Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'Chemistry' and 'Critique of Pure Reason'

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3 ideas

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 1. Thought
A pure concept of the understanding can never become an image [Kant]
     Full Idea: The schema of a pure concept of the understanding is something that can never be brought to an image at all.
     From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B181/A142)
     A reaction: Interesting. He is thinking of triangles, for example. The emphasis is on 'pure', and this is a nice defence of the notion of 'pure reason'. Obviously you wouldn't understand a triangle if you were incapable of imagining one.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 5. Rationality / a. Rationality
Kantian 'intuition' is the bridge between pure reason and its application to sense experiences [Kant, by Friend]
     Full Idea: In Kant's technical sense, 'intuition' is the bridge between sense experience and pure reasoning, making it possible for us to apply our reasoning to the physical world around us.
     From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 3.3
     A reaction: Although this concept invites Ockham's Razor, I like it, since it focuses on the mystery of how reasoning can have application. It is the bridge between the analytic and the synthetic, between the a priori and the empirical. It unites thought.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 5. Rationality / c. Animal rationality
Aristotle and the Stoics denied rationality to animals, while Platonists affirmed it [Aristotle, by Sorabji]
     Full Idea: Aristotle, and also the Stoics, denied rationality to animals. …The Platonists, the Pythagoreans, and some more independent Aristotelians, did grant reason and intellect to animals.
     From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Denial'
     A reaction: This is not the same as affirming or denying their consciousness. The debate depends on how rationality is conceived.