Goal attributions in biology: objective fact, anthropomorphic bias, or valuable heuristic?

Goal-attributing statements—which attribute a goal or endpoint to an organismic activity or process arise in three different biological contexts. The first context is the mid-twentieth century debate among biologists and philosophers over how to understand what was widely considered to be the “goal-directedness” in the living world. The second context is the debate in cognitive ethology over whether nonhuman animals are capable of goal-directed behavior that is, behavior that results from having a mental representation of a goal state. The third is the practice (common in evolutionary biology) of treating evolved traits, including behaviors, as means by which an organism furthers its overall goal of survival and reproduction (or maximization of fitness). In each of these contexts, a similar philosophical issue arises: Are the goal-attributing statements literally true? And if not, do they represent an anthropomorphic bias that should be expunged from science, or a valuable heuristic?