 The question of how the natural character of organisms can be reconciled with their status as purposes, and hence of the very coherence of the notion of a “natural purpose”, is indirectly addressed by Kant in the Dialectic of Teleological Judgment in the form of a question about how we are to reconcile the apparently conflicting demands of mechanistic and teleological explanation with regard to living things (see  Section 3.4  below). But it can also be raised in a more direct form. How is it possible to regard one and the same object both as a purpose (hence as something which has been produced as a result of conscious design), and as natural (hence—on the face of it—something which has not been produced as a result of conscious design)? To say that we regard it only as if it were designed does not on its own dispose of the question, for it is not clear what it is to regard something that is not designed “as if” it were designed: if we are not ascribing to organisms the property of being artifacts, then in what respect can we coherently regard them as similar to artifacts?