In Natural Ethical Facts William Casebeer argues that we can articulate a fully naturalized ethical theory using concepts from evolutionary biology and cognitive science, and that we can study moral cognition just as we study other forms of cognition. His goal is to show that we have "softly fixed" human natures, that these natures are evolved, and that our lives go well or badly depending on how we satisfy the functional demands of these natures. Natural Ethical Facts is a (...) comprehensive examination of what a plausible moral science would look like.Casebeer begins by discussing the nature of ethics and the possible relationship between science and ethics. He then addresses David Hume's naturalistic fallacy and G. E. Moore's open-question argument, drawing on the work of John Dewey and W. V. O. Quine. He then proposes a functional account of ethics, offering corresponding biological and moral descriptions. Discussing in detail the neural correlates of moral cognition, he argues that neural networks can be used to model ethical function. He then discusses the impact his views of moral epistemology and ontology will have on traditional ethical theory and moral education, concluding that there is room for other moral theories as long as they take into consideration the functional aspect of ethics; the pragmatic neo-Aristotelian virtue theory he proposes thus serves as a moral "big tent." Finally, he addresses objections to ethical naturalism that may arise, and calls for a reconciliation of the sciences and the humanities. "Living well," Casebeer writes, "depends upon reweaving our ethical theories into the warp and woof of our scientific heritage, attending to the myriad consequences such a project will have for the way we live our lives and the manner in which we structure our collective moral institutions.". (shrink)

In Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective, Marti Kheel explores the underlying worldview of "nature ethics," offering an alternative ecofeminist approach. Seeking to heal the divisions between the seemingly disparate movements and philosophies of feminism, animal advocacy, environmental ethics, and holistic health, Kheel proposes an ecofeminist philosophy that underscores the importance of empathy and care for individual beings as well as larger wholes.

In this essay we provide (1) an argument for why ethics should be naturalized, (2) an analysis of why it is not yet naturalized, (3) a defense of ethical naturalism against two fallacies—Hume’s and Moore’s—that ethical naturalism allegedly commits, and (4) a proposal that normative ethics is best conceived as part of human ecology committed to pluralistic relativism. We explain why naturalizing ethics both entails relativism and also constrains it, and why nihilism about value is (...) not an especially worrisome for ethical naturalists. The substantive view we put forth constitutes the essence of Duke Naturalism. (shrink)

Naturalized bioethics represents a revolutionary change in how health care ethics is practised. It calls for bioethicists to give up their dependence on utilitarianism and other ideal moral theories and instead to move toward a self-reflexive, socially inquisitive, politically critical, and inclusive ethics. Wary of idealisations that bypass social realities, the naturalism in ethics that is developed in this volume is empirically nourished and acutely aware that ethical theory is the practice of particular people in particular (...) times, places, cultures, and professional environments. These essays situate the bioethicist within the clinical or research context, take seriously the web of relationships in which all human beings are nested, and explore a number of the different kinds of power relations that inform health care encounters. Naturalized Bioethics aims to help bioethicists, doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, disability studies scholars, medical researchers, and other health professionals address the ethical issues surrounding health care. (shrink)

Moral agency is a central feature of both religious and secular conceptions of human beings. In this paper I outline a scientific naturalistic model of moral agency making use of current findings and theories in sociobiology,developmental psychology, and social cognitive theory. The model provides answers to four central questions about moral agency: what it is, how it is acquired, how it is put to work, and how it is justified. I suggest that this model can provide religious and secular moral (...) theories with a basis for a common understanding of moral agency. (shrink)

SummaryThis article discusses whether a naturalistic philosopher should endorse the epistemological version of the “is/ought gap” thesis. Quine thinks that there is an epistemological gap between normative epistemology and normative ethics, but I claim that anybody holding his naturalistic and holistic views has good reasons to deny the existence of a gap separating either epistemology from ethics or descriptive discourse from nonnative discourse. I maintain that both gaps can be bridged if one adopts, like Quine, a holistic view (...) of justification. Although justification in science, epistemology and ethics are different in certain respects, holism accounts for the justification of scientific, epistemological and ethical beliefs at a general level. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Naturalized Context of Moral Reasoning1Elizabeth BaetenAmerican philosophy of the past century seems to have availed itself of the advances in science primarily under the rubric of philosophy of science, especially using physics as the exemplar of scientific inquiry and almost entirely in service of developing an adequate epistemology (and related logic). Though there has been some philosophical work using biological sciences as areas of inquiry, this is (...) most often a matter of investigating either the logic or content of the life sciences as it relates to that of physics or chemistry; for example, trying to determine the proper method and scope of reduction. Cognitive science has been a fruitful avenue for philosophy of mind, but in most cases the dominant model sees mind as “software” able to be understood independently of the process of evolution that led to the human brain.Very little work (until the past half decade) has used advances in the life sciences as fodder for philosophic speculation in areas such as ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, and so on, though some subfields, like medical ethics, provide exceptions. American pragmatic naturalists, on the other hand, from the second half of the ninteenth century into the middle of the twentieth, insisted that the content of the life sciences was essential in understanding human nature. John Dewey, for example, thoroughly incorporated the premise of humans as biological organisms making our way in environments that must be navigated using natural powers and natural solutions to impediments to action. George Herbert Mead provides another example of a fully naturalized conception of human existence, especially as biological organisms in social interaction in various spheres.What I am particularly concerned with here is making sense of the moral sphere with a conception of the human subject as a product of evolution and both socially constituted and uniquely integrated in an environment (more [End Page 63] carefully—a related suite of environments). The beginning point of this re-framing is in Mead’s notion of the social constitution of human being. Most readers of Mead take up such constitution only in the arena of what Mead calls “significant gesture,” using spoken language, especially in propositional form, as exemplary and as providing the foundation for mind, self-consciousness, and so on. But Mead’s concept of sociality is much wider in scope than this; the concept is fundamental to his cosmology. Furthermore, Mead’s notion of sociality is closely linked to his claim that the emergence of true novelty is possible in a fully naturalized cosmos.Without exploring in greater depth Mead’s contribution to thinking about sociality as a precondition for the most fundamental natural processes,2 I would like to use a broadened version of this to frame some contemporary work in biology, ecology, and cognitive science as they relate to human existence, especially in terms of how we may think productively about the moral sphere.In earlier work, I noted that there is a ubiquitous premise in Western moral theories that I believe is mistaken—or at least worthy of serious reconsideration. Most moral theory takes as axiomatic that whatever feature makes us uniquely human is the same feature that, when perfected, makes us moral. That is, that being “good” at being human makes us “good” humans. This is obviously so for Aristotle, insofar as it is rationality that is our special ergon, and it is using rationality well and beautifully that constitutes human virtue. But I think similar assumptions underlie much of moral theory, ancient and modern, and extend to contemporary work that takes language (or concept) use as peculiarly human and sees linguistic (or conceptual) analysis of moral claims as the proper domain of ethical theory.It seems that this presupposition, in part insisting that morality is uniquely human, is put in question if we take seriously evolution through natural selection and understand the human species to be as much a product of natural selection as any other species. There has been a good deal of ethological work done in the past several decades pointing out the protomoral capacities of other highly social animals, especially in those species to which we are most closely related (see, for example... (shrink)

I offer several reasons for rejecting naturalism as a philosophical viewpoint or program envisaged for two paradigm cases: the case of mathematics and the case of ethics. Semantical, epistemological and metaphysical similarities between the two are investigated and assessed. I then offer a sketch of a different way of understanding the nature of mathematical difficulties and that of ethical puzzles.

This book offers a unique account of the development of thinking about nature from Early German Romanticism into the philosophies of nature of Schelling, Hegel, and beyond. Alison Stone explores the ethical and political implications of German Romantic and Idealist ideas about nature, including for gender, race, and environmentalism.

As the vulgar generally look no higher for the original of moral good and evil, just and unjust, than the codes and pandects, the tables and laws of their country and religion, so there have not wanted pretended philosophers in all ages who have asserted nothing to be good and evil, just and unjust, naturally and immutably; but that these things were positive, arbitrary and factitious only.1 In this short presentation I want to propose a sketch of what “naturalizing (...) class='Hi'>ethics from a Girardian perspective” would look like. My goal is not to engage in a Girardian tentative at naturalizing ethics, but rather to contrast what such a project entails in comparison with some of the current attempts at .. (shrink)

For most people, animals are the most significant aspects of the nonhuman world. They symbolize nature in our imaginations, in popular media and culture, and in campaigns to preserve wilderness, yet scholars habitually treat animals and the environment as mutually exclusive objects of concern. Conducting the first examination of animals' place in popular and scholarly thinking about nature, Anna L. Peterson builds a nature ethic that conceives of nonhuman animals as active subjects who are simultaneously parts of both nature and (...) human society. Peterson explores the tensions between humans and animals, nature and culture, animals and nature, and domesticity and wildness. She uses our intimate connections with companion animals to examine nature more broadly. Companion animals are liminal creatures straddling the boundary between human society and wilderness, revealing much about the mutually constitutive relationships binding humans and nature together. Through her paradigm-shifting reflections, Peterson disrupts the artificial boundaries between two seemingly distinct categories, underscoring their fluid and continuous character. (shrink)

This article argues that underlying Thomas Hobbes' prescription for concentrated power is system of ethics based on his understanding of human nature and the biological processes that govern natural human function. His thesis in Leviathan is not so much an argument for how rulers should rule as much as it is an argument for why individuals should allow themselves to be ruled in a specific manner. The justification for accepting rule comes from right reason which, in turn, comes to (...) us from the dictates of the biological organism. If the biological organism is functioning correctly, it supports those processes and impulses which drive self-preservation. Anything that corrupts these natural processes and impulses are said to contravene right reason. Ultimately, the author believes that theoretical discourse concerning the essential interplay between political ethics and human nature should include consideration of Hobbes alongside Aristotle, David Hume, and others. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Considering AnimalsKheel's Nature Ethics and Animal Debates in EcofeminismNoël Sturgeon (bio)How we treat the use of animals by humans for sport, experimentation or food has been controversial within ecofeminism. While it is fair to say that all ecofeminists agree that factory farming and cruel treatment of animals is morally wrong, universal arguments for vegetarianism or veganism have been, if one forgives the metaphor, a bone of contention. Attached (...) to these disagreements are important philosophical and political debates about ecological holism, individualistic frameworks, cultural difference, social privilege and ethics of care, which are consequential above and beyond evaluating our treatment of animals. Thus, ecofeminist discussions of animal issues have been formative for environmental ethics and politics, while remaining a delicate matter when disagreement occurs among a relatively small group of thinkers, activists and scholars who tend towards solidarity.Val Plumwood, the important Australian philosopher whose work and life are celebrated in this volume, was especially cognizant of all of this. In April 1998, Plumwood presented an early version of what became two articles on animal/human relationships (Plumwood 1999, 2000) at the Ecofeminist Perspectives Conference at the University of Montana. [End Page 153] The presentation, which occurred early in the conference, was, typical of Plumwood, straightforwardly contentious, a bold challenge to the position of some ecofeminists at the time that veganism was the only morally acceptable diet. In it, she suggested that what she called "ontological veganism" was a position that was both culturally ethnocentric and dualistic, two accusations guaranteed to deeply disturb this particular audience. The conference, organized by Deborah Slicer (whose 1996 article, "Your Daughter or Your Dog?" argued against animal experimentation), was also attended by Marti Kheel (who, along with Carol Adams, was an early proponent of "ontological veganism"). Present also were thinkers with more nuanced positions on the issue, such as Lori Gruen, Greta Gaard, and Karen Warren. Thus, Plumwood's provocation felt personal, and produced lively debate at the conference, and an even livelier argument on email afterwards.1 Stung by being portrayed as racist, several ecofeminists reacted with anger at Plumwood, with the result that she publicly rejected the label "ecofeminist," and from then until her untimely death, preferred the category "critical feminist eco-socialism" to describe her framework.Despite the hurt feelings, this debate (and Plumwood's subsequent articles and sections in her 2002 book, Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason), moved ecofeminist treatment of the issues of animals and morally sound eating practices considerably forward. Plumwood argued that to avoid the dualism of human/nature, humans should recognize themselves as prey as well as predator, an approach she brilliantly portrayed in her article on the experience of surviving a crocodile attack. (Plumwood 1995) In her view, any position that eliminated the possibility of using some animals as food necessarily relied upon a rights-based, individualistic approach that retained the status of some living beings as excluded from moral consideration. Yet, Plumwood argued, from a contextualized moral position, which respected both continuity and difference between different groups of living beings, one could make ethical claims about the moral problems of eating animals. She was particularly interested, both philosophically and from a politically strategic perspective, in arguing against the practice of factory farming. Karen Warren, in her book Ecofeminist Philosophy (2000), also followed and expanded Plumwood's discussion by emphasizing the advantages of a contextualized ethic of care in the treatment of animals as food, arguing (and as such agreeing with Plumwood's conference presentation), that it was ethnocentric [End Page 154] to insist on universal standards in evaluating whether some cultural groups, such as the Inuit, could morally refrain from eating animals. Greta Gaard's thoughtful article on the indigenous Makah whale hunt (2001) took on the charge of ethnocentrism directly, as in some ways an answer to Plumwood's provocation.Given this background, it is interesting to read Marti Kheel's important new book and see how her promotion of veganism as a moral position is articulated. A longtime feminist, vegan, and animal advocate, Kheel is a co-founder of the activist group Feminists for Animal Rights, and the author of an important early critique of deep... (shrink)

This essay argues against Richard Joyce, using him as an exemplar of a number of writers who purport to show that the best a naturalized ethics can provide are demands that we can hold only as moral agnostics; that is, that no moral claims can be shown to be epistemically warranted, hence no moral claims have the property of “inescapable authority” necessary for real moral discourse or deliberation. The prudent course of action is therefore to act as if (...) moral claims had categorical standing, knowing full well that we cannot, in principle, know this. The essay proposes instead that a fully naturalized account of moral reasoning and sentiments, compatible with the commitment to understanding human beings as products of evolutionary processes, can provide “existence imperatives” necessarily implicated in our being social animals. It argues that, on the one hand, we're mistaken in believing that real moral discourse must include imperatives that hold with inescapable authority as a foundation and, on the other, that a naturalistic perspective can offer demands that are authoritative enough to make moral judgment sound. (shrink)

This essay examines the relationship between Marti Kheel’s ecofeminism, particularly as articulated in her recent book Nature Ethics, and holistic eco-philosophy. It begins by arguing that while Kheel’s view shares some common ground with holistic thinkers, her position is best understood as one that re-conceives the meaning of holism. Next, her comments on species preservation are discussed both to show her individualism, and to highlight a weakness in her approach to issues involving at-risk species. It is then suggested that (...) one could develop a more holistic answer to questions about species that is consonant with Kheel’s overall philosophical approach. (shrink)

The reticence of scholars of ethics to enter into fundamental moral reasoning is well known. William Casebeer’s ambitious new book, Natural Ethical Facts: Evolution, Connectionism, and Moral Cognition, which is the publication of his 2001 University of California, San Diego, Ph.D. dissertation, stands in stark contrast. Casebeer, who teaches philosophy at the U.S. Air Force Academy, has undertaken the project of developing a comprehensive moral theory derived from what he terms “methodological naturalism.” Methodological naturalism, he explains, is a system (...) of moral reasoning derived exclusively from the empirically verifiable claims of science. His ethic starts with the materialist premise that all reality is reducible to matter and energy; since matter and energy are sufficiently explainable in terms of facts derived from the scientific method; morality too, as real—he is undeniably a moral realist—must be sufficiently explained in terms of such facts. With particular attention given to the cognitive sciences and evolutionary biology, Casebeer’s naturalism boldly asserts that ethics is reducible to science, moral norms to empirical facts, and practical judgments to theoretical propositions. This of course implicates the author in what critics refer to as the “naturalistic fallacy,” that is, the illicit inference from facts to norms. Aware of this, Casebeer attempts to show that such an inference is not only not illicit but itself the substance of fundamental moral reasoning. Unfortunately his refutation of the naturalistic fallacy is selective. He reduces the entire complex discussion to a distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, then successfully throws into doubt the existence of such a distinction and judges himself done with the whole question. Using David Hume and G. E. Moore as his principal foils, his refutation entirely ignores the most enduring and plausible argument against deriving “ought” from “is,” proposed by the great medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas and his contemporary expositor, the Oxford philosopher John Finnis. (shrink)

We all live our daily lives surrounded by the products of technology that make what we do simpler, faster, and more efficient. These are benefits we often just take for granted. But at the same time, as these products disburden us of unwanted tasks that consumed much time and effort in earlier eras, many of them also leave us more disengaged from our natural and even human surroundings. It is the task of what Gene Moriarty calls focal engineering to create (...) products that will achieve a balance between disburdenment and engagement: “How much disburdenment will be appropriate while still permitting an engagement that enriches one’s life, elevates the spirit, and calls forth a good life in a convivial society?” One of his examples of a focally engineered structure is the Golden Gate Bridge, which “draws people to it, enlivens and elevates the human spirit, and resonates with the world of its congenial setting. Humans, bridge, and world are in tune.” These values of engagement, enlivenment, and resonance are key to the normative approach Moriarty brings to the profession of engineering, which traditionally has focused mainly on technical measures of evaluation such as efficiency, productivity, objectivity, and precision. These measures, while important, look at the engineered product in a local and limited sense. But “from a broader perspective, what is locally benign may present serious moral problems,” undermining “social justice, environmental sustainability, and health and safety of affected parties.” It is this broader perspective that is championed by focal engineering, the subject of Part III of the book, which Moriarty contrasts with “modern” engineering in Part I and “pre-modern” engineering in Part II. (shrink)

Uncivil obedience, also sometimes called malicious compliance, has the potential to be a galvanizing force for political change. Historically, it played a key role in many 20th century labor movements, and is still used today by both individuals and more organized activist groups. Despite this, uncivil obedience is less often a topic of philosophical discussion than its more well-known cousin, civil disobedience. In particular, uncivil obedience’s relationship to violence is almost entirely unexplored. In this paper, I outline the necessary conditions (...) for some act to count as uncivil obedience, discuss its relationship to violence, and then present the conditions that must be met for uncivil obedience to be justified. Like other forms of protest and resistance, uncivil obedience has normative limits; there are things we ought not do with it, even in the name of fighting for a better world. (shrink)

This book presents four bridges connecting work in virtue epistemology and work in philosophy of science (broadly construed) that may serve as catalysts for the further development of naturalized virtue epistemology. These bridges are: empirically informed theories of epistemic virtue; virtue theoretic solutions to underdetermination; epistemic virtues in the history of science; and the value of understanding. Virtue epistemology has opened many new areas of inquiry in contemporary epistemology including: epistemic agency, the role of motivations and emotions in epistemology, (...) the nature of abilities, skills and competences, wisdom and curiosity. Value driven epistemic inquiry has become quite complex and there is a need for a responsible and rigorous process of constructing naturalized theories of epistemic virtue. This volume makes the involvement of the sciences more explicit and looks at the empirical aspect of virtue epistemology. Concerns about virtue epistemology are considered in the essays contained here, including the question: can any virtue epistemology meet both the normativity constraint and the empirical constraint? The volume suggests that these worries should not be seen as impediments but rather as useful constraints and desiderata to guide the construction of naturalized theories of epistemic virtue. (shrink)

Ethical naturalism is an ethical theory that holds that practical norms are a species of natural norms. It was a position held by almost all ancient ethical theorists, but despite a renaissance among some in the past three quarters of a century, it fell by and large into ill repute centuries ago. This dissertation aims to assess contemporary naturalism in light of that history. In chapter two, I note that contemporary ethical naturalism has had little interest in the historical background (...) of their own theorizing, and I try to fill that gap. The remaining chapters contribute to this task. In chapter three, I explore the concepts of nature at work in some of the writings of Aristotle and Cicero, suggesting that Aristotle has a richer conceptual repertory than usually realised, which could be of use to contemporary ethical naturalists, and that Cicero is needlessly neglected by them. In chapter four, I consider two significant historical developments that make the use of nature concepts difficult today. First, I consider the rise of the empirical human sciences. Second, I consider a line of thinking that concerns nature’s relation to history and society, a line that moves from Rousseau through Kant. I consider too the legacy of this line of thought among neo-Kantians. In chapter five, I consider a final challenge for ethical naturalists, that of genealogy and reflection. Certain kinds of genealogies have been put forth to show the irrelevance of concepts of nature to ethics, but I try to vindicate the notion that ethical naturalism not only can but must be vindicated using a kind of genealogical method. In conclusion, I remark on the prospects of an ethical naturalism more explicitly in conversation with the human sciences and with the history of nature concepts in ethical life. (shrink)

Philosophical naturalists deny the existence of anything supernatural, such as God, souls, demons, ghosts, angels, witchcraft, miracles, etc. They believe that human beings are animals whose existence is entirely governed by the same laws which govern the rest of the natural world. However, some environmentalists value nature intrinsically and aesthetically, and in doing so conceive of nature as that which is distinguished from the products of human culture. Some philosophical naturalists have claimed that any attempt to distinguish nature from the (...) products of human culture in this way stems from a pre-Darwinian world view in which humans are conceived as being separate from and superior to the natural world. They suggest that this distinction involves an implicit denial of philosophical naturalism. Furthermore, J. Baird Callicott and others have argued that it contributes to environmental destruction by espousing human superiority over the natural world. To the contrary, the nature/culture distinction is not the cause of either of these offenses. It is consistent with philosophical naturalism, fundamental to our ordinary conception of nature, and useful in promoting environmental protection. (shrink)

This paper serves as introduction to a significantly longer paper in progress. It argues that, within the ethics community, the wider philosophical establishment and society in general, people have been far too lax about what to accept as morally “right” behaviour – far too quick to let themselves and, all too often, each other off the hook. By drawing comparisons to artefactual behaviour and the objections people raise to calling that behaviour the morally acceptable behaviour of authentic moral agents, (...) this paper lays out a framework by which human ethics and meta-ethics can more fruitfully be approached. An earlier paper of ours argued that, for an action to be morally right, one must have a convergence of the right motivations, the right means, and the right consequences. The underlying insight is that deontological, virtue-ethics-based, and consequentialist accounts all have their necessary role to play, but each tends to get too focused on itself and its merits to the loss of the bigger picture; while utilitarian accounts, as perhaps the most prominent division within consequentialism, face the further problem of failing to allow for those occasions where the needs of the few, or the one, outweigh the needs of the many, as Ursula K. LeGuin so devastatingly addressed. Although the requirement to align motivations, means, and consequences may seem impossibly onerous, it need not be, provided one is prepared to allow that moral behaviour is far more difficult to achieve, either for artefacts or human beings, than it might seem at first glance. Mistakes will be made. Perhaps it matters more to take responsibility for those mistakes than to assure oneself, despite reasonable argument to the contrary, that one has avoided them. It is time to hold artefactual and natural agent alike to a higher standard. (shrink)

Readings in Health Care Ethics provides a wide-ranging selection of important and engaging contributions to the field of health care ethics. The second edition adds a chapter on health care in Canada, and the introduction has been expanded to include discussion of a new direction in feminist naturalized ethics. The book presupposes no prior knowledge, only an interest in the bioethical issues that are shaping our world.

Readings in Health Care Ethics provides a wide-ranging selection of important and engaging contributions to the field of health care ethics. The second edition adds a chapter on health care in Canada, and the introduction has been expanded to include discussion of a new direction in feminist naturalized ethics. The book presupposes no prior knowledge, only an interest in the bioethical issues that are shaping our world.

This paper aims to provide naturalized explanations for the goal-directedness of ecosystem development and its underlying causes within the framework of thermodynamics. While ecologists often use thermodynamic orientors to describe the directional trends of ecosystem development, they typically reject teleological interpretations, constrained by a narrow understanding of “goals” as intentional or mystical. We argue that ecosystems developing toward thermodynamic orientors through self-organization align with the naturalized definition of goal-directedness in system-property theory, demonstrating that such development can be considered (...) goal-directed. Critically analyzing ecologists’ application of Mayr’s distinction between teleomatic and teleonomic processes, we argue that ecosystem development should be considered goal-directed rather than merely end-directed and that the Mayrian path inadequately explains this goal-directedness. To address this, we integrate ecological research with behavioristic and mechanistic approaches (including teleodynamics and relational agency) to identify patterns of plasticity and persistence in ecosystem development and to explain how this goal-directedness emerges from thermodynamic interactions. Additionally, we assess field theory as a complementary externalist teleological framework. Through a comparative analysis of these approaches, we advocate for a pluralistic explanatory framework for the goal-directedness of thermodynamic ecosystem development. By demonstrating that ecosystem development within the framework of thermodynamics should be considered goal-directed and explaining its causes, this paper provides an epistemological foundation for legitimizing teleology in ecological research and extends the discourse on ecological teleology beyond functional explanations to address questions of goal-directedness. (shrink)