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Welcome to this lecture
I will first introduce to you the third
and last lecture of Robert Brandom
He will talk on this night about the last part
the ending passage about the Introduction
The title is
Following the Path of Despair to a Bacchanalian Revel:
The Emergence of the Second, True, Object
Please
I know that those of you who stay with me this long
are serious about this stuff
so I appreciate it
Hegel opens the Introduction to the Phenomenology
by considering an epistemological picture
according to which
our cognitive faculties are regarded as
"the instrument through which one takes hold of the absolute
or the medium through which one discovers it."
Philosophers otherwise as diverse as
Descartes, Locke, and Kant
can be seen to work with versions of such a picture
It seems clear that Hegel thinks
we need to break out of the confines of this way of thinking
about things that he nonetheless calls "natural"
In my first lecture
I tried to say why
and to indicate in general terms the shape of the new picture
he will recommend to succeed this traditional one
The broadest form of his objection is
that theories of the kind he is complaining about
make us patsies for skepticism
More specifically
he thinks traditional modern epistemology is conducted
within the scope of semantic assumptions
that make it impossible in the end to satisfy
what I called the "Genuine Knowledge Condition."
This is the requirement that an epistemological theory
not make it unintelligible that
at least when all things go well
how things appear to us is how they really are
in his terms
that how things are for consciousness
can be how things are in themselves
I argued that the crucial feature of the class of theories
he takes to fail this requirement
(by precluding the intelligibility of genuine knowledge)
is not that they construe the relation between appearance and reality
in representational terms
It is that they take the termini of the relation
to be characterized by a structural difference
representing appearances are construed
as conceptually articulated
while represented realities are not
Theories with this shape excavate a gulf of intelligibility separating
knowing from the known, mind from world
Of all the differences there might be between
how the known world objectively is
and how the knowing subject represents it
why should one think this possible difference
make such a difference?
Why would it matter if thought
but not the world thought about
is construed as coming in conceptual shape?
Hegel is working in a Kantian idiom
in which there is an internal connection
between conceptual articulation and understanding
Concepts are the form of apperceptive awareness
So what can be understood
what is intelligible
just is what is in conceptual shape
Hegel thinks that
unless the picture has it that
we can understand how things really are
any relation we assert between these realities and the appearances
we can understand or grasp
must itself be unintelligible
No relation to what is ultimately and intrinsically unintelligible
because not conceptually articulated
could count as a cognitive relation
It could not be the basis for an account of knowing
that makes sense of the possibility of genuine knowledge
This is the problem with the idea of
"getting the truth in its purity simply
by subtracting from the result the instrument's part in
that representation of the absolute
which we have gained through it."
The result of "subtracting" its conceptual form
from our understanding would be something unintelligible
We cannot understand the relation between what is intelligible
and what is not intelligible
for the simple reason
that we cannot understand what is not intelligible
A picture of this sort cannot satisfy the Genuine Knowledge Condition
Also in my first lecture
I suggested that the key to the alternative picture
Hegel wants to put in place
lies in the non-psychological conception of the conceptual
he introduces and develops
in the Consciousness section of the Phenomenology
According to this conception
conceptual contents are articulated
by relations of material incompatibility
his "determinate negation"
or "exclusive difference"
(that is Aristotelian contrariety)
This line of thought begins with
an understanding of determinateness
that applies equally to thoughts and things
It is codified in Spinoza's dictum
"Omnis determinatio est negatio."
Both that there is some determinate way the world is
and that a thought has a determinate content
are to be understood
in terms of what possibilities they exclude
A state of affairs whose obtaining
would rule out the obtaining of no other
a thought whose truth
would rule out the truth of no other
would be indeterminate ("unbestimmt")
The kind of negation
in terms of which determination is understood
in Hegel's version of Spinoza's thought is that characterizing
relations of what he calls "exclusive"
("ausschlie?end") difference
as opposed to "indifferent"
That is, it is the relation between circular and triangular
not that between circular and red
This way of understanding the metaphysics of determinateness
is by no means idiosyncratic to Hegel
Besides its Spinozist (and, indeed, Scholastic) antecedents
it is the master idea behind contemporary information theory
which understands the information conveyed by a signal
in terms of the possibilities its receipt excludes for its recipient
And it can be understood as another way of
expressing the understanding of a proposition
as a partition of possible worlds into those compatible
and those incompatible with its truth
But still, what warrant is there
for thinking of this metaphysical conception of determinateness
in terms of material incompatibility as a conception of the conceptual?
Justifying that identification requires
giving an account of two defining characteristics of the conceptual
First, one must show
how to justify in its terms
the Kantian identification of intelligibility in terms of conceptual form
by saying what it is to grasp or understand something
that is in conceptual form in this sense of "conceptual form."
Second, one must show how what is conceptually contentful
in this sense also exhibits representational purport
These correspond to the two dimensions of intentionality
I distinguished last time
'that'-intentionality and 'of'-intentionality
what one can think or say
and what one would thereby be thinking or talking about
My second lecture addressed exactly these two issues
Starting with the notion of conceptual contents
as articulated by the relations of material incompatibility
it showed both what one must do
in order thereby to count as cognitively grasping such contents
and how doing that amounts to practically
acknowledging the representational purport of those contents
Grasping or understanding a conceptual content
is engaging in the process of experience
This is Hegel's successor-conception
of Kantian apperception
For Kant
what one must do in order to apperceive
(to be cognitively aware) is to judge
Judging, in turn, is understood
as rationally integrating a commitment into a developing whole
that exhibits the distinctive synthetic unity of apperception
That unity is a rational unity
with critical, ampliative, and justificatory dimensions
corresponding to the normative obligation
to extrude materially incompatible commitments
acknowledge material consequences
and assess justificatory credentials
The contents commitments must possess
in order to be subject to these rational normative obligations
must, accordingly, stand in relations of material incompatibility
and consequence to other such contents
Grasping or understanding such a content
is practically being able to distinguish
what is materially incompatible with it
(what it conceptually excludes)
what is a material consequence of it
(what it conceptually includes)
and what it is a material consequence of
(what conceptually includes it)
That is just to say that it is necessary and sufficient
to be graspable in this sense¡ªto be apperceivable
that the contents be determinate
in the sense of standing to one another in relations
of determinate negation and (so) mediation
What is determinate in this sense
is in conceptual form, in Hegel's sense
In the Introduction
Hegel focuses on one dimension of
the process of apperceptive experience
the experience of error
This sort of experience is occasioned
by finding oneself with materially incompatible commitments
Practically acknowledging the error
is exercising one's critical task-responsibility to repair it
removing the incompatibility
by relinquishing or modifying at least one of
the jointly incompatible commitments
In the previous lecture
I explained how it is in the experience of error
that representational purport is practically taken up
that is, that determinate (hence conceptually contentful)
commitments are taken or treated as representations
as appearances of some reality
For incompatible commitments must have a common topic
If two properties are incompatible
what is impossible is that they should be exhibited
by one and the same object
If one attributes incompatible properties to two different objects
one has not yet made a mistake
To take it that one has made a mistake
that the commitments are incompatible
is to take them to refer to
or represent one and the same object
In the second phase of the experience of error
a subject responds to the acknowledgment of error
by fulfilling the critical task-responsibility
of repairing the incoherence
by amending or discarding one of the commitments
Doing that is treating the amended or discarded commitment
as a mere appearance
and the retained and resulting commitments
as expressing how things really are
In this way, through the experience of error
the distinction between
what things are in themselves (reality)
and what things are merely for consciousness (appearance) itself
becomes something to consciousness
That distinction is practically implicit
in the process that is the experience of error
That is how consciousness incorporates
as a basic aspect of the structure of its functioning
a practical appreciation
of its determinate subjective commitments
as purporting to represent how things really
objectively are
It treats its commitments as about things
in the sense of answering to how things are in themselves
for the correctness of how things are for it
So Hegel's Spinozist concept of determinateness
in terms of articulation
by relations of modally robust exclusion
material incompatibility, or determinate negation
meets the principal requirements
for a meta-concept of conceptual contentfulness
It makes sense of what it is to grasp a conceptual content
and of what it is for such contents to have a representational dimension
Furthermore
the ways these two criteria of adequacy are satisfied
are deeply connected
In the context of Hegel's structural critique
of traditional modern epistemology
the key explanatory virtue of
this non-psychological conception of the conceptual is
that it applies not only to subjective thoughts
but to objective facts
For both are determinate
there are determinate ways consciousness takes things to be
and there are determinate ways things are
and both in virtue of standing
in relations of material incompatibility
to other ways one could take things to be
or things could be
But the subjective and objective senses
of "material incompatibility" are not the same
If two states of affairs are materially incompatible
then it is impossible for both to obtain
But if two thoughts or judgments are materially incompatible
it does not follow that it is impossible for one subject
to be simultaneously committed to both
It only follows
that the subject ought not to be so committed
that such a subject is obliged to do something to change the situation
to fulfill the standing critical task-responsibility
to rectify the situation by eliminating the incoherence
On the side of objects
incompatibility of properties
is an alethic modal matter of impossibility
on the side of subjects
incompatibility of commitments
is a deontic normative matter of impropriety
But the notion of material incompatibility
or determinate negation that comes in these two flavors
is not simply ambiguous
For what one must do
in order thereby to count as practically taking or treating
two objective properties or states of affairs as objectively incompatible
is precisely to treat the corresponding commitments
as normatively incompatible
in the sense that finding oneself with both
obliges one to change one's commitment
in acknowledgment of an error
Treating two commitments as incompatible
in the deontic normative sense
is representing two properties or states of affairs as incompatible
in the alethic modal sense
What one must do
in order to manifest practically one's grasp
or understanding of conceptual contents
is suitably engage with them
in the practice or process of experience
especially the experience of error
by fulfilling one's obligation
to resolve acknowledged incompatibilities
Doing that is treating incompatible commitments
as representing incompatible states of affairs
The relation between
the sense of "materially incompatible"
that is articulated by deontic normative relations
of what one is obliged or entitled to do
on the subjective side of representings
(what things are for consciousness)
and the sense that is articulated
by alethic modal relations of what is necessary and possible
on the objective side of represented
(what things are in themselves)
is one of reciprocal sense-dependence
It is not that
there cannot be objective properties and states of affairs
standing in relations of modal incompatibility to one another
unless there are representings of them
It is rather that
one cannot understand what one is saying or thinking
in saying or thinking that they stand in such relations
except as part of a story
that includes what subjects
who represent them as so standing
by practically acknowledging their normative obligation
to do something to repair the situation
when they find themselves with commitments to objects
having incompatible properties
or to incompatible states of affairs more generally
This relation of reciprocal sense-dependence
is responsible for the Janus-faced character
of Hegel's metaconcept of determinate negation
On the one hand
it characterizes the alethic modal relations
that (that as Kant taught) structure the objective world
On the other hand
it characterizes the norm-governed subjective process or practice
that is experience
which is always, inter alia
the experience of error
In this latter aspect, it is not a matter of static relations
but a dynamic principle of movement
change, and development
That one cannot understand
the most fundamental structure of the objective world
apart from understanding what one must do to
represent things as being so
is an essential element of Hegel's idealism
One can put the point by saying that objective substances
no less than subjects
things no less than thoughts, as determinate
are essentially conceptually structured
But unless one keeps in mind
the complex fine-structure of Hegel's Janus-faced
non-psychological conception of the conceptual
in terms of determinateness as articulated
by material incompatibility of the two kinds
one will not understand what is meant by such a claim
The greatest hermeneutic challenge
in reading the Introduction lies
in the three paragraphs that precede the final one
For here Hegel makes two claims
that are surprising enough
to be worth quoting at length
You'll find this on the handout
The first is introduced with the observation
that we have put ourselves in a position to understand
that in the experience of error
the subject ("consciousness")
and consciousness of its knowledge of this truth
Since both are for consciousness
consciousness itself is their comparison
whether its knowledge of the object corresponds
or fails to correspond with this object
will be a matter for consciousness itself."
The subject assesses the material compatibility of its commitments
exercising its critical rational task-responsibility as a judger
Where an incompatibility is found
a choice must be made
One commitment can still be endorsed
as presenting how things really are, in themselves
But then others must be unmasked as mere appearances
They are now implicitly or practically treated ("to it")
as only presenting how things are for consciousness
Recall here the crucial distinction which
as was pointed out in Lecture II
Hegel marks grammatically
between what things are implicitly, "to" consciousness ["ihm"]
and what they are explicitly, "for" consciousness
In the example from the last lecture
seeing its behavior when the half-immersed stick
is fully removed from the water
the subject discards her commitment to its being bent
and substitutes a commitment to its being straight
It is only slightly hyperbolic to say
that the consciousness that is the subject of this experience
"is their comparison."
Something is to it the in-itself
but the knowledge or the being of the object for consciousness
is to it still another moment
It is upon this differentiation
which exists and is present at hand
And if, in this comparison
the two moments do not correspond
then it seems that consciousness will have to alter its knowledge
in order to bring it into accord with the object."
That is
after the discordance has been repaired
and material compatibility restored
the appearance, what things are for consciousness
should, as far as consciousness is concerned
("to consciousness")
have been brought in line with the reality
what things are in-themselves
But that is not how Hegel wants us to understand and talk about
what happens in such experience
He says
"In the alteration of the knowledge, however
the object itself becomes to consciousness something
which has in fact been altered as well
For the knowledge which existed
was essentially a knowledge of the object
with change in the knowledge
the object also becomes an other
since it was an essential part of this knowledge
Hence it comes to pass for consciousness
that what had been to it the in-itself is not in itself
or, what was in itself
was so only for consciousness
When therefore consciousness finds
its knowledge not corresponding with its object
the object itself will also give way
In other words
the standard [Ma?stab] of the examination is changed
if that whose standard it was supposed to be fails
to endure the course of the examination
Thus the examination is not only an examination of knowledge
but also of the standard used in the examination itself."
This is very odd
Why should we think that when a commitment
a subject took to express how things really are
(a presentation of how things are in themselves
is what it was to the subject)
when such object is revealed as expressing
merely how things are for consciousness
why should we think that the reality changes?
When I realize that the stick I took to be bent
is really straight
my view of the stick changes
but the stick itself does not
That I took it to be bent is not
in our ordinary way of thinking
an essential feature of the stick, the object
Surely the contrary claim does not follow from
what one might justifiably claim
that its object, the stick
was an essential feature of the appearance
the stick-as-bent
The stick serves as a standard for assessments of the correctness
of my commitments as to its shape
But in what sense does that standard change
when I realize that my shape-commitment
does not measure up to the standard
that it gets things wrong?
Hegel's claim here
seems extravagant and perverse
The argument that he offers
he says
"For the knowledge which existed
was essentially [wesentlich]
a knowledge of the object
with change in the knowledge
the object also becomes an other
because it was an essential part of this knowledge."
That argument appears to trade on
an obviously unwarranted slide
Even if we grant that
what it is a claim about (what it represents)
is essential to the identity of the claim
so that altering the represented object
would alter the content of the claim
it just does not follow that
the content of the claim is correspondingly essential to
the identity of the represented object
so that altering the content of the claim alters the object
"Being essential to"
is not in general a symmetric relation
So for instance
we might think that the identity of my parents
is essential to my identity
Anyone with different people as parents
would be someone different from me
it is not possible for me to have had different people as parents
But when we look at the converse
it does seem possible
that my parents might never have had any children
or only had some of the children they did
not including me
Essentiality of origin of humans
does not entail essentiality of offspring
It is easy to see Hegel here as engaging in a sleight-of-hand
attempting to smuggle in unobserved
an implausible idealism
that makes what is thought about it
essential to the identity of what is thought about
But, as we shall see
that would be to misunderstand the claim he is making
The second surprising claim
is introduced as part of an account of
the basic structure of experience
in the distinctive technical sense
Hegel introduces here
"This dialectical movement
which consciousness exercises on its self
on its knowledge as well as its object
is, in so far as the new, true object emerges to consciousness
as the result of it, precisely that which is called experience."
The challenge posed by the earlier passage is echoed here
How are we to understand the "movement"
which consciousness "exercises" on the object of its knowledge?
The key question will turn out to be this
when commitment to the stick as bent is discarded
and replaced by commitment to the stick as straight
what exactly is the "new, true object"?
Answering this question correctly
is integral to understanding the sense in which, on Hegel's account
the representational purport
of conceptually contentful commitments
is itself something to consciousness
implicit in its own process of experience
In order to understand the justification for saying
that the experience of error changes not only
how the subject is committed to things being
(the stick is now taken to be straight, not bent)
that is, what he calls "consciousness's knowledge"
but also the object of that knowledge
the essential point to realize is
that the "new, true object"
which he says "emerges to consciousness"
is not the straight stick
(After all, it didn't change
it was straight all along.)
Hegel describes the experience like this
"Consciousness knows something
and this object is the essence or the in-itself
But this object is also the in-itself for consciousness
and hence the ambiguity of this truth comes into play
We see that consciousness now has two objects
one is the first in-itself
and the second is the being-for-consciousness of this in-itself
The latter seems at first to be
merely the reflection of consciousness into its self
a representation, not of an object
but only of its knowledge of the first object
But, as already indicated
the first object comes to be altered for consciousness
in this very process
it ceases to be the in-itself
and becomes to consciousness an object
which is the in-itself only for it
And therefore it follows that this
the being-for-consciousness of this in-itself, is the true
which is to say that this true
is the essence or consciousness' new object
This new object contains the annihilation of the first
it is the experience constituted through that first object."
The first thing to notice, I think
is that the first object is described as the "first in-itself"
That implies that there is (at least) another in-itself
But there is only one real stick (and it is straight)
The key to understanding this is that
what is at issue here is the role something can play in experience
The role in question is
being an in-itself to consciousness
To be an in-itself to consciousness
is to be what consciousness practically takes or treats as real
At the beginning of the experience
the subject in question endorses the claim that the stick is bent
That is what the subject takes to be real
That bent-stick commitment
expresses the first in-itself to consciousness
how it initially takes things really, objectively, to be
The second in-itself to consciousness is expressed
by the later straight-stick endorsement
But what, then, is the "second object"
being talked about in this passage?
It is not the straight stick
(that's the second in-itself to consciousness)
Hegel says here the second object
is the "being-for-consciousness" of the first in-itself
What does that mean?
When he introduces the movement of experience
in the previous paragraph
Hegel says
"Hence it comes to pass for consciousness
that what had been to it the in-itself is not in itself
or, what was in itself was so only for consciousness."
What the subject discovers is that
what it had taken to express the way things really are
(the stick is bent)
actually only expresses an appearance
The role the bent-stick representation plays for consciousness
what it is to consciousness, has changed
It "becomes to consciousness an object
which is the in-itself only for it."
What he calls the "new, true object"
is the bent-stick representation revealed
as erroneous
as a misrepresentation of what is now
to the subject the way things really are
a straight stick
This representing is "true"
not in the sense of representing how things really are
but in the sense that what it is now to consciousness
is what it really is
a mere appearance, a misrepresenting
That is why
"This new object contains the annihilation of the first
it is the experience constituted through that first object."
This is the sense in which
the object itself becomes to consciousness something
which has in fact been altered as well."
What alters is the status of the bent-stick representing
what it is to consciousness
It had enjoyed the status of being to consciousness
what the stick is in itself
But now its status has changed to
being to consciousness
only what the stick was for consciousness: an appearance
Understanding that the two "objects" are
the bent-stick representation when it was endorsed
and the bent-stick representation when it is no longer endorsed
we are now in a position to see
that on our first reading
we misunderstood "knowledge of the object"
in the argument
"For the knowledge which existed
was essentially a knowledge of the object
with change in the knowledge
the object also becomes an other
since it was an essential part of this knowledge."
What is knowledge to consciousness
is what is endorsed
what the subject practically or implicitly
takes to be how things really are
What has, to consciousness
the status of knowledge changes
in the course of the experience
from being the stick as bent to the stick as straight
That was knowledge of the object
not in the sense in which a representing is of something represented
but in the sense that the status
(being to consciousness knowledge)
was possessed or exhibited by the object
(the bent-stick representation)
That the status was possessed by that object
(that conceptual content)
is indeed essential to that knowing
When the status attaches to something else
a straight-stick representation
it is in a straightforward sense a different knowing
What object
(here, crucially, in the sense of what conceptual content)
it attaches to is essential to its being that knowing
Altering the knowing
by endorsing a different, incompatible content
alters the status of the original content
and so alters what he calls the "object"
associated with the original knowing
its status changes from being a conceptual content that is endorsed
to being one that is rejected
Now, I think Hegel could have usefully avoid confusion here
either by not introducing this new sense of object of knowledge
to mean not represented by the knowledge
but the conceptual content of the knowledge
or by explaining that's how he's using the term in this passage
But he doesn't help us out with that
But so read
the first originally surprising claim
becomes so no longer
The second surprising claim is one
that Hegel himself flags as such
He says
"In this presentation of the course of experience
there is a moment
in virtue of which it does not seem to be in agreement
with the ordinary use of the term "experience."
This moment is the transition from
the first object and the knowledge of that object
to the other object
Remember I'm saying
the first object is the bent stick representation as endorsed
and the second object is
that same bent stick representation as rejected
Although it is said that
the experience is made in this other object
here the transition has been presented in such a way
that the knowledge of the first object
or the being-for-consciousness of the first in-itself
is seen to become the second object itself
By contrast
it usually seems that we somehow discover another object
in a manner quite accidental and extraneous
and that we experience in it
the untruth of our first Concept
What would fall to us, on this ordinary view of experience
is therefore simply the pure apprehension of
what exists in and for itself
From the viewpoint of the present investigation, however
the new object shows itself
as having come into being
through an inversion of consciousness itself."
He wants to focus on the activity of
deciding to reject the bent stick representation
and accept the straight stick one
So here Hegel is explicitly acknowledging
that there is a danger of being misled
by the way he has described the experience of error
He explicitly confirms the reading I've been offering
the second ("new, true") object is
he says "the being-for-consciousness of the first in-itself."
The "inversion of consciousness" is
the change in status of the "stick is bent
propositional conceptual content
from being endorsed (as reality)
to being rejected (as mere appearance)
His surprising claim is that
this element of experience
the unmasking of what one had taken
to present reality as it is in itself as in fact a mere appearance
a representation that is a misrepresentation
that is the centrally important aspect of appearance
not the new perception that
leads one to endorse the claim that the stick is straight
That new "object"
that is, conceptual content we are led to endorse
indeed prompts the experience of error
But if we focus on the event that contingently occasions
the process that is the experience, he is saying
we will miss what is necessary and essential to that process
as he wants us to understand it
This new way of thinking about experience
that he is recommending
is really the major point of the whole Introduction
It is what makes possible the sort of narrative
that occupies the rest of the Phenomenology
Focusing on the distinctive "inversion of consciousness"
by which what was to the subject the way things are in themselves
is unmasked as merely how things were for consciousness
That movement is what will give us, Hegel's readers
a phenomenological insight
that is not part of the experience of error
of the phenomenal consciousness we are considering
The passage I was just reading continues
"This way of observing the subject matter is our contribution
it does not exist for the consciousness which we observe
But when viewed in this way
the sequence of experiences constituted by consciousness
is raised to the level of a scientific progression."
This shift of perspective
this way of understanding the emergence
of the second new true object
is what makes possible
the "science of the experience of consciousness"
which I remember was the working title with which Hegel began
the project of writing what would become the Phenomenology
The particular commitments acknowledgement
of whose material incompatibility initiates a process of experience
are contingent
What is necessary about that process
is the acknowledgement of error
and the subsequent disillusionment it leads to
What is necessary is "the movement which is cognition
as Hegel says at the very end of the book
At this point in our story
we understand what that movement is
but not yet why it is the key to
the science of the experience of consciousness
That will be the topic of the final section of this lecture
Hegel tells us that
the key to understanding the significance
of the change in perspective he is urging is
to think through the significance for the threat of skepticism
of the role of what is made explicit in experience
by the concept of determinate negation
The penultimate paragraph of the Introduction continues
"As a matter of fact
the circumstance which guides this way of observing
is the same as the one previously discussed
with regard to the relationship
between the present inquiry and skepticism
In every case
the result which emerges from an untrue mode of knowledge
must not be allowed to dissolve into an empty nothingness
but must of necessity be grasped
as the nothingness of that whose result it is
a result which contains what is true in the previous knowledge
Within the present context
this circumstance manifests itself as follows
When that which at first appeared as the object
sinks to the level of being to consciousness
a knowledge of the object
and when the in-itself
becomes a being- for-consciousness of the in-itself
then this is the new object."
Now, I think at this point
we have put ourselves in a position
to understand this final sentence
about how the change of normative status
a judgeable content undergoes
when the subject withdraws a previous endorsement
(what he calls the "inversion of consciousness")
is intelligible as the emergence of a new object
What does this have to do with
the attitude we should take toward skepticism?
The issue arises
because of the expository trajectory we have traversed
In my first lecture
I claimed that we should read the opening of the Introduction
as concerned that epistemological skepticism
not be forced on us already by our semantics
The more specific diagnosis was
that skepticism will be forced on us
if we construe the relation between appearance and reality
as one in which conceptually contentful representings
confront nonconceptually structured represented
across what then looms as a gulf of intelligibility
I claimed further
that Hegel's proposed therapy
(gestured at in the Introduction
and developed in the Consciousness chapters)
is to identify conceptual contentfulness with determinateness
The kind of negation that's in principle, that's in play
when Hegel reads Spinoza principle
(Omnis determinatio est negatio)
is a determinate negation
corresponds to Aristotelian contraries
not Aristotelian contradictories
which would be understood in terms of formal or abstract negation
The determinateness of a thought or state of affairs
is a matter of its modally robust exclusion
of other thoughts or states of affairs
those it is materially incompatible with
This conception allows Hegel
to endorse another central Spinozist doctrine
Spinoza says
"the order and connection of things
is the same as the order and connection of ideas."
For this notion of determinateness applies
equally to things and thoughts
representeds and representings
No gulf of intelligibility is excavated
between appearance and reality
Determinate thoughts and determinate states of affairs
are, as determinate
both conceptually contentful
and hence in principle intelligible
Epistemological skepticism is not built into
this semantics at the outset
In this context
there is no reason not to construe the semantic relation
between appearance and reality in representational terms
But understanding conceptual content
in terms of the concept of determinate negation
does not just allow a such a representational construal
In Hegel's hands
it makes possible
a constructive analysis of the representational dimension
it finds to be implicit in conceptual content
Hegel combines this fundamental aspect of Spinoza's thought
(the structural isomorphism of
the order and connection of things and ideas
construed in terms of relations of determining negation)
with a Kantian idea that Spinoza did not have
For Spinoza did not appreciate
the distinctive normative character of
what he calls the "order and connection of ideas"
which distinguishes it from
the order and connection of things
Hegel's synthesis of Spinoza with Kant
depends on Kant's grounding of semantics in pragmatics
it depends on Kant's account of what one must do
in order to take responsibility for a judgeable conceptual content
In my second lecture
I rehearsed how Hegel's account of the experience of error
what he makes of
Kant's critical integrative task-responsibility
in synthesizing a constellation of commitments
that has the rational unity distinctive of apperception
that story underwrites an implicit
practical grasp of representational purport
Downstream from Kant
Hegel's conception of determinate negation
accordingly incorporates an essentially dynamic element
It arises out of the crucial residual asymmetry
between the order and connection
of ideas and that of things
It is impossible for one object simultaneously
to exhibit materially incompatible properties
while it is only inappropriate for one subject simultaneously
to endorse materially incompatible commitments
Representings are articulated by deontic normative relations
while representeds are articulated by alethic modal ones
Finding oneself with materially incompatible commitments
obliges one to do something
to revise those commitments so as to remove the incoherence
It is only in terms of that obligation to repair
that we can understand
what it is to take or treat
two objective properties or states of affairs as incompatible
in the alethic modal sense
Understanding the representational dimension
of conceptual content
requires understanding how the experience of error
articulated in normative terms
is intelligible as the (re)presentation
of objective alethic modal relations of incompatibility
Determinate negation
material incompatibility
mediates the relation between pragmatics and semantics
as well as the relation between the expressive
and the representational dimensions of intentionality
on the semantic side
But the revelation that the semantogenic core of experience
the aspect of experience is responsible for
the representational dimension of intentionality
that the semantogenic core of experience
is the experience of error
that its essence consists in
the unmasking of something as not real
but as mere appearance
seems to raise once more the specter of skepticism
If error is the necessary form of experience
if what one implicitly discovers in experience
is always the incorrectness and inadequacy
of one's knowledge or understanding
then why is not skepticism the right conclusion to draw?
Why has not Hegel's own concept of experience
shown itself as the "path of despair"?
Hegel wants to understand the relation
between the two "objects"
what he calls the "first in-itself"
and what he calls the "being- for-consciousness of the in-itself"
as one of negation
He says
"This new object contains
the nothingness [Nichtigkeit] of the first
it is what experience has made of it"
The idea is
that skepticism consists in taking the sense
in which the second object is negation of the first
to be formal or abstract negation
rather than determinate negation
Doing that is
"allowing the result which emerges
from an untrue mode of knowledge"
to "dissolve into an empty nothingness"
is not saying how things really are
It is an appearance
a mis-representation of a straight stick
That is the materially incompatible commitment
for which the bent-stick representation was discarded
changing its normative status
The original commitment is not revealed
by its incorrectness as an appearance (just as appearance)
but as the appearance of a reality
It is genuinely an appearance of that reality
a way that reality shows up for consciousness
It is wrong
but it is not simply wrong
It is a path to the truth
When Hegel says that
"the result which emerges from an untrue mode of knowledge"
must "be grasped as the nothingness of that whose result it is
a result which contains what is true in the previous knowledge"
this is so in a double sense
First
the original take on things is not simply cancelled
leaving a void
as a bare contradiction of it would do
It is replaced by a contrary
a substantive commitment
one that is materially
not merely formally incompatible with it
Something positive has been learned
the stick is straight
Second
the transition from the original object to the second, true object
is a change of status from a propositional attitude
ascribable to the subject de dicto
to one ascribable (also) de re
Where before we, and the subject, could say
"S believes that the stick is bent,"
(that's de dicto)
after the experience of error
and the rejection of the original endorsement
in favor of a materially contrary one
the very same attitude is ascribable as
"S believes of a straight stick that it is bent."
(That's the de re characterization)
That is the point of the analysis of representational purport
and its uptake in terms of the experience of error
which I discussed last time
The transformation of status
is a rejection of a prior endorsement
but it is not just a rejection of it
In an important sense
it is an enrichment of its content
as it becomes to the subject
a claim about something
The representational dimension
of its conceptual content becomes manifest
albeit by its being revealed as a misrepresentation
As we saw in the first lecture
the unintelligibility of this representational dimension
is characteristic of the semantically rooted
epistemological skepticism
Hegel diagnoses in the opening paragraphs
of the Introduction
It is no surprise at this point, then
to learn that skepticism's characteristic defect
is a failure to appreciate the role of determinate negation
in extracting consequences from the experience of error
He says
"The presentation of untrue consciousness in its untruth
is not a merely negative movement
as natural consciousness one-sidedly views it
And a mode of knowledge which makes
this onesidedness its basic principle is
the skepticism
which sees in every result only pure nothingness
and abstracts from the fact that this nothingness is determinate
that it is the nothingness of that from which it results
In fact
it is only when nothingness is taken
as the nothingness of what it comes from that
it is the true result
for then nothingness itself
is a determinate nothingness
and has a content
The skepticism which ends up with the abstraction of nothingness
or with emptiness
cannot proceed any further
but must wait and see whether anything new presents itself to it
and what this is, in order to cast it into the same abysmal void
But if, on the contrary
the result is comprehended as it truly is
as determinate negation
a new form has thereby immediately arisen"
Only from the point of view he is recommending
can we make sense of the fact
that in each experience of error
something positive is learned
One of the pieces of the puzzle
and one of Hegel's solution
that I hope to have added here is
the understanding of how the representational dimension
of conceptual content
no less than the expressive dimension
becomes intelligible
in terms of the essential constitutive role
that determinate negation plays in the process of experience
Nonetheless
we can still ask:
Why doesn't Hegel's account of experience
as the experience of error
as the unmasking of what we took to be reality as appearance
as the revelation of what was to subjects
the way things are in themselves
its revelation as merely being what they are for consciousness
Why does that provide exactly the premise
needed for a fallibilist metainduction?
The fallibilist metainduction is the inference
that starts with the observation
that every belief we have had or judgment we have made
has eventually turned out to be false
at least in detail
and it concludes
that every belief or judgment we ever will or even could have
will similarly eventually be found wanting
if we but subject it to sufficient critical scrutiny
Early on in the Introduction
Hegel tells us that this skeptical conclusion
is a natural one for those
who have not learned the lessons he is teaching us
He says
"Natural consciousness will show itself to be merely
the Concept of knowledge, or unreal knowledge
But since it immediately takes itself to be real knowledge
this pathway has a negative significance for it
and what is actually the realization of the Concept
is for it rather the loss and destruction of its self
for on this road it loses its truth
The road may thus be viewed as the path of doubt
or, more properly
as the path of despair
This road is the conscious insight
into the untruth of phenomenal knowledge"
What one needs to learn to see that this is the wrong conclusion
is the central semantic significance
of the experience of error
for the intelligibility of
the representational dimension of conceptual content
But to understand the positive significance
of the unmasking of commitments
as determinately mistaken
as misrepresentations since corrected
a substantive new conception of truth is required
That conception is developed in the body of the Phenomenology
and only hinted at in the introductory material
It is foreshadowed, however, already in the Preface
He says
what would be called the false
if it could be regarded
as something from which one might abstract
The evanescent itself must, on the contrary
be regarded as essential, not as something fixed
cut off from the True
Appearance is the arising and passing away
that does not itself arise and pass away
but is in itself
and constitutes actuality and the movement of the life of truth"
Instead of thinking of truth as an achievable state or status
Hegel wants us to think of it as characteristic of a process
the process of experience
in which appearances "arise and pass away."
They arise as appearances taken as veridical
ways things are for consciousness that are endorsed
as how they are in themselves
When they are found to be materially incompatible
with other commitments in the experience of error
some are rejected
a transformation of status
that is the arising of the "second, true object"
the appearance as a misrepresentation
it's becoming to consciousness only how things are
or were for consciousness
This process of weighing
the credentials of competing commitments
to determine which should be retained
and which altered
so as to remove local material incompatibilities
is the process by which we find out
(more about) how things really are
That passage from the preface
continues with a famous image
He says
"The True is thus a Bacchanalian revel
with not a member sober
yet because each member collapses
as soon as he drops out
the revel is just as much transparent and simple repose."
The truth is a Bacchanalian revel, a drunken party
The revel is the restless
elbowing of commitments
discovered to be incompatible
Those that "drop out" are those
that undergo the transformation of experience
and are rejected in order to maintain
the rational homeostasis
that Hegel identifies as a state of "simple repose"
The party continues its movement and development
because the place of those that fall away is
immediately taken by other commitments
This axial passage from the Preface
continues in a way that introduces three themes
with which I want to end my discussion
"Judged in the court of this movement
the single shapes of Spirit do not persist any more
than determinate thoughts do
but they are as much positive and necessary moments
as they are negative and evanescent
In the whole of the movement
seen as a state of repose
what distinguishes itself therein
and gives itself a particular existence
is preserved as something that recollects itself
whose existence is self-knowledge
and whose self-knowledge is just as immediately existence"
First
the truth-process whose structure is that of the experience of error
is the process by which conceptual contents develop
and are determined
It is not just the process by which judgments are selected
but also the process by which concepts evolve
It is the process
in and through which more and more of how the world really is
what is actually materially incompatible with what
in the objective alethic sense
becomes incorporated in material incompatibilities
deontically acknowledged by subjects
For one's response to
the acknowledged incompatibility of two commitments
one finds oneself with often is to adjust one's commitments
concerning what is incompatible with what
and so what follows from what
If my initial concept of an acid
obliges me to apply it to
any liquid that tastes sour
and applying it commits me to that liquid
turning Litmus paper red
I might respond to a sour liquid that turns Litmus paper blue
and the incompatibility of those two color-commitments
not by rejecting either the perceptual judgment of sourness
or the perceptual judgment of blue
but by revising the norms articulating my concept
I might, for instance, take it
that only clear liquids that taste sour are acids
or that cloudy acids don't turn Litmus paper red
It is because and insofar as they inherit
the results of many such experiences of error
that the normatively articulated conceptual contents
subjects acknowledge and deploy
track the objective modal conceptual articulation of the world
as well as they do
That is why the experience of error is a truth-process
The second point is
that Hegel's invocation of recollection (Erinnerung)
to which he returns at the very end of the Phenomenology
is a gesture at the third phase of the experience of error
We have already considered the first two
acknowledging the material incompatibility
of some of one's commitments
and revising one's commitments
including those concerning what is incompatible with what
so as to repair the discordance
What Hegel calls "recollection"
is a subsequent retrospective rational reconstruction
of the extended process of experience
that has led to one's current constellation of commitments
What is reconstructed is a sequence of episodes
each of which exhibits the three-phase structure
of acknowledgment, repair, and recollection
of materially incompatible commitments one has endorsed
From the actual process of past experience
the recollector selects a trajectory
that is exhibited as expressively progressive
that is, as having the form of a gradual
cumulative revelation of how things really are
according to the recollector
It is a Whiggish story
characteristic of old-fashioned histories of science
a story of the way things are in themselves
of how the way things are in themselves
came to be the way they veridically appeared for consciousness
That in this way the past is
constantly turned into a history
differently with each tripartite episode of experience
is how Hegel understands reason
as retrospectively
giving contingency the form of necessity
The third point is that
the recollection phase of experience
is a crucial element in what Hegel calls
"the science of the experience of consciousness"
So far in these lectures
I have talked a lot about the experience of consciousness
but not officially about
the science of the experience of consciousness
This might well have led to some puzzlement
Why am I talking about the role in experience
of mundane concepts
such as bent stick and straight stick
when the book Hegel is introducing us to focuses
exclusively on concepts
such as consciousness, self-consciousness
and agency
that is, I would say
on the concept of cognitive authority
the social institution of authority, and practical authority
Why have I been discussing
the development of constellations of judgments and concepts
when Hegel is concerned
at least in the second half of the Introduction
with the development of what he calls "shapes of consciousness"?
Such questions, while understandable
are I think misplaced
Though I have not explicitly been talking about it
what I have been doing is an exercise of
the "science of the experience of consciousness"
For that science is the explicit
systematic, self-conscious
understanding of the "experience of consciousness"
I take it that any understanding of Hegel
or for that matter Kant
should start with what he has to teach us about ordinary
ground-level empirical and practical experience
for Hegel as for Kant
a matter of applying
what Hegel calls "determinate concepts"
These are concepts like stick and straight
blue and sour
What Hegel calls "speculative"
or "logical" concepts
are theoretical philosophical metaconcepts
whose distinctive expressive role it
is to make explicit features of the conceptual contents
and use the semantics and pragmatics
of those ground-level concepts
The Phenomenology is a story
a recollective story
about the development of those higher-level concepts
in terms of which his readers
"phenomenological consciousness"
can be brought to comprehend discursive activity in general
"phenomenal consciousness"
The measure of our understanding of
what he has to say on this topic
lies principally in the sense we can use those metaconcepts
to make of the whole constellation of
conceptually articulated normative practice and institutions
that Hegel calls "Spirit"
That is why I have started my story with
what I take it he wants us ultimately
to understand about the "experience of consciousness"
Then, and I think only then
and on that basis
we can consider what it is to render the development
of either kind of concept in scientific terms
in Hegel's sense of that term
To do that is
to tell a certain kind of retrospective
rationally reconstructive story about their development
one that displays an expressively progressive history
made out of the past
This is the third phase of the process of experience
which is initiated by the acknowledgment
of the material incompatibility of some commitments
that proceeds through the local
and temporary resolution of that incoherence
by relinquishing or modifying some commitments
including those concerning what is materially incompatible with
or a consequence of what, while retaining others
and culminates in comprehending the experience
by situating it as the current result of a process
in which previous commitments show up as ever more revelatory
but still ultimately inadequate
appearances for consciousness
of what (one now takes it) things are in themselves
The capstone of Hegel's account
at the end of the Reason chapter
and further at the end of the Spirit chapter
will be to show us
how this retrospective rationally reconstructive
genealogical phase of the process of experience
means that such experience is at once
both the (further) determining of the content of concepts
whether determinate like acid
or philosophical like self-consciousness
in the sense of the expressive dimension of conceptual content
'that'-intentionality
that is articulated by relations of determinate negation
and at the same time is the discerning of referents (Bedeutungen)
what things are in themselves
that are represented by such senses (Sinne)
what things are for consciousness
along the representational dimension of conceptual content
'of'-intentionality
as articulated by the process that is the experience of error
normatively governed by relations of determinate negation
But that is a story for another occasion
Hegel thinks that
the only form a theoretical comprehension
of the conceptual and representational content
of a concept can take
is such a genealogy of process of experience
by which it is determined
This is true whether what is being addressed
is a constellation of concepts and commitments
at the meta-level of scientific self-consciousness
or at the ground-level of empirical phenomenal consciousness
That is why he assimilates them
in the Preface passage
that I have just been considering
He says
"Judged in the court of this movement
the single shapes of Spirit do not persist any more
than determinate thoughts do at the ground level
but they are as much positive and necessary moments
as they are negative and evanescent"
A proper meta-level account
of the experience of self-consciousness
is a science of the experience of ground-level consciousness
The Phenomenology recounts the experience
of the science of the experience of consciousness
the process by which meta-concepts he takes
to be adequate to comprehend explicitly the process of experience
are themselves developed and determined
We see Hegel asserting that the experience of error
as here described is also the mechanism
whereby new "shapes of consciousness" arise
in a passage we are now in a position to read and understand
He says
"When that which at first appeared as the object
sinks to the level of being to consciousness
a knowledge of the object
and when the in-itself
becomes a being- for-consciousness of the in-itself
then this is the new object
And with this new object
a new shape of consciousness also makes its appearance
a shape to which the essence is something
different from that which was the essence to the preceding shape
It is this circumstance
which guides the entire succession
of the shapes of consciousness in its necessity
But it is this necessity alone
or the emergence of the new object
presenting itself to consciousness
without the latter's knowing how this happens to it
which occurs for us, as it were, behind its back
A moment which is both in-itself and for-us is thereby
introduced into the movement of consciousness
a moment which does not present itself for the consciousness
engaged in the experience itself
But the content of what we see emerging exists for it
and we comprehend only the formal aspect
of what emerges or its pure emerging
For consciousness
what has emerged exists only as an object
for us
it exists at once as movement and becoming
This, then, is the necessity
in virtue of which the present road toward science
is itself already a science
And, in accordance with its content
it may be called the science of the experience of consciousness
In these lectures
I have focused on
what Hegel will have to say about the semantics and pragmatics
of the concepts
deployed and determined through base-level experience
by way of preparation for understanding
the course of the experience of meta-level self-consciousness
that he recollects for us in the body of the Phenomenology
That's what this is Introduction to
Thank you