscious functions, thus, have their
origins in matter, specifically in the developing neural
structures of the active brain. As in the case of Morgan,
80
Sellars, The Principles, p. 321.
81Ibid., p. 322. 82Ibid.
220
we find Sellars also holding a view that reality is known
to us under two aspects:
Reality has a content as well as a form. And it is
this content at the evolutionary level of mind which
emerges as quales with which we are acquainted be
cause, as conscious beings, they constitute that
field of awareness which we are. 3
This inner content of reality, raised by synthetic emer
gence to the level of consciousness, enters into our con
scious minds along with our experience of outer things.
Sellars makes this clear by saying that, "We are conscious
organisms thinking the things around us in accordance with
our nature and theirs."^ But from this inner ideal nature
of things, Sellars does not draw the conclusion of meta
physical idealism. He would not, therefore, agree with
Morgan’s contention that the lower structures involve a
mental correlate in their constitution. In conclusion, we
can say that, for Sellars, the entire mind— both its un
conscious and its conscious functions— is teleological and
adjustmental; and that, on the conscious level, it has
developed its highest and most efficient methods of
83Ibid., pp. 322-323.
^Sellars, Physical Realism, p. 217.
221
securing the ends of organic ’ well-being. Thus, the "sys
tematic character of our concepts and purposes must be an
index of the system-forming and system-sustaining capacity
of the brain.
Sellars agrees with both Morgan and Smuts in re
jecting the immaterial anima and the older mechanistic
concept of the mind, but with an interesting difference.
The older mechanistic concept utilized only the character
istics of inorganic matter; it, therefore, reduced all
substances and functions to one level of causality— the
mechanical. For it, none of the distinctively mental
traits appeared to be real; consciousness itself was re
duced to the status of an illusion; and conscious purpose
and deliberate choice were banished from the physical world
86
as "a closed causal system." Sellars rejects this view
of the mind on the ground that it failed to recognize the
levels of organization which evolutionary thought forced
upon later thinkers. But now that both science and phi
losophy have a more adequate grasp of these levels, Sellars
QC
Sellars, The Essentials of Philosophy, p. 281.
®^Sellars, The Principles, p. 331.
222
feels that we have "new hope of naturalizing mental pro-
87
cesses and localizing them in nature." Stated differ
ently, his view is that by recognizing levels in nature and
by its use of empirically derived categories, reformed
materialism can more adequately grasp the complex nature
and operations of mental structures as integral parts of
the physical world. In this context, he reminds us that
even the physical floor of reality is not alien to the
emergent structures, the directedness, and the mindedness
which are empirically found on the higher levels of order;
thus, even this floor is not mechanical in the older sense
of classical physics. We can therefore see that, on this
point, he agrees with Morgan and Smuts both of whom also
insisted that emergent levels are as real as the lowest
mechanical level. One direct result of this position is
the rejection of the mechanistic theory of the mind.
The animistic theory that the mind or soul is an
unobservable entity which serves as a productive source of
mental phenomena is, for Sellars, an unscientific and un-
verifiable concept which is useless in the work of phi
losophy and psychology. Since a genuine explanation must
87Ibid., p. 380.
223
be stated in terns of the actual facts and setting of
mental events, Sellars contends that the immaterial anima
explains nothing because it gives no specific knowledge at
all. The methods of science have failed to detect "this
88
influx of energy” which such a theory must suppose to
pass from the anima to the physical world in the mental
control of bodily behavior. Its further implication that
"the brain-event acts upon the soul and so energy dis-
89
appears from the physical world into an immaterial world"
is, for Sellars, both unverifiable and contrary to the law
of the conservation of energy. Furthermore, the existence
of such animal souls before and after their association
with animal bodies is a mystery which can serve as a fer
tile source of superstitious persecution and neglect of
man's ethical interests. Thus, for Sellars, as for Morgan
and Smuts, dualistic theories fail to account for the facts
and to encourage the responsible pursuit of ethical values.
Sellars finds that each of them "tries to express a truth,
but, in so doing, meets a counter-truth which it cannot
90
do justice to." In the view of Sellars, the opposed
88Ibid., p. 329.
90
Ibid.. p. 334.
89Ibid.
fallacies of mechanism and animism in psychology arise from
the same methodological mistakes; first, the failure to
recognize levels of order in natural fact; and, secondly,
the initial postulation of mind and body as two totally
unlike substances. In opposition to these mistakes, he
holds that mind is what the body does in the adjustment of
the organism to the environment in the processes of satis
fying needs. From this position he concludes that, if we
make the correct initial assumptions, we shall get rid of
gratuitous mind-body problems. It will be remembered that
Morgan and Smuts have made the same point.
Sellars holds that mental functions are teleologi-
cal throughout and that they are purposively so on the
conscious level. On this point, he asserts:
What I am arguing for is a teleology of self-
direction rather than a teleology of finalism, a tele
ology intrinsic to an economy which is both spatial
and temporal. In such immanent causality traditional
ideas of pushes from the past and pulls from the future
are transcended. A high-order substance makes its own
time in terms of its economy.^1
Crude mechanism and animism fail in their interpretation
of the directedness of mental life because "to the extent
there is self-direction there is escape from blindness
91
Sellars, The Philosophical Review, LII, 26.
and chance. As I see it, the brain-mind is an organ for
92
the highest type of self-direction."
Summary and Conclusions.— We have examined the
views of Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars on the nature of the
mind. Morgan said that mind is, first, a universal cor
relate of Substance and, secondly, the emergent psychical
unity of all acts and objects of cognitive reference. In
the second sense, mind is the psychical correlate of the
highly organized matter in the brain and nervous system,
and its functions are always adaptive. It is neither a
merely physical mechanism nor an immaterial anima, but a
novel structure identical with the psychical items and
substantial relations found in it. Morgan agreed with
Sellars in holding that one knows his own mind in two dis
tinguishable ways: first, he intuits what his mental acts
are by being them; secondly, he knows the behavioral ex
pression of his mental acts by observing his bodily actions.
What he intuits as a conscious event (or psychosis in Mor
gan's special sense) in his mind he can, under the right
conditions, perceive as a neural process (or neurosis in
Morgan's special sense) in the brain. The higher levels
226
of mind are the more functionally integrated forms of the
mental structures found on the preconscious levels of
psychosis; the presence of emergent mental qualities has
raised the lower ones to greater degrees of consciousness
and efficiency. At its highest known level, mental related-
ness becomes emergent deity through the presence in it of
ideals of value regarded as expressions of a Divine Pur
pose. Such deity is, therefore, an emergent unity of
conscious ideals whose function is to organize, control,
and direct all other functions of the organism in the
interests of the purposes of a growing personal (i.e.,
spiritual) life. Morgan, accordingly, finds purposive
adaptation throughout the entire pyramid of evolution.
Smuts agreed with Morgan that the emergent mind
exists only on the third level of natural order, but he
disagreed with him as to its origin and status. For Smuts,
the mind is not itself a substance; instead, it is an
organizing, holistic element of an instrumental nature
belonging to a substantial personality. Its first origin
lies in the chemical affinities and organic selectivities
of the organism which preceded it in the evolutionary pro
cess. Since its neural basis is the brain, it could not
227
emerge until after organisms with nervous systems had
established themselves. Contrary to the position of Morgan,
Smuts pointed out that the ultimate organic field of nature
has neither mind nor personality. Instead, this field is
an unconscious genus of which matter, life, and minded per
sonality are the emergent species, if one may express his
thought so.
Mind, however, is the most fundamental character
istic of the emerging personality; for, through its control
and direction of the behavior of the organic body, mind is
present in all the parts and actions of the personality.
Smuts, therefore, agreed with Morgan that the mind is
neither a mechanism nor an immaterial anima, and that
animism and mechanism are false in psychology.
Smuts agreed with Morgan that the emergent mind is
the control system through the use of which the growing
personality discriminates, seeks and finally enjoys values.
It, therefore, is the fundamental teleological factor in
the whole person; for, through its activity, the person
understands and overcomes difficulties in himself and in
his environment so as to achieve higher degrees of freedom
and self-realization.
228
Sellars has said that the mind is the brain whose
stable organization of functions enables the organism as
a whole to respond in adaptive ways to its needs and its
environment. Consciousness is the highest emergent function
of the brain, a function and not a substance. He agreed
with Morgan and Smuts that all the functions of the brain
are teleological, but he limited purposeful consciousness
to the higher mental processes in which discrimination of
ends and means becomes a deliberately accepted task of the
living organism in its ethical aspect. It is interesting
to note that he agreed with Morgan in the view that we have
two ways of knowing our own nature: in intuition, we are
our consciousness; and, in observation, we perceive our
bodily behavior. But he rejected Morgan's view that mental
correlates correspond to sub-cortical structures of the
brain.
For Sellars, the person is the trained, socially
developed organism; hence, for him, Smuts's view that the
person is a novel whole of organic and mental elements
would appear to be unacceptable. For Sellars, personality
appears to be a function of the developed organism and not
a substance in its own right, as it is for Smuts.
229
All three men agree that the mind is purposive in
its unconscious activities and is consciously purposeful in
its conscious activities. We can conclude, therefore, that
they agree that mind is always teleological and sometimes
purposeful in structure and function.
Since I accept the theory of logically discontinu
ous levels on the evidence offered by my sources, I also
accept the implied inadequacy of animistic and mechanistic
views of mind. However, on my own hypothesis of axiologi-
cal teleomechanism (see Appendix), I regard Sellars*s view
that the conscious mind is not a substance but rather a
function of the complex neural structure of the brain as
wrong in so far as it omits from the mind a real structure
of its own. This, however, does not prevent my accepting
his contention that mental functions and valuative outcomes
are verifiably real. A similar criticism of Smuts's view
that the mind is only a component element in personality
also follows from teleomechanism, which postulates the
aspects of structure, function, and outcome in every sub
stance. Morgan's view that mind is a genuine substance
(i.e., a form of mental relatedness) which grounds mental
functions and outcomes in its integral unity is logically
compatible with my own hypothesis. Hence, I cannot say
230
t
that he omits an essential aspect of mental processes; his
account rather supports a genuinely philosophical explana
tion (see Appendix) of the integral wholeness of minds.
Teleomechanism implies the integrity of each substantial
whole (including minds) and thus provides each substance
with an identity of its own.
The advantage of the empirical approach of evolu
tionary thought to the problems arising from recognition of
the interdependence of mental structures, functions, and
values is, of course, that it forces our attention to the
facts in the situation and thus frees psychology from ex
planations of mental processes couched in terms of the
properties of matter or hypostatized spirits. The empiri
cal approach of our authors has resulted in a functional
view of mind as a means of satisfying needs; and, at least
in this sense, we can conclude that their view is both
teleological and in accordance with the psychological facts
already adduced.
Specific Characteristics of Mind and
their Teleological Functions
In this section, our task will be to state and
compare the views of Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars on the
231
distinguishable characteristics of the mind and to point
out some of the most important teleological functions of
these characteristics in relation to the nature of the mind
as a whole. In this context, we shall endeavor to bring
out the similarities and differences between unconscious
teleological functions which are adaptive and purposive and
conscious mental activities which are purposeful and delib
erate in the sense that they involve some degree of ratio
nality and intelligence. Since our main concern here is
with mind, we shall seek to make clear the relation of pur
poseful behavior and the enjoyment of values.
Morgan holds the position that there is a progres
sive emergence of mental characteristics which are cor
related with corresponding neural structures. In its
cognitive aspects, mental evolution therefore involves the
three levels of percipience, naive perception, and reflec
tion. At any given level, how the earlier structures
perform depends on the guidance of the most evolved stage
actually present. Thus, for him, it is false to say that
there is nothing in perception except what was in percip
ience and perception. Since, in each case, the later level
is an emergent form of relatedness among items of the next
preceding stage, one cannot have the later stage of mind
232
until the earlier stages are present and active.
As Morgan sees the emerging stages of mental
activity, the very lowest stage is sentience, an unspecial
ized awareness of processes and changes in the body and in
the world outside the body. Sentience may be accompanied
by feelings of pleasure and pain but it has no special
awareness of the objects or organs involved. But even
these feelings affect the course of behavior by selecting
those responses which promote organic welfare. The next
characteristic of the mind to emerge after sentience is
percipience; for, Morgan asserts, "Primary percipience
accompanies extero-ceptor recipience. This is followed by
behavior accompanied by behavior reference. This entails
93
perceptive thereness." Primary percipience occurs the
very first time a given sensory receptor is stimulated; it
deals with a this which is located in a definite place out
there by the behavioral response. Hence, it is the lowest
level of our experience in which awareness of the discrete,
isolated sights, sounds, scents are recognized in "the bare
QA
now of the passing moment."3 ^ The instinctive behavior
93
Morgan, Mind at the Crossways, p. 82.
9 A
Morgan, The Animal Mind, p. 44.
233
which accompanies percipience is "in response to a situ
ation as a whole"^ and relates "the situation and the
96
practical behavior it calls forth." It follows, accord
ing to this argument, that percipient experience and its
corresponding "instinctive acts have biological value in
such degree that they have become congenital through the
97
preservation of adaptive variations." At the level of
percipience and instinct, therefore, one finds adaptive
behavior without the guidance of past learning; but such
behavior is, nevertheless, teleological in relation to the
survival needs of the organism.
In the ascending order of psychogenesis, perception
emerges from percipience and is the mental concomitant of
a further specialization of neural processes. At this new
level, the situation as a whole is perceived in terms of
its discriminable features, features which are the specific
data of the external sense organs, consciously distin
guished in the service of adaptation. Such features result
from particular modes of stimuli brought to bear on the
95
Morgan, Mind at the Crossways, p. 192.
96
Morgan, The Interpretation, p. 142.
97
Morgan, Animal Behavior, p. 111.
234
apparatus of the external sense organs; they result in per
cepts projected outward and giving the animal a heightened
practical effectiveness of response to the objects in its
environment through the effector nerves which they activate.
In this fashion, the higher animals become acquainted with
an extended environment and the bodily self through the
’ ’ non-projecting senses, the sense of Well-being, the joy of
98
existence."
With the emergence of the conscious awareness of
the non-identity of the bodily self with objects in the
environment, the distinct sense data are recognized as
coming from familiar outside sources with a meaning for the
organism’s welfare. Thus, for Morgan, every increment of
meaning is an outcome of prior experience which makes the
organism new in some respect. Hence, behavior accompanied
by meaning always has about it a dim sense of both past and
99
future, a "fore-experience" of things to come in the
routine of animal experience. One finds, Morgan contends,
"at the perceptive level, behavior subject to conscious
98
Ibid., p. 335.
99
Morgan, The Animal Mind, p. 248,
235
guidance."
100
Yet, at the same time, perceptive life is
lived in the present because it lacks conscious "fore-
101
plan," with end in view, chosen means, and a picture in
consciousness of past, present, and future--the character
istics of reflective procedure in the world later trans
formed by self-conscious reflection. In perception, the
animal’s choices are determined by stronger aroused emotion
and appetence because judgments based on the intellectual
standards of reflection are absent. The main point of this
argument is, for us, that perceptual behavior is guided in
the interests of survival and welfare in Morgan’s thought.
A final quotation will summarize Morgan’s position on the
teleology of percipient and perceptual experience:
In conclusion, then, we may say that the primary
purpose of the evolution of feeling and emotion is to
promote beneficial behavior, and that the observed con
sonance of the psychological end of attaining satis
faction, and the biological end of securing survival,
seems to be due to natural selection— is, indeed,
scarcel xplicable on any other naturalistic hypo
thesis.
100,
Morgan, Mind at the Crossways, p. 151.
101
Ibid.
102,
Morgan, Animal Behavior, p. 294.
236
Perception is intelligent in the sense that it involves
association of present percepts with conscious anticipation
of limited outcomes which are under the power of control
of the organism; such intelligence deals with the problems
of a relatively simple life in terms of particular situ
ations, trial and error, success, and then repetition of
the satisfactory motor response in a routine manner. Since
it involves no rational ideals of success, it is without
self-criticism.
Morgan contends, however, that the perceptual fac
tors just discussed provide ’ ’the more complex data which,
through ideational process, are raised to a yet higher
103
level in rational conduct" "at the level of reflective
procedure, where the organism becomes a self-conscious
agent directing his behavior in terms of ideals and formu
lated plans of action. On this level, reflective reference
with "mental rehearsal of events conjured up under inten
tional revival and recall"provides the psychological
103
Morgan, The Interpretation, p. 141.
104
Morgan, Mind at the Crossways, p. 151.
^"*Morgan, Life, p. 16.
237
tools for the "control of conscious behavior” by persons
who now recognize themselves as moral agents because they
have ends in view. On this level of mental development,
intellectual ends emerge to supplement the organic ends of
the lower levels of mental life. Morgan points out that,
"not until agents who act with purpose come within the
field of reflective reference is there any basis of ex
planation" ^ 7 in the philosophical sense. Since such
agents do emerge in this field, philosophy and the sciences
develop to meet these reflective needs. Thus, for Morgan,
the emergent person brings both the conduct of practical
affairs and the development of the higher values into the
area of knowledge and conscious responsibility. In reflec
tive consciousness, the self of enjoyment is developed as
the conscious unity of all the activities of minding which,
in their unity, make a man what he is at each moment; he
directly intuits what he is in this sense, for "only a
108
self-conscious being has the capacity of introspection."
*^Morgan, Mind at the Crossways, p. 151.
107Ibid., p. 254.
1 08
Morgan, The Emergence, p. 75.
238
The teleological meaning of purposeful self-
consciousness is demonstrated, for Morgan as for Sellars,
by the efficacy with which our plans dominate our behavior
and the changes which we introduce into the environment.
Hence, for Morgan, there is no inconsistency between
naturalism and finalism once their divergent purposes are
recognized, for he points out that:
Determinism, whether in external nature or in human
life, is the expression of purpose; purpose is that
which finds expression in determinate sequence. The
criterion of determinism is that all the conditions of
the sequent event are contained within the antecedent
configuration; and this, according to naturalism it
self, is just that which analysis discloses as the
characteristic feature of human volition and purpose.
Either, therefore, purpose has no existence at all, or
phenomenal expression.
Here we find Morgan in disagreement with Sellars and Smuts,
for the latter two men restrict purpose to the higher
levels of emergent beings, whereas Morgan holds that Divine
Purpose is expressed in all emergent structures. On Mor
gan's distinction between interpretation and explanation,
his conclusion is correct. But his distinction is ad
mittedly only an acknowledged postulate of metaphysics.
Needless to say, Morgan defends the position that as much
it is that of which
109.
Morgan, The Interpretation, p. 185.
239
of human behavior as can be brought under intelligent
responsibility is definitely purposeful, and Smuts and
Sellars agree.
Before leaving Morgan's interpretation of emergent
mentality, we should notice his comments on the highest
level of all— that of the spiritual and religious. In his
opinion, the "Spiritual implies a new and emergent atti
tude, on the part of a person who has reached the requisite
status, towards Divine Purpose as its objective.in
the emergent mental life of the person, this attitude, he
contends, supervenes upon organic, economic, moral, aes
thetic, and intellectual values, "but it does not supersede
them in any strictly antagonistic sense.From this
follows the important conclusion that God and human spirits
are brought together by the kinds of values mentioned, not
separated. This interesting result of his view highlights
a meaningful relatedness of all kinds of values in a single
hierarchy having its source in God as Supreme Person, so
that every fact and every value has a place in this one
system.
■^^Morgan, Life, p. 291.
240
Relative to the lower values, the spiritual in
cludes "an attitude towards 'playing the game, ' even there,
112
as consonant with Divine Purpose." It, accordingly, is
"never present without one or other, perhaps all, of
113
them," yet it causes the person in whom it emerges to
be "touched to finer issues of joy and of love."^^ That
man's spiritual experience is not primarily a matter of
reason or doctrine Morgan explains by saying that:
Without denying that rational judgment, with its lia
bility to error, plays its part in objective reference
at this level, what I deem essential is the newly
emergent quality of joy in the presence of spiritual
value and of sadness in presence of sin as spiritual
unvalue.
Since we as persons have no spiritual experiences
until we have matured through the prior levels of value,
Morgan contends that it is "in us as persons that Divine
Personality is revealed. Indeed, we become persons
through our developed response to "the all-embracing Per-
117
sonality of God." However, on sub-personal levels,
we, like all other emergent beings, are nevertheless the
112Ibid. 113Ibid.
114Ibid.. p. 292. 115Ibid., pp. 290-291.
116Ibid., p. 311. 117Ibid.
unknowing creatures of the Divine Purpose. If these state
ments are true, then it would seem that, for Morgan, the
word "God" is the proper, personal name of the Sniritus
Creator whose Personality is the Source of all evolutionary
advance, and that God's Personality is known to us in a
kind of love and creative joy which accompany our spiritual
acceptance of responsibilities as divine tasks. On these
terms, it would make sense to speak of the spiritual in
carnation of God in human persons, and of a personal rela
tionship between the Divine and the human at a certain
level of emergence, and under certain conditions, where man
has achieved a vision of the higher values of truth, good
ness, and beauty as God's goals for him. In such a vision,
even the physical and vital processes would be seen as sub-
personal expressions of God’s Purpose; and the body, in
stead of being the alien element in man's spiritual life,
would appear as the temple of the spirit, as was said of
old. In this view, an implied hierarchy of values and
structures is to be seen in which all lower structures and
values become instrumental to the personal and spiritual.
The teleological and purposeful implications are simply
tremendous.
242
Morgan contends that there is nothing supernatural
about God or even about the experience of spiritual joy;
for all that is natural and real belongs to the one Com
plete Reality. He points out that
all stages fall within the rational order of the cosmos
in our comprehensive sense; and for us this rational
order is, in spiritual regard, not other than Divine
Purpose. For us, Divine Purpose is inclusive of all
advance^-physical, vital, mental, social, and in
spiritual regard. Could we but reach the acknowledged
limit there would be no "super" beyond it.
On these assumptions, with which Sellars and Smuts agree
so far as rejecting the bifurcation of the natural and the
supernatural is concerned, Morgan sees spiritual values as
the terminus of all evolutionary development, the final
values which sum up and unify all other processes and
values. It is, therefore, the "something higher, namely
119
spiritual value," toward which all processes, both pur
posive and purposeful, are directed by God's personal
design.
Mental evolution, in its various stages, is pur
posive throughout. On the personal level of reflection it
is consciously purposeful in relation to organic, ethical,
and intellectual values; and, finally, on the spiritual
118Ibid., p. 306. 119Ibid., p. 307.
243
level the emergent person can enter the joyous spiritual
relationship with God in which the realization of all his
real needs can take place. This stage of mental evolution
terminates the evolution of mentality in the view of
Morgan.
Before we can evaluate the teleological signifi
cance of the mental functions, as seen in the Holism of
Smuts, we must ask, What characteristics are exercised in
these functions? Unfortunately, Smuts gives us very little
discussion of the detailed nature of these characteristics.
He passes over in silence the detailed psychological struc
tures of sentience, perception, and reflection which were
so clearly distinguished by Morgan. What he does insist
upon is that personality is an emergent whole with an inner
conscious self-direction which integrates all the separate
faculties, activities, emotions, and goals into one har
monious personal being. Its perfections and aberrations
are conditioned, internally and externally, by the growth
and self-realization of the whole person. On this point,
he says:
As regards Wholeness or Purity, it is essentially
identical with Freedom. Purity means the elimination
of disharmonious elements from the Personality. It
means the harmonious co-ordination of the higher and
244
lower elements In human nature, the sublimation of the
lower into the higher, and thus the enrichment of the
higher through the lower. From this it follows that
moral discipline is an essential part in the culture of
Personality. Personality is a spiritual gymnast, whose
object is the freedom and harmony of the inner life
through the refinement and sublimation of the cruder
features in the Personality and their subordination and
co-ordination in the growing whole of Personality. If
this object is secured by the Personality, all the rest
will be added unto it: peace, joy, blessedness, good
ness and all the great prizes of life. Wholeness as
free and harmonious self-realisation thus sums up the
summum bonum of Holism.120
From this statement, it is clear that Smuts agrees with
Morgan and Sellars that the human personality is the high
est emergent known, and that it is the key to understanding
man's nature and goal. Smuts further agrees with Morgan
and Sellars that mental progress involves the gradual
elimination of all that is irrelevant to value-experience.
For Smuts, the personality as a whole intervenes
between stimulus and response in such a way as to transmute
the psychological response into more than a mere mechanical
effect of the stimulus, i.e., into an action of the person
ality as a whole. This free power of the personality is
121
shown in the appearance of "mental activity" and "in the
120
Smuts, Holism, pp. 291-292.
121
Ibid., p. 306.
245
natural sense of freedom which accompanies this activity In
122
personal consciousness." Smuts maintains that If this
is true, then personality is "fundamentally an organ of
self-realisation; the object of a whole is more wholeness,
123
. . . more self-realisation." From his conviction that
personality constantly strives for more self-realization,
Smuts infers that
the will or active voluntary nature of Personality is
its predominant element, and the intelligence or
rational activity is subordinate and instrumental--
it has to discover and co-ordinate means to the end of
self-realisation. Feeling is likewise subordinate,
its function being to give strength and impetus to the
will. The Personality is thus a more or less balanced
whole or structure of various tendencies and activities
maintained in progressive hapnony by the holistic unity
of the Personality itself.^4
Despite the diversity of detail in the personality,
the person as their holistic unity, is their master.
Indeed, Smuts insists that, as in the case of the "self-
125
healing power" of the organism, so in that of the growth
of the person the personality can heal its own "moral and
other aberrations . . . and recover itself and often cre
atively . . . gather strength from its own weakness
122_,., 123T, . , „nA
Ibid. Ibid., p. 290.
Ibid. Ibid.
246
and errors."
126
In mastering both the conditions of its
environment and its own internal weaknesses, the person
ality becomes, for Smuts,
a self-restorer; it is a supreme spiritual metaboliser;
it absorbs for its own growth a vast variety of ex
perience which it creatively transmutes and assimilates
for its own spiritual nourishment, . . . and makes them
all contribute towards its holistic self-realisation.^27
Its freedom, therefore, consists in a personal holistic
control over its own behavior and the conditions in which
it develops. Indeed, the "essence of Personality is cre-
1 QO
ative freedom. ..." Whereas Morgan bases all deter
ministic mechanisms on purpose, Smuts insists that:
Determinism is in the last resort based on free holis
tic self-determination. We may sum up by saying that
Holism is free, and in so far as Holism has realised
itself in the universe, in so far as the universe is
of a holistic character and consists of holistic
entities, to that extent the universe and these enti
ties are themselves free.
Thus, for Smuts, the freedom of the personality consists in
the ability to assimilate and direct for personal values
the forces in itself and in its environment; and this
ability is grounded in its wholeness. Since the use of
126
Ibid. 127Ibid., p. 291.
129Ibid.. pp. 308-309.
128
Ibid.
247
this freedom serves personal values, it is both teleologi
cal and purposeful on the human level. Even the subhuman
levels of nature are, for Smuts, teleological for the
reason that they involve adaptiveness which, however,
remains unconscious and therefore non-purposeful until per
sonality with its mental component emerges. We find Smuts
agreeing with Morgan, therefore, on the point that below
the level of conscious mind we cannot truly speak of
organic activities as being purposeful. Morgan, as we
remember, holds that conscious purpose is a mental cor
relate of neural processes, however primitive. Smuts, on
the other hand, derives it from unconscious chemical
affinities and organic sensitivities of emergent wholes on
the pre-conscious level. Accordingly, Smuts rejects the
idea that personality exists in the organic field of the
universe from which holistic development proceeds.
Up to this point, we have shown that Smuts regards
the conscious person as a self-regulating whole which con
trols its conduct in accord with certain ideals of value
mentally envisioned and desired. On this assumption, the
mind comes to be seen by him as the conscious instrument
through which the personality conceives the satisfaction of
its needs as the principal end of life to be pursued with
effective purpose working through controlled behavior.
Mind is, therefore, the primary means through which the end
of personality self-realization is to be sought. Consider
ation of this fact leads Smuts to regard the mind as teleo-
logical and purposeful throughout all its activities. He
assures us that wholeness, in progressively greater
degrees, will characterize future expressions of person
ality; but, due to the unpredictability of novelties yet
to come in personal life, he does not attempt to describe
for us in detail what those novelties will be. The ques
tion of how these developments will take place, and what
detailed facts will be involved in them, he leaves for
further emergence to reveal. Hence, our final comment on
the holistic theory of mental life is that, for Smuts, as
for Morgan, mental characteristics and their appropriate
functions are always teleological and purposive; they are
only sometimes purposeful, namely, when they are carried on
by a consciously striving and responsible personality.
But, in any case, we have shown that, for Smuts, struc
tures, functions, and outcomes are mutually interdependent
in the mental life of the personality.
Among the characteristics of the mind which Sellars
discusses are sensation, perception, feeling, conceptual
249
thought, and volition. In agreement with both Morgan and
Smuts, he holds that these characteristics together consti
tute a unified structure by means of which the organism
carries on the economy of its life. For Sellars, therefore,
each mental characteristic involves a specific physiologi
cal structure through the exercise of which a specific task
is performed.
As we have already pointed out, Sellars sees the
mind as the controlling factor in behavior although most
mental processes occur on levels below consciousness. Only
the higher mental functions are conscious in this view.
However, on all levels, Sellars contends, the "activities
of the mind are like ingenious tools, they further the aim
130
of the organism." From this assumption, he concludes
that the mind in all its complex activities, conscious and
unconscious, is a teleological instrument, "an organon of
the affective-volitional tendencies of the organic indi-
131
vidual." The selection of any external existent as
object of response is, accordingly, "due to the interest
132
of the organism." In such selection, the self and
130
Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism, p. 73.
131Ibid. 132Ibid., p. 44.
250
its content form a body-mind unity whose elements are held
no
together by ’ ’the functional activity of the organism,’
an activity stemming ultimately from the needs of the
living organism seeking survival and welfare through ad
justment of internal processes to external conditions.
The most primitive characteristic of the conscious
self is, for Sellars, that feeling-awareness of organic
processes in the body which accompanies the satisfaction or
frustration of the organic ends of life. These needs them
selves are reflected in the relatively permanent desires of
the substantial system of the organism; they are "the data
which control sentiments and attitudes to the object.”^3^
Hence, as need is satisfied or frustrated, the affective
and volitional tendencies of the organism rise to con
sciousness in feeling and provide an index to the welfare
of the organism. Feelings are therefore teleological in
the sense that they "reflect and manifest the state of any
135
desire” in consciousness. As functions of the neural
system, desires are guided in their activity by neural
134
Sellars, Physical Realism, p. 466.
135Ibid.. p. 440.
251
patterns in the brain which coordinate stimuli from ex
ternal things with appropriate mental responses. In this
manner, consciousness qua immediate experience is not,
according to Sellars, efficacious in the production of
feelings; instead, its presence and efficacy depend on
appropriate underlying neural and muscular behavior. Taken
in abstraction from brain events, feelings and desires have
no effect, or even existence, in the organic economy. We
will remember that Morgan and Smuts both held essentially
the same view in their insistence upon the interdependence
of neural and conscious events.
Sellars insists that the capacity of the organism
for effective adjustment is greatly extended by the emer
gence of the special sense organs with their distance
receptors. The discrete sense qualities discriminated by
these organs facilitate, in a telic manner, selective
response on the part of the interested organism; such data
therefore are conditioned by both internal and external
factors. However, on the lower levels of mere sensation,
they are not distinguished from the objects which are only
part of their causal conditions; rather, they are there
identified with the stimulating objects. Even so, sense
data facilitate adaptive response because awareness of them
involves a sense of contrast between the bodily self and
surrounding things. Resulting meanings of externality,
independence, and persistence, Sellars says, "all add them
selves to this nucleus to constitute a belief in a co-real
136
object." Naive realism identifies "the object toward
which we are reacting and the content of which we are
137
aware"; but, even so, for the ordinary purposes of prac
tical life, this literal appearance of the object in the
act of sensation is "the most satisfactory type of knowl-
138
edge" on this level of mental development because it
makes possible a level of guidance more effective than that
on the earlier level of mere feeling.
From sensation, perception develops through dis
tinctions between quantitative and qualitative aspects of
external objects. On this level, we perceive and interpret
objects "in terms of predicates developed within experi
ence, . . . regarded as revealing the actual character-
139
istics of external things." Thus, for Sellars, the
136
Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism, p. 30.
137Ibid.. p. 25. l38Ibid.
139
Sellars, Physical Realism, p. 76.
253
predicates of perceptual knowledge are such properties as
quantity, mass, relation, and shape which pertain to the
physical structures of all real things as seen by physical
realism.
The important point for us in this study is not
Sellars's analysis of the contents of perception so much as
his agreement with Morgan and Smuts that the teleological
function of the entire perceptual process furthers the life
adjustment of the organism. In this context, Sellars says
that "perceiving is a directed complex act"*'4® in which
"data under external control are used as the basis for
predicates, ... in terms of which the external, denoted
object is thought, and in veridical perception, dis-
141
closed," in order to meet the "need of the organism . . .
to achieve a presentational pattern corresponding to the
142
physical environment to which it must adapt itself."
Thus, for Sellars, the teleological significance of percep
tion is brought out in his insistence that perceptual be
havior involves more adequate control of response than does
mere sensation. The perceptive organism possesses a power
140Ibid., p. vi. 141Ibid.
142
Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism, p. 72.
254
of awareness more complex and more effective than the organ
ism without perception. Perception on all levels of its
development is telic; and, in the animal with powers higher
than those of perception, perceptive process is carried on
in conscious and purposeful ways; for, Sellars asserts:
Perceptual knowledge is. knowledge because it fulfills
the tests I have regarded as implied by the nature of
knowledge: it discloses an ordered world which seems
to us forced upon us and not a fiction, and it guides
our overt behavior successfully.
To conclude this section on perception, we can, in view of
the previous discussion, say that, for Sellars, perception
is teleological because it serves the needs of organic
well-being.
On the level of abstract thought, Sellars finds
that bur ideas and methods are "controlled and standardized
144
by intellectual interests." Since similar things have
similar chemical constitutions, they have "similar proper
ties and structures. And, when we think them, we can think
i / p
them in terms of the same predicates." These predicates
and concepts are, therefore, instruments through which
■^Sellars, Physical Realism, p. 124.
1UU.
Sellars, Critical Realism, p. 71.
• j / p
Sellars, Physical Realism, p. 175.
255
we achieve knowledge of the structure of physical nature;
they are "operative instruments of the mind, . . . bound up
146
with generalized acts." Knowledge "consists of proposi
tions built up within consciousness and referred to an
147
acknowledged realm outside of consciousness." In propo-
sitional form, it states something about "the relative
sizes, the structure, the active properties, and the rela-
1 / ft
tions of things"; and the criteria of its truth are
149
"consistency and agreement with the facts." In every
instance, for Sellars, knowledge is an
[instrumental] function of the capacities of the organ
ism, many of which are experienced in consciousness;
and the physical things the organism selects as objects
and therefore controls. These are the ultimate condi
tions of knowledge. And it must not be forgotten that
knowledge has two distinguishable levels: (1) of con
tents correlated and identified with objects of percep
tion, and so cues for conduct; and (2) propositional
contents, developed upon these, yet held to be mental
and distinct from the objects of perception and thought,
and informative of them.^O
146Ibid.. p. 179.
147
Sellars, The Essentials of Philosophy,
pp. 154-155.
148
Sellars, Critical Realism, p. 151.
149
Sellars, The Essentials of Philosophy, p. 168,
^^Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism, p. 74.
256
For Sellars, therefore, the categories in which
conceptual knowledge is formulated originate as functions
of the capacities of the organism interacting with the
objective features of the physical world. Such features as
temporal and spatial order, patterns of process, and quan
titative relationships first appear
in experience as general characters of its pattern.
This pattern is a growth which expresses a necessity
to which the would be adaptive organism is exposed.
It is not a blind necessity in the mechanical sense;
rather it is a necessity which is freely admitted as
means to end. The mind of the organism must produce
a pattern in consciousness correspondent to physical
reality if it is to further the organism's safety.
The result is apparent in what I have called the
primary categories, viz., space, time, thinghood,
and causality. 5
According to this view of the mental functions, the
higher cognitive functions are teleological in the sense
that they enrich the content and extend the security of the
organic values. Consideration of this actual interdepend
ence of cognition and values leads Sellars, as it led
Morgan and Smuts, to the conclusion that even the highest,
most rational activities of the mind serve the needs of
life, both organic and conscious. Although the human good
shines through these three systems of thought, it must not
151Ibid.. p. 80.
257
be concluded that, for this reason, their authors are prag
matists, identifying truth with a species of the good.
Rather they hold that truth is a correspondence of mental
thought with an extra-mental situation; and that values are
functions of organic adjustments of inner need to outer
fact in appropriate functional ways.
Sellars insists that man's valuations grow naturally
out of his complex nature as it responds with purpose to
internal need and external circumstances. As a secondary
continuant, man is confronted with two different intel
lectual tasks: (1) the cognitive in which he seeks to
decipher the physical structure of what is; and (2) the
valuational in which he seeks to appraise the bearings of
objects and processes in the world on his own needs. In
agreement with Morgan and Smuts, he holds the position that
man's entire constitution, his entire "mind-brain is con
cerned with successful behavior, . . . right-wrong, . . .
tests and methods, have a biological framework." J Since
values are the satisfactions of our growing needs, they
depend as much on what we are as on what our circumstances
are. They have no extra-natural existence as they do in
152
Sellars, Phenomenological Research. XX, 11.
258
Morgan's thought. With Smuts, Sellars insists that human
values exist only for human beings for whom "goodness is
the intelligent living of social creatures constructed as
153
we are." An important agreement among our authors is
implied in this statement; for it means that as human
values are appropriate to human characteristics so other
kinds of values are appropriate to other kinds of charac
teristics .
Value-predicates are neither subjective nor solely
objective in their reference; instead, they are appraisals
of the appropriate functional interdependence of the sub
jective and objective factors in a developing life. On
this point Sellars asserts that such predicates are not
subjective "desires and emotions read into objects but
meanings of a specific kind in terms of which we now think
the object, . . . valuatively, . . . appraising it in the
light of our experiences relevant to it."^^ Since growing
human needs are the primary subjective determinants of
human values, we see that value-judgments err to the extent
that they fail to clarify the best human possibilities.
^-^Sellars, The Principles, p. 396.
154
Sellars, Physical Realism, p. 466.
259
The index to such failure is, accordingly, the frustration
of the "mental processes which are dominated by sentiment
and desire rather than by conceptual analysis and syn
thesis. Cognition is instrumental to valuation, as it
was for Morgan and Smuts.
Implicit valuation is subrational but nevertheless
effective in dealing with the lower organic processes; but,
for Sellars, as for Morgan and Smuts, explicit valuation
involves the distinction of ends and means. In rational
purposeful behavior, we are, accordingly, dealing with
plans which function as internal stimuli ordering "possible
events in temporal order. Conscious purpose, in this
view, works effectively through "mental temporal distinc
tions"^^ operative in the physical present; and present
needs, not future facts, control telic processes. Concern
ing the efficacy of present plans, Sellars argues that:
An idea as an effective existent must be correlated
with the physical present, but the same idea may have
the meaning of a future event. In ordinary parlance,
it is a thought of the future. . . . It is not the
155
JJSellars, The Essentials of Philosophy, p. 295.
156
Sellars, Physical Realism, p. 441.
^Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism, p. 340.
260
future which guides action but the present thought
whose content has the future as part of its meaning.
Objectively, behavior is purposive when it dis
plays an ordering of action-parts in such a way as to
lead to results related to the needs of the organism,
. . . adaptive to an independent nature and satis
factory to the organism.
Subjectively, or in the individuals experience,
the ordering of action implies a plan in which means
are correlated to an end. The plan is an internal
stimulus or control of a decidedly complex sort which
effectively guides the drive of the organism. Experi
ence contains a transitive linkage of forethought and
final experience. We conclude that the plan as an
internal stimulus is a part of the efficient cause.
. . . We have naturalized mind and choice and, by so
doing, have healed the breach between Democritus and
Plato.158
The teleological interdependence of ends and means is made
clear by a good plan in which correct appraisals and knowl
edge of objective facts are adjusted to each other. Such
a plan is itself
an end-means complex to which we give assent because
we desire the goal, thus comprehended, and are willing
to accept the consequences. It is evident that there
is here a simply tremendous mind-brain-body organiza
tion. I mean by this that the whole organism with its
drives, desires, propulsions, governing tendencies--
call them what you will— and its ability to know and
foresee and plan is expressing itself. There is always
a unity for, as we have already noted, even perceiving
as an activity is inseparable from interests.15^
158Ibid.
ISO
Sellars, Physical Realism, p. 439.
261
Thus, for Sellars, as for Smuts, plans exist only in the
context of nature; and Morgan's concept of the prior
existence of plans and values in God's purpose is rejected.
Although reason may work within the context of
adjustmental behavior to discriminate values and the means
of realizing them, it is need that determines what the
relevant values are. In agreement with Morgan and Smuts,
Sellars holds that "interest is by its very nature cate
gorical and has deep roots in the activity-tendencies of
the organism. "^0 since need is always present in be
havior, the resulting value-orientation makes all behavior
teleological in a broad sense. Below the conscious level,
rudiments of this ordering already appear in physio
logical organization in which sighting food awakens
the hunting complex and that leads to the eating, if
successful. The mind but carries this ordering into
more complex activities.
On the human level, we find "teleology in human action,
that goals are persistently sought because anticipated and
162
desired." Our effective purposes thus imply that
"genuine morality is an affair of choices and . . . , in
choice, the self is growing and determining its own growth
161Ibid.. p. 442.
160
Ibid.
162
Ibid.
262
in the situations to which it must adjust itself."
Continuing his discussion of morality and choice,
Sellars develops his concept of the spiritual life in terms
of the maximum development of human values. He tells us
that religion is, in the context of evolutionary natural-
164
ism, "a concern for human values" which is "an ines-
16S
capable aspect of life." Thus, for him as for Smuts,
but not for Morgan, the "spiritual is the realm of human
endeavor, because the naturalist must reject a divine
plan either within or beyond nature. The whole field of
demonology and personal gods is regarded by him as a pro
jection of human volition, ignorance, and weakness in the
face of natural process and human need. It will be remem
bered that Morgan and Smuts held the same view, except that
Morgan acknowledged Godfs Purpose as the Source of all
natural existence.
Since Sellars holds that natural process is the
actual condition of all values and disvalues, he must main
tain that all problems of value must be resolved in terms
163
Sellars, The Principles, p. 420.
164
Sellars, Religion Coming, p. 133.
165Ibid., p. 143. 166Ibid., p. 2.
263
of natural knowledge and moral responsibility. On this
point, he contends that:
Rain does not fall in summer in order to nourish the
plants; instead, the plants are nourished and continue
to exist because the rain falls. Once, it was hard
for man to admit this impersonalism. He wanted,to find
an objective purpose focusing upon his career.
Evils do in fact exist but they are particular maladjust
ments and malfunctions, not expressions of a radical evil
in general. The problem of evil in general, he thinks,
is a result of the false hypothesis of a good and omni
potent God. Remove the hypothesis, and you automatically
remove this problem, leaving the real problems of specific
evils to be dealt with in specific ways. Applied science
and a more nearly just social order will, he contends,
remove all real particular evils. He would replace divine
design with a more adequate human teleology.
Since all nature is teleological in the broad
sense, and "man's life is spiritual in its own right"
(i.e., concerned with purposeful values and appraisals),
religion can survive only by becoming more responsible
*^R. W. Sellars, The Next Step in Religion (New
York: The Macmillan Company, 1918), p. 166.
168Ibid.. p. 225.
264
for human welfare. And this, he believes, is just what is
happening in the more liberal movements of current reli
gious thought. He would have religion become more re
sponsibly purposeful than it has been in the past.
Summary of Agreements and Disagreements
We have now completed our discussion of the charac
teristics and functions of the mind as understood by Morgan,
Smuts, and Sellars. I shall now point out salient agree
ments and disagreements as to their teleological signifi
cance.
The first major agreement found is that all of the
characteristics and functions of mental life, on whatever
level, have tasks to perform in promoting the health and
growth of the organism through specialized responses to
particular aspects of the environment. But, on this point,
the three men have insisted that the details of mental
structure and function should be determined by empirical
investigations. In this context, Morgan pointed out that
sentience, perception, and reflective thought have their
physical basis in the neural structures of the brain; that
the exercise of these functions extends the organism's
265
£ield of awareness; and that each of them contributes in
its characteristic way to the development of the self.
Even the spiritual experience of the highly developed per
son is, for him, adaptive in the sense that it climaxes all
lower processes and brings the individual to the highest
possible^consummation of his needs.
Smuts did not discuss the mental characteristics
in detail but he expressed his contention that all of them
are functional elements of the whole personality. He,
therefore, agreed with Morgan on their teleological sig
nificance, but he rejected Morgan’s claim to find their
source in Divine Purpose.
Sellars discussed the mental characteristics in
some detail and contended that each of them separately and
in concert with all others is instrumental to organic and
mental values, a point which Morgan and Smuts accepted.
A second point on which we found general agreement
was the postulate that determinism in the mechanical sense
is false in psychology, both animal and human. Instead,
the men agreed that ends and means, values and processes,
are so interdependent that to separate them in thought is
to vitiate thought. The generally accepted proof on this
266
point was the recognized and undeniable efficacy of our
plans and needs in controlling our behavior.
A third important point of agreement among the
three men concerned the status of the human person as the
most fundamental and revealing fact about nature in the
metaphysics of evolution. They insisted that the entire
evolutionary process comes to its most complex and valuable
point of development in the self-conscious and responsible
human being who uses his mental capacities to understand
and further the values of health, social justice, truth,
beauty, and moral goodness. Morgan went further and added
the possibility of spiritual joy to man's list of values.
Since they agreed that human values should control human
thought and behavior, they found the needs of man and the
conditions of his living crucial to a correct understanding
of his philosophical views of the world. In consequence of
this, they further agreed in their rejection of all forms
of metaphysical and ethical reductionism, methods which by
their very nature must overlook significant portions of
natural fact. They, therefore, saw the progress of science
and philosophy as a gradual elimination of more and more
areas of ignorance and irrelevance to values. If this
267
inference is correct, then we can say that they agreed that
human freedom is a function of growing knowledge and re*
sponsibility in overcoming frustration of natural needs and
promoting the satisfaction of these needs.
A fourth point of agreement was found in their
concept of the instrumental nature of the rational and
Intellectual activities of the higher organisms. A sense
of values is present on the human level, and a feeling of
satisfaction or dissatisfaction corresponds to it on the
subhuman levels of organic life. Hence, the organism,
however crude its mental capabilities may be, is always
concerned with its needs and the conditions which satisfy
or frustrate them. The major disagreement found in this
area had to do with the ontological status of values in
the universe. For Morgan, values pre-exist as contents of
the Divine Nature before their ingression into the life and
experience of organisms. But, for Smuts and Sellars,
values are simply the natural possibilities of nature
brought to self-conscious enjoyment in the life of living
things. But, despite disagreement on this point, all
agreed that the affective, volitional element of the organ
ism is the seat of those needs which seek satisfaction in
268
r
value experience. From this acceptance of the primacy of
need and will in the economy of living things, they in
ferred that the natural function of the higher mental
activities is that of a servant of values. This, of
course, means that these mental activities are teleological
and purposeful throughout.
A fifth point of agreement had to do with their
conclusion that mental life occurs on both sub-conscious
and conscious levels. Although reflex actions and in
stinctive habits need not be accompanied by consciousness,
they are nevertheless adaptive; indeed, the conscious
capacities further elaborate and rationalize these func
tions on lower levels, once intelligence has emerged. But
underlying both levels there are the general patterns of
response which further the needs of the organism.
A sixth point of agreement concerned the natural
character of goods which satisfy needs of survival and
growth. Smuts and Sellars frankly identified the person
ality with the integrated whole of the critical functions
of the organism. But Morgan held that, in the dramatic
context of philosophical explanation, the personality be
comes a conscious creature of God which can achieve
269
a spiritual relationship to Him as its Source. However,
Morgan did not suggest that the personality, in its whole
being, can achieve immortality after the dissolution of the
body. From this, I infer, that for all these thinkers,
evolutionary naturalism precludes survival after death, and
that man's good is to be achieved in this life, if at all.
A seventh point of agreement concerned the ethical
problem of value judgments and responsible conduct. They
agreed that value judgments grow naturally out of the
conscious life of the organism and have as their task the
control of behavior in the interest of the values of
health, welfare, and further growth.
A final point of agreement concerned the status of
conscious purpose. On this point, Morgan held that purpose
exists in God from Whom it is expressed in all creation;
that it comes to conscious self-knowledge and responsi
bility in man where it acts as determinant of behavior.
Thus, for Morgan, purpose characterizes both God and the
more developed men. But, for Smuts and Sellars, there is
no Divine Purpose; there are only the purposes of evolved
beings like man, and perhaps of some of the higher animals.
It is, accordingly, on this basis of the efficacy of man's
270
growing insight and purpose that they all agreed to urge
the moral necessity of redoubled effort to understand and
promote human values. They were unanimous in the conclu
sion that the categorical imperative of our times commands
us to promote values through intelligence and moral respon
sibility; though this need is not categorical in Kant's
sense, it is at least what he would call a hypothetical
imperative. Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars agreed that values
can never be achieved without the great respect due this
imperative to put intelligence to work. I regard their
many books and articles as so many efforts to re-enforce
man's moral sensitivity and responsibility.
Final Comment and Conclusions.— The general con
clusion of this chapter that mental activities involve
neural processes and promote value experiences can hardly
be challenged. Nor can we reject the position that the
facts of mental life can best be determined by empirical
studies. However, the three authors studied here have not
developed an adequate philosophical interpretation of their
meaning for an integrated view of the whole of mental life.
In order to complete the latter task, it would seem to be
necessary to develop an inclusive concept of the nature
of reality, on all levels, as involving a diversity of
structural and value aspects. For, if we isolate struc
tural and valuational aspects, and pursue either out of
relation to the other, we shall frustrate our higher pur
poses through the very effectiveness of our abstract
achievements. Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars have recognized
and illustrated the interdependence of these two aspects
in the processes of mental life. On the mental level, they
have demonstrated that structure, function, and values are
inseparable in fact and should be so in thought. Con
sistent with my acceptance of this mutual interdependence
of aspects in the integrity of mental wholes, I should say
that each mind, since it exists on a certain level of
organization, must be understood in terms of its own
emergent constitution as a teleomechanical whole.
In view of the actual levels of existence present
in the one seemingly organized world, it would appear that
the final metaphysical postulates of Morgan, Smuts, and
Sellars are too narrow to account for the unity of that
world. For, in the first place, these postulates, although
interdependent for teleomechanism, are defined in terms of
the properties of special levels, despite the admission
272
that these levels are logically discontinuous. Therefore,
their effort to describe the unity of the whole of nature
in terms of the properties of purposeful minds, living
organisms, or self-organizing matter seem to me to involve
our metaphysical thought in fallacies of composition. And,
in the second place, the insistence on the genetic con
tinuity of all levels of nature should, in consideration of
the same evidence, have led these philosophers to the same
metaphysical postulates. But that has not, in fact,
occurred, as we have just seen.
It is in the light of this situation, therefore,
that I have, in this study, sought to bring to light the
lowest comnon denominator present in their diverse inter
pretations of the teleological aspects of the natural
world. And this lowest common denominator is the actual
interdependence of structures, functions, and valuative
outcomes on all of the levels studied. Now, if we may say
of all known processes that they have this character, then
we can theorize that unknown processes may have it too.
Although this speculation helps us to include the physical
sciences and the normative studies in the same metaphysical
perspective, it is admittedly hypothetical. But, in con
clusion, even this general hypothesis does not enable us,
in the absence of empirical knowledge, to describe the
actual aspects of unknown natural wholes or integral sub
stances. Therefore, on all of these hypotheses, the actual
unity and particular wholeness of the natural world is
unknown to us; and teleomechanism is therefore another
hypothesis which science and future thought will evaluate.
CHAPTER V
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
To have faith in the possibility of human progress
in a scientific age is to reject the bifurcation of human
knowledge into the merely mechanical and the merely teleo-
logical, the descriptive and the valuational; for, under
the conditions of a scientific culture, the unreasoned
acceptance of the isolation of the ends and means of man's
life can only lead to the lowered vitality, perhaps even
the destruction, of that life. An unbiased view of the
actual facts of natural organization and natural values
leads one to see their metaphysical and empirical isolation
as a fundamental misconception which hinders the growth of
knowledge and value experiences. The present study has
been conceived as a protest against this pernicious delu
sion and a search for new ways of thinking which can over
come it.
274
275
In accordance with these aims, the views of Morgan,
Smuts, and Sellars on the empirical and conceptual rela
tions between natural structures and value experiences
have been considered.
Keeping these discussions in mind as a background,
we shall now attempt to summarize the results of our study
and to draw such conclusions as are relevant to the con
cepts of teleology and purpose.
Physical Existence and Value Experiences
In Chapter II, we presented the views of our three
authors on the interdependence of values and the activities
of physical structures. With respect to the nature of
values, it was there agreed that they are the satisfactions
of needs for the conditions of survival and welfare exist
ing in emergent organisms. Since organisms have not yet
emerged on the merely material level of reality, it cannot
be said that values in the strict sense occur on that
level; but we can say that material structures require for
their integrity of being and operation the presence of
their mechanical parts and function, for without these they
could not be what they in fact are. And we have found that
276
the outcomes of physical processes are as real as the out"
comes of any other processes. Hence, it is quite legiti
mate to regard the existence of physical structures as
pre-conditions of physical processes, and physical pro
cesses as pre-conditions of physical outcomes. Although
no purposeful consciousness exists on the physical level,
it is, nevertheless, true that a teleomechanical relation
exists between physical structures and physical outcomes;
for without either the other could not be. A point of
crucial relevance here is that the sciences of chemistry
and physics reveal differing processes and outcomes cor
related with various kinds of physical structure, showing
the definite dependence of types of activity and outcome
on specific kinds of physical order.
Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars agree that matter has a
heterotelic relation to all later structures and processes
which emerge from its activities. For it is a necessary
condition and medium of all post-inorganic evolution.
Thus, in view of the emergence of conscious organisms and
value experiences from the material level of existence, we
can conclude that value-potentials are constitutive ele
ments of even the least structured kinds of physical
reality.
277
Continuity and Discontinuity of Physical Levels.—
The one-level concept of matter characteristic of classical
physics is rejected by Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars. For,
they contend, once physics and chemistry adopted an em
pirical program of investigation, the results have shown
that the characteristic properties and qualities of matter
vary according to the kinds of atomic and molecular struc
ture considered. This fact is formulated by saying that
physical levels are discontinuous in the sense that one
cannot predict the properties of an emergent structure from
a knowledge--however complete— of any earlier level. Yet
this logical discontinuity is accompanied by a genetic
continuity in the sense that all later levels are generated
by the activities of the next preceding level of matter.
This process of creative synthesis arises from the inherent
dynamism of matter (for Sellars), from the Activity of God
(for Morgan), and from the creative work of Holism (for
Smuts). Since the essence of the new whole is the novel
identity and mode of operation emergent with it, the way
things happen is appropriately different from the way they
happened on the older level. But the old never ceases to
exist; rather, it remains involved in, and subordinated to,
278
the structure and activity of the new. Just as the lower
forms of matter make possible the emergence of the higher
forms, so the higher forms re-direct and bring into exis
tence the potentialities of the lower. In this sense, at
least, teleology is a real characteristic of all material
processes.
The Graded Scale of Causality and Value Poten
tials. --The ends-means relationship is further illustrated
in the correlation of a graded scale of causal activities
and value potentials found in material substances. As we
have shown, the constitution of physical substances in
volves activities and outcomes appropriate to the kinds of
structure considered. A knowledge of these special struc
tures is, therefore, one cognitive basis of the ethical
uses to which the differing kinds of matter are put by the
various professions dealing with the relationships of
matter to human needs. In this context, the various forms
of matter enter into the goal-oriented activities of
responsible persons and become the indispensable conditions
of human achievement. Matter is thus teleological in at
least two senses: first, its activities and outcomes are
existentially correlated with the kinds of structure
it has; and, secondly, it provides the heterotelic condi
tions preparatory to the emergence of organisms, minds, and
persons whose natural needs and planned purposes can be
fulfilled through understanding and controlling its struc
tures and activities. On these points Morgan, Smuts, and
Sellars are in agreement; Morgan is alone in his contention
that matter is also the designed expression of God's Pur
pose. Morgan speaks for them all when he reiterates that
there can be "no mind without life; and no life without
'a physical basis. There is, therefore, a two-way de
pendence between life and matter: life depends upon matter
for its existence, and matter depends upon life for the
direction and guidance which it has in living forms. An
analogous relationship holds between adjacent levels
throughout the entire pyramid of evolution. Since tele
ology exists wherever such ends-means relationships exist,
matter is never without its teleological aspect. The human
significance of this fact can be brought out only by scien
tific determination of the characteristics of material
existence combined with the responsible application of the
resulting knowledge for man's good.
[organ, Emergent Evolution, p. 15.
280
The Teleomechanical Interpretation
of Matter
Keeping in mind the facts just summarized, we must
recognize the inadequacy of either mechanism or teleology
alone to provide a philosophical explanation of the actual
facts of material structure, activity, and valuative out
comes. In view of the fact that these aspects of the
material world are mutually interdependent and appropriate
to each other in empirically ascertainable ways, it is
apparent that these constitutive aspects of material things
are complementary. The axiological hypothesis of teleo-
mechanism contends that mechanism is true of matter in so
far as it describes the physical parts and mechanical
motions of material structures, but that it is false in
so far as it denies the ontological significance of valua
tive outcomes to the integral concept of matter. Tele
ology, on the other hand, is true in so far as it stresses
the valuative categories as revealing the nature of matter,
but it is also false whenever it denies the mechanical
aspects of matter or fails to recognize the dependence of
valuative outcomes on the value-potentials and physical
activities of material structures. Teleomechanism seeks
to make more metaphysical sense of matter by so enlarging
the concept of matter as to see valuative outcomes as well
as mechanical properties and motions as constitutive of
what it is. When this is done, each material substance or
whole will be seen as a res completa in the limited sense
that the presence in it of its own appropriate structure,
activities, and outcomes is sufficient to establish its
ontological nature. But, since this nature exists on some
particular level in the pyramid of evolution, no such
single material substance, and no collection of such ma
terial substances, can constitute the whole of reality, as
Sellars claims is true for his physical realism. The
reason for this implication of teleomechanism is that for
any natural whole to be a teleios on it must have reached,
through appropriate functions, the full realization of its
value-potentials; and, for matter, this means that its
organic, mental, and other potentials would have to have
been exhaustively realized in existence. The continuing
processes of physical change indicate that this condition
has not yet been attained; quite the contrary, the logic
of discontinuous levels implies that we cannot now even
predict what the full ontological nature of matter will be
at some future moment of evolution. Therefore, so long
as physical changes occur in relation to levels emergent
282
from it, our knowledge of the ontological nature of matter
will remain at best only approximately true and adequate.
And this conclusion will hold true for future physical
activities and valuative outcomes as well as for the struc
tural characteristics of material substances.
Our final conclusion is that we have established
the existence of teleological and purposive relations
between valuative outcomes and physical structures. For
simple material structures, simple activities and simple
outcomes are appropriate; for more complex structures, more
complicated activities and outcomes can be expected; but
for the physical structures to emerge in the future we can
only say that their activities and outcomes will be appro
priate to whatever their characteristics may be. But, in
all cases of material structure, teleomechanism accepts
activity and valuative outcome as constitutive of what
matter is in the ontological sense.
The Teleology of Organic Adaptation
At this point we are ready to restate the major
results of our chapter on the teleological features of
organic phenomena and to summarize briefly those points
which require the employment of telic categories in biology.
283
It will be recalled that Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars
are in agreement in their contention that organisms are
emergent structures arising from the activities of the
inorganic level of reality; that each organism as a whole
has developed a set of differentiated characteristics whose
functions serve the biological needs of welfare, survival,
and the creation of new variations in structure; and that
appropriate forms of efficient functioning are requirements
of all satisfactory organic outcomes. If these statements
are empirically true of all life patterns, then we can
conclude from them that the biological aspects of struc
ture, function, and outcome are in fact interdependent.
Indeed, these aspects can only be understood, in specific
instances, in relation to one another; and this implies
that, taken alone, as they are in mechanism and vitalism,
they do not constitute the full nature of life. The impor
tance of this fact for an adequate philosophy of biology
is that every organic process is teleological in the sense
that the nature of organisms is as truly constituted by
appropriate functions and satisfactions as it is by struc
tural aspects. It is here that our hypothesis of axio-
logical teleomechanism helps us to conceive the integral
nature of organisms by pointing out the interdependence
of structure, adaptive functioning, and valuative outcomes.
Where there is no structure, there can be no organic func
tion; where there is no organic function, there can be no
organic need-reduction; and where there is no organic need-
reduction, there can be no organic welfare, survival, or
growth of new structure. Therefore, where there is no
true conception of the teleological interdependence of
organic aspects, there can be no true understanding of the
nature of life. If this reasoning is valid, and is based
on biological facts, we have no alternative but to regard
organic structures and their functioning as the instru
mental means to the biological ends of welfare, survival,
and growth; and this ends-means feature of life processes
is precisely what we mean by organic teleology.
A brief review of the arguments of Morgan, Smuts,
and Sellars on the teleological significance of specific
organic processes will help substantiate this conclusion.
It will be recalled that Morgan speaks of the ’ ’functional
2
action" of the heart, the lungs, and other anatomical
structures as unconsciously meeting the needs of "the
o
substantial unity that characterizes an integral system"
^Morgan, Life, p. 38. 3Ibid., p. 220.
285
on the organic level. He has also said that, once the
biologist understands the mature stage of a given organism,
he can then appraise the adequacy of a given organic
response in terms of "how far the behavior adequately meets
the essential conditions of the situation"^ in leading to
"success or failure in the battle of life."'* Hence, for
him, all organic increments in structure and behavior are
seen teleologically as "steps subordinate to the reaching
of some observed outcome"^ of biological value.
Smuts has spoken of the organism as a functional
whole whose parts are united in the service of needs to
such a degree that this whole is "the ultimate category not
only of organic explanation, but also of organic adaptation
and evolution."^ He does not offer us a detailed account
of the anatomical structures and their physiological
functioning, but he does say that these structures are
"differentiations of this whole for purposes of greater
4
Morgan, Animal Behavior, p. 2.
^Morgan, Eugenics, p. 66.
6
Morgan, Life, p. 69.
^Smuts, Holism, p. 221.
286
8
efficiency” in meeting biological needs of "self-
o
preservation of the organism as a whole.” Hence, the
unconscious "selection of ends and an adjustment of its
movements to the attainment of those ends”^® characterize
11
"all organic and psychic activities and relations" found
in any organic whole. So important, according to Smuts,
is the teleological nature of the special organic charac
teristics and processes that he feels no "explanation is
12 11
possible which ignores" the "power of self-direction"
in biological wholes.
Sellars has told us that the organism is a "second-
14 is
ary continuant" whose "self-maintaining pattern" acts
through organs which are to be "explained as the result of
their survival value.It is "a differentiated system
8Smuts, Nature. CXXVIII, 526.
^Smuts, The Cape Times, July 25, 1929, 12.
"^Smuts, Holism, p. 162.
11Ibid.. p. 147.
12Ibid. 13Ibid.. p. 162.
^Sellars, Physical Realism, p. 307.
15Ibid.. p. 306.
16
Sellars, The Essentials of Philosophy, p. 272.
287
whose parts are specialized"^ organs to meet special
needs. Since "organisms have developed methods, organs and
18
functions of adjustment," Sellars concludes that their
19
economy is one of "empirical teleology." But he insists
that this telic economy is one of growth and not external
design.
The foregoing arguments in favor of organic tele
ology are all based on the actual facts of biological
science; in no instance has an appeal been made to extra-
empirical entities. When one considers the biological
structures, activities, and values in their natural cor
relation and interdependence, one is impressed by the light
they throw upon one another. The obvious conclusion one
is driven to accept is that any effort to understand the
phenomena of organic life in abstraction from one another
is bound to fail to reach truth and adequacy of concep
tion. In the effort to reach such adequacy of conception,
we shall next apply the hypothesis of axiological teleo
mechanism to the facts of life just mentioned.
^Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism, p. 335.
■^Sellars, The Principles, p. 324.
19
Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism, p. 336.
/
288
The Teleomechanical Explanation
of Organisms
What are the consequences of the facts discussed
for an adequate philosophy of organisms? In the first
place, they imply the conclusion that the distinguishable
aspects of any organism— structure, activity, and value
outcomes--are existentially complementary, and none of them
can be understood in abstraction from the others. In the
second place, they clearly indicate that the relations
among these aspects are characterized by appropriateness in
the sense that individual structures will have their own
special forms of activity, which will normally result in
biological outcomes specifically relevant to the needs of
the responding individual organism. Axiological teleo
mechanism interprets this to mean that vitalism and bio
logical mechanism are false in so far as they fail to
conceive these aspects in their empirical interdependence.
It bases this interpretation on the ground that the pres
ence of appropriate structures, activities, and outcomes
is required to constitute both the ontological nature and
the logical concept of organism. A third important conse
quence is that, since organisms with their special proper
ties and relations exist on only one level of reality,
no organism and no set of organic properties can consti
tute the whole of reality. Therefore, organisms can be
regarded as the realization of some of the value-potentials
of inorganic existence without implying that they, as such,
constitute a teleios on of perfect development; for they,
in turn, contain potentials of further development which
emerge only on the later levels of mind and personality.
Hence, organisms are teleologically related both to the
inorganic and to the personal levels, but in differing
ways. And since the properties of organisms are capable
of satisfying some of the needs of other organisms, it is
true that such properties are means, or heterotelic values,
in relation to these needs, as in the case of serving as
food.
A fourth consequence is that empirical truths con
cerning organic structures enable us to arrive at true
conclusions as to the specific needs and values appropriate
to any given organism. A most important ethical result of
this fact is that man need not remain undecided as to the
nature of the natural uses of organic processes; for, in
this factual context of life, valuative outcomes are as
knowable as are organic structures.
290
The final and most fundamental result, for the pur
poses of this dissertation, is that organisms can neither
be nor be understood without an empirical knowledge of the
interdependence of organic structures, activities, and
outcomes; and, indeed, without knowledge of the inter
dependence of the inorganic, the organic, and the mental in
reality as a whole. For the position of axiological teleo
mechanism is that to be on any level is to have a struc
ture, to act relevantly to that structure, and to achieve
an outcome appropriate to the motivating needs of that
active structure. Our study of organisms has revealed them
to be most convincing illustrations of this hypothesis.
On this hypothesis, the great unanswered questions have to
do with the facts of life-plans but these facts can become
available only through empirical investigations. Our pur
pose here has been the philosophical one of pointing out
the immanence of teleological patterns in all organic life-
plans as involving an empirical teleology in their internal
economy. And this has been shown to be a form of internal,
rather than external, design.
291
The Teleology of the Psychological Processes
Up to this point, we have surveyed the interdepend
ence of structure, function, and outcome on the physical
and organic levels of the natural world; and, in the light
of the data and arguments cited, we have decided that em
pirical teleology characterizes both of those levels.
Next, we shall sketch some of the salient features of the
psychological level, as presented by Morgan, Smuts, and
Sellars, and shall seek to determine whether their features
also can be described as teleological. In carrying out
this task, we shall restrict our remarks to the teleo
logical importance of Chapter IV of this study.
For Morgan, the term "mind1 1 has two meanings:
(1) mind is a universal attribute of Substance, in Spinoza's
sense, which is correlated with every physical event in the
evolution of the natural world; and (2) mind is the emer
gent correlate of the complex neural structures in the
brain, a supervenient kind of psychical relatedness which
is the sum total of psychic processes to be accepted as
an emergent fact. It includes "all that is objectively
20
minded as well as processes of minding" — sentience,
20
Morgan, Emergent Evolution, p. 194.
292
percipience, naive perception, and reflection. Its sub-
21
stance is constituted by ’ ’the psychical gotogethemess"
of all the activities of these processes and their objects.
The crudest activities of a psychical nature are
those of sentience, a generalized awareness of the pro
cesses in the organic body and its environment; it involves
no special sense organs but it does involve feelings of
pain and pleasure which guide action in an unconscious way
by influencing behavior toward greater selectivity.
Out of sentience there emerges naive percipience
which involves the reception of stimuli by external sense
22
organs and is "accompanied by behavior reference" toward
particular sights, sounds, odors, etc. Percipience is thus
of biological value in the sense that it represents a great
23
extension of "adaptive variations" of behavior in rela
tion to survival needs. It is the basis of instinctive
acts in which survival needs are met without the help of
conscious guidance.
organ, Mind at the Crossways, p. 82.
23
Morgan, Animal Behavior, p. 111.
293
With the further development of the neural struc
ture of the brain, there emerges from percipience the power
to perceive a situation as a whole in terms of its discrete
sensory features as coming from outside objects and having
a meaning for the organism’s welfare. Hence, at the per
ceptive level there first emerges an awareness of the mean
ing of objects for practical response. In perception, a
weak awareness of such meaning introduces the possibility
of selective response guided by the salient physical
features of the environment. Animal routine is its major
result.
Reflective procedure raises the preceding processes
"to a yet higher level of rational conduct"^ by directing
actions according to explicit ideals and plans of conduct.
On the reflective level the teleological connection between
means and ends is recognized and made a condition of
ethical progress. This level is the basis of the sense of
responsibility and the use of evaluative criteria typical
of human conduct.
Morgan concludes his discussion of psychical evolu
tion by remarking that, whenever the ideal ends of conduct
^Morgan, The Interpretation, p. 141.
294
are seen as having their source in the Divine Purpose, the
spiritual attitude of living according to these values
25
emerges as ’ ’spiritual value" which God always has, but
man has only in his highest development.
On all levels of mental development, Morgan sees
every process of accompanying appropriate physiological
processes and conditioning the achievement of its own
values. Therefore, he sees such processes as teleological
ones.
For Smuts, mind is neither an attribute of Sub
stance nor a unified psychic correlate of neural emergents.
It is, rather, "a holistic organ, especially of the Per-
26
sonality which is a real whole." It is thus an instru
mental component element which has evolved, under the
directive influence of Holism, from the inorganic and
organic functions of the brain and nervous system, and not
from God's Purpose and a mental correlate of physical
modes. Consequently, Smuts refuses to credit mind with
the origin of matter and organisms. He, nevertheless,
recognizes mind as the most effective control system
^Morgan, Life, p. 307.
Smuts, Holism, p. 224.
295
through whose activities the personality knows and seeks
the values of self-realization. In this view, mind in all
its functions is subservient to personal values; the
higher mental functions are specific to the personality,
the highest known emergent, in which "intelligence or
rational activity is subordinate and instrumental— it has
to discover and co-ordinate means to the end of self-
27
realisation."
That which is realized for its own sake is thus not
the activities of pure thought but the conative and voli
tional potentialities and needs of the personality for
further growth, freedom, and creative purpose, "more whole-
28
ness, . . . more self-realisation." In this process,
personality uses the mind and all its subordinate functions
not only to discriminate the contents of experience and the
environment, but also to learn from its mistakes, even its
moral mistakes, and "gather strength from its own weakness
29
or errors." In its very essence the personality is a
telic whole in the sense that all its structural aspects
function for continued self-realization in terms of further
27
Ibid., p. 290. Ibid.
29
Ibid.
296
growth, freedom, and value experience. Smuts agrees with
Morgan, therefore, that every form of mechanistic deter
minism in the physical, organic, and psychological pro
cesses found in the person and its environment is to be
seen in relation to the ends of personality development.
On these premises, we can only conclude that mind is teleo-
logical in its subconscious functions and intensely pur
poseful in its conscious acts; for what it does really
counts in the outcomes of life.
For Sellars, mind is whatever controls response in
the interest of needs; it is revealed in all behavior but
shows itself as consciousness only in the intuitive ex
perience of those organisms whose brains have a highly
developed cortex. Basically, mind is the stable "organiza
tion of instincts, tendencies, habits, and capacities which
30
enable the animal to act as a whole" in mediating between
organic needs and external stimuli. Each of its functions
serves as "the focus and instrument of functional adjust-
^ r,31
ment."
■^Sellars, The Essentials of Philosophy, p. 248.
31
Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism, p. 313.
297
The feeling-awareness of organic processes in the
body is the lowest form of consciousness and is reflected
in a permanent system of desires which "control sentiments
32
and attitudes" toward stimulating objects. Sensation
does not distinguish sense data from the objects and the
subjective factors involved in their occurrence, but it
does provide a means of adaptive response more adequate
than that provided by mere inner feeling.
Perception interprets objects in terms of predi
cates developed in experience and taken "as revealing the
33
actual characteristics of external things." These per
ceptual predicates are then used to construct a view of the
physical environment to which the organism "must adapt
34
itself." On all levels, perceptual awareness enhances
the organism’s ability to respond selectively to environ
mental obstacles and opportunities, and thus serves organic
welfare and adjustment.
Abstract thought uses concepts which are con
sciously designed to give us knowledge of the structural
32
Sellars, Physical Realism, p. 466.
•^Ibid., p. 76.
34
Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism, p. 72.
298
characteristics of the external world to which knowledge
35
must conform "if it is to further the organism's safety."
And, for Sellars, this instrumental feature of thought and
its categories and methods permeates even the most abstract
levels of science, ethics, and philosophy.
Particularly in ethical thought does the teleologi-
cal feature stand out; for there value-predicates are
appraisals of the role of objects and activities in the
organic economy of living things. Hence, such predicates
are neither merely objective nor merely subjective in their
reference. They refer, rather, to ends-means relationships
and lead to plans which act as internal stimuli of behavior
"ordering . . . action-parts in such a way as to lead to
36
results related to the needs of the organism." Morality
thus becomes a matter of intelligent choice of means to the
ends of organic welfare, growth, and survival.
In conclusion, we can say that, for Morgan, Smuts,
and Sellars, the mind, in so far as it exists in the con
text of nature, is always teleological, but is purposeful
only on the higher levels of consciousness. But, in every
35Ibid., p. 80. ~^Ibid., p. 340.
instance of its activity, it must involve appropriate
physical structures whose normal functions reach forward
to values.
Final Conclusions
We shall now formulate the conclusions to which
we have been led by this study of the interdependence of
structure, function, and valuative outcomes on the various
levels of natural order. Appropriateness of structures,
functions, and outcomes on all levels constrains us to
reformulate the concept of philosophical explanation (see
Appendix) so as to enable it to highlight this relation.
If philosophy is to be successful in this task, it must
enlarge the premises of metaphysics in line with these
facts and show that the aspects of being are integral to
the constitution of substances, or natural wholes, in each
particular case. Our hypothesis of axiological teleo-
mechanism seems to meet this need by pointing out the
interdependence of structures, functions, and valuative
outcomes given in the development of each whole and in the
methodology of the sciences and humanistic disciplines.
Hence, teleology is not to be rejected in all of its pos
sible forms just because its older form of external design
300
is no longer tenable; rather, it is to be reformulated in
accordance with the facts of adaptation reported by the
empirical sciences, and man's purposes in thinking about
these facts.
Man's thought is everywhere purposive, everywhere
intent on goal-seeking in relation to truth and moral
conduct; yet we find certain forms of this very thought
resulting in metaphysical and cosmological positions which
preclude the occurrence in nature as well as in human con
sciousness of anything resembling purpose! How has this
astonishing situation come about? This question is part of
the larger problem which grows naturally out of the situ
ation in thought described above. It is a problem in the
metaphysics of natural and cognitive order, traditionally
known as the controversy between teleology and mechanism.
Given the world--which we experience in its basic totality
as somehow involving, on the one hand, mechanisms, means,
devices, etc., and, on the other hand, purposes, satis
factions, ideals and goals of action--what philosophical
questions can be asked about the relationship between these
apparently unrelated aspects of natural process and ele
ments of human experience? The problem is threefold:
301
First, we may ask for a descriptive definition of each
aspect or element. Secondly, we may ask for a correct
statement of the relationships among these elements as they
appear in experience. Thirdly, we may ask for the pecu
liarly philosophical nature of any theory which is con
cerned with the first two questions. We shall then want
our questions as well as our answers to be of the philo
sophical kind. To paraphrase a famous line from Rousseau,
I do not understand how it can be true that man’s thought
is everywhere goal-seeking and that this fact is ontologi-
cally impossible according to certain theories purposefully
held by some thoughtful men! How amazing all this appears
to an innocent bystander!
Before I discuss the implications of this problem,
I shall try to clarify a conception of philosophy with
which I wish to identify my position in this dissertation.
It is this: Philosophy is the human search for the most
inclusive and truthful organization of man's cognitions and
valuations. Its aim is twofold, theoretical and practical,
for it seeks to reveal the nature of reality and to direct
man's goal-seeking behavior appropriately to his needs and
capacities. If this definition is acceptable, philosophy
is more than a purely cognitive enterprise as it is more
302
than a merely practical affair: its aim is the realization
of the human good, i.e., cognitive and practical good
existing together in all of man's living, doing, feeling,
and thinking. According to the forms of stimuli and the
human capacities involved, reality makes its many appear
ances in human experience. Teleomechanism is prepared to
recognize in every appearance elements of structure,
activity, and value.
Corresponding to this diversity of the phenomena,
human responses occur in various ways according to the
constitution and past experiences of him who responds. Yet
every appearance of reality and every response of man's
nature to those appearances concerns philosophy because
it is a genuine part of truth. In like manner, teleo
mechanism interprets philosophical principles and positions
as answers to specific questions which depend, in turn, on
motivating needs and values in the questioner. Such needs
and values, in their turn, bear a relation of dependency
to the personality structure of him who engages in philoso
phizing. This subjective chain of dependencies is cor
related with another chain of objective dependencies which
appear to man from non-human sources in the external world.
303
In consequence, philosophizing is a motivated enterprise
natural to the human being with his rational and practical
needs; and, thus, is, itself, an illustration of the funda
mentally teleological structure of man's nature. It is
worth noting that this conception of philosophical thought
is self-applying in a sense that acknowledges its own
motivational bias.
Since purposes and the use of means are essential
to this conception of human nature, I shall argue, by
analogy, that man's other forms of behavior— feeling, act
ing, responding aesthetically or spiritually— also involve
appropriate ends and means, and are, accordingly, further
illustrations of the telic unity of man's constitution.
Teleomechanism, therefore, regards the human being as an
integral whole, a self with an identity, whose capacities
are activated by environmental stimuli and internal needs
in such a way that the manifold techniques and institutions
of civilization are called into existence to further those
needs. Hence, every art and every science, every concept
and every device and technique must have an ascertainable
teleological structure fitted to make possible some other
wise impossible function terminating in some ascertainable
304
value or goal-satisfaction in human living. But what the
facts are in each case must be left to experience and the
empirical sciences to determine, since they are details of
application and not fundamental philosophical matters.
Consideration of the physical, organic, and psy
chical processes reported in this study leads us to con
clude that fittingness to function, or appropriateness,
holds among the aspects of any process that attains its
appropriate ends in any sphere and on any level of organ
ized existence. Thus, axiological teleomechanism inter
prets the good of a given substance as the actualized
satisfaction of its natural constitutional needs through
the appropriate operations of its structure, and the evil
of the same substance as the failure of such proper satis
factions to be achieved. Both good and evil are, there
fore, quite meaningless except in relation to constitu
tional need in general, and to particular, scientifically
ascertained constitution in the particular activities of
each individual thing. This view, of course, involves us
in an acceptance of the meaningfulness of teleology on all
levels of reality; for it implies that every natural whole
can, and normally does, achieve outcomes which enhance
305
its own being or the being of other wholes. Admittedly,
physical and organic structures, in the context of human
life, are of heterotelic value to moral persons, although
their bare existence must be conceded to be a value to the
whole system of reality.
The dependence of good and evil upon natural func
tions carries with it the implication that teleology is
a generic trait of all reality; that this trait is con
sciously present on the human level; and that, in the con
text of metaphysics, the inseparability of values and
functioning structures is at least one of the philosophical
implications of science. This, essentially, is what I mean
by reforming and modernizing teleology; with the proviso,
however, that it need not involve consciousness but only
the capacity to function in ways appropriate to the diverse
natures of things on the various levels. In principle,
teleomechanism makes it theoretically possible to determine
what we mean by values without appeal to arbitrary a priori
strictures on the nature of things. For, in every case, it
leaves the determination of structural constitution up to
the relevant scientific methods, and then seeks to find
the activities and outcomes natural to that constitution.
It must not be inferred that this excludes any of the
higher existent values, or even any still higher values
which may become possible on the basis of future emergent
structures. For, as we have shown in the body of this
study, we cannot now predict what future structures and
their entailed values will be. Such presently unanswered
questions must be left to further experience. All we can
now say is that, when the truths of metaphysics and cos
mology are sought, not in bare reason alone, but in the
nature of the real as this is revealed diversely to our
experience according to the different aims, methods, and
capacities which operate in our experience, then the inter
dependent facts of structure, function, and valuative out
come will substantiate rather than disprove axiological
teleomechanism.
When we consider the ethical dimension of man's
education, our position implies that our knowledge of man’s
constitution, of his appropriate activities and values, and
of the effective methods of furthering his development must
be elicited from the actual facts involved, and not from
some extra-empirical definition of what some thinker sup
poses these facts ought to be. Rather, we should seek
307
the telic processes of human development in a close ob
servation of the actual behavior of living and problem
solving in the experiences of individual human persons.
Otherwise our beliefs about man will be false, or at least
unverified, and our methods haphazard and ineffective
because irrelevant.
If I may paraphrase Descartes’s cogito, I should
say that to be is always to be a structure with an appro
priate function leading to an appropriate value outcome;
that is, to be is to be a teleomechanical system active in
realizing some inner need and contributing to the realiza
tion of the needs of some other being in such a way that
the bare existence and function of every entity, event, or
situation somehow or other supports the general system of
the world which is, for our actual experience, a value-
realizing system. I shall not try to define "being" in a
completely adequate way, but I shall use this term to
designate the specific and full nature of any real thing,
entity, system or person— i.e., to designate what the thing
is, both as the necessary condition of particular functions
and as that which, according to axiological teleomechanism,
is inherently active toward the realization of the value-
capacities resident within its natural constitution.
308
Hence, for me, the generic essence of being is this: to be
is to be a teleomechanical individual naturally oriented
toward the actualization of the appropriate value-potentials
belonging to its nature.
In respect to organic and mental wholes, teleo
mechanism, as a hypothesis, is seemingly more credible than
it is with respect to inorganic structures, where biologi
cal and psychological needs do not exist. However, when
one seeks to understand philosophically in the light of
this hypothesis, the value-potentials and valuative out
comes of inorganic processes, he must remember that, due to
the actual genetic interrelatedness of all levels of exis
tence, we have distinguished valuative outcomes into the
autotelic and the heterotelic. (See Appendix for the
stipulated meanings of these two terms.) Thus, when we
seek to understand on these terms the nature of, let us
say, the moon, we shall be led to contend that the func
tions and (unconscious) outcomes of atomic and molecular
lunar processes are determined by the kinds of matter
present in the moon. These outcomes are autotelic results
in the teleomechanical senses that they are appropriate to
the kinds of chemical structures they involve and that due
to the absence of life-supporting conditions, their effects
contribute to the further existence of material wholes
only. Since, however, every atom and molecule acts within
a larger context of active wholes, each level of lunar
structure will be seen to carry forward into further emer
gence the value-potentials of lower levels and to make
possible, in its own turn, the emergence of still later
levels, so long as the latter are capable of existing under
the conditions present on the moon. In terms of the teleo
mechanical hypothesis, this means that the lower levels are
heterotelic conditions of the higher, without in any sense
implying that organic or mental wholes are present on the
moon. Therefore, we must conclude that no organic or con
scious values occur on the moon itself.
But, due to the recent development of space science,
both astronomers and the lay public have become concerned
about the heterotelic values of the moon to earth men. In
addition to the ancient use of the moon's motions to meas
ure time, and of its reflected light to help men see at
night, our developed technology may, in future, be able to
extract ores from the moon and transport them to earth;
to use the moon as a space station for purposes of astro
nomical and meteorological observations, and even military
310
Intelligence about the earth; to help us relieve heart
disease by living in the weaker gravitational field of the
moon's surface; to generate electrical power from earth's
tidal waves induced by the moon; to generate great quanti
ties of power from the direct solar heat at the moon's
surface; and to use it in other ways not now dreamed of.
Of course, we should also remember the aesthetic value of
the moon to men, for it helps to create magnificent scenes
which we can enjoy. Who is not able to feel the rapture
of a beautiful orchard drenched in moonlight and perfumed
with a myriad of sweet blossoms filled with the life of a
new year? But, in the mood of sober scientific realism,
all of these values of the moon arise from the presence in
its field of organisms and minds with their varied needs.
Hence, relative to the moon itself, they are only extrinsic
(i.e., heterotelic) values in our sense. Thus, in philo
sophic principle, the moon is only one example of inorganic
matter existing under special conditions; but we cannot say
that it is valueless.
Since every individual being must have some real
nature, it must also have a determinate status and role in
the larger system of reality as a whole. Accordingly, each
being will be subject to the appropriate stimulation of
other natural beings and processes as well as capable of
responding, in ways appropriate to its structure, to their
influences upon its own constitution and activities.
Stimulation and response thus become conditions affecting
its structural integrity and functional efficacy as these
aspects relate to its appropriate good and evil. In the
example of the moon, just mentioned, we should expect lunar
processes to occur on the purely inorganic level and to
involve such physical activities as those of heat, gravity,
and chemical change. Similarly, we should expect organic
and mental processes to involve more complex structures and
the forms of stimulation and response proper to their
level. Hence, each being will not necessarily fulfill its
role in nature simply by retaining forever the same organ
ization and kind of function; for, inasmuch as entities and
their functions are related to other entities and functions,
we may suppose that certain beings have their teleological
roles in disappearing into other, presumably more valuable,
things as emergents progress from level to level. Thus,
we can say that the higher entity is existentially depen
dent on the lower for its emergence, and the lower is
312
telically dependent on the higher for guidance in its new
role in the higher system. Molecular structures on the
moon, for example, could not be whatever they may be with
out the involvement in them of simpler atomic structures;
nor could these atomic structures behave as they do if they
were not in these molecular forms. Since science does not
know the actual chemical composition of the moon, we cannot
say what these structures are; but, consistent with our
hypothesis of the dependence of functions on structure, we
can say that lunar processes would be different if lunar
structures were changed.
Hence, what appears as destruction of a given thing
may, in the emergent context, be the realization of its
teleological capacities in the highest values possible
to it. The teleological significance of this interdepen
dency of role and structure lies in the fact that value
theory is dependent on knowledge of specific structures;
for, until we know the actual nature and needs of a given
entity, we shall remain unable to distinguish its good from
its evil. From this interdependency, we can infer that
without an adequate ontology and cosmology we can have no
really true axiology or value theory. Therefore, the
313
peculiar breadth of philosophical thought should incline it
toward the identification of metaphysical truth with a
correct empirical knowledge of the various levels of
reality and qualities of experience, rather than with the
philosophically more specious specialties whose results are
more exactly verifiable but less adequate to the inclusive
task of metaphysics.
In view of the diversity of properties found on the
physical, the organic, and the psychical levels of reality,
no claim can be made here that the telic roles of all
beings depend on the presence of consciousness; hence, my
use of the word "teleological" rather than the word "pur
posive," for the latter term is accepted conventionally as
involving consciousness in some degree. But I do claim
that for man, with his consciousness, values and virtues
are as appropriate and natural as breathing. My real in
tent is to demonstrate the reality of teleology and so to
reformulate its meaning that it will be seen to signify the
inseparability of structure, function, and outcomes on all
levels. Since man cannot avoid philosophizing, he has no
justifiable reason, except special human purposes (e.g.,
the conscious limitations of subject matters, aims, and
314
methods in the special disciplines) for extruding the
broader philosophical forms of teleology and purpose from
his knowledge and technology. Indeed, is it not rather
true that every human product (including the intellectual
ones) is carefully designed to satisfy some human need or
to exercise some human capacity; and that it is, accord
ingly, a specific illustration of teleology rather than its
denial? If this may be admitted, then our task is to dis
tinguish the scientific from the philosophical varieties
of teleology and purpose, as we have done consistently
throughout this dissertation.
Current concepts of teleology and purpose, like the
historical concepts of matter, may be regarded as being
built upon the knowledge and purposes of the men who hold
them. And the fact that some of these concepts now seem
unworthy of serious philosophical consideration implies,
not that teleology and purpose are inherently and univer
sally false ideas, but, rather, that these particular
formulations are limited by the historical and experiential
factors which went into their formation. Indeed, to iden
tify teleology and purpose in their full range of applica
bility with their limited historical sense would be to
commit a patent fallacy of composition. For it is not
315
logically possible to identify the full range (comprehen
sion) of these terms with their historical meanings (i.e.,
their denotation). The fact that we no longer use the
plows of the ancient Egyptians does not mean that we have
no need of plows, nor that we do not have excellent modern
ones. Likewise, the fact that we can no longer use certain
outmoded concepts of reality does not mean that more ade
quate ones are not both needed and available.
Since it is fair to say that man's existence and
values are expressions of the real world, it is also fair
to say that, whatever else the world may be, it is the
seed-bed and source of all that is found in man's experi
ence. If teleology and purpose characterize man's living,
it is therefore appropriate for philosophy to include these
traits in its final assessment of the nature of the world
at this time. For it is conceded that philosophy cannot
deny any realities. Since some philosophies seek deliber
ately to deny either or both of these principles, we must
conclude that they contradict themselves in doing what they
say cannot be done: making assertions with the purpose of
answering questions, and yet, at the same time, disallowing
the reality of all purposes! The facts alone, and neither
316
our teleophobia nor our teleophilia, should dictate our
conclusions In this matter.
My philosophy of axiological teleomechanism does
not lead into such an impasse; instead, it is self-applying
in the sense that it openly acknowledges its motivation by
certain purposes appropriate to the structure of human
nature; that it is itself an illustration of the very
teleological and purposive principles which it claims to
find in reality; that in no case does it deny the mechani
cal aspects of nature; and that it is properly subject to
philosophical but not to scientific evaluations. Whatever
the criteria of philosophical truth may be, they must
acknowledge the total range of man’s experience of reality:
feeling, imagination, sensing, willing, spiritual and
social growth, and the objective structures of nature cor
related with these processes; they must also clearly indi
cate the purposes, materials, methods, and conclusions of
philosophy, so that, when the philosopher has reached the
correct solution of his problem, he will be able to recog
nize the fact and accept his conclusion. Since he can
never hope to stop thinking while he lives, he can never
hope to bring his mind to a final rest while he lives;
317
but he can gradually progress toward ever more adequate and
truthful insights and moral mastery of his problems; that
is, by living and learning, the philosopher can approach
ever more closely to the realization of the values and
capacities appropriate to his nature and needs, and thus
make of his life an illustration of the teleology and pur
pose which, on this hypothesis, pervade the world of nature.
Teleomechanism casts the problems of philosophy in a form
indicated by the special sciences and the total range of
human need; it, therefore, reforms and modernizes insights
which in their historical forms are now outmoded. By be
coming relevant to contemporary problems and methods, phi
losophy may yet hope to do its fair share of the world’s
work and to regain the esteem of mankind.
What is philosophical truth, and in what body of
philosophical ideas can it be adequately formulated? We
have surveyed the works of three typical evolutionary
thinkers on this basic theme. They have demonstrated to us
how real the structural, functional, and valuative aspects
of things are on all levels of existence as described by
the best scientific methods available, and how interdepen
dent these aspects are in actual fact. This factual
318
situation lies at the very core of the problem that has
confronted us throughout this study. Interdependence has
increasingly forced itself on our attention as we have
progressed from the least organized level of prime matter
to the highest and most complex emergents in the natural
world. The moral problems of modern life illustrate the
fallacies of current mechanistic and idealistic ontologies
with their one-sided interpretations of the whole truth
about reality. If the lack of conceptual and moral inte
gration between ends and means looms so large in modern
life, it is because we have not considered, in our meta
physical systems, the appropriateness of structures, func
tions, and values to each other in specific contexts of
existence. For four hundred years science has steadily
advanced in revealing the specific structures of nature and
their dependent functions; but, at the same time, values
have tended to disappear from our conceptual schemes or to
be seen as the arbitrary expression of purely psychological
processes. It is only natural that, under these condi
tions, we should have lost sight of the integrity of life
and truth as genuine totalities.
We have seen how the ideas of mechanism and tele
ology,' when separated in thought, have generated problems
319
which can only be solved by philosophical methods employed
under the ancient love of the whole of truth. Axiological
teleomechanism is both a method and a doctrine in the con
text of actual existence; it accepts the aspects of natural
wholes as real and it insists that, in our metaphysics, we
see these aspects as constitutive of the integrity of
realities. For it, the effort to conceive the whole truth
in terms of isolated aspects is vain and self-defeating for
the simple reason that they do not occur, and cannot be
understood, except in their interdependence.
Each of the three philosophers we have studied has
formulated a metaphysical principle to account for the
facts which are accepted by the special sciences as belong
ing to the natural world. Morgan, Smuts, and Sellars have
given different emphases to the properties of the Divine,
the organic, and the physical levels of reality. But their
shared concern with the specific forms of interdependence
and appropriateness found throughout the organized world is
the lowest common denominator of axiological teleomecha
nism, which seeks to speak the truth of reality in terms
of the integrity of every being.
The whole truth about a given being cannot be
grasped until its mechanical and telic aspects are
conceived as integral to its nature; nor can the full value
potential of any substance be realized until its functions
are appropriate to its nature. The truth about being is,
I suggest, that every being is the integral wholeness of
its structure, function, and valuative outcome; and that
it is, therefore, a teleomechanical whole. To be is to be
teleomechanical and this strictly implies that every being
has a valuative aspect appropriate to its own constitution.
On these terms, the moon is a physical structure only; its
functions and valuative outcomes are, accordingly, physi
cal, and must remain so until conditions there are made
favorable to the emergence (or invasion!) of post-inorganic
wholes. The main point to be noted here is that, even on
the inorganic level of existence, we have found that inter
dependence of the three aspects of structure, function, and
outcome which we have called teleomechanical. To be on any
level is, then, to be an integral whole of interdependent
aspects.
If axiological teleomechanism offers a worthwhile
perspective on reality as a res completa, one could wish
to know the answers to questions about the specific types
of structure on all levels, the functions and valuative
outcomes proper to these structures, and one would feel it
a moral duty to encourage the use of such knowledge in all
of the problems of human development. But the program of
empirical investigation must be left to the special
sciences, while the program of education and intelligent
moral guidance remains the unavoidable duty of every man.
APPENDIX
THE DEFINITION OF TERMS UNIQUE TO THIS STUDY
APPENDIX
THE DEFINITION OF TERMS UNIQUE TO THIS STUDY
Aspects.--This term is used here to name the three
distinguishable but existentially inseparable features of
any substance or integrated natural whole; these features
are: structure, function, and outcome of function.
Autotelic.— This term names any activity of a
natural whole which results in outcomes beneficial to the
structural integrity and functional efficiency of the whole
involved; it may or may not involve consciousness.
Disvalue.--The frustration (either conscious or
unconscious) of the needs of a growing whole; the result of
the failure of appropriate order in integral structures;
inadequate functioning, failure to achieve outcomes or
values appropriate to the integrity (wholeness), the health,
or the well-being of some substantial whole.
Dvsteleology.— Whatever opposes the integrity or
wholeness of a substantial being; synonymous with evil.
323
324
Evil.--Fundamentally, that kind of natural disorder
which consists in the absence of appropriate coordination
among structural, functional, and valuative aspects of a
natural whole; such disorder is here thought of as the
source of inefficiency, frustration, misery, pain, or
destruction of the structure concerned; more specifically,
the valuative result of such absence of coordination.
Evolution.--The natural development of structural
characteristics able to function in given environments in
such a way as to satisfy growing needs on the organic and
psychic levels, or necessary existential conditions on the
inorganic levels; the natural growth of higher levels of
structure out of simpler ones through more adequate struc
tural forms and functional responses; the creative natural
rise of new substantial wholes in whose constitutions
simpler structures are subordinated to the more complex
demands of the higher structures.
Function.--The response of an organized whole to
its environment in such a way as to lead to the growth of
that whole through satisfying its existential needs.
Function is an intermediate stage between structural needs
and a satisfactory relationship to the environment.
325
Good.— Whatever contributes to the integrity of a
natural whole; but, more especially, those satisfactions
or values which are appropriate to the actual needs of a
natural whole. In its intrinsic sense, it means the actual
integrity of an existent being. There are, therefore, as
many intrinsic goods as there are integral wholes, for the
distinction of appropriateness applies in every case of
relation between structure, function, and value; and there
are as many, and no more, extrinsic or instrumental goods
as there are natural conditions useful to the realization
of intrinsic goods on the part of integral wholes. But
some goods are both intrinsic to a given stage of develop
ment of a natural whole and useful to a further stage of
growth of the same whole, or to the concomitant growth of
other wholes.
Growth.--The actual increment of substantial organ
ization resulting from appropriate functions and outcomes.
Heterotelic.--Any structural characteristic, func
tional activity, or achieved outcome on the part of one
natural system which is useful or beneficent to the struc
tural growth, functional efficacy, or satisfaction of
another whole.
326
Integrity.— The wholeness of a natural system; the
presence in its being, at any given stage of development,
of all those structural characteristics, functional activi
ties, and value outcomes appropriate to its good. In
reference to knowledge, integrity means that no abstract
aspect of a given whole can be truly identified with its
integral tfature.
Interdependence.--The mutual dependence of struc
ture, function, and valuative outcomes in the constitution
of any whole; also, the reciprocal relatedness of co
existent wholes to each other and to their environment;
the cosmological inseparability of aspects in a natural
whole which are distinguished mentally for cognitive pur
poses but which cannot exist or act apart from each other,
or from the whole, or from the environment.
Mechanism.--The cosmological doctrine that the
functions of a natural whole are nothing more than the
mechanical results of the motions of its material parts;
the ontological hypothesis that every natural whole is_ a
mechanical system in which needs, values, and direction of
behavior are both unreal and irrelevant to an understanding
of its nature. In this study, mechanism means the doctrine
327
that all natural order is physical and that, in conse
quence, organic, mental, and valuative categories have no
cognitive significance in revealing the actual nature of
natural wholes or systems; the doctrine that a whole is the
additive sum of its physical parts and that its functions
are the additive sum of the functions of the parts.
Need.--The lack of anything requisite to the growth
of a natural whole; a concept which cannot be understood
except in relation to some criterion of wholeness or inte
grity on the part of a given natural whole; a structural
deficiency which, when not supplied, retards the optimal
growth or welfare of the system in which it exists; and,
when present, contributes to normal growth and optimal wel
fare; by hypothesis, the structural source of functional
response to environing stimuli which, when appropriately
active, leads to a further structural condition of growth
and satisfaction, the valuative outcomes of function;
despite the hypothesis that need is, in the first instance,
a condition of the structure, it is clearly recognized that
need can also mean deficiencies in function and value, in
the sense that these aspects also have their optimal condi
tions; but it is the existent structure which has, and acts
328
with respect to, needs; only the whole is a need-reducing
agent.
Outcome.--The growthful or disgrowthful result of
an unconscious functional process; the unforeseen and un
intended but nevertheless need-significant result of teleo-
logically oriented functions on the part of a natural
substance; the result of functions on the part of subcon
scious organisms and structures unaware of their activities.
Philosophical Explanation.--The statement of what a
natural system is in terms of the integral interdependence
of its structural characteristics, its functional activi
ties, and the valuative outcomes of its behavior in such a
way that these constitutive aspects are seen to be integral
to the nature of the whole in question; more especially,
a concept of the wholeness of things which, by initial
postulation, so enlarges the premises of metaphysics that
valuative outcomes are recognized as integral to being and
as providing a cognitive point of view supplementary to
descriptive interpretation which is essential to the pur
poseful needs of man's mind; the use of axiological teleo
mechanism to place in practical perspective the methods
and results of the limited disciplines of science in such
329
a way that the value studies are seen to be as essential to
knowledge as are the studies of structure and function in
science.
Purpose.--The awareness and seeking of valuative
outcomes appropriate to the needs which exist in a natural
whole; also, the ideal values consciously recognized and
made the objects of deliberate planning and conduct.
Res Completa.--This concept is borrowed from Morgan
who uses it to indicate his acknowledgement of the supple
mental relationship between the natural world interpreted
"under emergent evolution"^ by the descriptive sciences and
the same natural world explained as the expression of God's
purpose in philosophy. Interpretation, for Morgan, rests
on the postulate that the natural world exists for descrip
tion which, however, can observe no purposes in it; hence,
to explain purposefully why this world exists he postulates
that God's causality is the source of all causation under
interpretation. If both of these postulates can be
accepted (neither, he thinks, can be proved or disproved),
then we shall have the theoretical possibility of both
describing the world in terms of related phenomena and
1
Morgan, Emergent Evolution, p. 300.
330
explaining it in terms of Divine Purpose, thus achieving a
complete philosophy. For, he contends, description and
explanation are both required because, "a constructive
o
philosophy demands the Res Completa which is Reality."
This writer will, however, use this term to mean that every
natural system is a res completa in the sense that only the
presence in a given whole of its structure, functions, and
valuative outcomes is sufficient to constitute its onto
logical nature; hence, any cognitive identification of its
entire nature with anything less than that whole nature
will be regarded as a fallacy of composition.
Structure.— The arrangement of material parts —
elements, cells, tissues, organs, or neurological patterns
of the nervous system— found on the various levels of
natural order; generally, the mechanical aspects of wholes
observed by the special sciences; the source of functions.
Substance.— Any integral natural whole character
ized by the interdependence of the aspects of structure,
function, and valuative outcomes.
Teleios on, or teleion.--Any natural whole which
is without defect and has reached, through appropriate
2 Ibid.
331
functions, the full realization of its value potential;
a whole in its structural, functional, and valuative health
and integrity.
Teleology.--The observed tendency of a natural
whole toward activities which lead to outcomes— either in
tended or unintended--which satisfy the conditions of its
integrity, growth, and need-reduction; the hypothesis that
natural wholes can neither be, nor be understood, unless
their tendencies, outcomes, and values exist and are under
stood along with their physical, chemical, and biological
aspects.
Teleological Metaphysics.--The hypothesis that the
nature of a whole is constituted by the integrity of its
aspects in interdependence.
Teleomechanism.--The axiological hypothesis that
natural wholes are constituted by distinguishable but in
separable aspects--structure, function, and valuative
outcomes--essential to their nature and to a philosophical
knowledge of their nature; the thesis proposed in this
study as a hypothesis concerning the possibility and re
quirements of metaphysics, namely, that the analysis and
description of the aspects of wholes must be supplemented
332
by a synthesis of those aspects in a concept which is both
scientific and purposeful, if philosophy is to conceive
reality as man experiences it. It is here proposed that
philosophy now needs a reformed version of teleology in
corporating the methods and results of the empirical
sciences as well as the principles of metaphysics, an
improved recognition of the interdependence of the aspects
of reality which will be both empirically true to matters
of fact and maximally useful in man's pursuit of personal
values.
Telos.--The goal or unrealized end toward which
appropriate functions of structures tend by nature; not the
achieved but rather the arriving goal of activity; the
appropriate future increment of being in relation to pres
ent need and action; therefore, the specifically appro
priate ideal of a present structure, if conscious; and the
proper outcome if the structure exists on the subconscious
level.
Telos on.--Any structure which now functions toward
the telos or goal appropriate to its present need.
Teleophilia.--The philosophical love of knowing
nature in terms of the values which natural wholes can
333
achieve through appropriate functions; the conscious
ethical acceptance of responsibility to conceive natural
wholes in their integrity for the philosophical purpose of
integrating fragmented fields and methods of knowing and
for the ethical purpose of finding the real principles of
intelligent, value-oriented conduct; the defense of tele
ology as a metaphysical aspect of reality which provides
both the theoretical basis of empirical knowledge and the
ethical imperative of responsible pursuit of values in
man's life; a dangerous attitude when divorced from knowl
edge of structure and function.
Teleophobia.--The human fear of introducing value
concepts into the study of nature because they can result
in the loss of scientific truth; the purposeful ejection of
value concepts and problems from mathematics and empirical
science for the sake of greater scientific truth in those
fields; anti-teleology for a good but limited (pre-
philosophical) purpose; the result, according to axio
logical teleomechanism, of the failure of philosophy to
supplement the special sciences with methods appropriate
to philosophy as such, resulting in some of the false bi
furcations and technological separations between values
334
and power from which men now cruelly suffer; since scien
tific truth is a human value much sought after, anti-
teleology poses the problem of relating it to other human
values, and the truth of anti-teleology must be incor
porated into a reformed philosophical teleology.
Teleosis.--A term taken from the German philosopher
Ernst Haeckle and adapted to the purposes of this disserta
tion; by it, Haeckle meant improvement and perfection in an
organism; but I wish to apply the term generally to all
kinds of improvement on all levels of reality; the name
designating the natural process of growth in which struc
tures function toward appropriate ends.
Value.~-Any conscious satisfaction of need which
results from purposeful, or consciously motivated, goal-
seeking; whatever strengthens the structure, increases the
efficiency of functions, or increases the satisfactions of
a conscious, responsible whole on the personal level of
existence; consciously and responsibly achieved appropriate
satisfactions as opposed to fortuitous satisfactions had
without knowledge and conduct.
Whole.--Any natural system constituted of structural
characteristics, functional activities, and self-sustaining
valuative outcomes in appropriate relations of inter
dependence as determined by science and philosophical
analysis.
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Sellars, Roy Wood. Review of Beyond Mythology, by R. W.
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Research, XII (1951-52), 146-148.
_______. Review of Christian Belief in God, by George
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Scientific Method, XVI (1919), 277-279.
_______. Review of Education at the Cross Roads, by Jacques
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_______. Review of Epistemology, by P. Coffey, Journal
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353
Sellars, Roy Wood. Review of Essays in Science and
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_______. Review of Good Will and 111 Will, by Frank
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_______. Review of Introduction to Philosophy, by Durant
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_______. Review of The Moral Life and the Ethical Life.
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_______. Review of Naturalism and the Human Spirit, edited
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_______. Review of The Science of Culture, by Leslie A.
White, Journal of Philosophy and Phenomenological
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_______. Review of The Science of Culture, by Leslie A.
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Creator Stafford, William Tecumseh, Jr. (author)

Core Title Teleology And Purpose In Recent Anglo-American Philosophy

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