Abstract

Formal methods for representing the characteristic features of organic development and growth make it possible to map the large-scale teleological structure of organic activity. This provides a basis for semantically evaluating, or providing a theory of meaning for, talk of organic activity as purposive. For the processes of organic generation and growth are subjunctively robust under a variety of influences characteristic for the kind or species in question, and these subjunctive conditions can be displayed in a two-dimensional array. After motivating and introducing this array, I use its two dimensions to partially account for features of the purposiveness characterizing two sets of exemplars of the plant and animal kingdoms: ferns and cacti, and cheetah and gazelle. The result is a formal framework for interpreting talk of organic activity as purposive, able to be adapted to a range of research traditions in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of biology.