The Etiological Account of Teleological Welfare
Chapter 3 develops an etiological account of teleological welfare, an account that satisfies the conditions of adequacy set forth in the previous chapter and so answers the subjectivist challenge. It explains how if nonsentient organisms really are teleologically organized, their good can be defined in terms of their ends in a way that is nonarbitrary, nonderivative, and subject-relative. However, this depends on providing a naturalized account of teleology—one on which teleology isn’t merely illusory, arbitrary, or derivative. Borrowing insights from etiological theories of function, the chapter develops an etiological account of teleology, explaining why it is superior to a theory that defines welfare in terms of functions. It also argues that the etiological account of teleology is the only game in town as far as biocentrism is concerned; alternative accounts of naturalized teleology, such as autopoietic accounts, are ill-suited to the aims of defending biocentrism or grounding teleological welfare.