Type
Text
Type
Dissertation
Advisor
Casey, Edward | Jeffrey Edwards | Allegra de Laurentiis | Daniel Dahlstrom.
Date
2010-05-01
Keywords
Philosophy
Department
Department of Philosophy
Language
en_US
Source
This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.
Identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/11401/72680
Publisher
The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
Format
application/pdf
Abstract
This dissertation examines Kant's project in his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science to present a `critically' approved account of physical entities, purportedly necessary for all scientific investigation. It develops an original interpretation of its key programmatic premises, which revolve around the attribution of motion to matter as a way of making further a priori claims about outer things in general. It clarifies the connections these premises have to central doctrines of the Critique of Pure Reason such as Kant's theories about mathematical cognition and the constitution of perception according to sensation. Fatal flaws in Kant's project, however, compel revisions that affect those very doctrines that were supposed to provide a prior basis for it. The dissertation outlines these problems and the corresponding revisions with the help of Hegel's surprisingly sympathetic and detailed criticisms of Kant's Metaphysical Foundations. This has the added benefit of showing how Hegel's own philosophical approach is much more intimately informed by Kant's said project than it initially appears. In sum, Kant is asked to relinquish his transcendental-psychological framework in favor of an account of perception which is immanently reflective and which rests on rational-physical bases instead of providing an allegedly subjectivist basis for the latter. This result issues a challenge for us to think such revisions without helping oneself either to a blatant Hegelian rationalism or an anachronistic naturalism foreign to Kant.
Recommended Citation
Sudan, Meghant, "Matter and Motion in Kant's Philosophy of Science" (2010). Stony Brook Theses and Dissertations Collection, 2006-2020 (closed to submissions). 1883.
https://commons.library.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-theses-and-dissertations-collection/1883