Grice, "Teleology", undated item in the Grice Archive

--- The complete folder goes by the title, "Value, Metaphysics, and Teleology", so one has to be careful.

Grice would not often use the word 'teleology'. But the classicist in him was strong enough to want to always identify the 'telos' with the 'causa finalis', seriously. So for Grice, the telos is not just a rationes cognoscendi, but sometimes a ratio essendi. The telos, or END, or, in Latin, the 'finalitas', is a basic notion in philosophy. Philosophers have a duty to consider this. There is no way out. They cannot deny an answer to the question about 'ends'. The idea that this question is metaphysically loaded has nothing to do with our need to answer it.

One of Grice's betes noires (in his 12-fold list) is Mechanism. So here the point is to contrast Mechanism, as a minimalist philosophy, that always searches for a reduction (qua reductionist, rather than reductive analysis) of the idea of 'final cause' which is deemed unjustified. Grice reacts to this, and the Devil of Scientism behind it.