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 Class Forums - Spring 2010
 PHIL 390-001 - Metaphysics
 Merkmal		  Forum Locked
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Meik Loughran
Apprentice

21 Posts
Posted - Mar 27 2010 :  3:29:10 PM  Show Profile
Concerning Kant’s use of the word «Merkmal», I was curious to discover how many ways it’s used in German, and this is what I found:
quote:
distinguishing mark, distinction
attribute, characteristic
symptom,
feature; particular feature,
specialty,
trait,
[and most curiously,] a token -n.
How is Kant using it?

[Lightly edited to enhance readability -TT]

Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin

1368 Posts
Posted - Mar 28 2010 :  07:29:00 AM  Show Profile
Kant's use of the term is in the ballpark of the first, second, and fourth of these senses. What he's always talking about is a particular attribute, characteristic, or feature of a thing that belongs to the cluster of attributes, characteristics, or features that we have in mind and use either: (in the case of empirical concepts) to distinguish things of its kind from things of other kinds, or (in the case of mathematical concepts) to construct, specifically, things of that particular kind in pure intuition, or (in the case of the pure concepts of the understanding), "to decipher appearances, that we may be able to read them as experience" (Prolegomena Part II, §30.)
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