Teleology
= refers to the goal-orientedness of the universe, i.e. : "a universe self-organizing into more complex forms (from stars to plants to brains) by using up free energy from the environment". [1]
Discussion
Daniel Kodaj, László Bernáth et al. :
"Regardless of the historical baggage of the term “teleology”, functions and goal-directedness (facts of the form: x is for something) are difficult to banish from reality. They are clearly present at the level of human agents and human societies, for example. We have goals, pens are for writing, the function of hospitals is to provide healthcare,Footnote3 and so on. The human mind and the social world are full of teleological phenomena, in blissful ignorance of the anti-Aristotelian backlash in modern philosophy. Indeed, teleology may be an important hidden theme in core areas of philosophy. If knowledge is the proper functioning of cognitive abilities,Footnote4 or if morality is related to biological ends,Footnote5 or if goals are ineliminable from the analysis of action,Footnote6 then epistemology or ethics or action theory may turn out to be heavily invested in teleology.
Moreover, teleological notions continue to be present in biology even in the shadow of Darwin. The main source of the contemporary distaste for teleology is probably the fundamental tension between Darwinism and the idea of a transcendent designer.Footnote7 However, “teleology” and “teleological” can be used in a less loaded sense that is applicable to biological functions even in a reductive context, and this is the sense that we are employing here. As Garson (2016, 18–19) points out, goals and functions are conceptually related in that both goal-explanations and function-explanations concern what something is for. The heart is for pumping blood and not for making dub-dub noises, even though blood circulation and dub-dub noises are both consequences of its activity at the purely physical level. Moreover, both functions and goals involve normativity: a diseased organ is not doing what it should, just as a bad plan will not lead to the end it’s meant to bring about.Footnote8 It is impossible to understand biological organisms without understanding the functions that their parts play, so teleology, in the form of functional relationships, is still relevant post-Darwin. Whether organisms are teleological in some ‘deep’ sense is, of course, up for debate, but that debate revolves around things that are undeniably real (like the heart’s function to pump blood).
The philosophy of mind, social ontology, epistemology, ethics, action theory, and even biology itself undermine the prevailing sentiment that teleology is of at most historical importance.
There are in fact two questions here:
(i) Are there cases where explanations in terms of purpose/function are appropriate/helpful?
(ii) Is there any teleology at the fundamental level?
The current distaste for teleology is typically levelled at (ii), but (i) is also important, and the reasonable answer to it seems to be Yes. Understanding functions is key to understanding life in its myriad forms, including ourselves. And the neglect of teleology in analytic philosophy involves neglecting both of those issues, not just the suspicious (ii).
As a result, teleology matters for both naturalists and anti-naturalists. Naturalists should be interested in the way that agential goals and social functions are grounded in biological functions and in the way biological functions are grounded in physics and chemistry. Without such grounding relations, how could one claim that goal-directedness belongs in the philosophical museum, not in debates about the fundamental structure of reality? On the other hand, anti-naturalists should also be interested in such reductive projects, because if they fail, then their failure is a very strong argument against full-blown naturalism, unless the latter can be shown to be compatible with fundamental teleology, which sounds unlikely.Footnote9 Robust conceptions of teleology are also very important for in-house debates between anti-naturalists. For example, cosmic teleology may be an important alternative to traditional theism."
(https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-025-04926-7)
How Entropy and order relate to each other
Brendan Graham Dempsey:
"We don’t build a house in order to use up raw materials and energy; we don’t light it in order to use electricity; we don’t cook in it in order to burn propane. No, all of these things we do to maintain and enhance our complexity. We leverage free energy to resist entropy. True, the net result is greater entropy, but to interpret this as the universe’s aim is to mistake means for ends.
Yes, the great paradox of our thermodynamic universe is that the whole process of cosmic order got started as entropy maxization; but as the universe has complexified, the significance of this process has become clearer and clearer. In its drive towards entropic chaos, the Second Law of Thermodynamics itself produces order. That is what a dissipative structure is. That’s what plants and human brains are, in ever-increading degrees. And the empirical trajectory of this order through increasing free energy rate density suggest that this is the direction in which the cosmos tends.
Better understood, the natural tendency to dissolve is the very impetus to cohere. This is the yin-yang harmony at the core of being itself—the relentless interdependence of entropy and energy, dissolution and construction, nothingness and wholeness, nihilism and Meaning.
..
As complexification has ratcheted up, the universe has evolved from inanimate matter; to animated life; to feeling, volitional animals; to humans capable of reflective, compassionate, ethical behavior. The emergence vector we see in the universe is very much a “drive toward enlightenment,” not just a push towards nothingness. Billions of years moving further from equilibrium has seen a push towards the emergence, deepening, and expansion of consciousness in the cosmos. And where billions more years will tend along this trajectory remains to be seen, we are compelled to extrapolate, I believe, through simple inference based on all prior experience, that the direction in which we tend, following this cosmic groove, is toward more of the same. If, that is, we can continue to resist entropy and avoid collapse…"
(https://brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com/p/is-the-cosmos-moving-towards-a-goal)
More information
* Special Issue: Kodaj, D., Bernáth, L. & Pickup, M. Teleology for the twenty-first century. Synthese 205, 78 (2025). doi
URL = https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-025-04926-7
"The present collection brings together 13 innovative papers that explore contemporary accounts of biological teleology and their possible extensions into social ontology, the philosophy of mind, and non-living nature"
- See our entry on: Teleodynamic Social Processes, = the self of higher-order beings are based on the dynamics of selves of lower-order beings. See the video of Terrence Deacon at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ0KKVX-7C0