From Kant to Hegel

let's return to our discussion of cost because there is something about God's position that it's important for us to understand before we launch into Hegel's critique we were talking at the very end of last about the distinction between phenomena and newman i basically caught is saying that space and time are forms of sensibility that there are pure concepts of the understanding that are forms of the understanding that are forms of our conceptualization of things and that we impose those on our experience of the world we cannot experience anything outside of space and time we cannot conceptualize anything except in terms of the basic concepts of love we organize our experience in terms of objects and their properties in the relations they stand in to one another we think of things as happening for reasons and so we think that events have causes and we think of things as broadly speaking relating to each other through causation or in a variety of other ways those are all things that are built into the structure of the mind experience has to be like that so there are some synthetic a priori truths that we can know independently of any particular experience simply because we understand the projector that is basically what is our mind we are taking input of some kind and turning it into experience of the world and we are doing that in some way that allows us to know something about what's going to come out before we even look at the details however it's important to notice that in that story of some kind of input and then my mind is constructing the world of experience as we actually know it there is a distinction between that input whatever it is we it's really of something I know not what and then the form that our experience has well the things in the world of experience that we construct in this way through the forms of sensibility and through the pure concepts of the sandi that is the realm of phenomena the objects of experience he also reverses them as the appearance and so the phenomena are the things we experience the tables the chairs the human beings the cats the shirts the pens etc etc etc all of that is a world experience constructed in part by sensibility putting things in space and time and then in part by our faculties of conceptualization the details of course have to come from experience I can't know that there is a great chair here until I had experience but that the world would consists of objects standing in relations to one another that is something that I can know independently of experience because that relates just a basic form of experience itself on the other hand what about those inputs those are the things that he refers to as Newman ah the things in themselves we can say they must be there because there is something that provides regularity to our experiences on the other hand we can't say anything determinate about what they are so the phenomena are the things we experience those are the objects in the ordinary sense the appearances those are eight objects of experience like tables and chairs they are also things that the categories apply to and apply to a priori so we can know something about them a priori independently of experience but now the noumenon the things in themselves these inputs whatever they're like we don't know what that really is and so really these are the things in themselves the world as it exists independently of our experiences independently of our arms he thinks there is such a world so in that sense he's not strictly speaking an idealist on the other hand he thinks we can't say anything about it and so everything we can actually know anything about say anything determinate about is actually something that is a mental construction so that's the eye that's the reason people refer to as a transcendental idealists there is something that looks like an idealism here all the objects we can discuss know anything about our objects that we are constructed so they are my dependent he thinks there is a mind-independent world but it is the sort of thing that really is just at one point he says the unconditioned ie unconditioned by our minds equal to X okay something we cannot really know anything about can't even say anything determinately about the categories do not apply to them our priori principles do not hide are these inputs the noumenon the things of themselves really in space in time we don't know are they really can sort of divide it up into objects let's have properties in sand in relations we don't know all we know is that our mind takes that input and then produces a world of things in space and time standing in relation to one another but that it really have that character when they come in as inputs we have no idea we cannot know them at all now all of this means that caught in rationalists but a rationalist of a rather peculiar kind he does think it's possible to have synthetic a priori knowledge and really in the critique of pure reason it starts from that assumption he says we obviously have synthetic a priori knowledge knowledge for example but 7 plus 5 is 12 and he argues that that is something that is synthetic it's really a true throughout the world but on the other hand it is not something that we get out of experience it's something that has a universality and a necessity to it that is incompatible with it being a product of mere experience so there are innate ideas these pure concepts of the understanding things like unity things like relation causation and so forth there are synthetic a priori truths like every event has a cause or the world consists of objects standing in relation to one but they apply only within the realm of experience so he's a rationalist but only about the world of appear the world of phenomena about the world as really is independently of our minds he has almost nothing to say he's a complete skeptic with regard to that so if you think in what ways does caught agree with Descartes a stereotypical rations to what extent does he agree with Hume a stereotypical let's say empiricist well above certain questions he agrees with one on certain questions he agrees with the other so for example are there synthetic a priori truths Descartes says yes Hume says no Todd says Descartes is right about that there are synthetic a priori truths there are things we can know about the world independently of experience but of course it's the world the world of appearances the world of phenomena that we're knowing these things about can we have knowledge beyond the realm of experience beyond the realm of phenomena well here Descartes would say yes we can you would say no and what is cost position no we can't know anything about the world independently of experience we can know about this role of phenomena at the noumenon the inputs that we can't say anything about at all and finally do we gain knowledge of the world as it is independently of experience Descartes says yes Hume says no cause again says no so on two of those three questions God is actually agree with Hume that's why he ended up saying that's human woe compromise is dogmatic slumbers earlier he had been alive Mitsy you would have answered just like they heart just like live it saw all those questions but after reading Humes and wait a minute I've been assuming that my universal and necessary knowledge is really knowledge of the world as it exists independently of my mind I no longer think I have any justification I think I do have universal or necessary knowledge that actually is synthetic and aa priori in some cases but it's purely about the realm of appearances it's purely about the world of phenomena presented to be an experience about the actual inputs the world as it really is independently of they're of a skeptic justice unit I think it might help to look at this in some diagrams so here is a diagram of Plato's philosophy of mind the mind and thinking about an object of experience like a triangle is in part proceeding that triangle but is also seeing it as a triangle and Plato would say that's an indication the mind has some kind of contact with the form of triangularity it's able to recognize the object as a triangle by virtue of its apprehension in the form of triangularity and that form is something that is there in the triangle the triangle being perceived as something that participates in the form so there's a match between the thing my mind is turned toward triangularity and the feature of the thing in the world that makes it a tribe well once we move on beyond this thing we could see the cottage changing this picture around the first big change is that the forms are no longer somewhere out there independently of the my they are now pure concepts of the understanding they are things that are in the mind remember Plato has this problem how do I explain how we have any contact with triangle area or justice or is that good or any other abstract form we don't causally relate to them and experience so how is it that we know anything about the forms and we said that's why we then a generation Plato's Academy had become skeptic because his successors basically said yes I don't see how we solve that problem Plato this theory would be great if we could go the forms if we can't know it it all falls apart Khan says well here's one solution put those sorry put those inside the mind so there are these pure concepts the pure concepts that we understand the basic categories in terms of which we understand the world and then notice instead of things coming in from the world we are actually constituting the object we are constructing the object as an object by virtue of well what you were first with the synthesis of the manifold we take this mat a whole new experience and we organize it for example in this classroom you're seeing all sorts of things right now and all sorts of people you're hearing the various things feeling various things if you think about what's actually coming into the mind it's hugely complicated and you're somehow dividing it up into objects synthesizing out of that manifold of experience that sort of sheer massive data something that makes sense you're dividing it up into various objects you're thinking of my voice for example is actually coming from me so you're coordinating all sorts of senses and putting them together in a way that makes sense but all that's happening within your mind you're actually constructing the object of experience as you're experiencing it but now is this the object that is really out there in the world well according to the diagram as I've drawn it yes and so this is sort of thoughts philosophy of mind before he reads you but once he reads him he realizes way to his head I can't assume that the object as I constructed is really the object as it is in the world so take a look at this water bottle is it an object well yes as a phenomenon as an appearance this is one object it has some properties what are some properties of this water it's please clear yes another good solid of relation between it another uncle good it holds water it's in my hand so so there are lots of things we can talk about it but now what about the actual and input our minds are all constructing something very similarly here on the basis of similar forms of sensibility space and time and similar pure concepts of the understanding as well as well a similarity of inputs but now what is the water bottle really like independently of my mind is it really in space and time is there anything clear is it really about no cover it by hands on the table is it really containing water well Aristotle Plato day Clark live Nets would Olson yeah of course but now after reading Hume Cod things wait a minute a I know that the output is in space and time i I know that the output of my cognitive and perceptual processes contains water and is clear and is in my hands and so on but what about the thing in itself whatever the input is after all I'm doing a lot of processing here my faculties have sensed my mind my concepts all of those are processing the inputs I'm given and in some ways protecting that what are the inputs really like he says I have no idea so we get a division between the appearance and the thing in itself between the phenomenon and the noumenon and that thing in itself that I've marked there as the spooky gold star or explosion like oh thicken itself we can't say much about it yes [Music] the shake oh the shaded region there is my moment as circuit yeah I should have explained them the shaded reason region is my mind that concept of triangularity is the concept in this case not a pure concept to the understanding something today's book was all an experience to some extent and then that little thing that looks like a strip of bacon is my thought and then that bubble indicates the content of my thought this is a triangle yeah sorry I should have explained the details of this that is the object of experience the thing I've actually preceded the perceptual triangle and then that's whatever the inputs of this whole processes the thing in itself yeah our good this is a different form of skepticism he's not saying ooh what if this is a hallucination or what about just dreaming about the water bottle and so on it's in a way a much more radical form of skepticism and yet in another way a much more limited what actually is coming in independent of the line that is in some way producing our experiences amazed and he realizes that given the amount of processing going on I can't say you last time notice that this really has a relation to pass except achill arguments like that argument from Pilate I know how something affects me but what is it like in itself I don't know and so that I think that is the form of cop skepticism really I know how a thing affects me I know how I perceive it but I don't know what it's really like it yeah look every living birds would interpret that in the same way it's just that every single mind that we have is just happens to be the same like every rational human would interpret it isn't being that spot a dog would probably sniff it no one gets in that spot plants would go around it right matter that is not growing would not go through it like that everything revolves around it so not only our minds interpret they're also things we don't have mind since early right there okay all right good good yeah look any human being is gonna interpret this yeah pretty similar way not entirely similar maybe they don't have the concept of a water bottle they've never seen one before and so on but on the other hand we can tell you what they're going to see it as an object they're going to realize it contains something they're gonna see it in space in time and cod would agree with all that right we all have faculties of perception and cognition that share those features so he would say yes you're absolutely right and it's not just human beings it is most living beings after all other animals are going to perceive it in the same way at least we think within bounds now if we go microscopic I don't know is a Paramecium gonna perceive this hit a hole maybe that's going too small so maybe we should back up a little but like suppose we have a slug is the slug gonna perceive it this way I'm not sure but guys you point out even plants are gonna grow around it as if it's an object they're not just going to grow through it and so on and so there is a lot of universality here now to some extent claude is happy about that because he wants to say yes there is these forms of sensibility these pure concepts the understanding really our universal every human being shares them in fact animals tend to share most of them maybe animals don't have the full set of concepts but they have most of them but now you can also see how a Descartes or a lightness or for that matter a plate or an Aristotle would say wait a minute maybe this is evidence not just that we have Universal forms of destruction but but the thing as we perceive it really is the thing that is there in the world that in other words the water bottle is the input that is causing us all receive it in that way and if we say that then actually this basic divide between appearances and things in themselves no longer seems like a very big cap at all so I think you're absolutely right Plato Aristotle Descartes Lyman's would all say look all of that is evidence that the input is just the output now admittedly this has colors right this has secondary qualities but the input purely how the primary qualities doesn't have but Locke told us how to deal with that and so yes but that's a traditional position would say I'm sorry the thing in itself has the primary qualities the object has constructed has both the primary and secondary qualities or maybe if I really go with thoughts definition of secondary quality as a power stead hey the power is in the thing in itself to the effect isn't the orange isn't there but the thing that gives it the power Bruce the sensation of orange that maybe is this yes [Music] a very limited briefly cleans out the entire ancient I don't think that's I don't think there is oh good alright that's a great point reception is not Universal in that sense you're right animals of different species of perceived light of different wavelengths human beings in fact vary in their hearing you tend to as young people to have a pretty wide range as you get older you lose some of especially your upper range of hearing there are certain sounds that in fact teenagers often used in high school to communicate with one another that their teachers can't hear because they've lost the ability to hear those really high frequencies for a while or been have a sound addition engineer who had lost a lot of this high frequency hearing and so there would be terrible feedback the rest of us would be going oh well anyway that's what happens with your a really bad sound engineer things make terrible noises and it destroys your hearing and then you can't hear it well nevermind I'll have to edit this out because I'm still friends with this guy but anyway that's something got of I mean he's a brilliant scientist he's just a bad kid but well partly because it's now mostly deaf having a sound engineer whose death is about the greatest idea it's like having a visual artist who's blind there's this problem there anyway let me back up what were we talking about oh yes the different species so here's the idea different species will indeed perceive things in different ways so not all of these things are going to be universal presumably they're going to perceive things in space and in time though if we go down to worms and start asking whether worms are really perceiving things in space I mean I think so they turn around objects and so on but but admittedly that details are going to very cute and the same thing will be true with for pure concepts to the understanding we love earth one share our full set of pure concepts the understanding surely not they will have some and so what cut is really interested in is the universality among human beings but when we ask how far that extends beyond the realm of human beings you're right it's gonna fall off depending upon the species were considering yeah I have a friend who follows School of Neoplatonism and he identified the idea of forms to me like as sort of there now and that's well I guess as more akin to like this sort of eternal lasting sort of ideas about a thing would you say that that's similar to Kant's idea of the form yeah the forms has lasting ideas of things of God thinks there they are lasting ideas of things but they last for a particular reason it's not just like the idea of money for example which lasts for a long time but because it's so useful and because societies beyond a certain level of complexity and organization needed its instead because he thinks they're really built into the structure of the mind itself so they have this lasting character because they are sort of preconditions for having experience of the kind we have unlike money where it's a precondition of a certain form of life but it's not necessary he would say these are more lasting because they're necessary conditions of just having any experience and any of any kind at all at least any human experience indeed things might change if we were at different species and so forth if we no longer had the ability to draw the distinction between one and many for example that would be a big conceptual change and it's something that would affect human life in all sorts of ways so it's not just that it's useful to draw that distinction which is what a lot of empiricists would say he thinks no it's really built into the way the mind conceived sport but now let's turn to Hegel and Hegel's critique of cons position all of this was really introduction to the thing I mostly wanted to talk about today which is the philosophy of Hegel come on there we go okay so Hegel was the most influential German philosopher in the generation Afrikaans he is someone who spent most of his career teaching at the university of llena where at that well there and after Lyn he is someone who is remembered as a great philosopher and one of the last of the great system builders in philosophy there is an image of Hegel with a number of his students traveling around asking questions I guess after the lectures now Hegel puts forward a distinctive a version of ideas it is clearly a version of idealism thoughts as we've seen as only an idealism in a qualified sense because he thinks that all of the phenomena of the objects of experience are constructed by the mind but he does think there must be some input some unconditioned thing that is causing us to respond in this way though in the first edition of the critique he uses that language in a footnote but later he goes back and gets rid of it because he realizes who causation is a category I can't say the input causes the mind to do all of this but he nevertheless in the section the reputation of idealism thinks there must in sense some sense be is something I know not what then ascribing the process well Hegel sees the dynamic part of all this is happening within the mind itself not happening in a something I know not what that exists outside the mind is unconditioned equal X instead he thinks everything depends on the light including the way the mind progresses so the dynamic principles are built in from the beginning and what is really I think most distinctive about Hagen is that idea of dynamism the idea that to understand the mind isn't just saying something static it's to understand what the mind does how thought actually progresses how it changes well I showed you that image of cops philosophy of mind the distinction between the thing in itself the noumenon and then the phenomena like the perceived triangle the object of experience Hegel looks at this basic portrait this idea of what cops doing and says there are several features of this that seem problematic the first one is that the things in themselves really don't play any role we can't say anything determined in a fountain we can't know anything about them and so contests look they have to be there something is making the body do all this but of course making is causal talk driving that was causal talk so really cops I can't even say any of that he thinks the mind can't be just doing all this on its own there must be something else but it can't play any role because we can't say anything about it in fact we can't officially say that human I'll exist because I for all existence is one of the categories so since they don't actually fall under the categories we can't refer to them as stays properly but the idea being a thing an object a substance that is one of the categories we can't say they cause our minds to react in a certain way because causation is a category we can't even say they exist cuz existence is a category so basically Kant's theory has this important element the Newlands the thing in itself that he admits he cannot say anything about but that what that means Hegel says is that it can't possibly play any role in his system it can't explain anything because it can't do anything it can't actually even be there officially we can't say any of the things caught would be to say so what do you do with a part of a theory that could do no possible work within the framework of a theory get rid of it so the first thing Hegel does is say eliminate the things itself it's not doing anything the mind is constructing this world it is juicing it is there some input that is causing it to produce it well on Potts premises it will turn out that if there is we can't say anything about it we can't even say there is so Hagel says it is impossible for us to actually give any determinant theory about that it can't do any explanatory work eliminated now there's a second part of all of this that little diagram my clue did have that shaded area that was supposed to represent the line the south and behind the self that is this collection of thoughts and feelings and perceptions God says there is something where the pure categories of the understanding resign because of the transcendental unity of a perception that's who I really am I am this transcendental unity this self that lies behind experiences it's not just the combination of perceptions thoughts and feelings it is actually that they having the perceptions and thoughts and feelings it is that thing that you was searching for and couldn't find but there must be such a self-concept after all I can at any point say I think I feel I perceive and so they are all really part of me they're my perceptions so there must be a me for them to be the perceptions thoughts and feelings up but now Hegel says we'll wait a minute said I don't get it that is a thing in itself that is lying behind the appearances the appearances I have in my mind when I run like they're always just pretty fewer thoughts feelings and perceptions I don't encounter this thing in itself the transcendental unity my perception that is supposed to be the me having the thoughts feelings and perceptions so again it's one of these mysterious lumina it's one of these things in themselves we can't even say the transcendental unity exists much less than it does anything so get rid of it no says there are these pure concepts of the understanding that are universal within all human beings and oh rationally in fact that gives us synthetic a priori truths applying within the realm of experience but Hegel says wait a minute wait a minute how do I know that all the human beings at all times in all places in all cultures and societies have shared those same concepts those concepts are the basic concepts of logic but after all logic unlike headed clock Locke has developed over time people started out with certain ideas of logic and then they add of others I am my mentioning a modern logic had all sorts of things there the cot did not have but distinct SAR between the finite and the infinite the countable and the uncountable between many and few and so on and so you might say wait a minute wait a minute we shouldn't assume a pure concepts of the understanding or universal so in fact Khan says look we have no and it's our cough says all of these things really are the ground of universality and necessity Hegel says we have no reason to believe they're actually universal or necessary in fact they seem to be tied to historical developments of cultures and so he ends up advocating a kind of historicism he says fad the kind of concepts I that I used to experience the world are ones that yes I get from a given society that is developed over time so they are the pure concepts that this society this social setting has given me I have no reason to expect that anybody at anytime in place would share those so the result of this is that as things develop these concepts change people organize experience in different ways he concludes that philosophy is its own time raised to the level of thought that is to say we can each reflect on what our fundamental categories are but those categories may not be universal they may be things that have developed historically now cop-con thinks there is universal knowledge underlying all this but we shouldn't end up being relevance thinking everything is relative to a historical era actually Hagel agrees with him about that the basic concepts I have are tied to my historical circumstances but he tells this grand story of mud of spirits in German it is Geist which is actually a cognate of Archer ghosts and the idea is that this progresses through various stages until it reaches absolute knowledge so it does that in a rational way according to dynamic principles and because there is a universality to those dynamic principles we can actually say in the end knowledge the universal and necessary truths are not very relative to a culture in the end they will be the ones that culture in general develops toward and terminates it so there are some basic dynamic principles and that suggests that all these historical developments will converge on the stage of absolute knowledge remember saying there's a combination of ideas it's an entertaining somewhat surprising combination given the one hand historic this who said that philosophy is its own time raised to the level of thought so he thinks that there are viewers synthetic a priori originals their government very possibility of experience that it's said we've really written to experience something before and something that is operate something they're creating is about the growth but all he ever and he doesn't see that as unchanging it's something that develops historically and so it is transformed from era to era and that tells us that there is a kind of dynamics process to the ball well combine that with the other flock will be soft which is that in the end this is all the development of what he refers to as the spirit that's the whole spirit absolute spirit that tends for any condition absolutely in the end he is not irrelevant he doesn't say that truth is something that depends on particular historical error later next week we're going to see something they do say but in his days he sees that this is the unfold of the spirit of the world and so it's all headed in a certain direction it's headed toward the ultimate absolute truth but it doesn't start out there it's something that develops over time so you might think for example about all situations where we think things go back it's not as if we have a firm truth that is absolutely up in you throughout or at least our conceptually 2008 but intends in the sort of direction so you might say eventually when we figure it out eventually we get to the truth but it takes a lot of effort we don't really know what the truth is and people from those things and things develop over time can you think of situations they're kind of like that where we don't really have one unchanging set of opinions once unchanging set of assumptions we drink to things but on the other hand it does converge we ended up in the same place thinking okay that's the observer medical oh good medical ball which might be a great example of this people have different kinds of theories at different stages of medical practice and so a doctor might for example treatment notice now in the 21st century in a different way from doctors treatment of that a century ago or two centuries ago or five hundred years ago and so on and the reason for that is we think of medical knowledge is something that advances it changes the methodology changes it's not as if we just sort of bring the same set of assumptions all the way along but on the other hand as this revolution progresses it progresses in rational ways and we end up in a position where we hope to at least gain full and complete or in a way that's full the complete knowledge of things as we can and if that's true of medicine as a whole you might think well it's also true in treating an individual patient you try to figure things out when you bring this assumption to it and then you try things out oh maybe it doesn't respond we thought maybe it's really something different you form various hypotheses in the end you come to fella you hope you figure it out before the patient dies because a patient dies first then you can perform an autopsy and figuring out the fact and you think well dimensionally I'll figure out what's wrong with this person or what's wrong with this person and so those would be examples people thinks of the entire history of the world is something like so we bring a set of assumptions but they change as time does we import do have synthetic a priori principles that we employ but they are not constant they're not the same for all rational B's or even the same for all human beings they are things that develop over time now he does think you can back the way they develop that is to say you can trace some of these principles and you can figure out how we change our IDs in medicine for example what does happen what would make something change their idea about what was wrong with a particular patient or more generally how to want to treat a certain disease I mean doctors for example if you have an infection used to lead you they still put up your veins and try to lead out the infection this is not completely erratic there's an infection in there or they're trying to rid of it and they thought that was a way of doing it it doesn't work very well but anyway why would they do that anymore you're going to doctor Avenue your infection why do you need you yeah okay good people do research they will tackle reports of actual cases try to figure out what worked what did not work state-run Apostoli what's really going on under the surface and so they form theories about what's underlying into the disease and so in process of doing all that they come to greater and greater knowledge well handle this he has a general way of trying to understand what's going on not just in medicine or in another science but in generally the public thought and he has a number of these ideas they are not really made very precise or explicit in his thought in my opinion but nevertheless there are a number of these dynamic principles the most famous one is a certain pattern of thesis antithesis and synthesis he thinks that would apply to these kinds of scientific cases but much more broadly to thought in general so the idea is really this there are going to be so universal and necessary truths but they're not going to be true like every event has a cause or 7 plus minus 12 and other things like that the club thought those are rather stat he wants them to be commercial principles of a dynamics or they're going to be quite different and so for example here is how he sees thought about we have all sorts of different theories about the world think of those boxes on the bottom as representing our various theories of the world as they progressed across time we start with a very let's say Egypt ends up sort of medicine and then we advanced we come to a medieval concept of early modern concept that can figure out things like the circulation of blood they come up with the germ theory of disease and so on and so forth and there's a progression of our medical theories in short things we hope get better and better closer and closer to the truth now those change however table says there are some theories of that other theories some dynamic men are principles of your own think of that not principles about how to create a certain disease or how to actually implement something within a specific field of study like magic but instead the way in which one progresses in one's thinking the general principles that drive the dynamics of thought so here's how it goes we formulate a thesis a hypothesis we say okay a good way to treat infection is to try to get rid of it by bleeding the patient let the infection come out with the blood and then we observe how that works now if we do that what enzyme people die it's worse than just figure him out of our chair so that's back we say yeah all right that's the thesis encounters truck so we form in antithesis we say okay so yeah forget a good luck don't leave patient that's the wrong right now we'll we'll have your baby just that denied oh maybe we have some thesis about what's going on so there was a period invested between that period leading patients and the formulation of the germ theory of disease and during that time what did people do for infections does anybody know yeah well there were leeches there were there were various kinds of folk remedies various things that we're not meant I buy box what nevertheless were thought to be helpful to patients in this condition and so they think all right leading the patient is not a good idea but maybe we can give them these various kinds of medications we find out that once well guess what that doesn't work so bad either and so we sort of start with this visa this hypothesis it doesn't go anywhere or at least didn't cause a certain problem with there things that are a novelty can't explain so we moved to an antithesis we said well that wasn't right let's try the opposite approach then that doesn't work and then we try to put them together for example we said maybe there really is something going on the blood but on the other hand where the blood doesn't help and so maybe we have to treat what is going on and that would be an example of this synthesis so here's one way I like to think of it the world is really really complicated it's scout's something like the pattern of this river in Utah okay and when we're trying to actually construct an intellectual theory a scientific theory of medical theory or for that matter a theory about history theory about politics whatever it is it doesn't really matter maybe it's just about what football team develop it doesn't make any difference what the theory is that's the sense in which this is supposed to be really universal we formulate a thesis and that's something like drawing a straight line through what is in fact in the remedy a really complicated thing well some things end up on the right side of that line sometimes the person and you lead them you take something about and they actually get that sometimes they don't of course and sometimes they get worse and so we find well the thesis only partially that best personally captures any truth about this up so that we are be at Genesis that's like this dark line on the other side where we say all right let's try a different way of drawing that line and we draw it over here we find out what that doesn't work out well leader again a lot of things and on the right side a lot of things as well then we look to together and try to formulate a synthesis well that's something like that orange line in the middle but now of course you can see very quickly if I'm trying to divide one side of the river from another side that doesn't really do it either it does a bit of a better job that you know the pieces for me I said this is like tin and so we've made some progress but it still doesn't capture anything like the full complexity of the river and so the process starts again we get the end enough the synthesis becoming a thesis and then we know as well they admit whether it really gets this wrong and it's a pretty specific thing maybe and so then we try the X emphasis to that and then we formulate a synthesis we get better and better approximation to the truth but we never capture the form flex it yet or at least we don't tend to now angle thinks that is the final analysis that we will actually attain this we can anyway but eventually we can find ways of drawing these straight lines in such a way as to capture accurately what's on this side what's on that side or to make a problem abroad that we can actually come up with more and more complex theories more and more sophisticated hypotheses in such a way that in the end we can't run so that stage of gender price would be absolute health how do we know we can get there what's up the bells going off it's not the only sudden it's like you know be the game show host says that's right okay now next question wre presento no you don't get anything that tells you ha ha that's right what happens is you don't encounter any more anomalies you don't get any more competition you have a hypothesis and it works says hey that truth that patient as this disease treat them this way ha ha it works ok and that's something that actually indicates the achieve at least in that respect absolutely not so here's how he's thinking about this when we face a certain kind of problem practical problem intellectual problem we really start thinking about the way the world is and we formulate some pieces sub hypotheses but don't need parts to be correct we're not going to get it right out of it reality is complicated it's difficult and so what happens is we formulate this hypothesis and then we do encounter contrary evidence we do encounter anomalies contradictions we find covering samples and so we think well ok that's not right now by the way this is really what philosophy does feel like much of the time somebody says for example we go back to Socrates courage is standing if I maybe not right away and then you think well not always and so on and you start realizing their power examples they're contrary and Sola so you formulate some other synthesis you say well let's don't just move that external behavior in that way let's look at something in term maybe its allies endurance of the soul that would be a good example of an antithesis but then you look at that you say well that too is only a partial truth it turns out that it also encounters camera objects contrary elements cowboy examples and so forth and so you decide well that's not quite right then what do you do you try to take the insights from both sides you say well gosh that first definition the courage is standing and fighting it not running away captures something right it has something to do with behavior but on the other hand it doesn't capture everything the other definition also captures something namely that there's an internal state of mind that matters and we have to combine these so the natural synthesis is good be to say the true definition has to combine both an external behavior of that's and also some internal elements having to do with your mental attitude your state of mind and exactly how you put those together they're not very maybe you say it's a matter of overcoming fear in response or to pursue something you perceive as good let's say you write that synthesis you've got an external element you've got in it well actually said you can overcome fear that sounds all inter so we have to build in the next room we act in the face of fear to to achieve some perceived good well then we'll be diving to say well how is that that's our synthesis we've now got an internal element and an X for a moment but then we start analyzing that we say well maybe that face is counter examples of contradictions etcetera yeah believe oh all right yeah that's an interesting yeah that's an interesting yeah for a long time people thought even though this is the way politics works because somebody says here's how here's how we ought to have the government structure for example and then you encounter certain problems and you say well already that wasn't a very good way of structuring it so let's try this day and then you find out that's not very good and so on then you try this other thing and if you dig a very broad historical perspective Hegel thinks that's how it works but you're absolutely right within any given historical period that's somehow suggest that we all are doing the same thing kind of like in medicine people formulate these hypotheses and it's not as if you have different camps in medicine that just keep getting further and further apart but in some fears you do and so at least in some historical stages and we seem to be in one now it does be the political attitudes drift further and further apart a lot of times they seem to come together after the Second World War for example it felt as if in American politics anyway there was increasing convergence and then in the 1960s it seemed like a pirate was the parties and so on dig further apart then by the late 70s they started being a consensus again and it's became possible to work across partisan lines and that makes stay there for a while and then for the last let's say twenty years or so we've been going in this sort of way so I agreed that it's not as if this when you get close up looks like what's going on now Hagel would explain it in this way he would say well I don't eat that we're doing this quick okay this can take a long time and so in particular and the partisan with the thesis it's a - a thesis and then you're an opponent you start coming up with anomalies counter-examples counter-evidence and so on and so if you formulate your handset business do we all rushed over to the antithesis well no some of us stay over there with the thesis and say oh you know those young types are over there there and they have this new theory that's below me by my back my back all we need is a few minor repairs - and then until if there is a synthesis of this okay yeah I think you're putting out two things that are really important to keep in mind one is that in politics there are a bunch of issues being dealt with at the same time it's not just one issue there are certain historical stages where one really seems to predominate as in the 1850s with the issue of slavery for example but throughout most of history people are disagreeing about all sorts of things and it's not as if you just had the advocates of the thesis the thesis in capital letters great about it involves lots of things and the ends of the antithesis you're a bunch of different issues that people are dealing with all the time and so that's one thing that complicates the other the club thinking that complicates it is that if you think about sort of where the parties have gone it isn't the case you're absolutely right that there are these two parties and then they unite to form a unified party and then it divides up again you know there have been some unity governments especially it becomes restoring more time but as soon as the war ends they tend to break apart again and so there are two things you might take that one is to try to explain that in alien terms and say oh look wipe doesn't that happen and then once these two parties united in the synthesis party the Unity Party then you're going to go there before me it doesn't look like history develop stuff okay that appears to be a kind example and so one thing people can do is point to this complexity and say well really you've got all these the parties are just names for collections of interest groups and it's happening within the interest groups on various issues but the other thing to say is this is a very simple model and how does it apply to certain historical events sometimes I think it fits them quite well and often I think it doesn't fit the profile in fact the most common criticism of Hegel is that he's just making this stuff now he's not making it up on the basis of nothing if you observe intellectual life for long enough you realize there is a lot of this out scientific method has some of this character philosophical debate has some of this character and so on but when you think about that way it looks like an oversimplification and I think you're right to say as soon as you get down to the details of the development of science or the development of politics and history or for that matter applied this is the history of philosophy it's done everybody was a homer play mode then Aristotle came along with that antithesis and everybody rushed over there became an Aristotelian and so on it's over it's from that point of view it looks like a very very oversimplified you had time with all these different ideas right okay good actually yes the pedicles is my friend that's kind of a nice example where it looks like the synthesis was the Constitution with the Bill of Rights and sometimes in that sense this fits the historical developments very nicely if you then say well what happened with let's say the party's leading up to the Civil War it's so much more complicated sort of thing and it's harder to I think a pie model like this but on the other hand you shouldn't think that the fact that a times opinions diverge is it evidence against him it's not he would predict that he would take a look until you come up with that synthesis yes what typically happens is the evidence of the thesis and the evidence of the antithesis actually enough sort of going apart from one another and it requires you to an event or compromise or some new idea to advance us to that synthesis and the idea there is supposed to be that the each thesis that is competing there is both the Ferdinand got negated that is to say we end up in a position where say if it was really something right about that but also something right about this the problem was you didn't see how to combine once you see I'm combining all of a sudden you realize we can advance to a new stage but as soon as we do we then get a new set of issues emerging because we have the synthesis emergence and the thesis it starts you having trouble and so we have an important formulation of antithesis and so you might expect that history is it's going to be what grant marks for progress see it's going to look like divergences and consensus is forming and then falling apart and so on and that is more or less what really happens now sometimes I think the problem is this implies that it's going to be like a constant two-party system in a scented pizza two-party system better benefits of parliamentary democracy in Europe let's say within parties or think about the 1860 election there were four presidential candidates which is part of how people can live as one the Democratic Party was badly split and so that's something that allows you to say yes it's not as if there was a consensus electing Lincoln it was rather than at the end yes I'm not sure whose pieces in his aunt Elizabeth here but one side and then dividing into separate groups on its own and all of that complicated the picture immensely if we try to understand the way in which talked about we realize there's something very important that we can learn from this process of development even if that isn't the only dynamic law we have to worry about even if it's oversimplified in some ways even if we've got a collection of issues and this is happening with respect for both of those issues at once which is how he would I think analyzed a lot of real political complexity there's an underlying point the thought is really social not only do we have to understand somebody's remarks Sony's decision in terms of the certain historical context we also have to realize that there is a social character to all of this that is to say that each person is saying what they say advancing their position making their arguments and having a certain view of the world in light of their own social and historical condition it's always driven by a certain social historical context so our thinking really is fundamental in in the following we are actually not just thinking about the world but the ways in which were thinking about have been shaped by other people before us and other around us and that means that we do bring a set of concepts to experience caught was totally right about that but it's a set of concepts but is it the entirely built in the human mind initially it's something that we get from the other people around us and they're doing it apart from their predecessors so this is something that develops social think about how you live your language you were a little baby let's say and you were born speak English or Spanish or Chinese or German instead you learn to speak that language now how did you do it this is my atom of the Bible you just stage these things know you're learning from them to be around you right I mean hence the picture of some of my husband's and my daughter's holding my little baby cousins the idea they're supposed to be but there is a social cap you learn language from the other people around you that was my kindergarten class okay sometimes you learn this in a formal setting that is to say people actually teach you this other times you just picked up from the people around so yes to go to school you learn something there that's a sort of formalized version of this social process but a huge amount you're just picking up from other people around you all the time it's very good that you do if you didn't learn how to speak the language at all until you're not for kindergarten good to be in trouble so Hinkle sees all of this is reflecting a specific social background and indeed there are a lot of things about our speech that really do reflect a specific social back I don't know if you've seen some of these things online where you go through and answer a bunch of questions and it tells you where you're from based on the words you use for certain things and based on maybe your accent other things you can often do with this surprising degree of accuracy I've taken some of these and it's amazing it identifies three possible sources of my speech what is Pittsburgh where I grew up what is Texas where I've spent the last 40 years and then one is halfway between Missouri I've been to Missouri a few times but we ever had my pieces is just halfway between Pittsburgh in Texas and so that's weird so I mean they're from Pittsburgh or Texas or st. Louis is what they usually say but anyway it's because they're aspects of that social background that really seep into not only our accents of language use but also to our ways of thinking now what that means is that my own concept of myself knowing that concepts of the world I talk to myself are also something that develops historically and socially I don't just look inside and take my teeth I am my self concept is something more complicated than that it's not that they price wrong so much as if that's a misleading model the idea is that the unity of itself isn't a gimmick it's an achievement I'd learn to think of myself as myself and I've learned from the people around me what that means indeed handles great work the phenomenology of spirit that phenomenology is the study of phenomena in concepts that is to say the study of appearances the study of the contents of the mug it traces the development of the self through a variety of stages and these stages are ones that are crucial to anybody's development of a sense of self this is something we actually accomplished not something we just start out there by the way there's a fold it's rather silly saying that I heard from a friend in the Yale philosophy department you must never forget with hangul there can be no apology for his fun anyway the idea is really every one of us goes through the stage of what you call unhappy countries what that means is that there is a stage at which we are inevitably alienated from ourselves where we feel as if we're strangers to ourselves this is normal this is natural in fact we have to go through that process in order to achieve a whole sense of self so we start out being really driven by the things around us then we distance ourselves from things around us and try and sort of isolation understand who we are but the problem is we can't understand who we are in isolation from the world in isolation from our social setting in isolation from history we have to actually learn who we are by interacting the things in the world so for a while we filled form B feels that we don't understand ourselves everybody has to go through that but in the end we actually over-pumped we attained when he calls full self-consciousness and actually fully become a self by recognizing other people in having that recognized us and of course then recognizing their recognition of us and so so I really don't know who I am you don't quite know who you are either until we see each other reflected well I guess we each see ourselves reflected in the other and we recognize that recognition useful so I don't know who you are but we become friends and finally I recognize you as recognizing me as appreciating me as itself and so I'm here to appreciate myself I would lose interactions with other people now there's one other thought I want to get on people go long and that is his attack when he calls the myth of beginning he wants to reject both the standard rasmus model tonight and also the standard empiricist model he thinks they both rest on the same concept that is to say base think certain things are simply given to us claude krauser front line between sensibility and understanding human thinks of the world's making impressions of us we're basically passive and the world comes on fox us with certain things and then we form ideas of the basis of that and so on every empiricist he thinks all the way from Aristotle to apply this new book through Hume has that basic model / rationals are the better they tend to think the same thing actually about empirical knowledge they just think that Jerry Jones there are innate ideas but also do a bit of faulting to the lives and he says book all of this is a mistake because all of it rests upon our spark your bond between concepts and all sensations we think we have a sensation like here the sensation of breathe and we think okay there's that as a sensation and then I terminate concepts on the basis of that sensations first concepts later maybe with the exception of the native concepts of my Marash most people look that's the wrong way to look at this instead we can't develop concepts from the pre-conceptual purely sensation apart from the beginning we are formulated concepts we were applying them to experience and so it's not as if we have these raw sensations and eventually we figure out my concepts to use instead really concepts and percepts get mixed together from the very beginning norms review exam okay we construct norms that is to say aught whether they're moral to a big red sense knowledge are not killed or whether they're little things like you know you shouldn't text friends using your cell phone in class hi Samuel on from these class this morning a young teacher give him some advice and he did great but I must say I was looking at the students in the back of class who had laptops around me four of them were on Facebook one was ordering a new winter coat for herself and one was watching a television show she had these earbuds event there was some show going on and she would periodically erupt this to like do Instagram she took like a selfie and she's watching herself in this class and puts that up and stood right now and okay see what the teacher would ask your question and so everybody reached from their clickers click something and then immediately go back to it then it was started okay it was such an argument against a lot of people who have these electronic devices and kind of unbelievable but many of it we have certain norms and these norms develop historico li and we construct them some things really do make us go don't because we think that violates some kind of more but Hegel's point would be they aren't things to eat enough and they are relative to a historical period and social context not maybe some of them we will end up with in the stage Arab so they've done it so it's not as if it is impossible for us Norm's but the norms the PR is practice familiar are things that really are stemming from certain historical context I wouldn't it take something that wasn't as dramatic as big moral motions so just look at the norm so fast and go back to 1600 here were appropriate forms of fashion in 1600 guys barrier tights and hats and your armory I mean today well if any of us walked into class would be like that what would the rest of you think what performing Shakespeare later classic something up it would see bizarre well this is from a hundred years later now these things all express the world spirit of their current state of development so any would say it's odd for us to criticize I said we may be closer than absolute truth so if those we can't criticize it but on the other hand they were doing the best they could for their time and so here is a 1700 sort of norm of appropriate dress but they are making progress toward the absolute so here we get the 19th century beast as conceived by a current movie Drecker but notice to still be pretty bizarre containment applies for us like that it really went to abandon party website well if you could step in whatever it is right not in this incident is absolutely right because after all all these different conflicting roles can't all right however the idea right given their the best you can do with that current state of denial so you might say all of these neurons are actually appropriate to their social context they can only be judged really appropriately in that social context of course eventually we'll get to the stage of absolute knowledge but they what we do mayor in Otto strange pepra listed something from the 1780s and then the developments of the 1960s those look a little more but a quite a bit more proximal which ones that to talk to us but here is the fashion Club at UC Davis and so is that what you all wear today anyway that's what California students did you ought to be wearing but later people might look at that and say how ridiculous so point is these dorms are things that do change they are responses to specific historical settings they are things that have to be judged that context and they're bred for that cause that's the state of development a certain time but eventually we are going to a get to the stage he hosts it where we could move around saying now fighting with contract and then we'll look back and say some of these things yes that was all ridiculous that was a ridiculous way to dress or ridiculous way to live however people were doing the best in food

Channel: Daniel Bonevac

Views: 36,665

Rating: 4.8818998 out of 5

Keywords: Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Id: 0qZiGOgPPKo

Length: 69min 22sec (4162 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 04 2017