Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in History of Philosophy
Cognition Without Construction: Kant, Maimon, And The Transcendental Philosophy Of Mathematics, Nicholas A. J. Birmingham
Cognition Without Construction: Kant, Maimon, And The Transcendental Philosophy Of Mathematics, Nicholas A. J. Birmingham
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
In the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant takes the ostensive constructions characteristic of Euclidean-style demonstrations to be the paradigm of both mathematical proofs and synthetic a priori cognition in general. However, the development of calculus included a number of techniques for representing infinite series of sums or differences, which could not be represented with the direct geometrical demonstrations of the past. Salomon Maimon’s Essay on Transcendental Philosophy addresses precisely this disparity. Maimon, owing much to G. W. Leibniz, proposes that differentials of sensation achieve what Kantian constructions could not. More importantly, Maimon develops a kind of symbolic cognition that …
Aristotle's Concept Of Nature: Three Tensions, W.W. Nicholas Fawcett
Aristotle's Concept Of Nature: Three Tensions, W.W. Nicholas Fawcett
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
The concept of nature (phusis) is ubiquitous in Aristotleʼs work, informing his thinking in physics, metaphysics, biology, ethics, politics, and rhetoric. Much of scholarly attention has focussed on his philosophical analysis of the concept wherein he defines phusis as “a principle or cause of being changed and of remaining the same in that to which it belongs primarily, in virtue of itself and not accidentally” (Phys. 192b21-23) and the implications this has in various parts of his philosophy. It has largely gone unnoticed, or unremarked, that this is not the only understanding of phusis present in his thinking. This thesis …