130 Paul Sheldon Davies
The traditional concept “purpose” illustrates the loss of authority in our humanistic
concepts. The illustration rests upon progress in (a) knowledge of our cultural history and
especially (b) knowledge of our psychological constitution. To illustrate this loss of con-
fi dence, I introduce three directives for philosophical inquiry that elaborate on our knowl-
edge in (a) and (b). Although I cannot defend these directives here—though see Davies
(2009)—I can point out that they are utterly banal and that such banality ought to minimize
disagreement between competing parties. I also wish to emphasize that, despite being rela-
tively uncontroversial, these directives affect the way we frame our inquiries into a variety
of issues, including the alleged purposiveness of living organisms. The larger view, then,
is that the adoption of these directives is one reform that we philosophers must undertake
if we wish to make our refl ections relevant to the pursuit of knowledge.
8.2.1 History of Culture
Among the concepts bequeathed to us by our intellectual ancestors, some have proven
themselves to be dubious by descent. A concept is dubious by descent if it descends to us
from a worldview that we, in light of our growing knowledge, no longer regard as true or
promising, and if it has not been vindicated by progress in some well-developed scientifi c
theory. The traditional concept “free will” as elaborated by Chisholm (1964) and others
is dubious in this sense, since it derives mainly from our theological ancestry and has not
been vindicated by any contemporary scientifi c theory.^4 This is not to assume that all
theological claims are false, only that none has shown itself relevant to the enormous
progress in knowledge since the rise of modern science. The increasing irrelevance of
theological concepts and claims to progress in science is as near a brute fact as we are
likely to fi nd in the study of history. It thus is rational to frame our intellectual problems
and solutions in such a way that we leave out or neutralize the potentially retarding effects
of dubious concepts. We need, that is, the following directive for inquiry:
(D) For any concept dubious by descent, do not make it a condition of adequacy on
our philosophical theorizing that we preserve or otherwise “save” that concept; rather,
bracket the concept with the expectation that it will be explained away or vindicated as
our knowledge of the world progresses.
At minimum, we should not assume that a successful theory of the relevant domain must
somehow preserve or account for concepts that are dubious by descent. And as I now try
to demonstrate, the genealogy of our concept of “normative functions” is suffi ciently
dubious to warrant the application of the directive in (D).
We know that the recent cultural roots of “purpose” and other related concepts trace
back to the argument from design for the existence of the Judeo-Christian God. This argu-
ment was enormously infl uential in England near the turn of the nineteenth century, thanks
in part to the writings of William Paley (which were formative for the young Charles
Darwin). For Paley, the apparent design in nature could not be a product of blind causal