aporia and Aristotle

Ian Murray seamus2001 at home.com
Sun Oct 28 18:51:11 PST 2001


From: "Chris Burford" <cburford at gn.apc.org>


> Are we all out of date?
>
> >aporia [aporia]
> >
> >Greek term for a difficulty or puzzle (literally, "with no
pathway").
> >Aristotle commonly used this term to signify a group of
individually
> >plausible but collectively inconsistent statements. The
reconciliation of
> >such statements by considering alternative solutions, he supposed,
is the
> >chief business of philosophy.
>
> according to a certain Prof Garth Kemerling, Newberry College, SC
>
> http://www.philosophypages.com/
>
> Chris Burford
=========== I think part of what happened was that Kant found Leibniz' use of non-compossibility and the strategy of combinatorics too complex [for Kant!] to be usable alongside antinomy [shorthand for anti-nomological?] in the first Critique, so he went with something a little easier for managing his exploration of the issue of the synthetic apriori. K like L and their 'rationalist' predecessors all looking for the nomologics of thought. The mind ain't that tidy...........

Ian



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