purposiveness

plural purposivenesses

1. uncountableusuallyThe state or condition of being purposive.

   We do not regard uranium as having any in-built purpose, or in-built drives or tendencies, at least not in the way that animals have; organisms, on the other hand, have a purposiveness, and death puts an end to such purposiveness.

   1995, Gerald J. Hughes, chapter 5, in The Nature of God, London: Routledge, page 129

   3 more examples

   1853, William Benjamin Carpenter, Principles of Human Physiology, Philadelphia: Blanchard and Lea, 5th American and 4th Enlarged London Edition, Chapter 14, p. 675, These reflex actions of the Spinal Cord have much more regularity and apparent purposiveness in the lower Vertebrata, approaching in this respect to the reflex actionso fhte ganglionic column of Articulata, than they have in Man.

   The majestic spectacle of this blind, inarticulate purposiveness thrusting its way upward and ever upward in an endless unity of differentiated achievements towards an ever-increasing complexity of organisation, towards spontaneity and spirituality, swept away all my old conception of a duty to Man as such.

   1943, C. S. Lewis, chapter 7, in Perelandra, London: The Bodley Head, page 102

   1963, Walter Cerf (translator), Analytic of the Beautiful from The Critique of Judgment by Immanuel Kant, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, Third Moment, § 10, p. 24, If the concept of an object is regarded as the cause of the object (as the real source of its possibility), then that object is a purpose; and purposiveness […] is the causality of a concept with respect to its object.

   Synonyms: purposivity