"Primal debate": The author replies

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 51(2) of American Journal of Orthopsychiatry (see record 2013-42219-025). The original article, was inadvertently supplied with a preliminary manuscript of Mr. Swenson's letter, which was longer than the published version. As a result, Dr. Crosby's reply makes reference to several points that do not appear in Mr. Swenson's text as published. The views of both parties in the exchange seem, however, to have been clearly and adequately conveyed.] Reply by the current author to the comments made by W. B. Swenson (see record 2013-42790-023) on the original article (see record 2013-42212-019). Croshy does not consider himself bound to Aristotle in any manner beyond the use of his four causes as suggestive of an approach whereby we might glean some insight regarding the question of when does human life begin. Mr. Swenson has enlarged the arena of debate with his basic premise that, "If something has a purpose, then it has a purposer" and "If something does not have a purposer, then it does not have a purpose." Swenson further claims that my emphasis on the "telos" is essentially fallacious inasmuch as purposefulness can only be confirmed by linguistic statements, since human behavior, according to Swenson, may be used in an interpretative sense but never in a confirming sense. Swenson appeared to be semantically tied to the Webster dictionary definition of "purpose" as "conscious intent". Obviously, Swenson drawn on both Webster and Hospers in making his case that purpose must be conscious intent and thus much of what we call "purpose" is in fact "function." However, the original article failed to see that the final, ultimate, or purposeful cause (telos) of the developing fetus is anything other than a healthy and well-born neonate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)