What is teleology today?

I've tripped over references to "teleology" from a 1968 paper and I'm trying to wrap my head around it. It's described as controversial, to say the least (CW: "teleology as a lady without whom no biologist can live without but he is ashamed to be seen with her in public." 🙄​). https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-88343-9_3

Teleological explanations are defined as, "the explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve rather than of the cause by which they arise."

Do brain researchers use it today? For instance, are normative models (like Bayesian models of decision making) teleological? There, researchers typically define the optimal solution for a problem and compare real behavior to it.

What about the neuroconnectionist program? There, researchers typically define a problem that needs to be solved (like labeling objects in images), train an ANN to perform it, and compare that ANN to the brain.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-023-00705-w

The few papers I've found that discuss teleology versus Normativity were impenetrable. Thanks in advance for pointers in the right direction!