| dc.contributor.advisor |
Higgins , Kathleen Marie |
|
| dc.contributor.committeeMember |
Seung , Thomas |
|
| dc.contributor.committeeMember |
Martinich , Aloysius |
|
| dc.contributor.committeeMember |
Phillips , Stephen |
|
| dc.contributor.committeeMember |
Cleaver , Harry |
|
| dc.creator |
Heftler , Christopher Scott |
|
| dc.date.accessioned |
2012 -02 -15T22 :34 :18Z |
|
| dc.date.available |
2012 -02 -15T22 :34 :18Z |
|
| dc.date.created |
2011 -12 |
|
| dc.date.issued |
2012 -02 -15 |
|
| dc.date.submitted |
December 2011 |
|
| dc.identifier.uri |
http : / /hdl .handle .net /2152 /ETD -UT -2011 -12 -4950 |
|
| dc.description.abstract |
In the Critique of Pure Reason , Kant defends the mathematically deterministic world of physics by arguing that its essential features arise necessarily from innate forms of intuition and rules of understanding through combinatory acts of imagination . Knowing is active : it constructs the unity of nature by combining appearances in certain mandatory ways . What is mandated is that sensible awareness provide objects that conform to the structure of ostensive judgment : “This (S ) is P .”
Sensibility alone provides no such objects , so the imagination compensates by combining passing point -data into “pure” referents for the subject -position , predicate -position , and copula . The result is a cognitive encounter with a generic physical object whose characteristics—magnitude , substance , property , quality , and causality—are abstracted as the Kantian categories . Each characteristic is a product of “sensible synthesis” that has been “determined” by a “function of unity” in judgment .
Understanding the possibility of such determination by judgment is the chief difficulty for any rehabilitative reconstruction of Kant’s theory . I will show that Kant conceives of figurative synthesis as an act of line -drawing , and of the functions of unity as rules for attending to this act . The subject -position refers to substance , identified as the objective time -continuum ; the predicate -position , to quality , identified as the continuum of property values (constituting the second -order type named by the predicate concept ) . The upshot is that both positions refer to continuous magnitudes , related so that one (time -value ) is the condition of the other (property -value ) .
Kant’s theory of physically constructive grammar is thus equivalent to the analytic -geometric formalism at work in the practice of mathematical physics , which schematizes time and state as lines related by an algebraic formula . Kant theorizes the subject–predicate relation in ostensive judgment as an algebraic time–state function . When aimed towards sensibility , “S is P” functions as the algebraic relation “t → ƒ (t ) .” |
|
| dc.format.mimetype |
application /pdf |
|
| dc.language.iso |
eng |
|
| dc.subject |
Kant |
|
| dc.subject |
Kant's theory of judgment |
|
| dc.subject |
Kant's theory of synthesis |
|
| dc.title |
Kant’s analytic -geometric revolution : ostensive judgment as algebraic time–state relation in the Critique of pure reason |
|
| dc.description.department |
Philosophy |
|
| dc.type.genre |
thesis |
* |
| dc.type.material |
text |
* |
| thesis.degree.name |
Doctor of Philosophy |
|
| thesis.degree.level |
Doctoral |
|
| thesis.degree.discipline |
Philosophy |
|
| thesis.degree.grantor |
University of Texas at Austin |
|
| thesis.degree.department |
Philosophy |
|
| dc.date.updated |
2012 -02 -15T22 :34 :30Z |
|
| dc.identifier.slug |
2152 /ETD -UT -2011 -12 -4950 |
|