Contemporary Readings of Hegel (Session 2)

Hello everyone, welcome to the second session of Contemporary Readings of Hegel with Ray Bracier. I'm going to pass the mic and the camera to Ray to begin the seminar. Go ahead Ray. Hi, thanks. Thanks Mo. So today we're going to focus mainly on the introduction and given that, you know we weren't able to cover all the material and now last week which was mainly on focused mainly on the preface my proposed that we start simply trying to go through the basics of the introduction today and then if hopefully also kind of maybe cover some crucial some of the really important

quotations from the preface that we didn't have time to discuss last week. So I hope you should all be able to or have access to this, the second handouts. If it's ready yet or? Ray, where is the second handout? I just, I sent it to you. Sorry. I just got the email, sorry. Sorry, I should have sent it. No problem. I'm just going to quickly, you can talk. I'm going to quickly convert it to PDF and put it up. Okay, great. And I'm going to run it in the background, actually.

So if you want, anytime you want to go to it, it's already on my screen. I can go to it, but I'm in the midst of also converting it. So you can start if you prefer. And I'll do that in the background. Yeah, today, now the, okay, so the preface of Phenomenology was famously written after the completion of the book, and it's really a kind of, you know, it's Hegel's programmatic statement about his entire philosophical system, which is why it is forbiddingly difficult and obscure in places. The introduction to the Phenomenology in a way is, you know, more accessible. It's easier to get an angle on what it is he's trying to do.

And he basically tries to clarify, well he begins by discussing the problem of knowledge and the problem of how philosophical knowledge can successfully establish itself without accepting dogmatism, the kinds of metaphysical dogmatism criticized by Kant, but without simply remaining stuck at the level of skepticism, skepticism about the very possibility of knowledge. And in fact, I think that one way to understand what's going on at the opening of the introduction

is that Hegel is trying, Hegel I think takes it that Kant has convincingly refuted empirical skepticism as represented for instance by Hume, but has not successfully vanquished the threat of transcendental skepticism. So what I mean by this is that, so in a way the critique of pure reason shows that the kinds of doubts about the possibility of knowledge elaborated by Hume rely on an atomist thing, a kind of epistemic atomism. the claim that experience, sensory experience can be decomposed into these discrete self-sufficient units of sensation,

smells or colors or sounds or whatever. And that somehow everything or experience of object is somehow a construction from these elementary atoms of sensation. and Kant's critical move here is to say that this conception of sensation of sensory experience is itself a philosophical abstraction which relies on disavowed metaphysical premises So Kant's insistence will be that, Kant's claim will be that it is, if one is attentive

to the structure of experience, what presents itself in experience is not a series of disconnected sensations or a rhapsody of sensations but actually discreetly individuated objects standing in determinate relations to each other. And I take it that Kant's strategy, argumentative strategy against human skepticism is to take both the fact of knowledge to be an incontrovertible starting point.

By the fact of knowledge he means physics and then to show that in order to cast doubt upon the cognitive authority of Green's vote of knowledge we would have to be able to show that they are constructions from some stratum of experience that is allegedly more fundamental and this is I guess the emphasis I think I said something about last time and Kant will show that human skeptic begs the question by appealing to this originary stratum of sensation,

which allegedly is more fundamental, is prior to judgment, prior to the judgment that things are thus and so. And through a kind of transcendental reflection on the different roles played by sensibility and understanding or concepts and intuitions in the construction of empirical knowledge, we see that you know the the minimal units of experience is in fact the propositionally articulated judgments and the claim that objective judgments somehow presuppose synthesis of habits is vitiated by the appeal to you know to

is itself a result of an abstraction, an abstraction which illegitimately abstracts intuitions from their conceptual determinations, because this is what a pure, you know, an anobjective sensation would be. It's an intuition which is somehow accessible or grasped by the mind independently of conceptualization. And this is what Kant completely rejects. intuition is already conceptually formed or conceptually structured. However, so this is how Kant, I guess, refutes empirical skepticism. But the challenge of transcendental skepticism, however, is that even if Kant has convincingly shown that these forms of intuition

and categories of the understanding are necessary for us to have the kind of knowledge that we have. He hasn't successfully demonstrated the universality, kind of the universality of these conditions of experience. So it may be that what Kant calls transcendental are merely entirely parochial or species-specific conditions, in which case they completely fail to deliver what Kant wants to deliver, which is to see the possibility of apodictic, universally binding knowledge for any cognizing subject. He wanted to do this without having to demonstrate the existence of God

as the guarantor for the correspondence between judgments and reality. but he took the the placeholder for this for this divine concordance in chance is pure perception is the transcendental unity of a perception the claim that the I think must accompany all my representations and but what can't means by this by the I think that's just reiterate once again is the spontaneity of giving oneself the rule the

spontaneity of rule following in contrast to the receptivity of of causally or of empirical causation the the the causal determination of states of the nervous system so the transcendental skeptic can you know try to kind of call this distinction into question by simply by saying oh how do you know how what is the basis for a principle distinction between rule following and mere and habits or between rules and patterns in Szilardian parlance and the dualism this kind of alleged

this transcendental dualism of you know transcendental form and empirical content means that from Hegel's vantage that Kant has not quite, he hasn't successfully bridged the gap between the aperceptive spontaneity of the subject or of conceptual consciousness and the causal associations in experience. So what he proposes to do at the beginning of his introduction then is to find a way of bridging this gap, bridging this gap, you know, in a way the

gap between kind of spontaneity and receptivity or between concepts and intuitions that still provides a point of leverage for transcendental skepticism. So what's at stake here is Hegel's contention that transcendental reflection, which is Kant's kind of procedure in the critique of your reason is insufficient to identify these is insufficient to establish conditions for the objective purport of judgment and why because can't

doesn't doesn't convincingly demonstrates that the categories and the forms of intuition are you know indispensable conditions for all possible experience so I think I think this is the starting point or one way of understanding what Hegel is is grappling with in an introduction so what he proposes then to do is to find a way to establish knowledge and you know a genuinely kind of philosophical knowledge or what he calls science without taking anything for granted without simply without anything in the

way of a transcendental postulates or an empirical assumption so this is an extremely you know it's a very tall order he's a set for himself and this is why in a way he begins by talking about you know he's addressing the problem of ancient or Pyronian skepticism which has been formulated in terms of the problem of the criterion so Pyronian skeptics said that any kind of any judgment about any judgment about the world or about our own consciousness as a claim to truth

about the way about the way reality is is can be systematically suspended through the the operation of what they call the the epoch a suspension because it's always for any combination of subject and predicates in a judge in a judgment that is supposed to have objective purport it's always possible to show that this synthesis of the connection between the subject term and the predicate term is merely an arbitrary conjunction it's an association what human called an association but it's an association which has no which

is entirely contingent and or whose contingency can never be satisfactorily refuted and so this is a problem of the criteria so the first point on the handout is the gist of the of Pyronian skepticism is this to separate true beliefs from false ones to distinguish between reality and appearance we need a true method but to separate true methods from false ones we need true beliefs we must already know that belief that this is the true method is true but if we already know that we know something that is true then we don't need a method to separate true beliefs

from false beliefs so this is the kind of the problem that the challenge of of radical Pyrrhonian skepticism is to say that any appeal to a criterion that would allow us to distinguish between reality and appearance presupposes another criterion to guarantee the truth of the initial criterion so there's an infinite regress of justification you need a method to distinguish reality and appearance but you already need to know the difference between reality and

appearance to distinguish between a true and a false method that's a problem of the criteria so in paragraph 81 Hegel right so this is the first quotation on the handout if this exposition the exposition of the science of the experience of consciousness which is the task of the phenomenology if this exposition is viewed as a way of relating science to phenomenal knowledge and as an investigation and examination of the reality of cognition it would seem that it cannot take place without some presupposition which can serve as its underlying criteria. 4. An examination consists in applying an accepted standard and in determining whether something

is right or wrong on the basis of the resulting agreement or disagreement of the thing examined. Thus, the standard as such, and science likewise if it were the criterion, is accepted as the essence or as the in itself. But here, where science has just begun to come onto the scene, neither science nor anything else has yet justified itself as the essence or the in itself. And without something of the sort, it seems that no examination can take place. So this is a difficulty which Hegel faces at the very beginning.

And the phenomenology is written to try to kind of to overcome this difficulty. And in a way, so Hegel accepts a Pyronian challenge. He says he will suspend, he simply will not take anything for granted, either empirically or transcendentally. And in a way, the classic objection to transcendentalism is that every transcendental condition is over-termined by its empirical condition. Because the assumption is that it's necessary for some empirical phenomenon to be the case.

So it involves a kind of a backward movement, a backward movement from the empirically real to the transcendental, the transcendentally ideal. And this is, of course, Deleuze's objection to Kantian transcendentalism, or what he calls the tracing of the transcendental from the empirical. so Hegel is trying to avoid this problem the problem of circularity on the one hand and the problem transcendental form is merely traced from empirical content so what he proposes in is to accept this suspension this no

preliminary suspension of judgment about you know the determinate content the in itself by examining what he calls a natural consciousness natural consciousness which he thinks is he also kind of identifies in terms of phenomenal knowledge so in other words this is he thinks that natural consciousness has a structure which involves a claim to knowledge but this knowledge he says he's going to treat as a phenomenon in other words he's going to treat every claim to knowledge as a kind of phenomenal datum itself so this

is the movie he's studying kind of consciousness but he's saying he suspends any metaphysical assumption about the you know the veritable relationship between consciousness and reality in itself instead he simply takes consciousness at face value and it takes it you know on its own terms so to speak and he's going to examine it to see whether there's anything whether there's any kind of characteristic of this consciousness that itself, you know, provides something like a criterion for distinguishing between reality and appearance.

And he says that, and in fact, he says if we examine, if we're attentive to the structure of consciousness, of what he calls, you know, natural consciousness, the most elementary kind of cognitive awareness that we may have of ourselves and our world, he's saying that there's something about its structure that already gives us a clue as to how to tackle the problem of the criterion and this is the second quote on the handout so this is from paragraph 82 Hegel writes consciousness simultaneously distinguishes itself from something and at the same time relates itself to it or as it is said this something exists for consciousness

and the determinate aspect of this relating or of the being of something for a consciousness is knowing but we distinguish this being for another from being in itself whatever is related to knowledge or knowing is also distinguished from it and posited as existing outside of this relationship this being in itself is called truth now just what might be involved in these determinations is of no further concern to us here since our object is phenomenal knowledge its determinations too will at first be taken directly as they present themselves

and they do present themselves very much as we have already apprehended them So, and again, I'll just quickly read another kind of sentence from paragraph 84, where Hegel kind of recapitulates this claim about the structure of consciousness more economically. In consciousness, one thing exists for another. Consciousness regularly contains the determinateness of the moment of knowing, At the same time, however, this other is to consciousness not merely for it, but is also outside of this relationship or exists in itself. The moment of truth.

So, what I think what Hegel is saying here is that consciousness is consciousness of something both as it is for consciousness and as it is in itself independently of consciousness. Thus, consciousness is consciousness of the difference between knowing, or what is for consciousness, and truth, or what is in itself. So this difference is actually kind of, it's inherent to the structure of consciousness as such. and once again it's important to remember just to reiterate once again that even though Hegel is here talking about phenomenal natural consciousness or phenomenal consciousness

he still means cognitive consciousness so in other words he is not talking about mere psychological states and I think it's important to distinguish between the philosophical meaning of the word consciousness in this in the post Kantian context in which Hegel is writing and any psychological characterization of consciousness because what is the difference the difference is that a psychological state is obviously not necessarily cognitive and most if not often most of our psychological states have no determinate cognitive contents so we can be conscious or we can be consciously

aware but we're not necessarily aware of some things being thus and so what Hegel is interested in in and when he's talking about consciousness here is the consciousness in his sense is the minimal consciousness of something of of some things being thus and so. And this is so the of here is an intentional of. So consciousness is consciousness of something. Whether that thing is a sensation, a perception, or an objective state of affairs, it has objective purport. It is about something. In other words, it can be, it's about something,

therefore there's a it's it's truth apt or truth invoking which is obviously not the case for most of our psychological states I think it's so this is where you know once again just to reiterate Hegel the kind of phenomenology that Hegel is engaged in here phenomenology defined as a science of the experience of consciousness is a phenomenology of cognitive experience cognitive experience not experience experiences of tickling or of being happy or sad etc etc I think it's really really important to bear this in mind so it's cognitive

experience that is at stake here and consciousness according to Hegel is is minimally cognitive it's consciousness of something and that's something is something that is taken to be thus and so that has something that is taken to be the way it is in itself as well as for consciousness once we've made once we register this the way in which consciousness is structured around the difference between knowing and truth, or between the way in which something is taken to be by consciousness and the way it is in itself independently of consciousness, then this difference gives us the criterion we sought. Natural consciousness, which Hegel calls phenomenal knowledge,

possesses the criterion for distinguishing between what is for it and what is in itself. So the criterion is imminent to phenomenal knowledge and not transcendently imposed by science. And this is a quote from paragraph 84. Consciousness, writes Hegel, provides its own criterion from within itself so that the investigation becomes a comparison of consciousness with itself. For the distinction made above falls within it. Thus, in what consciousness affirms from within itself as being in itself, or the true, we have the standard which consciousness itself sets up by which to measure what it knows.

End quote. so in this regard this is how Hegel says it's possible for us to begin with an examination of phenomenal knowledge or natural consciousness and through by simply kind of examining its structure we will see how first of all there's a criterion of objectivity imminent to that very consciousness each shape of consciousness each shape of natural consciousness you know is structured

around a distinction between appearance and reality and we will and Hegel says we will not judge we're not going to try to kind of judge these criteria by an independent yardstick or an allegedly scientific criterion that we have conjured up ourselves because we are not yet in a position to justify this criterion. Any allegedly scientific criterion that we invoke to judge whether or not natural consciousness is right in demarcating appearance from reality or truth from knowledge would be to beg the very question.

The very question, you know, the problem of the criterion reemerges. So the phenomenological method being deployed by Hegel here is simply going to study each form of, each shape of consciousness, each shape of natural consciousness, and then show how it's itself, it corrects its own experience of the object in light of a criteria of distinction between appearance and reality

or truth and falsity that is necessary to its very experience. In other words, the claim is really that without this, because consciousness is structured around the difference between the in itself and the for it, it means that the criterion, the imminent criterion of distinction between in itself and for consciousness is is necessary is constitutive of the experience of consciousness itself no but we have to say now we have to say something about the terms of the notion which hegel is is

going to invoke here the notion is at once knowledge what the object is for consciousness and truth what the object is in itself so on the one hand phenomenology measures the extent of which the notion or knowledge corresponds to its object or truth while on the other hand it measures the extent which the object or truth corresponds to its notion so the next quotes reads from paragraph 84 if we designate knowledge as the notion but the essence or the

true as what exists or the object then the examination consists in seeing whether the notion corresponds to the object but if we call the essence or in itself of the objects the notion and on the other hand understand by the object the notion itself as object this is for another then the examination consists in seeing whether the object corresponds to its notion it is evident of course that that the two procedures are the same. So it's because of this, the equivalence of the two procedures,

that Hegel will say that for philosophical science, what is concretely, as opposed to abstractly, what is concretely real or actual, and again, the German word is wichlichkeit, what's concretely real is the notion as the unity of knowledge and truth or subject and object rather than either moment considered separately because any claim any attempt to decompose reality into a subjective components on the one hand and an objective component on the other hand is an abstraction so in fact what you have to understand is the interdependence between these two poles

between the subject pole and the object pole but this this interdependence is notional and it's it's what is the it's also not a stable or near it's not a a fixed or static correlation between subject and object. It's actually the way in which consciousness relates to its object entails a kind of self-surpassing or self-overcoming. consciousness is compelled to revise its its conception of the object and this is

and it's compelled to do so because consciousness is its own notion says Hagle this is what he says in paragraph 80 consciousness is the notion of itself It relates to itself as another. So consciousness, however, is explicitly the notion of itself. Hence, it is something that goes beyond limits. And since these limits are its own, it is something that goes beyond itself. Now, this self-overcoming generates the process of what I'm going to call here phenomological recursion. What is meant by this?

Well, in a way, it's... Well, we have to kind of... Before we can begin, you know, really getting to grips with it, we're going to have to see how... If we, once we've suspended any metaphysical assumption about the nature of the reality of the object, on the one hand, and the nature of the reality of the subject. On the other hand, our primary datum is simply the phenomenal correlation between subjective knowing and known object. but because this correlation is structured around a discrepancy or between a distinction rather

between what is for consciousness and what is in itself it means that consciousness is capable or consciousness is obliged to revise its its demarcation of the limits in its own experience so consciousness revises its own demarcation of the limit between what is for it and in itself in knowing anything so here's a quote from paragraph 86 Eagle writes consciousness knows something this object is the

essence or the in itself but it is also for consciousness the in itself this is where the ambiguity of this truth enters we see that consciousness now has two objects one is the first in itself the second is the being for consciousness of this in itself the latter appears at first sight to be merely the reflection of consciousness into itself ie what consciousness has in mind is not an object but only its knowledge of that first object but as was shown previously the first

object in being known is altered for consciousness it ceases to be the in itself and becomes something that is the true in itself only for consciousness and this then is the true the being for consciousness of this in itself. Or in other words, this is the essence or the object of consciousness. This new object contains the nothingness of the first. It is what experience has made of it. This is very abstract in the way in which Hegel presents it here, but I think actually Brandon gives, I think, a very clear concrete example of what Hegel has in mind here.

So if one considers the way in which a straight stick, a solid stick, looks bent in water. So when we're looking at a stick in water, we believe that the stick is a rigid, solid object. However, when we look at it, when it's been placed in water, it looks bendy and wavy. So now we have a, you know, kind of a, Branham's vocabulary's incompatibility. There's an incompatibility between

our beliefs about the object. on the one hand that it's a rigid object, on the other hand that it seems to wave when placed in water. And obviously the way in which to resolve this dilemma is to distinguish between the way, the rigidity which the stick possesses in itself and the bendiness or waviness that it only seems to have when placed in water. So in other words, we distinguish between the properties that are essential to the object, its rigidity, its solidity, and those which are merely accidental or inessential,

the fact that it looks bent when placed in water. but now we've learned something I mean but Hegel's crucial point is that we have learned something what's happened is that we've expanded our concept of the object because now we've learned something about straight sticks which is that they look bent in water and this this you know the reason that we were confused initially is because we didn't know this. This was a property that sticks have that we didn't yet know. But now there has to be a connection between there's something about the stick that makes

it look bent when inserted in water. And this is obviously the fact that it kind of reflects light. it reflects light, you can still see it when it's placed in a transparent liquid medium, but we know that even though its shape is still the same, still a straight stick, it looks bended or it looks wavy. So now, Higgle's claim is that we realize that what we took to be a characteristic of

the object in itself is only a characteristic for us. In other words, we realize, if we understand that a straight stick only looks bent in water, distinguish between what it is in itself and what it is for us but at the same time we we've also kind of you know expanded our concept of the stick because we now know that one of the characteristics of the stick is to to look bent in water and this is this is a characteristic this is an aspect that is somehow tied to its essentiality this is a characteristic of the

stick not of our mere perception of the stick I mean the claim here is that things like phenomena like reflections or shadows are things that are in the world alongside solid objects so in other words once we realize that solid objects also have reflections and shadows we enlarge our concept of this object so that our new concept of the object includes not only what it is in itself but what it is for us

so what's happened here says Hegel is there's a movement from this is the transition from the first object to the second object the first object the first in itself is merely an object considered in abstraction from its you know perceptual relation to us and then the second object is the object considered in connection with the way in which it relates to other objects including ourselves so and what Hegel is saying is that we have our concept of the object has

undergone a change, it's been enlarged or expanded but also that the object itself has changed. This is an initially puzzling claim. now why does hegel insists what is hegel seem to insist that it's not only our our knowledge of the object has changed but the object itself because well hegel says that consciousness because

consciousness is consciousness of the difference between truth and knowledge or in itself and the for it any transformation he says that the integration of what we took to be in itself into the forest generates a new in itself so what's happening here in this kind of in this movement is that something that was the the initial demarcation between the forest and the in itself or between knowledge and truth is enlarged so that what was in itself becomes part of what is for us. But in this integration of truth into knowledge or of the in itself into the for us, a new

in itself is generated. and this is what I think is what I mean by recursion. So there's a brief attempt to kind of to schematize this below the quotation here. So if you think about it, since consciousness is structured in the difference between knowledge and truth, so in number one you've got knowledge for consciousness, one is in a way kind of distinguished from truth in itself. for consciousness one. So the boundary between truth and knowledge is constitutive for consciousness. But what happens is that when what was taken to be,

what consciousness took to be in itself, is recognized to be something that is for us, we have a new concept of the objects which includes which now includes the difference between the first difference between the in itself and the for us but this integration generates a new splits between knowledge and truth or between the for us and the in itself and this is what's shown in in the in the second stage so we now have the next stage where we have knowledge for consciousness two whose object is knowledge for consciousness one and truth in itself for consciousness one as split from truth in itself two okay so we have there's a new object of knowledge a new objects

for consciousness but there's also a new truth um for that consciousness in a way that truth which is kind of subtracted from this second you know enlarged object and of course the you know the process continues at each stage so when you what will happen is that truth in itself too will be integrated into knowledge for consciousness too so you'll get a third object of knowledge which is no so that knowledge for consciousness three is knowledge for consciousness too as as ultra consciousness one contrast with truth in itself for consciousness one and this is itself contrasted with truth in itself for consciousness too and this

complex is concatenated object is no contrasted to a third in itself or a third truth so this is I think the way to understand the structure of this process you have at each stage you have a renegotiation of the boundary between the for us or the for consciousness and the in itself which works by embedding what was taken to be absolute okay is recognized to be merely relative but this relativization of the initial absolutes yields a second absolutes

which itself is going to be whose own relativity will be acknowledged in a third stage third form of knowing which will itself generate a new episode so this is a very kind of rough schematization of the movement that Hegel is is describing here now in paragraph 87 okay there's a very kind of this is a very long quote I'm not going to read all of it but I'm going to focus on two very you know kind of well the question is two very important passages which explain why Hegel thinks that this recursiveness, this phenomenological

recursion is not merely infinite in a bad way. It can't simply go on forever. If it did, that would simply lead absolutely nowhere. Hegel believes that it does culminate in a transition and it culminates in a transition because of you know the relationship between the the phenomenological observer the subject of science and the phenomenal consciousness that is the the object of of this the observed objects for this science so I'll read the two passages

in bold from paragraph 87 here our accounts implied that our knowledge of the first objects or the being for consciousness of the first in itself itself becomes the second object it usually seems to be the case on the contrary that our experience of the untruth of our first notion comes by way of a second object which we come upon by chance and externally so that our part in all of this is simply the pure apprehension of what is in and for itself now the word apprehension here is crucial what hagel is is that from the vantage point of the experiencing consciousness,

or this phenomenal consciousness, this transition from the first to the second object, and then from the second to the third object, etc., is involuntary. It's something that just happens to consciousness. The shift in the object of knowledge and in the characteristics of the object It seems to be something that is imposed upon consciousness by an independently existing reality. So in other words, consciousness is kind of obliged to change its knowledge because of the pressure exerted by independent reality.

so consciousness takes itself to be merely apprehending what is in and for itself but Hegel says that this in fact from and here I'll continue with the the second sentence in the passage in bold Hegel writes from the present viewpoint and by which he means from the viewpoints of we phenomenological observers who are engaged in writing the science of the experience of consciousness the new object shows itself to have come about through a reversal of consciousness itself this way of looking at the matter is something contributed by us by means of which the succession of experiences

through which consciousness passes is raised into a scientific progression but it is not known to the consciousness that we are observing so what Hegel is saying here is it's crucial that in this in this this account this phenomenology of the experience of consciousness in which we are merely tracking or describing the transformations undergone by natural consciousness itself as it recalibrates its concept of the object when it discovers a discrepancy between what he believes about what the object is in

itself and how the object is for its or how the object appears to it this This recalibration has a logical structure. And in fact, it's constituted by a series of what Hegel calls determinate negations. These determinate negations are only visible from the vantage of the fact hello guys can you hear me yep okay I think we lost the way for a second I

think there is ray we're having difficulty transmitting you maybe you want to leave the room and come back you Yeah, there's a little bit of a transmission issue here. Okay, here we go. I think it got resolved. So maybe, Ray, would you like to repeat the last two, three sentences? Because there was like an interruption. Yes. What was the last thing you heard? I'm so involved in it. Maybe somebody else can reiterate what Ray was saying,

the last sentence you guys heard. Determine negations. that the object seems to come from the outside as a term indication. Okay, okay, right. So, yes, so Hegel is distinguishing between the transition as experienced by natural consciousness and the transition as understood by the phenomenological observer, by which he means the, you know, the Hegel himself, or we readers of the phenomenology. And so in a way he's introducing, what Hegel here is introducing is a distinction between subject and object.

There's another, there's a subject-object distinction which is entirely imminent to phenomenal consciousness, okay? So because consciousness is always consciousness of an object. but he's saying that what's what gradually becomes apparent through the unfolding of these transitions and you know shapes of consciousness is a discrepancy is you know the difference between our you know subjectivity you know the subjectivity of the phenomenological observer and that's of of the experiencing the subjects of the phenomenal experience and he's saying that we detect we can

perceive logical connections or logical determinations where the natural consciousness or phenomenal knowledge merely perceives something that is objectively imposed by by reality by the in itself so this is why you know Hegel says this way of looking at the matter is something contributed by us in other words we found logical observers detects the logic which is you know say will famously say working, operating behind the back of phenomenal knowledge or natural consciousness.

And it's because we can detect the necessity of the notional determinations at work operating behind the back of consciousness that we see the succession of experiences through which consciousness passes is actually a scientific progression for us for we phenomenological observers in other words we can see a notional necessity or a conceptual necessity where experiencing consciousness merely sees some kind of natural necessity or empirical necessity so and this is what and this is I think think where you know the concept of determinant negation which is already

introduced in the preface is really crucial and just immediately after the passage in both Hegel writes we have here the same situation as the one discussed in regards to the relation between our exposition our exposition of of the earth of a science and skepticism is that in every case the result of an untrue mode of knowledge must not be allowed to run away into an empty nothing but must necessarily be grasped as the nothing of that from which it results a result which contains what was true in the preceding knowledge it shows up here like this since what first appeared as

the object sings for consciousness to the level of the way of knowing it and since the in itself becomes a being for consciousness of the in itself the latter is now the new object so it says Peggy Rice it's this fact that guides the entire series of the patterns of consciousness in their necessary sequence so obviously the claim that there's the necessity to this sequence is crucial this is why this phenomenology is not on the one hand says Hegel we are suspending judgments about what the absolute or the ultimate difference between you know the for us and in itself might be accepting natural

consciousness's own experience of this of this difference and the way in which again the boundary between appearance and reality keeps on shifting through this experience but Hegel says we now detect there's a logical necessity each shift in the boundary each change in the demarcation is logically determined and the necessity here is that necessity of determinate negation so this is why

he says that the movement of consciousness occurs in the movement of consciousness that occurs a moment of being in itself or being a being in itself for us for we observers and one which is not present to the consciousness comprehended and experience itself so this is quite anyway this is in a way it's this kind of distinction that opens up in a way the possibility of kind of an accumulation of determinations which will eventually bring about a fusion between the what

which involved which will kind of bring about first of all the will raise natural consciousness into self-consciousness into full-fledged philosophical rationality and but also bring about the the realization of this you know philosophical self-consciousness as the fusion of subjects and objects absolute knowledge is the fusion of phenomenal knowledge the objects of phenomenology phenomenal knowledge is the object is that is the object studied by the science of the experience of consciousness. It's a fusion of this object with science, which is the subject of phenomenology.

This fusion is the point at which we phenomenological observers see the necessity in what was mere chance for experiencing consciousness. So that the sequence of determinate negations through which both subjective knowing and objective truth are compelled to satisfy their own notion. Now, there's, I mean, the question here is, clearly, Hegel says, we already see that for Hegel, consciousness is its own notion. What does he mean? He simply means that consciousness or cognizing consciousness, whether it's merely natural consciousness or full-blown self-consciousness,

is not merely, is a kind of self-relation, is a kind of normative self-relation, or involves this minimal degree of reflexivity. This is why, as we noted above, he insists that consciousness is its own notion. So because if consciousness is its own notion, then the way in which consciousness, you know, relates to itself or aperceives itself can, in a way, is kind of a subject to a kind of conceptual determination. because the notion has a kind of is ultimately a conceptual content it's the it's the fact that in

any in any kind of consciousness of anything in any kind of experience of some things being thus and so there is a kind of there's a panoply of conceptual determinations operating and the cohesiveness of these conceptual determinations requires a process of revision and once the so once the kind of that minimal definition of consciousness as you know inherently notional is in place it means that consciousness cannot but be engaged in you know what sellers call the self you self-correcting enterprise, a process of conceptual and cognitive revision.

Why is this process? This process for Hegel is not just infinite, it doesn't just go on forever without ever reaching a culmination. One, because Hegel thinks that that would just be a kind of a bad Kantian infinity, where the fusion of knowledge and truth, or subject and object, would only be a regulus of ideal. And Hegel thinks that that conception of the infinite is itself a prejudice, is itself a kind of a prejudice of the understanding and of a kind of natural consciousness. So one of the things he's going to show is that this, the contrast between the finite and the infinite,

is, as kind of ordinarily understood, is itself a kind of, based on a specific form of consciousness. It's only a kind of a determinate kind of consciousness that, you know, understands the distinction between the infinite and the finite in that way. In a way, I mean, the distinction between truth and not, truth is allegedly infinite, knowledge is finite. so Hegel is going to say that actually this distinction this very difference is one of the things that will be overcome through the you know the evolution of

consciousness so to the point where consciousness will recognize itself once consciousness achieves self-consciousness transition from consciousness to self-consciousness self-consciousness recognizes itself as as its own other and in that regard it understands that it is not its cognitive determination is actually not imposed upon it by anything external and extrinsic to it so in other ways that so consciousness has the kind of the freedom to determine the way in which the object appears to it but also the way in which it's

the way in which it is obliged to transform its understanding of the object precisely because it itself controls or determines the difference between what the object should be and what the object or how the object appears to what the object is for it so and it's precisely once then self-consciousness and self-consciousness here and if we understand that the distinction between consciousness and self-consciousness self-consciousness is implicit in all consciousness and all cognitive consciousness and the first stage in the you know the the unfolding of the phenomenology is the transition from consciousness to self-consciousness. Once

that's once consciousness becomes self-conscious it recognizes it knows that it is itself generating its own objects or its own its own other and And this means that it's no longer simply bound to accept. So in a way, it has to kind of, to be able to legitimate or justify to itself its own transformation of the concept of its object.

So consciousness as self-surpassing is infinite, since for Hegel the infinite is nothing but the self-surpassing of the finite rather than its unattainable beyond, so that ultimately the notion that consciousness, the notion which consciousness already is in itself for Hegel, and what is that notion? It's the unity of self and other of knowledge and truth, will ultimately become for itself. Through phenomenology, consciousness becomes fully self-conscious. It achieves self-knowledge by recognizing that it is what it is in relation to another, i.e. a truth, that it itself is. but it's only through phenomenology that this kind of knowledge can be achieved or realized

through phenomenology the notion is reflected into itself as absolute knowing which is the point which is the point of coincidence of knowing and truth and I think at this point is where the combination of the phenomenology is where the progress of consciousness, from natural consciousness to self-consciousness and ultimately to reason, is, itself cancels a discrepancy between the phenomenological consciousness and its own object. So that in a way when you work through the phenomenology, you're supposed to kind of,

the imminence of these kind of transformations and these cumulative expansions of the relationship between the in itself and the for us culminates in a point where you know the what is in itself is is, you know, transparently for us. This is the coincidence, the point where there's no longer any discrepancy between what is and what is known to be. And in more abstract language, it's

the point at which the possibilities of cognitive relativity have been exhausted. So you have a kind of a self-absolutization of the cognitive relation. Initially, you have consciousness insofar as the in itself is merely an abstract in itself or an abstract absolute. It can be shown its absoluteness can be relativized once again. each relativization is a kind of concretion of a merely abstract absolute but for Hegel this this kind of process of relative relativization culminates in its own absolution okay the

cognitive relation itself or the the you know the relativity of the absolute is itself what absolute and that is the point at which one reaches absolute knowing so so this then will become the starting point for philosophy as rational self-consciousness when thought and being or knowing and truth are inseparable and it this is a starting point of Hegel science of logic where philosophy assigned is properly consummate so the point remember that the phenomenology is just supposed to be a kind of an elaborate you know kind of a sense to the viewpoint of absolute knowledge which is not the end of knowing it's the beginning of scientific cognition or you know the realization of philosophy as a science so okay no

okay I've been talking for I think we should open things up now I just wanted to give a camera and also it would be great right if you can turn some light on because the light kind of beautifully after the Muslim prayer just went super dark yes thank you yeah is that enough light so if we refer to the sidebar Maybe there's some like rules. But, you know, let's all kind of like, if you have a question, let's just go over the sidebar ones in order. And then if you want to ask a question, first post it there. Because cutting without notice into the middle of Ray's talk

should not be sort of like done again. Okay, thank you, everybody. Okay, so let's go over the – so, Ray, you can just scroll up and see yourself. I'm just kind of like not screen sharing. So go ahead. let's just go up and see what's going on okay so right okay the first comment is by Christian who writes resisting skepticism and dogmatism can't refuted empirical skepticism but not transcendental sketches other classes where we just sort of write notes. Ah, I see. Okay. So the first question is,

I'm just trying to find the, is Theodore's the first question? I think we should just deal with the ones that are actually with a question mark because the rest of them are comments and we can continue on dealing with them on the classroom, right? To me, the first real question is Aaron's, which he says, Ray, is this also the case for Kantian? So Aaron, if you want to reiterate that question, I'd pass on the mic to you if you're around. Yeah. Turn your camera on too, please, if you don't mind. Turn your camera on. Yeah. So I'll just restate that. I think it was when we were talking about specifically consciousness as cognitively. And it seemed to me that experience, at least in the uses that it's been given also kind

of has this category. I just was wondering if, yeah, if you could kind of talk on that or sort of the relational sort of intentionality to experience or experience necessarily is experience of objects, right? That to have an experience at all, it has to have this conceptual background so that you're relating to it. Yes. Something. It seemed like, it seemed that the way we were talking about consciousness also applied just as well to experience, even though we were using experience variably as an experience of a sensation or an experience of consciousness. Yes. So, okay, the words, the experience that Hegel is interested in is Erfaren. And in German distinguishing, there's two words for experience.

one is you know a foreign which is used I think by you know by chance and Hegel consistently and it means cognitive experience an experience of something where the all is intentional and even though Hegel begins with uncertainty which is sense certainty is the kind of the minimal degree the minimal degree of cognitive awareness it's the experience of this here now if we begin with the most primitive or rudimentary kind of cognitive awareness of simply some things being you know this thing here and there and then he will show how even this is conceptual the kind of um that you know a conceptual universal is

already kind of operative in in this even at this kind of a minimal level of cognitive experience and the words you know the Germans you know the contrast term is at labeness which is often translated as lived experience and you know the distinction between a firing and a labness is very important for no all of German philosophy really and Benjamin makes the you know kind of emphasizes the importance but it's so it's in a way the distinction of foreign consciousness as a foreign is consciousness of so it's intentional and that means it's it's consciousness which involves the distinction which

distinguishes however minimally between how things are and how they appear or truth and knowledge and so it's not it's not a psychological kind of characterization of experience it's not but of course Hegel strong claim will be that all our experiences conceptual in this sense that the minimal awareness awareness of anything whatsoever even the you know that kind of the awareness that one is being tickled or that one is nauseous is ultimately kind of conceptually mediated where remember where the concepts are not simply kind

of you know individually instantiate the concepts that mediate all our experience for Hegel are embodied in a collectivity a geist a shape of spirits so that this is why for him there's nothing inherently private or ineffable about any you know layer of subjective experience okay is that the next one I would say is the is the longer question by Helen oh by sorry by hunter by hunter hunter then that's us can you

talk about the isomorphic or like yeah that one yes um can you talk about the isomorphic or lack thereof between the phonological recursion that unfold in Hegel's own book versus the unfolding of reason an actual human history and on the one hand an individual psychology psychogenesis or not yes this recurs this kind of phonological recursion it's precisely it's not a chronological account okay it's not a chronological account and it's not I mean I think this is a well this is a kind of one point of contention in and kind of Hegel and you know that these the Hegel interpretations that we're going to look at is that there is you know kind of Hegel is notorious

for the claim that's you know logic that there's a logic in history and that's ultimately the you know the the the unfolding of history the way in which history unfolds is is ultimately as a kind of a logical structure and he does say you know reason history he does often say things that can easily be taken to in that sense but I think it's clear already like in just what we've read so far of the introduction that he clearly does not in a phenomenology he does not take himself to be charting a chronological historical sequence of

shapes of human consciousness and if you look at I mean the way in which so that you know, in the first section of the book, the transition from, you know, the three stages of consciousness from, you know, sense certainty to perception to force and understanding, these are not, these are the, it's a logical succession. It's a logical succession because Hegel thinks that these, the only way in which one cognitive experience can unfold, it must, you know, it must kind of unfold through these determinations. It must unfold in this way.

But the necessity is logical. And the necessity, he says, is imposed by the phonological observer. and in a way this is if he was if he wasn't saying that he would be a metaphysician so this passage on you know this paragraph 87 it's really this is comes towards the end of the introduction it's really really it cannot be overemphasized when he says no the reversals of consciousness charted you know which which constitute the recursive pattern of the recursive sequence are contributed by we the phonological observer okay they're not you know they're not in the in the experiencing consciousness as such so

there's no kind of there's no kind of natural or metaphysical necessity connecting the these movements or this kind of succession of transformations in the experience of consciousness like it seems like on the one hand he's saying that but on the other hand like there are so many domains where what he's talking about is applicable in different ways like on the one hand like human history sort of has in some way progressed according to this logic and um like the cognitive development of children you know

has this recursive quality to it or like the psychoanalytic cure or learning um like just just learning new knowledge. Like, it does seem like this is an abstract logic that's instantiated in all these different ways in the world. And I'm wondering if there's like a surreptitiousness to it, you know, that he's sort of taking this empirical data from the world and then kind of abstracting it or like if this would be, you know, almost like a formal version of something and then there's like this mere apparent embodied versions or something like there's there's something that is um that feels kind of unclear to me or it's like surreptitious or I mean I don't know no I mean that's

it's um I think this is one of the biggest issues and you know the interpretation of Hegel is that on the one hand I mean the common criticism is that he is just, it's actually Hegel himself who is, you know, pulling the strings behind the scenes. So he's manipulating each kind of transition so that the, yeah, so the movement is artificial, in which case, you know, it's not going to have, in which case there won't be, in which case it's not going to be a science of the experience of consciousness because then he was simply going to be imposing his own criterion in other words he simply presupposed

what he's kind of allegedly trying to demonstrate and simply kind of shaping the material in this way so as to kind of guarantee the result but also but about recursion I mean it's yes although recursion is a kind of a ubiquitous phenomenon that can be seen and although it's a good way I mean the phenomenon of recursion you know in linguistics and psychoanalysis it's you know it's kind of clearly detectable the way in which for for Hale himself does just to emphasize like he doesn't use this term that's you know I just introduced that term as a kind of a in a way to so I need to kind of in

the way to try to help clarify the way the movements, you know, the way in which Hegel thinks that there is a kind of accumulation, there can be accumulation of determinations. And there has to be accumulation of determinations for this to count as a progressive sequence, he thinks. But you can track, look, you can track some of these shapes of consciousness to, you know, clearly, like he is, I mean, some of these shapes of consciousness do seem to correspond to episodes in the history of philosophy, in the history of knowledge, but also specific cultural episodes.

And then after, you know, once he's moved to self-consciousness, then he's going to all of a sudden start talking about these, you know, cultural phenomena, like, you know, the unhappy consciousness, stoicism, you know, the French Revolution. Obviously, it seems part of the difficulty is understanding the bewildering variety of phenomena he discusses and their interrelation. because sometimes he's talking about a cognitive or purely epistemological kind of transformation and then he's talking about some wider social or historical

transformation but I think do you think he would be able to state clearly what exactly he's trying to say or is it part of the like nature of speculative philosophy and his understanding of it that there is this like it like it seems to make sense but it's also sort of like a nomination that that you know forces you to think well I mean I think it's very difficult well at least I mean I don't know Hegel well enough to to know if there's a place somewhere who really clarifies this issue but look clearly if Hegel if the necessity is if there was

no distinction between you know the apprehension or between the kind of a chance and necessity between the way between empirical contingency and notional necessity then if there was no distinction at this level this phenomenological level then Hegel would be doing metaphysics because he would be saying that there is a law like necessity governing a logical necessity governing these transitions but he can't but if he was doing that he'd be immediately violating his own kind of stricture where he said that the only criterion he's going to invoke for distinguishing between necessity, truth and knowledge.

And remember, you can recode the distinction between necessity and contingency in terms of distinction between truth and knowledge. He's saying that the only criterion will be the one that he thinks is operative in the the shape of consciousness that he is simply examining. So, if he... The other thing is, if he was simply kind of... If he is simply... Let's say, kind of... He's accumulated a bunch of... A wealth of historical material, episodes in the history of philosophy, the history of science, and the history of culture,

and then he's saying that we can understand these as the incarnations of these notional forms, these shapes of spirit. He would still have to explain the relationship between how an empirical phenomenon, which is, after all, because what we know about the history of philosophy, the history of thought or the history of culture is completely empirical so in other words hegel he would be a historicist in a pernicious um you know in a kind of a relativistic sense um and his whole point is that he can't presume to know the essence of history when he's writing

the phenomenology not if we take what he says about he says he's going to begin he's going to to take the challenge of radical skepticism seriously and say that we're going to, it's a process of self-negation, is that each limited shape of consciousness will negate itself and generate a new one. He was, he says that. You might say it's like where the most interesting way to read Hegel is to try to make him neither a historicist nor a metaphysician and you could criticize them for either but it would the strongest reading would be to find a way to make another of those things yes and I think yes there and there

is I mean okay there's evidence you could probably find evidence for a weaker reading but I think there is some very substantial evidence for a strong reading notably in what you know in the the preface and the introduction, given the challenge he set himself, which is to reject dogmatism, whether metaphysical or transcendental, but also empirical skepticism. Now, historicism is a kind of skepticism, and the problem with historicism is that how do you know about history? History is an object like anything else. What entitles you to say this historical facts are facts. So what entitles you to be able to identify and catalog historical facts

and to then say that they are actually surreptitiously determining any other kind of facts, kind of a philosophical, logical, conceptual, aesthetic, whatever. And I think Hegel is a radical thinker in the profound sense that he really wants to have something approaching presuppositionalness, but not in the classical. But he says that in a way the way in which metaphysical foundationalism and empiricist foundationalism tried to articulate presuppositionalness was all too, was dogmatic. They helped themselves. He says the problem with skepticism is that it always has to help itself to certain facts or to certain kind of assumptions,

which in order to then kind of cast out or suspend all these other assumptions. And assumptions about history and about culture are going to be every bit as debatable from his point of view as metaphysical assumptions. so this is why I think there's pressure so you know to reiterate if if he's just kind of seeing connections between patterns recursive patterns and human cognition and human kind of you know cultural experience and then saying that

they are actually then you know the concrete incarnations or instantiations of these notional forms, then he's clearly flagrantly ignoring his own kind of methodological structure from the very beginning. So what you've asked is a very crucial issue, it's a pointed question, because in a way a popular way in cultural theory people read Hegel in a week which is just as a kind of I mean the claims also he historicizes knowledge and he shows that all consciousness all knowledge is always kind of you know historically

circumscribed how on earth would he know that how would anyone know whether or it was given I mean unless the quick what is historical knowledge what do we actually know about history I mean it seems that historical knowledge is as you know it was able if not more so than any other so like I think it's very strange when people say that Hegel's kind of submersive move is to kind of you know to his historicization or appealing to the kind of that he he knows history he's understood something about the histories historicity of thought that metaphysician satan well how would he arrive at this knowledge of the historicity of thought this is the whole problem of phenomenology so he has to go through this whole process to be

able to you know to say what what history is and this is why in a way that the phenomenology is actually not historical although it's taken to be kind of it's actually completely not historical the constellation of forms of shapes of consciousness is logical and notional and he thinks that it has it can be kind of it kind of erupts into history he's the one who says that time is the self-externalization of the notion of the concept but he clearly he thinks that of course one can track one can see specific historical kind of analogues with

these shapes of spirits but the claim that they're all merely kind of you know embodied that he's know that this is you know that what he's describing is the historical incarnation of spirits I think is simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny given what he's told us about what he's doing so history will come into Hegel is going to come into history and I think that Hegel does you know philosophy is retrospective philosophy can only understand its own time retrospectively which means it's conditioned by time, but the way in which philosophy can think its own conditioning by time,

because time, the structure of temporal determination, or historical determination, is precisely not given, not simply given. It must itself be notionally articulated. So I think this is why the kind of vulgar historicist reading of Hegel is I think really just begs all the questions that Hegel took himself to be grappling with after camps should we go to theaters question yes okay and you know right underneath hunters almost he says theater are you

Are you there? Yeah, can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you. And if you turn your camera on, it says, I'm curious about what motivates the revisionary process. So you want to explain it and engage? Go ahead. Sure, yeah. We've been touching on this throughout. But I just wanted to hear more about what's motivating or deriving what you're calling the phenomenological recursion or the dialectic. I mean, I know he says explicitly that it's self-moving notion. And it's not as if some object outside of consciousness instigates consciousness to have to revise itself. It seems as if, or at least the way Pippin describes it, that consciousness itself encounters a contradiction with itself.

Yes. As opposed to an obstacle outside of itself that it then has to map back into itself. yes more about that yes well look I think this is a tricky issue but I actually think this is where Brandon and Brandon in particular is very strong very convincing he explains it in terms of like to go back to the kind of the bent stick example he says that what for it's because the distinction between what the object is how the object is what properties it has in itself independently of us and those properties it has in relationship to us because that's the concept

of the object our concept of the object includes a distinction between what the object is in itself and what it is for us so therefore if we if experience if our experience of the object generates incompatible beliefs, such as, for example, the belief that something solid can suddenly kind of become, bends in water. This conflicts with what we know about sticks and with what we know about water. Water doesn't have the power to bend solid objects, and solid objects don't bend simply by getting wet.

So there's a kind of an immediate incompatibility between these beliefs that this stick is a solid object. It's a wooden stick. It's solid. Wood doesn't bend simply by getting wet, and yet the stick, the wooden stick looks bent in the water. So we have to kind of somehow, there's an incompatibility between, if we believe that all of a sudden we can either decide that water really does have the power to bend, and, you know, to make hard wooden objects soft, but obviously you know we decided against that because we have lots of other evidence that's

you know whatever water does or whatever water can do and cannot do this is not one of the things it does so we decide to say that the stick retains its heart its rigidity in the water but it merely looks bent okay and so that we we register a difference between how the stick looks or appears in water and the way it really is even when it's underwater it's still stick it's still rigid still straight so can i happen one one more time and just say then that then i

I think intention becomes at least strange because I can't will myself to perceive objects according to a conceptual scheme that doesn't in some way cohere with how I experience reality. Is that? you can um you can will yourself to perceive reality in accordance with a conceptual scheme which um which may yes which and completely disregards the way in which things appear to you um is that what you're or i'm saying it seems that i cannot i cannot will my perceptions to behave in a way that's at least seemingly well yes well no yeah because there's an

capsule for it's considered the Muller-Layer illusion now that's the one where you have you know the kind of the two lines which are of equal length but they have you know the the arrows at the end one has internal arrows internally pointing arrows other one has externally pointing arrows and the one with the external arrows looks longer than the one with the internal arrows at the end and even though we know that they're exactly the same length and there's lots of similar examples where so even know when we know the truth the true property of an object we can't help but see it in a certain

way but we know the we're aware of this you know we know that the the objects has this property and that this property it has is independent of the way in which the object appears to us and this is so so we know you know there's lots of things which we can't help but perceive in a certain way but nevertheless we we are confident that the thing you know the object of perception has a certain properties that can be known you know that are independence of the way in

which it's perceived so even if we can't control or kind of we can't control the way in which things appear to us because we can't we have limited control over our kind of you know sensory modalities you know we can't there's you know it's only a limited ranges of audible frequencies we can hear same thing goes for vision and other kind of you know sensations but there's room for conceptual there's considerable room for conceptual mutability obviously at the level of you know proceeding as okay so and this is where you know so conceptual

determination is what allows you to perceive something as something a line as a line but it's not going to it doesn't it can't control the way in which you know we are organs or sense organs can of process you know the kind of physical information so there's a kind of you know this is what was like food or talk a lot about you know the the the encapsulation of sensory modalities there they're they're impermeable to conceptual determination this is an argument against kind of conceptual the claim that perception is conceptually mediated all the way down no there seems to be there's a kind of a

neurophysiological kind of core about you know the processing of perceptual information which is impermeable to conceptual mediation but then we understand this we understand it seems that I'm not sure so I don't think that this would be a kind of a rebuttal of Hegel's points you'll say of course of course we know that we can't help but you know sense things you know and so we are some of our kind of sensory capacities are kind of hardwired and we can't simply transform them at will but this is something this conditions our experience and this is because our experience is never purely sensory

stand this and even in a case where we we we have a novel experience a novel perceptual experience and in which we take something we take we mistake a property that the thing only has for us to be a property of the thing in itself Hegel's point is that someone else another member of our community can come along to correct us someone who understands visual processing or auditory processing will explain to us so even though the thing seemed to be you know you perceived it in this way you know it's actually this way it's actually this other way so I mean the point here is that it's a mistake to

simply to focus exclusively on the individual level the point Hegel's point is that are no the the conceptual mediation of our perceptual capacities unfolds at the collective social level and at that level we also involves an understanding of our own kind of corporeal structure we understand certain things about you know our bodies and our nervous systems and but that kind of knowledge is itself conceptual hey this one is that nothing at the level of experience itself allows you to there's nothing at the level of experience itself that would

provide you that would count as a kind of as a non conceptual criterion of discrimination between appearance and reality between how things the way things really are in the way in which you know we take them to be his strong claim is that in order for us to be conscious of anything whatsoever however minimal a kind of a battery of concepts has to be in play and of course then once they're in play we are just we're obliged to keep on correcting our understanding of yes there was a relationship between

you know reality and appearance so is this I mean is this addressing your you're worried that the question you wanted to raise I think a little bit I'm still curious about how internal it seems for both Hagel and the way that Pippin talks about Hagel. What do you mean by internal? As in it's not the object somehow outside of me that I gradually approximate getting closer and closer in

revisionary process it seems as if it is the object because the difference between you know the objects for you and the object what the object really is is part of your consciousness the whole point is that you wouldn't be aware of the objects that you can't have any consciousness of an object like consciousness of the difference between its truth what it is in itself and what it is for you but the point is that that difference is conceptual so in other words your concept of an object includes the difference between its real and its merely apparent properties and you revise so therefore the pressure comes from it's the object itself that makes you change your mind it's a stick that makes you revise your belief about it because you believe that the stick is

essentially rigid okay sticks are this this kind of thing it's essential that it's part of the essence of this stick that it's rigid and it's part of the essence of water that water doesn't you know bend rigid objects okay so we the reason we change our minds about you know the the band stick in the water is precisely because of what we believe about the nature of the stick in itself the nature of water in itself right so I think the pressure is coming from the object it's not coming from you know these are and precisely because they're object concepts they're not concepts of sensations or this is I think I mean so

although that the point is that the way in which it's always going to be limited what we know the way in which we can track the boundaries between the objects truth and what we know about it is always going to be relative but that doesn't mean that it's not you know the thing itself forcing us to revise our beliefs about it and Hegel's point is what would be the alternative what would it be to have what conception of the object could you have independently of any possible relationship to a perceiver or community of perceivers? I mean, we have, I mean, you can

gradually develop such a notion, okay, but the point is that even the concept, you know, micro physical particles, whatever kind of, you know, physical concepts that are supposed to be optimally observer independence or mind independence you can name they're completely conceptual that's that's Hegel's points is that we we've always drawn the difference between reality and appearance he says not this is why he uses the word notion not concept the notion is actually you know the correlation between subjects and objects the concepts every notion in a way kind of encompasses a whole barrage or panoply of concepts concepts of water

sticks perceivers etc etc hegel's point is that each the minimal units of epistemic analysis is this notional correlation which is always kind of coordinated around the distinction between truth and knowledge oh sorry Christian do you wanna do you wanna like summarize your question and present it to Ray wait no first could I just ask a question that it's sort of directly related to what was just said okay it's quick also and it's just right because you were just talking about the difference between, if you don't mind.

Yeah, the difference between notion and concept. And is there a difference in the original German? Is reading the Terry Pinkard translation, he gets rid of notion completely and just uses concepts, no capital C. What does notion do there that concept doesn't? And is there for Hegel really? How do you tell what that difference is? Hmm. Yes, I actually don't know at what point the English term notion was introduced. And I guess, I think it was introduced by initially, precisely to mark the distinction, you know, that I just alluded to.

that it's a difference between an individual concept for instance what is an you know anything that can assume a predicate role is a concept a concept is just anything that can assume a predicate a rule in a judgment a notion I think that you know the translators chose the word notion because they knew Hegel means something you know in some instances although he uses a German word they could if you know which is concept he actually means something different from merely that which can assume a merely assume a predicate predicate of role he means something well in a way the point is that every

conceptual determination is only is itself part of a notional determination so in order to you know because of his conceptual holism he insists that you can't understand no it's not just that you can't understand any single concepts independently of his relationship to a kind of a battery of other concepts it's that there must be a way of individuating a kind of conceptual totality and I the notion the term notion is simply used to kind of to individuate it's the

minimal unit of conceptual analysis for Hegel because he thinks or no so I would wager because he thinks that it doesn't make sense to talk about individual concepts if you did that you'd have to be you have a theory of conceptual atomism holist you know conceptual homeless so I think he says that the notion is this kind of this conceptual totality within which you know particular concepts can be isolated but only by abstraction so no so in German no I think pretty certain that there is he

just uses the term bigot if and but I think in a way to mark is the difference between his and can't see it's precisely because he doesn't just have a canteen theory of the concept where concepts for cans are functions of judgment and he goes point is that you can't understand judgment itself in abstraction from judgment itself is only a part or a component of this big you know this this this bigger conceptual structure which you know which the term notion is supposed to express I think great thanks Christian do you want to do

you want to bring up your question sure I said um to also sure um this is like relevance to class too um I said what the recursive room demonstrates the phenomenology does that mean contemporary readings of Hegel be they psychoanalytic rational cognitive or neuroscience scientific must prove their mechanisms of ascertaining certainty really are accounting for the productions of their experience that is would Hegel's question be does a psychoanalytic or scientific mode of cognition account for the shapes of its own experience well I think he goes well with psychoanalysis it's kind of more

complicated given you know people you know these Slovenian hegelians but certainly no he'll say that's any any more of empirical knowledge so neuroscientific knowledge is itself going to depend upon it's going to be notionally determined it's going to be it's going to develop it's going to belong to a cognitive context in which you know there's a whole host of you know substantive assumptions about you know about matters that exceed the remits of neuroscience strictly speaking so he's going to say and again what he's

he's not against, I think, he's not at all hostile to empirical knowledge, but he's saying that empirical knowledge, he says it's a mistake simply to kind of start, or to think that any portion of empirical knowledge provides some kind of, you know, indubitable kind of foundation for a kind of critical investigation into what is what truly is which is why he did the phenomenology of knowledge and the science of logic first before he did the philosophy yes he does the phenomenology then the science of logic a few years later and the science of logic is his system that's where you

know the phenomenology is a kind of although Hegel hates this talk about preliminaries but the proper duty to the science of logic it's supposed to help explain how it's possible to write a science to do what he claims to be doing in the science of logic which is you begin from the unity of thought and being you begin well you begin where there's no determinate difference between thinking and being and then you proceed to kind of to unfold all these kind of these categorical determinations you basically kind of fundamental you know categories or conceptual determinations are presupposed in every and every in

any and every kind of knowledge whether empirical or a priori so the phenomenology is supposed to get you to this point so that's why he thinks he absolutely has to write it even though he conceived you know the preface shows that he'd already kind of conceived the logic or you know was preparing the logic when writing the phonology even if he hadn't finished it with psychoanalysis it's different because psychoanalysis the Lacanian Hegelians we're actually going we will be examining like Mladen Dolar, Alenka Zupancic and Slavoj Žižek and

they now they have a very interesting account of the relationship between psychoanalysis and Hegel's system which is very complicated but the claim the crucial claim is that psychoanalysis is not a kind of empirical knowledge it's not an empirical it's not a science in the way in which Freud thought it could be a science in the 1890s but nor is it a metaphysics so it has this very the six this anomalous this exceptional status these are the other kind of of human knowledge. So I think we'll try, you know, when we come to, we will deal with

that actually in later weeks. But, and look, I mean, Mladen Dolar, who we'll be looking at, he thinks that, you know, that Hegel's own logic is kind of, you know, presupposes a kind of what he calls a kind of a minimal a non dialectical difference a distinction without a difference which is this point of pure subtraction which he thinks is which you know is this kind of co-evil with the drive that's what they call the drive so that even absolute knowledge in Hegel's sense is

conditioned by the drive it's a very interesting account but then what's the challenge there is that these you know the their Hegelian but they think that there's Hegel Hegel's discourse is conditioned by something something in a way that he he articulates in the very opening of the logic and you know the difference between being not being nothing becoming where this the beginning which is the matrix within which determinant negation will unfold but the beginning is not yet the determinant negation of anything that's the the kind of the Slovenian claim and that's a very interesting clip which we'll have to examine and of course the question then is this is this a

speculative claim but is this a speculative claim that is somehow independence of the framework elaborated in phenomenology does it risk relapsing into a kind of metaphysical claim these are the issues that we'll be considering okay I should move on to the next question which is Is it Theodore? I'm not sure if he... I think we touched on that a little bit already. As you might know, we're also reaching kind of like the end

and maybe a little bit, I don't want to interject like if Ray has other material to go through, but it would be great to talk about your writings and what's going to happen to them and how Ray wants to deal with it. I noticed that some of you have posted your writings. And for those of you who haven't, I'm just going to reiterate that the writing is basically you're picking one of the readings of the week one and week two and focusing on one point and reflecting or elaborating for about 500 words. If you haven't done it, this is what you were supposed to be doing. now if you like for those of you who have posted it and for those of you who

will who will post Ray what do you think is the best way to deal with it my my idea was to somehow compile them in a file to one single file with everyone's name and all that for you to just have one thing to deal with rather than hundred like tens of like downloads and stuff and then maybe we post that on Google Doc and then and then you can maybe make comments on Google Doc and then the people can take the comments and incorporate them or something like that or any kind of arrangement and then also to say this if we go by the same logic your next writing won't be due next week but the week after and also consider that Ray won't be here for a couple of weeks so there's time to deal with all this stuff and yeah so yeah so back to you Ray well how do you think is the best way to deal with with the writings well the way you just said that I was a much rather have

everything in a single document or a single file as opposed to having much easier for me to kind of to deal with it so yes and for everybody else also to be able to kind of like look at it all at the same time I mean and I take it people are okay with unless someone you know would rather not you know you know would rather not that they're people of writing be made public and only wants me to look at it if if that's what you prefer that's you know that's fine I'm assuming that everyone is okay with like you know seeing you know everyone else's work but if you if you'd rather not that's okay I think everyone will be

okay with that I don't think there will be a problem with that right okay well then yes that's okay so so we're clear about that right okay so maybe maybe maybe if you want to take take more questions from the sidebar go ahead or if there's any any any final remarks and last week we went over time so we perfectly fine to end like 10 minute or 20 minute early this time because last time you you gave us a lot and you were totally generous last last week so it's up to you well I'll I think I should go through more of the questions no problem so let me see if I can find the last question answered was I think Christian's

question about neuroscience and psychoanalysis and then so Theodore has a number of questions or comments so first is here the question of intention becomes important again since I cannot will my perceptions or at least seem like no I cannot will my perceptions but okay so in other words I'm affect the world does affect me in a certain way and I seems I don't you know we're getting back to this issue about hails relationship to can't so Hagel notoriously you know want to do away with the dualism of you know concepts and intuition or you know the spontaneity of the understanding and the receptivity

of sensibility and claim that even the way in which we that conceptualization is already at work in sensible intuition so that the way in which the win which we feel is already you know conceptually determined no there's an equivocation here because what Hegel is not saying here is one if one just distinguishes between well sellers distinguishes I think it's a helpful distinction here is a distinction between awareness of and awareness as now you can be

aware of something okay without being aware of it as the thing that it is or you know or you can be wrong or mistaken about what the thing is and clearly you know children and non-human animals are aware of lots of the same things of which we are aware and yet they are not aware of them as the things that we take them to be so So like if you have a dog looking at a TV, the dog can see the TV, can smell it, hear it, etc. It's aware of this thing in front of it.

It's looking at it, smelling it, pawing it perhaps. So it's aware of it, but it's not aware of it as a television set because it doesn't have the concept television set. doesn't understand what a TV is so there's one Hegel's claim although he uses the term he only uses the word you know consciousness of I think that the way to make sense of Hegel's claim is that consciousness of is consciousness as he says in order for in order for you to be aware of something as something concept needs to be in play he's not saying that no he's not making the

impossible claim that's our you know the way in which our you know your physiological kind of processing of information operates is already kind of is conceptual in in his sense or he's not as what he understands a concept but also there are complicated mechanisms going on but they're not concepts so I I guess yes I think that you know the way to he although he's he says he's overcome the kind of the current and dualism between spontaneity and

receptivity he's not denying that there is a real world you can have a known you know kind of a mind independent non-human reality you know with which we are interacting and that is kind of affecting us in certain ways what he's claiming is that everything we understand everything we know about this independent reality is conceptually determined and in so far as our experience if we're talking about cognitive experience and he's going to that are experience of this world which contains lots of you know non-human phenomena will be you know conceptually mediated the claim then is that the I

guess I mean that the question is is whether there's anything is whether there's a dimension of reality that is unconceptualizable this would be the can't even rejoin it to Hegel if you if one could say that you know if even if one you know reads Hegel in this way in this attenuated way where he's just talking about saying that consciousness as is always kind of mediated is there anything about our understanding of reality or rather is there is it

possible to envisage a reality that is somehow completely refractory to conceptual understanding or to conceptualization is there anything that is completely unconceptualizable and therefore unintelligible for our consciousness that's the and of course you know he goes critics have said yes and in the 20th century they've tried to come up with various instances of things that are supposedly refractory to conceptualization usually form based forms of the whole discourse of altarity you know and well really in post-heideggerian phenomenology and post-structuralism really is anti-hegelian in this sense claims that there is there's a non-conceptual charity hegel

insist that all authority is conceptual they insist no there are non conceptual alternatives it's difficult to challenge Hegel on this ground because the point is the point is this the problem that you face if you're trying to kind of challenge legal in this way is how are you going to be able to what any non conceptual alternative that you invoke is going to have to be workers is you know no it's difficult for you to invoke it without some minimal conceptual determination even whether it's non-identity you know infinitely other

the flesh, the sensible, the events, etc., etc. And Hegel never claims that everything in our experience is exhaustively conceptually determined from the get-go. He's simply saying that there is nothing in our experience that is completely refractory to conceptualization, or that is simply kind of, it's simply kind of, it's completely opaque and impenetrable, conceptually impenetrable. So, that's why, I mean, that's why I think his position is powerful.

And all he needs to do is to say that once it's understood that he's not talking about concepts in a psychological register, he's not talking about consciousness in a psychological register but rather in this speculative speculative register which involves both a kind of an epistemic and an ontological I think the way to understand speculative is that what where the distinction between you know this moldy and ontology has been kind of superseded so that anything that you're aware of anything that you experience has you know about it but it also has a kind of being as it's it

exists it is and here he will simply insist well that that's you know being you know what it means for something to be for you for consciousness is for it involves conceptualization. So now just to go back to the question. I had a question too up there but I don't know if you if it's significant for you to take it. I asked is this recursive nature part of the updatability in science or even like a necessity part of how science update its itself no science can revise its commitments okay but the

the process of conceptual revision is not the doesn't itself involve any kind of recursion phonological recursion as you know I've characterized it here it It simply involves minimizing conceptual incompatibilities, maximizing consistency and coherence at the level. And for a Hegelian like Brandom, it's precisely maximizing compatibility and coherence is what guarantees correspondence. You explain the satisfaction of the correspondence requirement in terms of this obligation to

maximize coherence. So you eliminate the, and incompatibility is the symptom of a failure of correspondence, but the pressure to eliminate that incompatibility involves, will itself come from the conceptual totality involved from from you know the game of giving and asking for reasons nothing in this in the thing itself obliges you to rather the reason that the thing itself obliges you to you know to eliminate you know one incompatible belief and to kind of arrive at a compatible set of beliefs

about it is because everything you can say or know about the thing is part of this system of compatibilities so in order for you to be able to not so not in order for you to avoid contradicting yourself and you know being in a position where you have to say you know a and naughty which according to what you know which would render you unintelligible to other speakers. And just one word about this is that, so Brandom's claim, or the claim about non-contradiction, Hegel famously denies that speculative thinking is bound

by the law of non-contradiction. You have to be careful here. I mean, even if that's true, Hegel thinks that you can't simply begin by abandoning you know non-contradiction you don't you know you can't you have to get to speculative thinking to understand how contradiction is you know is essential a contradiction is the ground of being but you don't get to there you have to hold on to the constraint of non-contradiction to arrive at the speculative vantage point This is why Hegel doesn't begin with speculative thinking. Although he says you have to kind of... speculative thinking emerges through the inadequacies

and inconsistencies of the understanding, of non-speculative understanding. And that's all it is. And it's realizing that if properly articulated can become cognitively enabling. So I guess if I reiterate a question, then what will be the role or the impact of this phenomenological recursivity on the production of so-called objective knowledge? If you believe that there's progress in knowledge, then it looks like this kind of recursivity

is a very plausible reconstruction. If you believe that knowledge progresses through determinant negation, in other words, that history of knowledge is not just one damn thing after another a series of discontinuous paradigm shifts for instance this is where hegel hegel's claim is that even if conscious natural consciousness cannot directly you know perceive it or experience it there is a kind of there's a conceptual logic underwriting you know epistemic shifts or transformations and but it's only discernible from this speculative vantage or first of all from this phenomenological and then ultimately speculative vantage point and the reason

for that is because he goes he goes things that discontinuities are only intelligible against the background of an underlying continuity and this is why he thinks that the you wouldn't because it's look it's not just the continuity of knowledge that is compromised by kind of epistemic relativism it's the very idea of knowledge that that's the kind of the you know really if you really kind of reject Kant and Hegel the point is that it's not just idea what are you when you pluralize knowledge and what sense are they all instances of knowledge okay and this is Hegel's point is that you can't

simply pluralize instances of knowledge you know without holding on to some kind of you know unitary notion of knowledge if you do it or if you pulverize it altogether then it's not knowledge at all okay what what do all these different kinds of alleged practices which are grouped together as you know cognitive practices what why do we call them cognitive and of course if you go the whole hog as you know some post-modernists did you say well they're not you just you can't call them cognitive and you can't call them practices either okay the point is that Hegel's argument is an argument from he says that you can't the reductionist atomism including whether it's culturalist

anthropological historicist sociological is ultimately self-undermining these are all variants of skepticism but they're incoherent skepticism because they hold on to you know they relativize knowledge by absolutizing something which is you know the social the you know society history nature culture whatever you want there's always an illegitimate absolutization going on and Hegel says this is you can't do this this this is you know incoherent so he says that once you take the kind of the pressure on holism you know the the pressure on kind of to kind of that things can only be understood holistically

or systemically or is interconnected then you have to go the whole hog okay you have to go the whole hog and this is why he's the most uncompromising holist in the history of philosophy but his holism is also the most sophisticated because he doesn't do he the point is that the totality is internally differentiated and articulated in a very complicated way so yes I think that the phonological recursion is the only way to make sense of something like cognitive progress and the unity of the continuity of human cognitive experience of course you can deny it but then it's it it's very difficult to simply help yourself

to universal or generic categories such as experience knowledge humanity or history if you simply kind of want to kind of through all of this age I so I think I think that's what I was trying to say in the beginning so that's why I'm glad I clarified and then you also like clarified yeah so thank you thank you for that okay so should we should we should we end the second session everyone because we're totally at our two and a half hours, as long as Ray is okay with that. Yes. I mean, if there's any questions I didn't address, I'm happy to – I'll have to go in about 10 minutes.

But this is the last call for question. So just take it as is. So maybe we'll take one more question if there is, probably from somebody who hasn't asked the question, if it's possible. if not from somebody who has asked the question okay go ahead Mika it's good to hear from you go ahead you got it I don't think we can hear you you want to type it or okay we'll hold on as you say yeah okay so yeah if you type it maybe theater can read your question theater do you want

to read it sure I'll read it Mika says in what sense does the idea come into play I'm wondering about what sense this about the production of the new in general okay okay so well idea is a term you know the German word is idea you know he does he go capitalized and this is so there is a difference between concept or big riff and idea so yeah that is a hegelian kind of term of art and the thing is okay so we talked about the absolute idea at the end of you know

the science of logic and the absolute idea is this this kind of internally differentiated self-reflecting kind of structure so it's what you it's what you get at the it is kind of it's what you arrive at I guess at the very end of you know Eagle science of logic so it's it's kind of it's the total structure which includes every notional determination which recapitulates every notional determination and it's this but it's not a static structure because it's also it's engaged in this you know

kind of it's well actually talking about it is it's difficult to talk about the idea in Hegel without resorting to the kind of the theological language which you know obviously invites the metaphysical reading and actually well your your question is also about the production of the new in general I mean the the other objection to Hegel is that because the in what sense are we to understand the actuality of the absolute idea in Hegel this is a very difficult question it all hinges on what you know how we this term perfectly cites our actuality and you

know again when he says you know the real is rational the real is actual and the actual the rational is actual and the actual is rational Hegel thinks that he rejects again we touched upon this last time and I think the reading or I think that the the the way in which I would like to kind of make sense of this notion is by first of all by rejecting the idea that the actuality of the notion can be understood in terms of potentiality so that the the actuality of the notion doesn't depend upon a contrast to potentiality and yes I mean

is Hegel's spinicism in a sense. He says, you know, and he is spinicist that he refuses the kind of, you know, to kind of to split the real, you know, into the distinction between, you know, the possible and the actual. He says, no, everything that is, is actual, but there are degrees of actuality. These degrees of actuality are tied to notion, to determination. also degrees of negativity self-relating negativity so in one sense only the the idea the absolute idea is holy and you know unequivocally actual actual without remainder

but because it first of all it's an infinite totality so it's not its actuality doesn't kind of you know is unbounded it's an unbounded actuality so it's not you know that doesn't begin or ends doesn't begin or cease to be actual but at the same token I think that the worry then is that it becomes this kind of trans historical eternity you know this kind of and Hegel's remarks about the self-externalization of no the the idea you know the idea the idea externalizes itself in nature and then reunites with itself after the externalization you

know they sound there's a bit set are obviously the most problematic for anyone who's trying to read them non metaphysically it also yes if the if the idea is eternally actual then in what sense can there be novelty well he thinks I mean Hegel thinks that there's going to be he thinks I think that he thinks one that novelty is a cognitive determination that's in order for something to be new it has to be that's involves a kind of a transformation in the structure of experience but in a way these transformations in the structure

of experience will you know they need to be they're not the radicality will not be immediately apparent to the experiencing consciousness and in fact it's only the consciousness of the fenological observer you can see you can you know observe the radicality of a transformation the transformation from one notion into another that's that's a kind of a novelty but then novelty here is not tied to it's it's it's the antithesis of Bergsonian novels Bergson is I think the you know the philosopher of you know being as absolutes

innovation absolute creative becoming and Hegel doesn't think that I think that that conception of novelty he thinks is doesn't survive speculative analysis and I think that the question is look in order for you to find something a transformation in the structure of experience such as precipitated by modernity and Hegel you know sort of like not the kind of novelty represented by the French Revolution for instance he thinks needs to be thought

but it can only be thought philosophy constructs the resources to think novelty retrospectively so philosophy always is always belated it always kind of falls upon the advent of a revolutionary rupture or a break and in this sense you know bad use again when he says that you know philosophy doesn't itself generate truth but philosophy you know compossibilizes you know evental you know evental eruptions you know after after the fact after the event the I guess you know philosophy is the you know philosophy is is there to develop

the resources to explain in a way to emphasize the discontinued the genuine discontinuities and human experience but then also to try to you know to make them intelligible and never to to denounce them never to denounce them in the name of some alleged deterioration or degeneration because for Hegel there is no yardstick other than you know also it can only ever be its own time come right and it's also there is no trans historical yarn stick which means that even the you know the the actuality of the notion from which you draw resources to understand these these breaks or these ruptures in history is

it's you know that actuality is perfectly compatible with the you know understanding these these breaks or the the inactuality of historical rupture and that involves negation I mean this is where he thinks that every break is going to be an you know an upsurge of negativity so obviously this is a very you know anti-deleuze and anti-bergsonian rather but but the link between actuality and negativity is really interesting in Hegel because he thinks that's only infinite negativity the infinite negativity of the idea is

is wholly actual and that infinite negativity is obviously never cannot be incarnated cannot be kind of incarnated in any kind of in any moment but every moment in a way draws upon this reservoir of infinite negativity all novelty is siphons you know part of this kind of infinite negativity without ever exhausting it. So I think, I guess you could say, I think whatever novelty is, Hegel is going to say that it's not something, it cannot be tied to immediacy. In fact immediacy or you know or empirical spontaneity or

surprise are not you know I'm really kind of are not reliable indices of of genuine novelty and because the mark of genuine novelty will be that it will be initially unrecognizable so you're only going to be able to measure its its kind of radicality or its novelty after the fact there is no point there's no point at which you could some you can be you can be co-present with the the upsurge of novelty that would be a kind of a metaphysical illusion thinks that novelty can only be recognized after the fact

well you mentioned proposit um so this is a contention about proposition and it's no that is it you mean Hegel's contention Ray, are you still interacting with Mika? Yes, yes. I just asked if... It would be great if Theodore keeps reading them because they will not get recorded in the video. Sure, I'll keep it. Okay. So it says, right, this is the contention about Proposition 9 in Spinoza, I think.

The absolute doesn't contain negation. The proposition regarding the absolute not containing negation. Spinoza's proposition about the absolute not containing negation? Yes, Spinoza's. Okay. yes because yes because Spinoza's substance is infinite and eternally actual and although all determination is negation I guess the determinations of the understanding don't apply to don't allow one to kind of to catalog

attributive distinctions but of course for the problem you know Hegel will say yeah that this is a problem is that he got first the nose a substance is eternally and absolutely actual and it expresses itself you know in its you know in the modes and it's at modes and subjectivity is merely an attribute and and Caden wants to be refuted, this is precisely where he starts company with Spinoza because he wants to understand how and why substance expresses itself in subjectivity.

why is there not just eternally actual substance and if it expresses itself is there there a logic of expression this is a note Deleuze you know being a big contention Deleuze tries to develop a logic of expression to counter the dialectical logic of negation because expression and requires no negativity but that may you know there's a problem the question is whether the extent of which that we require some kind of appeal to intellectual intuition that

that's the dates between I guess spin is this from hegelians hegel denied that we can have an intellectual intuition about the the infinite actuality of substance that we have to work it out and are working it out is part of its infinite actualization okay so should we you're way past your 10 minutes so you're late actually for whatever it was you were gonna do so people can we just end the second session I mean I don't have any problem if Ray wants to go go deeper into discussion and but it is almost like

three hours now what do you think Ray well I really yes but I have by it yes I'm gonna have to you know I'm afraid I'm gonna have to go so the only the only note I have is that I will email everyone about the two classes and what happens with those dates and then also I would double check them I would double check the daytime daylight daylight saving time and factor that into the email so everybody's clear about like the beginning of next classes according to different time zones in which we all operate and yeah and let's thanks Ray for this amazing second lecture. Thank you, Ray, and I'm going to end the broadcast. The notes and the videos will be posted,

both notes to the classroom and the video, both to the classroom and to the new center's access page. Thank you, everyone.