The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

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What are the objections to teleology, in the sense of "a single absolute world-plan, complete in every detail from all eternity, and executed with inexorable power" (The Logic of Perfection: 205)?

There are at least three such objections:

(1) the author/executor of the plan is also responsible for all the imperfect adaptations and discords;

(2) human choice and responsibility are turned into an enigma; and

(3) execution of the plan becomes in the bad sense gratuitous, since it can add absolutely nothing to what the author/executor of the plan already possesses in having the plan itself.

n.d.; 11 February 2005

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