Did Mariano Artigas’s proposal answer the objections against teleology?
Héctor Velázquez
Universidad Panamericana
Mariano Artigas described in The Mind of the Universe the four main objections against teleology as invalid, useless, impossible and illegitimate. However, other writers argued that teleology was replaced by functionality. They consider teleological reasoning as absurd, because it implies that an existent future can direct the existent present. In Artigas’s answer against these objections, he assumed that teleology can be understood in at least four ways: (i) purpose as the end of a process, (ii) as the goal of a tendency, (iii) as the value to a subject or (iv) as the objective of a plan.
In this paper I emphasize the equivalence between teleology as objective of a plan and its illegitimacy; between teleology as a value to a subject and its uselessness; between teleology as an end of a process and its invalidity; and between teleology as a goal of a tendency and its impossibility. I also analyze if this four meanings of teleology and there equivalences are sufficient to answer the objections according to which the teleology is replaced by functionality. If this replacement is true, it supposes that there is not a future as a better result than the present. On the contrary, the teleological reasoning apparently implies that the future state guides the present. Mariano Artigas discusses this proposal, and I evaluate his answer.