Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Anna Marmodoro
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Mental Life

The introduction raises the main question the book investigates, namely how some of the greatest metaphysicians of antiquity discovered, reified in their ontologies, and explained what structure is. Structure is to be found in the natural world, in our mental life, in any work of craftsmanship and art: a plant, an intention, an engine are all instances of structured entities. Anaxagoras treats structures as primitive entities in his ontology; Plato pioneers a conception of structure as a property, which leads to many metaphysical innovations in his system. The book’s introduction sketches its overall argument, starting with an investigation of structure in Anaxagoras’s ontology, which will serve as a foil for understanding the development of Plato’s views concerning structure and their fundamental impact on those of Aristotle.

scholarly journals Kant and the Laws of Nature

Philosophy ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michela Massimi
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Reflective Judgment ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
To Come ◽  
Theoretical Philosophy

Immanuel Kant’s complex and nuanced view on the laws of nature has been at the center of renewed attention among Kant scholars since the late 20th century. Kant’s view is one of the best examples in the Early Modern period of the philosophical view of nature as “ordered” and “lawful” that emerged with the scientific advancements of the 17th and 18th centuries. Building on the extraordinary success of Isaac Newton’s mechanics and optics, but also on the burgeoning chemistry of Stephen Hales in England and Herman Boerhaave and Pieter van Musschenbroek in the Netherlands, among many others, Kant’s lifelong engagement with the natural sciences (broadly construed) influenced and fed into his mature Critical-period philosophy. Explaining why laws of nature seemingly govern the natural world (as much as the moral law regulates the realm of human freedom and choice) is key to Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Kant seems to embrace a coherent account of what it is to be a law, in moral philosophy and in theoretical philosophy. When it comes to theoretical philosophy (and in particular, to Kant’s philosophy of nature, which is our topic), the main question is how it is possible for us to come to know nature as ordered and lawful. Where does the lawfulness of nature come from? In the Critique of Pure Reason and in the Prolegomena, Kant held the view that our faculty of understanding is the primary source of nature’s lawfulness because the a priori categories of the understanding “prescribe laws to nature”—that is, they play the role of constitutive a priori principles for our experience of nature. Yet, already in the first Critique, and even more so in Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant stressed the importance of the faculty of reason, first, and the faculty of reflective judgment, second—with their regulative principles—in offering a system of laws necessary for our knowledge of nature. The crucial distinction between constitutive principles of the understanding versus regulative principles of reason and reflective judgment leads, in turn, to a series of further distinctions in Kant’s philosophy. For example, it leads to the different status of laws in the physical sciences and in the life sciences, which in turn became the battleground for the debate concerning mechanical explanations versus teleological explanations.

Naturalism in social science

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ted Benton
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Social Rules ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Success Of Science ◽  
The One

Naturalism is a term used in several ways. The more specific meanings of ‘naturalism’ in the philosophy of social sciences rest on the great popular authority acquired by modern scientific methods and forms of explanation in the wake of the seventeenth-century scientific revolution. For many of the thinkers of the European Enlightenment and their nineteenth-century followers the success of science in uncovering the laws governing the natural world was used as an argument for the extension of its methods into the study of morality, society, government and human mental life. Not only would this bring the benefit of consensus in these contested areas, but also it would provide a sound basis for ameliorative social reform. Among the most influential advocates of naturalism, in this sense, was the early nineteenth-century French philosopher Auguste Comte. The authority of the new mechanical science, even as an account of non-human nature, continued to be resisted by romantic philosophers. However, the more limited task of resisting the scientific ‘invasion’ of human self-understanding was taken up by the Neo-Kantian philosophers of the latter part of the nineteenth century, in Germany. Followers and associates of this tradition (such as Windelband, Rickert, Dilthey and others) insist that there is a radical gulf between scientific knowledge of nature, and the forms of understanding which are possible in the sphere of humanly created meanings and cultures. This view is argued for in several different ways. Sometimes a contrast is made between the regularities captured in laws of nature, on the one hand, and social rules, on the other. Sometimes human consciousness and self-understanding is opposed to the non-conscious ‘behaviour’ of non-human beings and objects, so that studying society is more like reading a book or having a conversation than it is like studying a chemical reaction.

Beyond Intelligence Testing

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 320-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serge Nicolas ◽  
Zachary Levine
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Intelligence Testing ◽  
Developmental Psychology ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Applied Psychology ◽  
Important Research ◽  
Memory Research ◽  
English Translations ◽  
The Many

Though Alfred Binet was a prolific writer, many of his 1893–1903 works are not well known. This is partly due to a lack of English translations of the many important papers and books that he and his collaborators created during this period. Binet’s insights into intelligence testing are widely celebrated, but the centennial of his death provides an occasion to reexamine his other psychological examinations. His studies included many diverse aspects of mental life, including memory research and the science of testimony. Indeed, Binet was a pioneer of psychology and produced important research on cognitive and experimental psychology, developmental psychology, social psychology, and applied psychology. This paper seeks to elucidate these aspects of his work.

Universities in ХХI Century: Challenge of Research

2006 ◽  
pp. 118-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Rozanova ◽  
E. Savitskaya
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Teaching Quality ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Quality Signal ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
Russian Universities

Research activities in universities are analyzed in the article. Modern Russia has been flourished with a variety of universities of different teaching quality. What institute to choose is the main question of young people and their parents. As many investigations have shown, the main quality signal for the universities is the level of professors’ research. The situation in Russian universities in this sphere is presented in the article.

A Māori Girl Watches, Listens, and Learns – Coming of Age from an Indigenous Viewpoint: Mauri (Merata Mita, 1988)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Indigenous Woman ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Force ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines Merata Mita’s Mauri, the first fiction feature film in the world to be solely written and directed by an indigenous woman, as an example of “Fourth Cinema” – that is, a form of filmmaking that aims to create, produce, and transmit the stories of indigenous people, and in their own image – showing how Mita presents the coming-of-age story of a Māori girl who grows into an understanding of the spiritual dimension of the relationship of her people to the natural world, and to the ancestors who have preceded them. The discussion demonstrates how the film adopts storytelling procedures that reflect a distinctively Māori view of time and are designed to signify the presence of the mauri (or life force) in the Māori world.

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