Reason & Time (Session 3)

Hangout is light. Go ahead, Reza. OK. So this is hard to see if anyone has any questions from the previous sessions. No question. Nothing. OK. So I mean, because these two sessions are back to back, I told Mo I couldn't really prepare any slide. And it's more of kind of a free style today and tomorrow.

But I will prepare basically the last session, which will be next week. The session is next week, right? That's right. Yeah. We'll be... To be precise, Reza, and not to confuse people, it's next week Sunday, not Saturday, because next week Saturday there's no class. So tomorrow we have a class, and then the following Sunday. Yes, yes. Today is just makeup. Yes. So, yeah, the last session, which I'm going to talk about and Hegel prepare some slides. So basically, I want to go over the goal of the first module,

which we talked about understanding of self-consciousness or mind as a project requires its decomposition to two main activities. One, activities concerning self-conception, and the other one, practical activities which can be brought under the rubric of self-transformation. and what constitutes self-consciousness is a necessary link between the two but the necessary link already implies that it is not a sufficient or adequate one and in fact as I will talk about

this for a self-conscious creature or let's call it an advanced agency I will define what agency is is necessary to render this link between the two between self-conception and self-transformation from one that is necessary to one that is adequate and an adequate link can be thought albeit reductively speaking as a positive feedback loop between practical intelligibilities and intelligibilities of things as such.

And the scope of, I mean before I start, the scope of self-transformation as what ultimately defines an advanced agency is something that philosophy has pre-nearly preoccupied with since the time of Socrates in Greece and Confucius in China. And then cynics, Stoics, Spinoza, Kant's practical reasoning, Hegel's establishment of spirits and how it realized itself through historical development to Marx, to Althusser,

to somehow Brandon and definitely the Chinese New Confucian philosophy. I mean, philosophy, in fact, the difference between self-conception and self-transformation can be approached as the primary questions of philosophy concerning truth and goodness, or theoretical reasoning and practical reasoning, and ultimately the commensuration of both in order to constitute a unified project. And in fact, agency is a project. It's not an entity. It's a project.

But when we look at, you know, history of Western philosophy, we see that after Socrates, academic philosophy, I mean, from a historical perspective, or those people who moved to academia under Plato's banner, pursued mostly a trajectory that was mainly concerned with truth. Of course, this is kind of a controversial claim because Plato talks as much about truth as he talks about goodness. But nevertheless, the kind of methodological prioritization was basically on the orientation

of thought by means of truth. Whereas the people who moved outside of the academia, the immediate ones, the cynics and the Stoics, where their methodological prioritization was over goodness. And the same thing can be said about Chinese philosophy. Chinese philosophy needs to be understood as a philosophy whose methodological prioritization is over goodness rather than truth. Which, basically, why is that this methodological prioritization is put over goodness, over truth,

can be formulated in terms of the relation between the intelligible and the intelligence. Intelligence without the knowledge of intelligible is unintelligible. But the intelligible without intelligence is fundamentally important. Likewise, we can formulate this in terms of the relation between intelligence and freedom. intelligence incapable of further capacitating its freedom is too primitive and ubiquitous of a phenomenon to be venerated.

But a freedom that does not translate to the intelligence is merely somehow a liberal scam in the service of folly and ineptitude. And this is basically the main thesis of both cynics and Stoics. Cynicism, not in the connotation that we have in mind in modern day as kind of a jadedness or kind of a fundamental skepticism,

Cynicism was a philosophy that basically was very concerned with this integration of freedom and intelligence. That you can only venerate freedom in so far as it has a role in the, basically, in evolution of intelligence. And this evolution of intelligence can be seen as basically perfection or cultivation of agency. Hence, you know, the thesis of cynicism is, which is prior to a stoicism in some sense,

is basically concerning bringing all emotions, all natural impulses under the command of reason. And Astoicism takes this to a further doctrine in the sense that for the Astoic, the mind is a hegemonic device, and an agency can only be distinguished by its capacity to form hegemony. Hegemony in what sense? in the sense that it is capable of hegemonically transform itself under the command of mind.

And mind is basically, again, distinguished by this commensuration between truth and goodness. But of course, there are many differences between cynicism and stoicism. And one of these differences, as I will argue, is basically the emphasis on affect. For cynics, they need to have basically both cynicism and stoicism are first philosophies that they give simultaneously a naturalized account of agency and a rational account of

agency. And this is, Cicero, you know, sums it up pretty nicely that A's moral philosophy is seen as an outgrowth of nature, as basically it is still naturalizable, it has a natural structure, but it also needs to be seen as an outgrowth, a functionally autonomous outgrowth of nature. And so, yes, so both stoicism and cynicism are perhaps the first philosophies that give an account of agency that can be both naturalized and needs to be taken into account in terms

of its natural structure, its natural constitution, and in terms of its rational capacitation, in terms of that outgrowth from nature. But the difference between Stoicism and Cynicism mainly lies in this attitude toward natural aspects or natural structure or natural constitution of the agency. cynicism tries to address these this natural attitude in terms of affects in terms of you know emotions true to nature emotions but also that needs to be brought under the command of reason of rash or rational ends whereas a

stoicism rightfully argues that affects once properly understood are emotions that have been termed or formed as beliefs. And this is exactly something that, you know, for example, Sellars talks about, Brandon talks about. It's quite actually a modern understanding of affect. That if you just prioritize affect, you simply ignoring the belief dimension of your emotions that affects ultimately are sense impressions

or emotional impressions and impressions are conceptually mediated they are beliefs so you can have affects that are contaminated with wrong beliefs with semantic distortions and in order for you to be capable of basically creating a productive field between affects, between emotions and your rational ends or virtues, you need to be capable of tracking your belief statuses when we are talking about affects, when we are talking about our emotions. This is very much as we are familiar with, it's very much a kind of Kantian understanding

That's in order for emotions to serve any role for creation of good life, the first thing that we need to do is we need to look into the belief statuses, the believing attitudes of these emotions to track what kind of facts they are working with, what kinds of impressions they have formed, what kind of semantic structures they have. because as the Stoics were arguing, if we see affect simply as pure emotions,

we are making a mistake. There is no such thing as pure emotions. There is no such thing as pure senses. Every sense, every emotion has a belief status, has an impression. and this impression can be tracked to some sort of conceptual commitment. We have committed to some sort of concept. We have committed to some sort of belief and that belief not only implies something else but is also implied by another belief and in order for us to be capable of basically unlearning, capable of undoing detrimental emotions, detrimental affects, we need to

navigate, we need to track these concatenations, this chain of one belief implying another belief implying another belief. Basically, we should be capable of tracking our commitments, or conceptual commitments or belief commitments that constitutes the formation of our affect, of our, basically, our emotions. And this is exactly what Stoicism emphasizes. I mean, from a modern perspective, there are, you know, kind of rather poor interpretations of Stoicism, and the main cause of that is because Christianity hijacked both cynicism

and Stoicism via a very superficial reading of Stoicism, via a popular impression of Stoicism. But Stoicism needs to be understood not as indifference toward emotion, not as skepticism toward emotion, but as a rational approach to emotions. and why is that it needs to have a kind of a rational attitude toward emotions? Because for Stoicism, the rational schema is too abstract. It needs to have a libidinal investment.

It needs to have an emotional investment in order to basically be capable of effectuating, a cultivation of the self, a cultivation of agency. So I'm going to talk about what is exactly self-transformation, kind of approach it via kind of repeating what I said in the first session of the previous module in terms of the relation between conception and self-transformation.

and how basically understanding the differences, the methodological differences, but also differences in kind of conception and transformation allows us to formulate a robust account of agency, or what we call an advanced agency. And then I will try to, you know, elaborate this link in terms of the progression of, you know, certain forms of thought that methodologically prioritize goodness over truth

in the sense that, as we talked about, truth without goodness is fundamentally important. And then I will bring this discussion from kind of ancient philosophy, the Stoicism, Cynicism, Confucianism, toward more modern philosophies like Espinoza, Hegel, Kant, and moving toward kind of a new philosophy of goodness, which I see it's more in, new Confucianism in which basically you have both an account of truth in the sense of truth

as being truth of the concept, truth of conceptual activities, but also intelligibility of things as such, namely what we talked about, the scientific enterprise, and how you can use both the products of Stoicism in terms of cultivation of self as individual selves and how you can link this to cultivation of collective self. Collective self understood as synthesis, as a rational synthesis of aperceptive selves, of basically eyes. So it creates a we.

And then how this account of self-transformation is basically can be understood as a formulation of a singular collectivity or a collective singularity, if we name it. And that's what calls Zhongshan Talk's address as a form of social sagehood or a self-apprehending intelligence. I further try to argue that this methodological prioritization over goodness is basically the very definition of intelligence and the evolution of intelligence, what intelligence is and what it ought to do.

So, I think, let's start with, again, a Hegelian problem. And that's the understanding of a spirit. I want to kind of decompose Hegelian spirit, again, to its main activities, again, in order to repeat and highlight the main themes of the previous module, and then trace the evolution of a spirit, both in terms of its past states and also hypothesizing its future states.

That would be, the past state would be somehow tomorrow, and its future states will be the last session. So one of the most fundamental insights of Hegel is the identification of a spirit as a function. And that's really, I think, the most important insight of Hegel, that he doesn't ask what a spirit is. said that what, he elaborates the spirit in terms of what it does. And again, we can see that already it anticipates, it prioritizes, methodologically prioritizes the question of spirit

as the question of intelligence, as what is capable of doing something to the intelligible in order to further cultivate itself, in order to make a history for itself. So one of the most fundamental insights of Hegel is the identification of the spirit as a function and the functional decomposition of essentially self-conscious creatures. A spirit being understood as mind or consciousness.

It is a functional explanation of self-consciousness and respectively a spirit in terms of role-playing activities, core realizers, that sets forth a project where theoretical and practical desacralization of consciousness or the mind as something ineffable or God-given coincides with historical emancipation. Characterizing essential self-consciousness in a functional context rather than by taking recourse to an essential or predetermined structure makes it possible not only to identify those key activities which orchestrate the realization of self-consciousness,

but also adequately abstract, reorient, realize, and recoordinate those role-playing activities in order to extend and elevate the project of emancipation. Now we talked about that functional analysis is neither oblivious nor is tantamount to the elimination of structural or material constraints. It is a proper method of carving nature as its joints that reflects in the correct attribution of functions to proper structure, processes, or material organizations which support and constrain them to their specificities.

And that's exactly, you know, we saw that in order for self-consciousness to be effectively realized, we need to decompose it in order to be capable of distinguishing its distinct functions, conception and transformation. with, again, conception having different functional structural levels, as we saw in the first module. And, again, transformation, as we will talk about, again, has different functional structural levels. And if we conflate these, basically, we create what Hegel calls an unhappy consciousness

that is basically incapable of seeing what is exactly wrong with it, to identify and diagnose pathologies of the mind, which, as I will talk about, pathologies of the mind for Hegel, or pathologies of a spirit, in fact, are pathologies of history. With history, as we talked about in the second session, in the first session, was that history for a spirit is not simply its past, but is primarily the sequence of its self-constituted transformations.

Namely, these are the pathologies attributed to both conceptions self-conception of the mind and its self-transformation. Amazing stuff, Reza. I have a question, if you don't mind. Sure. Maybe it's not even a question. The challenge here is the challenge then is not so much basically the challenge here is how one swim against because this attitude towards

this attitude towards the relationship between truth and goodness this attitude towards the relationship between freedom and intelligence this attitude towards the relationship between self conception and self transformation all of these are 180 degree against the currents of mainstream thought as you know, as still propagated in, I mean, even the way you talked about affect, and we were just discussing like how academia is in new materialism, right, is interest in new materialism, right? How one goes beyond oneself to to sort of like, like, how to

navigate this against the stream streaming is really the challenge because it rings all sorts of red bells when you talk about this. Oh my god, this reminds me of that and this reminds me of that because all sorts of stuff is established for at least 100 years we can trace it back to different points in time when this thing started to go opposite in the wrong way but that's another seminar altogether but how to navigate against the currents. It becomes sort of like itself another challenge that this project has to have in mind, right? Yes. Well, there should be, we cannot stick to one antidote. There should be different

There should be different antidotes for different problems. Yes, well, I mean, I'm kind of optimistic in the sense that I see 20th century philosophy and its kind of reactionary status toward these kinds of projects as basically a useful one in the sense that, you know, we needed to investigate other alternatives. And these are basically hypotheticals. You need to create hypotheticals and you need to navigate them in order to actually fail in those alternatives. And what we need to do is not really to question why we took this course, for example, in 20th

century. No, absolutely. But yeah, but to see that how can we not repeating it, that's the question. And yes, that I think needs, we can't really formulate a kind of a solution to all of these problems. These problems I think need to have different antidotes. One, for example, yes, is a kind of education. and another one is basically really, I think, is the idea of emphasizing on disagreements and in a kind of a Socratic method that talks about that expressive rationality is that when people object to these kinds of thoughts, then tell them,

what is your alternative? And then take their alternatives to their ultimate conclusions. show basically what they are committed to already. And this is exactly, well, of course, Socrates got killed for this, exactly. But this is exactly what expressive rationality is, that you don't need to negate people, but in fact take what their commitment, conceptual commitment, what their beliefs are already, take it to their ultimate conclusion, agree with them in a kind of a methodological sense, and then make explicit what they are already implicitly committed to. Now, the next thing that comes in mind is the relationship between good and truth, right?

So the argument here is that the criteria of good is politics or political. I mean, you can say it's political. Yes, absolutely, yes. It's political, essentially, right? Yes. And then argument is always, oh, truth is ultimately good, good is ultimately truth, right? But here there's like a little bit of a tension between the two, the way you describe them, right? It's not really like ultimately truth is good or good is truth. Well, truth is good in the sense that truth can only be good if it actually serves a practical intelligibility. But also practical intelligibility, as we talked about, is reliant on basically appropriate and purposive action, all things considered.

All things considered, meaning what we talked about in terms of a practice that has gone through stages of reflection on the nature of things, namely their intelligibility. So there is this kind of complex interplay and interdependency. But yes, there should be a distinction between the two, in the sense that one is the question of is and one is the question of ought. In fact, in order for us to account for their complex interplay, we need to first sufficiently distinguish these two from one another. Thank you.

Welcome. So, Sorry, just a note. Could I make one note? So, somehow expressive rationality could you're saying that it works towards some kind of essentialism. Towards what? Sorry. It can heal some kind of some kind of essentialism that come out in society every now and then also in terms of truth of what is conceived as truth and also as good yeah well you see expressive rationality

is more of a kind of a strategy of of cultivating critical disagreement by actually, on a surface level, agreeing to what people are already talking about, what are already people believing in, but in the sense that for them, as I said, I mean, this is exactly what the Stoics believe, that when we have affects, when we have attitudes, when we have beliefs, we have commitments, and we see, we basically identify ourselves through these, through entitlements of these supposed commitments, with these commitments

not all being explicit to us. And that's exactly what expressive rationality wants to do as do as a kind of a strategizing, bringing basically what Brandon calls to the space of, to the game of giving and asking for a reason. Bring a person to this, to this game, and agree to him, this is exactly what, you know, the continuation of Socratic method. Then take what basically what they have already committed to, explicit their implicit commitments, take their beliefs to their ultimate conclusions, tell them what that belief implies,

but also what other kind of beliefs have implied that belief. And then you see that it actually, people, some people, yes, some people react to this. But for so many people, at least in the philosophical circle, still this can be useful. But as I said, these are just like, we can't really talk about this in terms of one antidote. Expressive rationality was just one strategy. And obviously, you can't use this against people who are fundamentally, you know, don't want actually their implicit commitments to be made explicit. as you say, there is a kind of an essentialist attitude

that does not allow you to decompose this for them. So for them, there are different kinds of solutions. What would those be? If you could maybe speak to that a little bit more. I mean, because sometimes people refuse to, I guess, make explicit in any way their particular commitments. Do you have any particular approaches for that? I mean, okay, I need to think about this, and this is something that I will try to talk about it tomorrow a little bit. I think it's, if people have essentialist,

and completely immutable essentialist attitudes toward this relation between their implicit assumptions and this method of expletization. This is where exactly politics come to picture. creates rules that people are forced to be bound by them. And this is exactly what politics is, as we talked about it. The politics mobilizes elements that are outside of reason precisely because of this, because rationality ultimately at the end, even though it's necessary,

is not sufficient to make these kinds of changes, even in the belief and status of people. And that's where exactly you need to have political rules, you need to have institutions, you even need to have violence and manipulation. But again, what kind of violence and manipulation, That's the question of how we can create a kind of hegemony in which violence, with violence I don't mean physical violence, but simply an expression of force or institutions or rules can be commensurate with these kinds of rational ends.

I think I don't want to be very optimistic, but I haven't really, well, other than for me I think the main problem of this kind of attitude is mostly monotheistic faction. But monotheism is exactly what has always an essentialist way of thinking in the sense that it does not want to make explicit its assumptions. I do not see really any solution to the problem of monotheism other than a very broad educational

program that is enforced politically. But with other people, actually, I would say that the majority of people are actually, you can use different degrees of these kinds of expressive rationality and they listen to you. But the whole point is that you shouldn't expect anyone to fully discard his or her beliefs, you know, on spot as you basically create these kinds of things. We need to understand this basically cultivation of agency as a project. Basically intelligence is nothing but this hegemonic project. And the hegemonic project means that it always takes time.

But yeah, I think the most important thing about these kinds of resistance to transformation, resistance to expressive rationality, at this point is monotheism. With monotheism not just kind of fundamentalist approach, but simply a monotheism that has also being assimilated by you know capitalist system which is even more prevalent and more insidious because because it's ubiquitous it is somehow invisible to track it down what do you think are you speaking with to me yes yeah I think the point in regards to politics

is probably a salient one in the insufficiency of epistemology or rationalism alone to kind of suss out these particular concerns, because some people will just be resistant to them. I mean, I guess as far as building a particular sort of politics or criteria that's probably dependent on the context in which that's being deployed, I would say, for instance, a politics of art would be somewhat distinct from maybe the politics of a nation state or something like that. So I think that it's going to have to be adjusted to the specific context in which it's in.

Yes, yes. I mean, it's not all about also politics. You see, I think this whole self-transformation with self-transformation being understood as further capacitation of a freedom that can be translated back into intelligence, namely what you can do with the intelligible, is a really, I think, and this is exactly what Hegel talks about, it's something that needs to be understood both in terms of, you know, kind of its historical progress, but also in terms of natural history.

Majority of our, I mean, huge amount of our biases, huge amount of our pathologies are also derived from our natural history, our evolutionary embedded, genetically traceable. So there should be, you know, it's not just politics. There should be a way to have some sort of genetic activism, too. It's not just that we can simply ignore the biologically generated or biologically evolved biases. And this is, I think, that this is where politics falls short, that not everything, just as rationality is insufficient, so is politics. And that's why you need kind of a technoscientific dimension to all of this.

Reza, I'm sorry, but your sound is starting to break down. If you can leave and come back, that would be lovely. Okay, sure. One second. Waiting for Reza to come back. Joshua, it would be good if you turn your camera on when you're speaking and I will make you present so your face gets like larger for the video and all that. Yeah, sometimes I'm like eating a banana or something like that so I don't necessarily No, but when you're speaking, you know, like when you're speaking you don't have food in

your mouth, right? But maybe you speak with food in your mouth, I don't know. Yeah. Or other things, but I don't know. Well, the last time I turned on the camera it seemed that's when Reza's thing fuzzed out. Oh, Reza's having a problem getting back in. So we're just waiting for Reza to get back into the room to continue on. Mo, could you re-brief me on what you said before about the mainstream?

What you said before I think implies the constitution of an agenda, probably, which would be the non-mainstream agenda, which needs to inform any mainstream that exists. I don't know. How did I understand it? It was quite abstract. I'm sorry if I'm wrong. No, the problem, the way I see it is the dominant attitude not only own the car, but they own the roads on which the car is driven. So the problem is double. I'm sorry, I lost my internet connection. I was trying to. well we have to really find out one day

what happens to your mic when it goes crazy maybe your machine is like intelligent and then at some point it starts to like it starts to like steam up from like the complexity of the conversation or something but like maybe your computer is like transforming into like a real like that's the sign of it saying like okay enough but but yeah so that's really the problem is like it's like sorry Reza we're just finishing a conversation, I'm just going to give the microphone back to you. But yeah, so the problem is realizing that the attitudes, both on the car and the road in which it's driven and the direction that this road is paved, right? So you're dealing with more than one problem. It's like two or three problems combined. That makes it really hard to even get a chance

to make an argument, let alone win the argument, right? Yeah, but it's not a matter of winning the argument. As I said, that we need to understand that this kind of, you know, this schema needs to be understood in terms of a project. And obviously when we are talking about a project, it surpasses our lifetime and needs to be understood as something basically that is exactly what the Stoics talk about, that what makes an agency an agency, what warrants the happiness of agency is what makes agency an agency and what makes an agency an agency is really the perfection of agency with the perfection of agency needs to be understood as a hegemonic project

that surpasses you know the finitude of the life of that agent. I think your disputation of politics is a little inadequate because politics properly understood I think is really talking about ends, and ends imply some sort of agentic relationship to the world, and the question is really only more about the degree to which one, as a collectivity, whether that collectivity is a single person that we think of, or whether that collectivity is a society or a group or whatever, the question is really the degree to which those ends can actually be chosen as opposed to merely determined. I don't see a strong separation between the

technical and the biological and the social in that respect. Historically, our discourse has enforced that separation, but I think that's a false separation. Yes. No, I can see it. No, absolutely. It's exactly what I'm trying to argue, that there is no clear-cut separation. In fact, they shouldn't be separated. But this is exactly what historical pathologies for Hegel, which brings them under the heading of abstract negation. An agent that is solely equipped with abstract negation is incapable of basically negation is incapable of basically integrating all of these things.

Because for such an agent, either these things are fundamentally, as you say, fundamentally separated from one another, or they are already integrated at our hand. We can't say just that they are fully integrated. Obviously, if they were fully integrated, then we did not have, you know, obstacles. We did not have setbacks. We did not have problems. They ought to be. They ought to be seen that way. Not that they are. Yes. No, they are. They are, but, you know, their effect, their integral effect basically is not available to us. And that's the most important thing.

And that's exactly what political hegemony is. to render palpable the effect of this interlinking between biological, technical, social, so on and so forth. Reza, what I was going to go back to was the impatience, the impatience that make one want to see faster results come from the fact that within the last, not even 100 years, within the last, one would say even since World War II, we've seen the English academia being sort of like convinced once or like overtaken in terms of hegemony

by a sort of like Western Marxist Frankfurt School Adorno type and then by post-structuralist Foucauldian Derridaian, right? So these two really like different paradigm shifts that took place in academia, most of it after World War II, creates this type of like impatience for like, okay, if others can somehow sort of like penetrate academia with new ideas or new arguments, new philosophies, why shouldn't we? But I tend to think more along the lines of what you're talking about, which is these shifts that come with the kind of philosophy that you and others are proposing are much longer and they require maybe more work than just one lifetime.

And as you were saying it to me a few months ago when we were hanging out in L.A., that we may not even see anything happen during our own lifetime in terms of major attitude changes. Yeah, but I don't, I mean, especially, probably you know and Josh knows that I have the softest spot for Foco. I think there is no incommensurability, there is no incompatibility between changes, effectuating changes that we can see, and also creating possibilities for changes that we can ever witness. I think there should be both, in fact, and this is exactly why I think people like Foucault, what they did, was completely aligned with these kinds of massive intergenerational projects.

Yes, you cannot have a global construct, a global goal, a global rational end without its concrete local particularities. It needs to be understood as a construction. Each step of construction needs to be procedurally conceived. It needs to have palpable effects. but once you see the global scope of the construction, it can be conceived as basically a singularity that is completely discontinuous and asymmetrical to its local effects. I was thinking maybe back to some of the stuff you were saying about biology

and the kind of construction of this sort of maybe more universalized politics and perhaps some of the more, you know, rational goals there as kind of like ultimate ends. And I've been thinking about, I mean, I've recently read something by Helen Hester, and hopefully she'll forgive me for mentioning this prior to it being out there on here. But she discusses the feminist movement, actually, you know, and it's sort of, it's recognition of the sort of, like, universal emancipation of humanity kind of past these sort of, like, gender binaries and that sort of thing.

But then she talks about how they embraced particular political tactics at the time. For instance, in kind of emancipating women from home life and the sort of domestic binary, they suggested they move into the work life because this was a space, you know, especially as conceived under a kind of more Marxist politics in which they could have a kind of political voice. And this tactic kind of became a bit reified over time, and, like, the domestic space became forgotten as a space that could be revolutionized as well. So I guess I'm kind of wondering maybe a bit about this difference between the sort of, like, ultimate ends of this kind of more universal trajectory

and the implementation of particular tactical moves in politics and how political goals may serve or have kind of operations that are counterintuitive or sometimes even apparently counterconstructive to the overall major goal of, like, getting rid of, for instance, like work altogether by having, you know, women enter the workplace. So these things can kind of run against one another as they confront the different sort of contexts that they have. Yeah, no, yes, I think this is exactly what hegemony is. You see, hegemony is really the ultimate, you know, global, universal, rational, and understood estoically.

but hegemony is exactly the integration of different orientations. With these orientations need to be understood that they might not be aligned with the global orientation. Basically, ultimately hegemony takes you. And this is exactly what we need to understand hegemony, that the practice of hegemony needs to have a hypothetical global orientation, but also kind of novel approach to local phenomena. With local phenomena, what novel approach to local phenomena means, meaning that we need to address the local problems.

For example, the local problem of family, the local problem of whatever. In terms of a context, what is exactly a context? A context means that it's always embedded or immersed within a kind of a global environment, within a more general context. We can't just... So the tactics need to be understood not as a form of tactics that is specifically targeting the exigencies of a local problem, but the first thing that it needs for a tactic to become a tactic

needs to understand that how these exigencies, how these local problems were generated by basically kind of a general or global forces or global elements. And that's exactly where I think, yes, tactics become counterintuitive. Because if we see tactics as simply addressing the specific local problems with the understanding that these specificities are already, the knowledge of these specificities are already available to us, we are making kind of that trivial localist move.

This is exactly what localism is about, that it thinks that the problems of the local are basically generated spontaneously from the context of the local. And then it tries to address them, respond to them, target them, manipulate them, so on and so forth. But we need to understand that these problems are actually the specificity, local specificity means that it's contextual specificity, meaning that this context need to be traced back to a more general environment and how those general forces, how that general context give rise to these local specificities.

For example, as you see, as we talk about, when we are talking about work sphere, then we need to see these problems with the work. We need to address these in terms of, you know, a more general or a more broader context, which in fact gives rise to these kinds of, you know, local specific work problems. It is exactly that kind of the navigational tool that we need to have, that what makes the local local is not the spontaneity of local specificities, but it's in fact the topological correlation between a local domain and the general environment in which it is embedded.

And we can never divest or talk about these local exigencies without the global context in which these problems are embedded to. And I think this is something that is exactly missing in any kind of revolutionary politics these days. Because revolutionary politics still has this kind of localist attitude toward specificities. It confuses specificities as basically the nodes for change,

for effectuating palatable change with local parameters. But there is no such thing as local parameters. It's only local insofar as it has been generated by more broader, more general, you know, context and parameters than the synthesis between them. And in order for you to devise a robust tactical response to these problems, you need to be able to track basically how the plot depends, how you can see these specificities in light of more general problems.

and how these generalities can be, you know, contextualized as specificities. This is why I think that, you know, this approach to this local global problem is important in the sense that you – if you say that the local is given to you, you are simply making a trivial move, a trivial tactical move. If you say global is already available to me, you are creating a kind of a universal incompetency, a kind of a general globalized approach. You need to understand this local global problem as a form of dialectics. The relation between these two is neither being intuitive nor straightforward.

Well, I'm still presenting to the group. Would you mind to be left? Sorry. I couldn't hear you. Well, that's OK. I was saying that Joshua had a pretty face. That's why he was presenting. But I put Reza back on. Thank you, Joshua. thing is that also this is this also comes to you know one of those like the stuff that you know it can be talked about in terms of you know and war studies that there are two always there are two no kind of polarities between

tactics and a strategy you know kind of you see for example people like clouds with always talk about the strategy with kind of an overall global politics of change and establishing force by appealing to you know global perspectives and you see that for example revolutionary tacticity you know the field of subversions and stuff which always try to see their tactics in light of local specificities and how a system can be corrected by manipulating its local parameters the thing is that these two are completely deficient without

in without being there are completely deficient if they if they mutually exclusive one another local specificities of a system need to be understood in terms of the global tendencies and the global behavior of a system and the global behavior and global tendency of a system needs to be understood by way of how local parameters of the system determined over trajectory. There is one caveat here that these local parameters, the way that they

are integrated and make the overall tendency of a system is not the addition of sums. You can't just put certain particularities together and create a global perspective. There is a form of counterintuitive synthesis and that's the most important part. Any kind of politics needs to understand to how incommensurable different trajectories, different local parameters can create global perspectives. And how global perspective can be, again, decomposed into these different non-reconciliatory, incommensurable, and distinct orientations and local parameters. The ultimate question is really the question of synthesis,

differentiation and synthesis, differentiation and integration. It's very interesting. It reminds me of the local, the synthesis of the global and local. for me in the . Konstantinos, I couldn't hear you. Can you repeat? Well, this whole dialectic reminded me of the synthesis, also of the word global and local.

The global, I've seen it sometimes. And also, I don't know, I made a huge effort to elaborate this in the previous assignment, in which I couldn't. It was really small. But the general feeling that there is global and the local actors regimes. And it's very difficult to move out from local specificities and also move out from global generalities. well it is not because you see and this is one of the things that for example some of the acceleration

people talk about that we need to understand local specificities in terms of what they call for example what Benedict Singleton calls a plot and a plot is traceable you can trace these specificities in terms of generalities in terms of more broader basically elements that have contributed to the rise of these specificities you can trace them and this is exactly what any good tactician and any good strategies needs to do in to understand a local site as simply a plot a plot of deeper forces deeper complications different complicities

so on and so forth. If you see, yes, if you see a local, the local as simply a fixed framework, a set of particularities, yes, then it is really hard to see it. But if you see that actually there is no such a thing as pure locality, that every local is already embedded into, you know, a much broader domain, then you need to be capable of optimally deepen this plot, identifying exactly what constitutes these specificities. And what constitutes these specificities is, for example, what Ben calls a plot. A plot then can be traced back. And then the most important thing is how to optimally deepen this plot.

How, in order to implement change at the level of local, all exactly what kind of, how can you unpack this in the most optimal manner? How can you unpack these specificities and trace them to more general structures and functions, so on and so forth? That's the question. That's the difficult part. How can you optimally unpack it without either resulting some sort of, again, a bad generalization, as I said, or basically creating some sort of pure honest stability for basically local parameters. Ben was talking about, and this I can agree with him, that while I don't really, I'm not

really an acceleration is I just think of myself as you know as someone who's like very interested in these discourses but not ultimately committed to oh my god that's really that's all I told a Khomeini I'm not committed to them a bunch of Iranian Olympic medalist when when to visit him especially like Iran always win like wrestling right so they went back after like the world world championship and then they're all sitting at his like around him and he said well I'm not really a sport person but I really like sport people that they put everywhere in the city so it's like I'm not really an acceleration is what I really like acceleration is no I know I can see that

the where they are coming from I can act that's that's I think I can easily see that, which I'm completely in agreement and have sympathy for that. But, so anyway, Ben was talking about this, that one of the primary things with accelerationism that is like kind of widespread among all of its factions and its microbranches is that it sees everything in terms of plots. And once you see every specificity, every local problem in terms of the plot then you can actually understand how to manipulate these parameters because a plot is something that can be further deepened

exactly create is exactly it expresses that synthetic passage within local and global that need you need to unpack it optimally and unpacking of it it gives you a blueprint of further manipulation. This is, I think, really, I think, something that is completely missing in those kinds of revolutionary, you know, tactical approaches in 20th century politics. And you see that kind of like the most extreme of it would be the communization theory. Communization theory is exactly not what doesn't see local specificities as plots.

And hence, manipulation, it's not about manipulation. It's really about basically replace one set of parameters with another set of parameters. Whereas when we are talking a plot, it becomes what Carl Craver calls, when I'm trying to generalize, no revolution is necessary. you can create basically points of manipulation, points of subversion by simply tracing these local specificities to global ones, changing deeper structures, implementing, for example,

change at a different level of a structure that from perspective of local problems might have nothing to do whatsoever with that structure. This is exactly what that nested picture of hierarchy comes into play. This is exactly, you know, the definition of how you can implement change by seeing the perspective the surface perspective of sir of a structure and function in terms of a nested counterintuitive hierarchy of complexities and the important question is that how you can dive into this nested hierarchy how you can manipulate it how you can make change you know in this

spectrum of complexity with the aim of effectuating tangible change on the surface structure and function okay and Matt may ask something sure yeah it's interesting that you mentioned in terms of superficial and superficial terms because I mean one thing that I found very enlightening about the communication theory. May I ask who is speaking, who is speaking because I want to switch to you and maybe ask you to turn your camera on. Okay. My name is Mateen and I've been auditing and now there was some free…

Hi, how are you? I'm good, thank you. It's funny because I don't see you down there as one of the… It's abject, right? Exactly. Do you want to turn your camera on or you don't feel like it? Right student informatin. I'm kind of, I think, yeah, okay, but I might have to leave, well, anyway, yeah, I don't know if it works, actually. Go ahead. Basically, what I find interesting about communication theory is understanding of capitalism in its It's taking a very careful analysis that comes from value form understanding of how

all these capitalist categories are interconnected and you cannot undo one without the other. So how do you, in regards to what you were saying before about making changes in the kind of superficial level or through the plot manipulating, but however, how can you actually get into some of the root of the problems that capitalism has, which has to do with with its totality, its structural categories that determine the everyday reality and the

more local concrete specific things. I think, you see, this is something that's exactly where I disagree with communization theory because yes I understand that's a communization theory identifies capitalism as you know kind of a global construct but it's the way that it identifies global construct is exactly within a kind of rather antiquated philosophical understanding of what a global construct means hence it identifies capitalism as a totality there is no such a thing that having both Both dynamic global behavior and having a totality. These two are completely incommensurable.

In fact, having a global dynamic tendency means that you do not have totality. You have dynamic functions. You have dynamic tendencies. And this is exactly what capitalism is. It's a dynamic global tendency. A dynamic global tendency might have, you know, kind of an integrative function in which every local parameter is linked, but this is not a form of totality in the sense that you cannot manipulate its functions. This is, dynamic tendencies are distinguished by basically their adaptability. Now that's exactly where the weakness of capitalism is. And its function, because it's a dynamic tendency, it's also adaptable.

You can target capitalism through its, you know, it's basically Achilles heel, which is the adaptability, which is basically where it becomes dynamic. And that's exactly what requires a kind of careful distinguishing of what are its local parameters, how they can be manipulated, so on and so forth. But seeing it as totality, I think, falls back into this understanding that capitalism is actually a structure. Capitalism would strap itself to a structure, but it's ultimately a function. And when it is a function, it becomes a matter of dynamic tendencies, a matter of adaptation.

And adaptation, sure, that has its own pathologies, but precisely because it is a function, it can be manipulated by either replacing some of its structures or by infiltrating the correlation between how it yields its global functions from these local structures. But, again, the thing with the communization theory is that it wants to simultaneously show that how capitalism is such a monstrous global construct,

construct, but there is in fact a local solution, a local tactical solution to this global construct. And this is, as I said, this comes from understanding that how it identifies this global construct is within the framework of a totality, with the totality being understood as there is a kind of a very rigid correlation between the function of capitalism and its structural basis. Yes, it's a structural totality. But I think this is a kind of a problematic understanding.

There is no such a thing as... We shouldn't confuse totality of a structure with totality of function. Functions are dynamic adaptations. Functions can actually change underlying structures. So related to that, I was talking to Mo earlier about reading the eighth volume of Collapse and Nick Land has an article in there called Odds and Ends. And he makes a really interesting definition of capitalism. If you don't mind, I'll just read the... He compares capitalism to its abstract alternative, which is to say, any social arrangement in

which the outcome of risk-structured undertakings is potentially revisable upon appeal to a superior tribunal. Insofar as risk is transcended by a higher principle of distribution, it remains a subordinate fact of social existence and thus fall short of its terminal capitalist form. Inversely, the extent to which society is placed at risk by economic opportunities is the degree to which capitalistic imperatives prevail. And he kind of makes the distinction between risk and ventures where the venture of a business is the project through which it could cease to exist. So that existential threat to the agent or to the system is... Or to the structure, yes. or to the structure is that definition as opposed to the idea that there is some transcendent

guarantor outside, which is necessarily a meta-system or a meta-level structure. Yeah, no, I will talk about this problem with RIS that actually this is very kind of, fact a very Hegelian understanding that the spirit odyssey is understood in terms of its adaptability to time, in terms of risk-taking. And this risk-taking, which creates its dynamic tendency, which creates its function, can result in basically existential risk for its for its structural components, namely agents.

And the same thing about capitalism. In order for us to identify what is exactly, when we are talking about capitalism, we need to identify this difference between a structure and function with the understanding that not all structures translate to functions. and secondly, that a structure, even though constitute function, it does not fully determine the course of its evolution and adaptability. And ultimately capitalism needs to be understood in terms of its functionality.

If we are going to change something, it should always be change of functionality. A change of functionality that requires a careful understanding of how we can decompose these functions to its, you know, sub-capacities, sub-functions, and also structures. Precisely what kind of a structural analysis it entails for us to change, you know, the overall functions. functions but again with the understanding that the dynamicity of the function is ultimately irreducible to totality of a structure and this is I think the most

important thing about capitalism otherwise we simply trivialize capitalism yes we say that it's global but this notion of global dynamic capitalism then becomes kind of a trivial image in so far as it can't really distinguish a global function from a global total domain of a structure. And it seems that communization theory really what it tries to target and criticize and diagnose is not the capitalism as function, namely it has a form of abstract autonomy

of its own, but at the level of global structure, or which as you say, the totality of a structure. Yes, at that level, yes, you completely need to replace something with something else. And the structures need to be engineered, needs to be subverted, replaced, so on and so forth. But what is really the most important question is really the dynamicity of function. With a system, and this is exactly what the modern definition of a system is, that if capitalism system can never be understood in terms of its structure but simply in terms of its abstract tendencies that constitute its global behavior, its global function.

I just wanted to maybe add, medical metaphors are not necessarily appropriate or follow all the way through the end with the way Reza explained how we should look at capitalism. But sometimes it's good to sort of like point to something. The problem of communization is that it kind of like, if you want to look at it in a medical metaphor, is like capitalism is not really like a bacteria, but it's more like a virus or even retrovirus. So you can't really locate it as this infecting agent, whereas it's more like how Reza was explaining it, like a retrovirus, it latches on to already existing structures.

And in fact, if you look at both cancer and AIDS treatment, the treatment really only got going in the right direction when they stopped thinking of it as a thing and started thinking of it as what does it do. and then start to like engineer treatment for regardless of what it was, but what it did and how they could prevent it or delay certain processes. And that's how they started to. So, yeah, so the question of what it is was almost like left unanswered. Even though the metaphor... This all comes to this idea that... That's very functional. Sorry? That's very functionalist. You black box the system, and you basically say, I don't need to know what it is ultimately in terms of some sort of substance.

I just need to know that given... It's a process, it's not a totality of substance. You see, I think the idea of totality is quite an antiquated metaphysical idea. It just doesn't exist. It's not an intelligible idea. Yes, it's not a black box, in fact, a system. System is really a bundle of processes that are materially constrained, that are dimensionally varied, but nevertheless they yield integral tendencies, integral functions. and for us in order to identify

we see the integral function for example of capitalism but in order for us to coherently talk about this we need to be capable of decomposing this integral function to as I said to how this function is materially constrained by different level of structures not by just some appeal to some sort of totality of a structure of capitalism. But in fact, how it is constrained, how it is determined by structures that are not capitalistic by nature, that's the most important thing. If you want to reduce the globality of function to the totality of a structure,

we risk basically overextending our analysis. And what is really, this is what ultimately came to what we talked about, that functionalism needs to be understood not as kind of that abstract picture of function where you have a black box system and then you see how it behaves. But we need to understand in terms of what we call dimensionally varied and multiply constrained functionalism. Multiply constrained meaning that a function or a behavior is afforded by qualitatively distinct level of structures. Basically what constrain or what affords that global behavior.

And this is exactly how a sufficient analysis of capitalism needs to take into account, that the global function of capitalism, its global dynamic tendencies, how they are generated by qualitatively distinct types of structures that cannot be mashed up together in terms of totality. in terms of basically all having the same quality or the same type or the same functionality as capitalism. And this is exactly what I think, you know, accelerationism is quite,

I think is quite on the right track to identify what is exactly, what are those kinds of structures, what are those kinds of material components and organizational components that are qualitatively distinct, what they do and their structure are qualitatively distinct from the global function of capitalism, even though in this framework they serve that global function. I mean, Matin, we talked about this.

I think would be, oh, I think Matin left. I mean, this is exactly what's, I'm going to continue, but this is exactly what we talked. why is that it is necessary to have a good account of function and structure, how ultimately Plato's thesis, carving things at their joints. Yes, I'm quite in agreement with Jordan. If we have an abstract or flat picture of function, then all of the systems becomes basically a black box.

Then we are incapable of making any change, but also we are making these kinds of really facile argument that, for example, the function of capitalism can be easily embedded into other things, you know, into other social strata or in other material systems insofar as it is unshackled from its underlying structure. Or if we do not have again a good account of function then we are making what communization theory says. Basically we mistake global function, we think that there is a

one-to-one correspondence between a global function and a totality of a structure. That basically all the structure that serve a global function, that generate that global function, need to be understood as subsumed within the logical of that global function, which is basically, again, a kind of erroneous functional picture. And this all comes basically to this idea of how we can dimensionally conceive different strata of a structure and function. how we can then interpret a global function in terms of qualitatively distinct level of structure and functioning.

And so this is, okay, let me continue. This is what I'm going to talk about. This is basically what Hegel really thinks is the most important problem in understanding how a spirit functions and then how we can change, amplify the transformation of a spirit. So, for this reason, I said that functional analysis, however, is neither oblivious to nor is tantamount to elimination of a structural or material constraint. It is the proper method of carving nature at its joints that reflects in the correct attribution of functions to proper structure, processes, or material organizations which support and and constrain them to their specificities.

For this reason, functional analysis or decomposition entails a stereoscopic view that sees or quantifies a singular function in terms of activities that are both qualitatively distinct and are different from what the function appears to be doing. While every functional stratum has its own order of uniformities, it might be supported and constrained By different hierarchies of structure and function, regardless of their order of distribution, the identification of a function as dimensionally varied, that is, analysis in terms of the multiplicity of qualitatively distinct activities distributed across different levels of realization,

and multiply constrained, that is, analysis in terms of a structural material and functional organizations which afford every activity or function a specific role or functional characteristics is, in principle, a blueprint for the realization and reorientation of that function. The dimensionally varied and multiply constrained analysis of a function is, in reality, the deep picture of what a collection or an organization is doing as a complex system. The overall morphology of a function, its attributes and characteristics, is determined by interplays of processes and performances which cannot be simply merged or intuitively

added together. The identification of function as flat and therefore unconstrainedly abstract makes the issue of the realizability, reappropriation, and functional change appear already at hand and only a matter of understanding and intervention at the level of immediate cognitive and practical resources. So this in relation to all we just were talking about and this is flat picture of function needs to be understood as what Jordan was talking about you know or also what we talked about in terms of for example a flat picture of function sees that for example within an input and output simply there is a map of transition and this map of transition can be abstracted

without taking into account structural specificities, local specificities, material organizations that also needs to be understood in stratified terms, insofar as they are qualitatively distinct. Even though the surface function appeared to be a totality, its reality is never a totality. It's basically decomposable to qualitatively different structures and functions. So the myth of totality is exactly like the myth of substance that sees the monism of function as the monism of substance.

But in order to really break through this myth, you need to understand it in terms of basically processes, qualitatively distinctive processes that give rise to this overall function, to the manifest totality of a function. So, for example, within, you know, this flat picture of function, if X has a global function G, symbolizing global, and local qualitatively distinct sub-functions, nlocal, mlocal, so on and so forth, then according to the flat picture of function, all activities in X are regarded as essentially subsumed within G,

meaning the global function. then if what X is doing is bad or flawed then by definition and by virtue of the functional subsumption the totality the picture of totality then sorry then by definition and virtue of the functional subsumption entailed in the flat picture or totality of function all activities and functions in X must be discarded. So if something is bad in this image of capitalism, then it must, if something serves, you know, the dynamic tendency,

the global function of capitalism, then by virtue of this global function being a totality that flattens all the qualitatively distinct functions and structures, that all structures that serve this function needs to be discarded. If something is bad, if the global function is bad, then all structures and functions that serve it needs to be abundant, which is basically, again, comes out of this fallacy of the flat picture, quote, totality. Or if what X is doing is good or adequate, then all activities within X must be preserved.

Similarly, the change, subversion, realizability, and implementation, ranging from resignatory cynicism, sorry, similarly, the flat picture of function can perpetuate biased assumptions regarding the prospects of change, subversion, realizability, and implementation ranging from resignatory cynicism to fatalist optimism. It is not difficult to envisage the dogmas stemmed from a flat identification or a poor analysis of a function as totality. Incorrect, that basically stems from incorrect attribution of functions aligning the qualitatively

distinct functional levels, overextending a structural model, so on and so forth. And I see that with communization theory, it basically creates all functional dogmas, all structural functional dogmas in the service of identification of a totality for capitalism. prescriptions for wholesale affirmation of or full exit from capitalism prophecies regarding the imminent advance of a superhuman intelligence models of struggle and change confident in their immediate resources for understanding and action all

at their core share a flat or flawed picture of functions, and that's global function qua totality. Hegel's recognition of a spirit qua collection of rational agencies or essentially self-conscious creatures as a function, and subsequently decomposition of this function into qualitatively distinct activities, should be seen as a systematic attempt to uncover the deep picture, or more accurately, the dimensionally varied and multiply constrained account of function. By analyzing the meaning of essentially self-conscious, in terms of activities and further functional decomposition of these activities

into other distinct processes, capacities and sub-capacities, whose causal and inferential links bring about the realization of consciousness, Hegel points to hitherto unknown realizers and material organizations, powers and constraints. Basically, once we understand, we see the function of the system no longer as a totality, but in terms of dimensionally varied and multiply constrained deep picture, then we are capable of not only identifying pathologies and obstacles, but also discovering new realizers, new potentialities that can be actually used,

utilized, augmented in order to, you know, implement a global change or completely take a different alternative course of functioning or action. Insofar as this move brings the spirit to light as a functional organization deeply enmeshed in performances and material structures, it inaugurates a new stage for what Hegel calls the spiritual struggle, that is a struggle pertaining to the spirit in constituting its own history. This is what I will talk about, that a spirit as a history, and history is really what brings conception and transformation together.

This new stage is characterized by its thoroughgoing theoretical and practical desanctification of time, by its avoidance of ineffability and mysteries in explaining and intervening with the history of a spirit, by highlighting those structural joints or material organizations which should be treated as sites of struggle in order to liberate, cancel, or change a specific function and respectively facilitate the history of the Geist as a functional self-realization. In short, Hegel's systematic elaboration of the Geist in functional terms sets the stage for not only diagnosing what can cause bad or unhappy consciousness or an impoverished history of the spirit,

and how can it be repaired or removed, but also more importantly, it sets the stage for determining how the functional realization of the spirit can be sufficiently augmented and amplified so that the spirit achieves an autonomous and in a sense automated self-realization. And this is exactly, automated self-realization is the adequate link between self-conception and self-transformation. Now I said automated in a sense because this automation is neither fully self-referential nor identically iterative of its past histories. Instead it suggests the intertwinement of self-referentiality

and negation as an engine for bootstrapping complex abilities from primitive ones. For a spirit, what it is and what it has been is simultaneously recognized and negated in order to infer and realize a new functional level that can no longer be simply determined by its antecedent conditions. So Hegel says that basically history is a repetition of past. But there is a caveat here. It's repetition concomitant with negation. So far as we recognize our past commitments, but also we negate them in terms of analysis of our past commitment,

that if they were wrong or right, by whom they were authorized, so on and so forth, which creates this kind of progression in which every stage of history is non-bijective to the previous one. So even though we are repeating, basically, even though history progresses by repeating its past states insofar as it combines this repetition with negation, this self-recognition with negation, it creates this kind of progression in which the course of progression

is no longer identical repetition of past. In fact, as I said, a spirit becomes something, what it will be is never what it is and it has been. And this is basically what transcendental Odyssey of a spirit consists in. what it is and what it has been is simultaneously recognized and negated in order to infer and realize a new functional level that can no longer be simply determined by its antecedent conditions the functional transcendence of spirit is not elevation in the order of finitude

fixated on the boundary and the promised infinity beyond it is the diagonalization of the finitude And we talked about this diagonalization is exactly this kind of move by way of self-recognition, a connegation that allows a form of constructive dynamics in which every stage of construction cannot simply reduce to its antecedent conditions. since diagonalization is nothing but the concomitancy of self referentiality and negation or repetition and negation as the constructive principle of self dissimilarity what it will be

is never what it is or has been here never implies the elimination of by activity namely one-to-one mapping between transitions of the adequately conscious self whose sequence of self-constituted transformations is not entailed in the iteration of its past states. Important one. So never is that what it will be is never what it is or it has been. Never here implies the elimination of bijectivity between transitions of the adequately conscious self whose sequence of self-constituted transformations is not entailed in the iteration

of its past states. It is the demonstration that it is possible to conceive via finitude a new plane impossible to be dreamed of through a constant appeal to infinity. and this is what we will talk about tomorrow it's exactly the understanding of agency as a project that where the finitude of the agent is compatible with the infinitude of its global construction,

of its basically historical progression. It is in the above sense that Hegel's functional decomposition of the spirit as that which has a history and is endowed with the capacity for self-augmentation and self-transformation lays the groundwork for what Althusser calls Marx's monumental discovery, the uncovering of history as a continent of scientific knowledge whose functional analysis brings to light a concrete schema of events, material organization, and processes where sites of diagnosis, struggle, and intervention must be formed in order to implement any consequential change. For change is only determinately signified with regard to a function.

Change in a structure is only carried out to effectuate the change in function with the understanding that the relation between function and structure is neither bijective, one-to-one, nor subjective, since not all structures contribute to the realization of a given function. Now, it's time to ask, what does the functional analysis of essential self-consciousness consist in? or to put it more straightforwardly, what is self-consciousness decomposed into? And that was the overall trajectory of this whole seminar. What are its principal activities? We explained them in terms of self-conception and self-transformation.

These activities, self-conception and self-transformation, on the principal activities of consciousness or basically the realization of the spirit, the realization of something that has history. We understand that this history is not just past, but the ability to generate a sequence of self-constituted transformations. and where the sequence, where every sequence of transformation is no longer the repetition of its past states,

is no longer identical to its past. Essentially self-conscious creatures are those for which what they are for themselves is an essential component of what they are in themselves. and this is what we talked about. Alteration in the order of self-conception induces a change in the self of which it is a conception, and a difference in the self induces a transformation in the conception of the self. The positive feedback loop between conception and transformation instigate a disequilibrium in the self

with each difference in one order destabilizing the other and becoming a cue for its adaptation, establishing the constructive dynamics of self-referentiality or self-recognition communication as a principle for mechanizing the diagonalization of the self. Only self-conscious creatures as ones equipped with the ability of self-diagonalization, creating those basically sequences of transformation which is not entailed in the repetition of their past states, are capable of constituting their history, to have a history. This is what it means to have a history, in fact. And this positive feedback loop between conception and transformation,

as I will talk about tomorrow, is the definition of agency, That what makes an agency an agency are those activities that create a structural change in the definition of agency. And again, those structural change further capacitate further transformations. We also talked about that just as a robust self-conception brings about a consequential self-transformation,

a wrong or a poor self-conception, i.e. how we falsely conceive ourselves according to how we appear to ourselves in the world as in contrast to what we really are, incites a flawed or inconsequential self-transformation. We talked about this in terms of that basically this is because self-conception is correlated with the objectivity of the intelligible. it's not I mean otherwise if self-conception was simply a matter of the manifest image namely subjective conception

according to how we appear to ourselves then we could say that's you know this true a false conception we could create also a consequential self-transformation but in so far as we talked about it that ultimately what makes conception conception is that objectivity, objectivity of the intelligible. The falsehood of self-conception doesn't really translate to anything but a flawed self-transformation, namely an objectively and subjectively weak transformation.

Raza? Yes? A point here is to also say that this thing you called false self-conception, or it's like self-conception according to the manifest, right? That also is always revisible and it's improving on its own terms. And that should not confuse one with a kind of rigorous self-transformation. transformation, because ultimately the false self-conception is also updatable. It doesn't remain the same. Yes. Yes. It is.

The microphone going crazy. In terms of limitations, you see that a false self-conception, if we approach this false suit simply to a critical standpoint launched from the manifest image, we are incapable of simply radically revising it. Reza, your microphone is acting up again. I'm so sorry. Okay. meanwhile secretly it's me was causing this because I'm just trying to like you know up him I'm kidding it's not me yes I was saying that

up because the sea yes okay yes is revisable but there is one caveat here and that's we talked about this That was the whole point of the scientific manifest image. That manifest image capacity for updating or revision is very limited, in fact. Yes, of course. Look at the history of art, history of modern art. You see an example of his instantiation right there in front of your eyes. That's why I brought it up, because I think the history of art, particularly history of what we call contemporary art, whatever came out of abstract expressionism and minimalism in the late 60s is a perfect example of this, and the limitations of this updatability.

But go ahead. Okay, so we talked about inconsequential self-transformation. Insofar as our self-transformation is embedded in the objective world, We also talked about its flaws translate into a ruin or a disaster, depending on its proportion and persistence in those world structures that environ and support us. This calamity further diminishes our ability to determine the conception of ourselves and our vocations. Correspondingly, it also debilitates action either by simply laying ruin to resources required for perpetuation and transformation,

or more insidiously, by precipitating a disorientation that prevents us to decisively think and take measures, to detect and act on opportunities without the crippling anxiety of further deterioration and imaginary tragedies. The diagnosis of what is exactly wrong, namely revealing the specific inadequacies of conception, or what Hegel calls determinate negation, then falls under the jurisdiction of abstract negation and unconscious self-deception.

And we said abstract negation is precisely correlated with the flat picture of function that is incapable of decomposing the totality of function to qualitatively distinct function structures in order to be capable of implementing change, manipulating, replacing, and transforming. So, the diagnosis of what is exactly wrong then falls under the jurisdiction of abstract negation and unconscious self-deception.

the complete disillusionment about traps of history and prospect of self-realization, which is but a hallmark of absolute naivety and a path to despair. And Hegel always associates abstract negation to a path to despair. And in fact, we see that this picture of abstract negation as the most insidious obstacle to self-transformation quite sharply captures the picture of today's humanities, especially the so-called critical discourse. Reasons which form and adjudicate recognitions,

obligations, responsibility, and imports are replaced with a critical discourse on the irrationality of causes, namely causes that masquerade themselves as reasons. This turns into a critical discourse on how causes not only semantically distort reasons, but also masquerade themselves as reasons. But dispensing with the conceptual and normative resources of reason in order to expose their causal irrationality, and diagnose pathologies by reasonless appraisal of causes amounts to the impoverishment of semantic requirement necessary for the intelligibility of diagnosis.

In other words, the unconscious undermining of the criteria required for the adequate consciousness of the self occasions a consciousness which is inadequate to have a proper conception of itself in the world and determinately transform itself in accordance with such a conception. I mean, it's not really hard to see this everywhere in the so-called critical radicality of today's theory, academic theory, from the likes of Adorno and Horkheimer to Frederick Jameson to the contemporary one like Mackenzie Warwick

I don't know even Steven Shaviro wherever we go we see that ultimately they want to flatten the difference between reasons and causes explaining all reasons in terms of causes, not objective causes, but more subjective causes, in terms of social forces, social configurations, material organizations, so on and so forth. And precisely because of that, all of these philosophies, ultimately all of these theories, and they are not actually, we don't call them philosophies as such, These critical discourses create these specters of totalities or flat regimes of functioning.

Either capitalism is a totality. For example, everything needs to be explained either through capitalism and how the global totality of capitalism functions. or, for example, in terms of climate change, or in terms of, for example, material organizations, Latour, so on and so forth. And as we see, and this is exactly how Hegel anticipates it, that once, this is exactly what abstract negation is. What abstract negation is legitimized once becomes the tools of the critique, rather than something that critiques needs to sufficiently dispel thinking from, then the path to despair is already paved.

whatever we do at the same time we have the complete disillusionment of traps of history rationality you know is simply a trap because it's simply there are causes that are masquerading themselves as reasons so we are at the same time have this kind of so-called naive so-called this total this illusion meant about traps of history, but at the same time we have a sort of resignatory cynicism in order to effectuate a transformation. Because whatever we do, we are simply coming back again to the traps of history. So this kind of almost, as I said, that there is

basically optimism, the fatalist optimism and the resignatory cynicism in this picture are basically the two faces of the same coin, in fact. They are the logical consequences of one another. And the coin itself for Hegel is really what he calls the abstract negation. Abstract negation is Hegel calls it not only a path to despair, but the ultimate pathology of a spirit. In order for a spirit to establish a robust conception and a consequential self-transformation,

the first thing that it needs to develop is a determinate negation. And a determinate negation for Hegel is really the decomposition of the activity of a spirit in terms of the history of its the history and if a structural functional evolution of its different qualitatively distinct different activities conceptions and transformations so tomorrow I'm going to talk about today simply we got a little bit sidetracked with question and answers tomorrow I will talk about the question of agency and what it means to for agency to have a history and with

understanding that's how agency transforms itself is by by simultaneously analyzing its history and basically configuring or organizing arrangements that are capable of adequately transform this analysis of history into a vehicle of historical transformation. As trivial as it may sound for Hegel,

I know that this historical transformation is kind of like almost a modernist thing that has been thrown around in the 20th century. But historical progression for Hegel is extremely like a kind of almost... intricate problem in the sense that, as I talked about it, historical progression is not a linear progression. It's a form of self-diagonalization. Each sequence is non-bijective to the previous one. And the implication of this non-bijectivity

between sequences of self-transformation is actually huge. This is what I will talk about in terms of what I just, what earlier I said in the session, that it creates kind of difficulties in identifying our past estates but also hypothesizing our futures. insofar as if there is no bijective relation between our present past and future then how are we going to analyze basically the relation between present and the past and hypothesizing a path from the present to the future and this

This becomes basically Hegel's speculative historical philosophy, understanding history as a form of adaptation, deep adaptation to time. So questions? I would like you to read again the small diagram you described

with the x having the local functions leading to the global functions? Sure. Or if you could show it. It's unfortunately on the iPad. I can read it for you slowly. For example, if x has a global function g, and local qualitatively distinct sub-functions, n local, m local, p local, so on and so forth. Then according to the flat picture of function totality,

all activities in x are regarded as essentially subsumed within g. if what x is doing is bad or flawed, then by definition and by virtue of the functional subsumption entailed in the flat picture, all activities and functions in x must be discarded. This is what abstract negation is. Abstract negation as correlated to the flat or unconstrainedly abstract picture of function. likewise if what X is doing is good or adequate then all activities within X must be preserved and then we can see that once you take this kinds of logic

of abstract function quote to tap function as totality to its ultimate conclusions, it's similar, it creates actually polar opposites. Polar opposites at their base are coming from the same common presumption. And this polar opposite, we talked about it, it kind of either creates a kind of resignatory cynicism or optimistic fatalism. Either, you know, wholesale affirmation of capitalism, full-scale affirmation of capitalism or wholesale exit from capitalism. in. Either complete negation of projects of AI or all of the stuff, you know, that for

example Nick Land or Scott Baker talk about in terms of imminent advent of a superhuman intelligence 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years, as if it's inevitable. The The whole problem is that once we see how a system behaves through this distorted lens of abstract negation, everything is indeterminate. Indetermination of specificities creates practical indeterminacy and theoretical distortion. theoretical distortion so far as it flattens the difference between causes and reasons

and practical indeterminacy in the sense that in so far as all reasons can be traced back to their causes, then we can't, we say that either we have to do material, reconfigure these causes without having the proper rational means to do it, or simply saying that these causes are beyond our power. So we might just as, well, do nothing, let us be Heideggerian-Glossenheit. Reza, I had a quick question. I hope it's not redundant. I haven't kept up with the seminar as much as I'd like to recently.

But regarding kind of your conception of synthesis and this conversation or this perspective of local, global, global universal relations as needing dialectical understanding or synthetic approaches. I guess my question is, are you taking a more Persean approach? Like the dialectical relation in Hegel, you know, as being some kind of fusion of opposites or poles seems like almost reductive to me. I know it has to be a counterintuitive, or it's often a counterintuitive analysis, but I was just wondering if you could say more on your notion

of synthesis in regards to those two thinkers? Well, for Hegel, dialectic is, there are different forms of dialectics, but ultimately Hegelian dialectic is dialectic of real oppositions, real forces, not logical opposition. And Persian dialectic, in particular, general is also a form of Hegelian dialectic in the sense that it is a form of opposition of real forces. A good example to distinguish real opposition with logical opposition is that logical opposition is like P and not P.

Real opposition, and this is a Kantian example that Hegel also develops and rectifies, can be thought in terms of a form of generativity. A good example of this, there is a north wind, there is a west wind. These are two real forces, and they are opposing one another. A ship that is sailing on the sea, its course of traveling, its course of journey, is generated by the opposition of these real forces. So as the west wind hits the north wind and they express themselves within a single subject,

here the ship, they generate a synthetic magnitude. The synthetic magnitude is the magnitude of the amount of, journey that, for example, this ship has so far undertaken. And this is, again, coming from a very Kantian perspective in Hegel, which is kind of generated by Grassmann and Kant both. In terms of generation of magnitudes, the real opposition is expressed in terms of productivity of their sum expressed as a magnitude

that's taking place within one single subject. So real opposition always needs to be expressed within one single subject in order for it to be understood. And this is the difference, one of its differences from logical opposition. Whereas logical opposition cannot be taken within one single subject. But in so far as real opposition is a generative opposition, it creates a synthesis. The productivity of this opposition needs to be taken into account within one single subject. For example, a windmill, the amount of flour that generates within that windmill itself,

within one subject, is determined by, again, different orientations of wind, different forces that drive this wind, drive this subject. So real opposition is a driving force. It creates a productivity, a magnitude. Cool. So if we were to talk about local global dialectics... The same thing about this. And you see that the global is kind of a productive thing. Neither the scope of the global is given, nor the identity of the local is given. In fact, we need to unravel the identity of the latter and the scope of the former

through the going back and forth of the passage between the two, deepening the plot of the local and further broadening the scope of the global. Basically giving, you see this, again, these are all coming from, you know, how these philosophers start to formalize some preneal questions with regard to freedom of agency. Local freedom of an agent is natural freedom, survival, feeding. It's global freedom in terms of what makes it an agent. nature doesn't make an agent an agent

it's what agent does to itself that makes it agent I will talk about this tomorrow and it's really a good freedom is one that maximizes the individual freedom of the agent by maximizing its global freedom or it's collective freedom. Maximization of collective... So this is... The basic formula comes from Epictetus and Seneca. Only freedom counts in which collective freedom

cultivates individual freedom, and individual freedom can basically contribute and further cultivate collective freedom. Any kind of prioritization of one over another creates a pathology, a local global pathology, basically. Cool, thank you. I guess the only reason I was confused, or I'm still wrestling with this, is just the triadic nature of Persia and synthesis and the kind of binary seeming relation of Hegelian dialectics that seem incongruous. The synthesis, the triadic part, is basically the expression of the productivity

between the category of firstness and the category of secondness. So the thirdness becomes the expression. In Hegelian dialectic, you need to understand the thirdness in terms of the subject itself. As I said, real oppositions, the productivity, namely the synthetic product of real opposition, is always expressed within a single subject. So the subject expresses the triadic parts of this. Basically, two binary forces come together, they generate a productivity, generate a synthesis. That is an enablement for the subject. Got it. Thank you.

Very much clarified. I wanted to bring up the fact that we're almost done with the class. We began at 12.16 and it's almost 2.46, which will be sort of like the end of the class. So maybe the last few minutes if there's any questions or concerns about assignments or or like any other like leftover thing for tomorrow, which will end up being the third segment of the second module, and then the following, which will be the last one. So there's only a few more minutes left. If you guys have anything, if Reza has closing remarks,

or if any of you have any questions to ask about the assignments or anything, it's a perfect time to fill up these few minutes and end the class on time. Josh is silent. Josh is on Facebook. Oh, okay. At the moment. I guess, yeah, is there, as far as the final paper, anything like that? Is there anything with that? Well, I want to put the final paper as basically the whole module thing, so I decided not to give the final paper for the first module. I will give it next week, which will be both modules. so people can actually write something that is like kind of substantial.

And to also bring it up that like we are more than happy to, once Reza is done with your paper, we're happy at the triple ampersand journal to work further with it and make it publishable and hopefully publish it in the journal. Not only the final paper, but any of your shorter assignments could also be utilized for the triple ampersand blog. So get in touch with me or Jason in regards to that. I don't have any final remark. I wish I had basically tomorrow I

will try to make a little bit more slides, because I know that Skype is kind of difficult to trace, you know, these kinds of arguments simply by me reading over stuff and discussing it. I will try to make some kind of minimal slides. But tomorrow we will talk about, I think, this relation between mind, spirit, and history. And that's where, basically, self-transformations come to light. One of the things that also I really wanted to talk about but it seems that we are already in a kind of, because of that extra session that we attributed to the first module, I really

wanted to talk about risk and time. I will briefly talk about it tomorrow but this is something that needs further, hopefully in another seminar. Yes. I also want to say that I managed to find a copy of Jay Rosenberg's book on sellers, which Reza has recommended it. If you guys don't have it, we're not supposed to post a whole book to Google Classroom because they might sort of like get really angry at like a whole book being posted. But if any, and the file is kind of large, so I'm going to personally put it on my Google Docs, and if you guys want it, I can share it with any of you. I just posted the part about myth of the given to the classroom a few days ago, which I found very useful. So if you're interested

in that book, let me know. And I share it. The Rosenberg's book is, I think, the best book on sellers. And thanks for sharing that because I'm quite enjoying it. It's very good. And the thing is, really, the most important thing is that Rosenberg's... So many people think that Sellers' take on Hegel is kind of superficial. it's just only similarity of vocabulary and stuff and lexicon and overall ideas especially this has been put forward by Terry Pickard but Jay Rosenberg shows that in fact once you really understand Sellars especially in the sense of the synoptic image and the ultimate ontology of the regulative ideal

Sellars is more Hegelian than being kind of canteen and he gives sellers kind of like an absolute idealist position okay so classes sort of finished if you guys don't have any question I would like to stop the broadcast and yeah so I will stop the broadcast