#Transcendental unity of apperception

[blueheartbooks]

Delving into Kantian Philosophy: A Review of "The Critique of Pure Reason" by Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant's "The Critique of Pure Reason" stands as one of the most influential and enduring works in the history of philosophy, reshaping the landscape of metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. Published in 1781, this monumental treatise seeks to provide a comprehensive account of the nature, scope, and limits of human knowledge, offering profound insights into the nature of reality, the structure of the mind, and the conditions of possibility for knowledge.

At the heart of "The Critique of Pure Reason" is Kant's revolutionary concept of transcendental idealism, which posits that the mind plays an active role in shaping our experience of the world. Kant argues that the mind imposes certain fundamental concepts and categories—such as space, time, and causality—on our sensory perceptions, organizing them into a coherent and intelligible framework. Through his rigorous analysis, Kant seeks to uncover the a priori conditions that make experience possible, shedding light on the fundamental structures of human cognition.

One of the key themes of "The Critique of Pure Reason" is Kant's distinction between phenomena and noumena, or appearances and things-in-themselves. Kant argues that while we can only know phenomena as they appear to us through the filter of our cognitive faculties, there exists a realm of noumena that lies beyond the reach of human knowledge. This distinction has profound implications for Kant's philosophy, shaping his views on the limits of human understanding and the nature of metaphysical inquiry.

Moreover, "The Critique of Pure Reason" is notable for its meticulous analysis of the nature of space, time, and causality, which Kant identifies as the fundamental categories of human thought. Kant argues that these categories are not derived from experience, but rather constitute the necessary framework through which we interpret our sensory perceptions. By elucidating the synthetic a priori nature of these categories, Kant lays the groundwork for his transcendental idealism and challenges traditional empiricist and rationalist accounts of knowledge.

In addition to its groundbreaking philosophical insights, "The Critique of Pure Reason" is also celebrated for its rigorous methodology and systematic approach to philosophical inquiry. Kant's meticulous argumentation, intricate terminology, and careful exposition of concepts make "The Critique of Pure Reason" a challenging but rewarding read for scholars and philosophers alike. Kant's influence extends far beyond the boundaries of philosophy, shaping the development of disciplines such as psychology, physics, and linguistics, and leaving an indelible mark on the intellectual landscape of the modern world.

In conclusion, "The Critique of Pure Reason" by Immanuel Kant is a towering achievement in the history of philosophy, offering profound insights into the nature of human knowledge, the structure of the mind, and the limits of metaphysical inquiry. Kant's rigorous analysis, groundbreaking concepts, and systematic approach to philosophical inquiry make "The Critique of Pure Reason" a timeless classic that continues to inspire and challenge readers with its depth, complexity, and intellectual rigor.

Immanuel Kant's "The Critique of Pure Reason" is available in Amazon in paperback 24.99$ and hardcover 31.99$ editions.

Number of pages: 516

Language: English

Rating: 10/10                                           

Link of the book!

Review By: King's Cat

#Immanuel Kant #Critique of Pure Reason #Transcendental idealism #Phenomena #Noumena #A priori knowledge #Metaphysics #Epistemology #Synthetic a priori judgments #Space #Time #Causality #Categories of understanding #Rationalism #Empiricism #Skepticism #Transcendental deduction #Transcendental aesthetics #Transcendental logic #Analytic judgments #Synthetic judgments #Appearances #Things-in-themselves #Transcendental unity of apperception #Unity of consciousness #Schematism #Idealism #Rationalist philosophy #Epistemological inquiry #Metaphysical inquiry

[blueheartbookclub]

Delving into Kantian Philosophy: A Review of "The Critique of Pure Reason" by Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant's "The Critique of Pure Reason" stands as one of the most influential and enduring works in the history of philosophy, reshaping the landscape of metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. Published in 1781, this monumental treatise seeks to provide a comprehensive account of the nature, scope, and limits of human knowledge, offering profound insights into the nature of reality, the structure of the mind, and the conditions of possibility for knowledge.

At the heart of "The Critique of Pure Reason" is Kant's revolutionary concept of transcendental idealism, which posits that the mind plays an active role in shaping our experience of the world. Kant argues that the mind imposes certain fundamental concepts and categories—such as space, time, and causality—on our sensory perceptions, organizing them into a coherent and intelligible framework. Through his rigorous analysis, Kant seeks to uncover the a priori conditions that make experience possible, shedding light on the fundamental structures of human cognition.

One of the key themes of "The Critique of Pure Reason" is Kant's distinction between phenomena and noumena, or appearances and things-in-themselves. Kant argues that while we can only know phenomena as they appear to us through the filter of our cognitive faculties, there exists a realm of noumena that lies beyond the reach of human knowledge. This distinction has profound implications for Kant's philosophy, shaping his views on the limits of human understanding and the nature of metaphysical inquiry.

Moreover, "The Critique of Pure Reason" is notable for its meticulous analysis of the nature of space, time, and causality, which Kant identifies as the fundamental categories of human thought. Kant argues that these categories are not derived from experience, but rather constitute the necessary framework through which we interpret our sensory perceptions. By elucidating the synthetic a priori nature of these categories, Kant lays the groundwork for his transcendental idealism and challenges traditional empiricist and rationalist accounts of knowledge.

In addition to its groundbreaking philosophical insights, "The Critique of Pure Reason" is also celebrated for its rigorous methodology and systematic approach to philosophical inquiry. Kant's meticulous argumentation, intricate terminology, and careful exposition of concepts make "The Critique of Pure Reason" a challenging but rewarding read for scholars and philosophers alike. Kant's influence extends far beyond the boundaries of philosophy, shaping the development of disciplines such as psychology, physics, and linguistics, and leaving an indelible mark on the intellectual landscape of the modern world.

In conclusion, "The Critique of Pure Reason" by Immanuel Kant is a towering achievement in the history of philosophy, offering profound insights into the nature of human knowledge, the structure of the mind, and the limits of metaphysical inquiry. Kant's rigorous analysis, groundbreaking concepts, and systematic approach to philosophical inquiry make "The Critique of Pure Reason" a timeless classic that continues to inspire and challenge readers with its depth, complexity, and intellectual rigor.

Immanuel Kant's "The Critique of Pure Reason" is available in Amazon in paperback 24.99$ and hardcover 31.99$ editions.

Number of pages: 516

Language: English

Rating: 10/10                                           

Link of the book!

Review By: King's Cat

#Immanuel Kant #Critique of Pure Reason #Transcendental idealism #Phenomena #Noumena #A priori knowledge #Metaphysics #Epistemology #Synthetic a priori judgments #Space #Time #Causality #Categories of understanding #Rationalism #Empiricism #Skepticism #Transcendental deduction #Transcendental aesthetics #Transcendental logic #Analytic judgments #Synthetic judgments #Appearances #Things-in-themselves #Transcendental unity of apperception #Unity of consciousness #Schematism #Idealism #Rationalist philosophy #Epistemological inquiry #Metaphysical inquiry

[the-perfect-wagnerite-again]

I have a categorical imperative question. I read some Kant in undergrad but do not retain much. My question is; does the categorical imperative account for specificities? As in, is lying, for example, acceptable under specific circumstances because under those circumstances the most ethic action would always be lying (say by omission)?Or is it more of a blanket concept, such that even though I feel it’s the right thing to (more or less) lie and tell an acutely dying man that he will “be alright”, and that this is the correct action under this circumstance, is it still morally wrong because I am lying?

Not sure if this illustrates what I mean properly. Would love an explanation to scaffold my meagre understanding. Please recommend any useful Kant texts that you’d consider readable for someone undergoing intensive study in an entirely separate discipline, too (I mean that I don’t have a whole lot of time to dedicate to personal reading). I’d love to learn more but have some difficulty knowing where to start.

The short answer is: no, the moral law is immutable and absolute.

The thing to understand about Kantian deontology, and the thing that gives most people the most trouble with accepting it, is that it makes absolutely zero room for conditionals. Kant was not trying to derive moral rules based on sentiment or hypotheticals, he wanted to derive a moral LAW from the principles of his metaphysical system. A law is universal, regardless of circumstance.

It's difficult to explain why this moral law is such without getting into the specifics of Kantian metaphysics, because the two are deeply interconnected, but I can give a few brief comments to summarize Kant's first Critique:

We live in a phenomenal reality full of objects that we perceive and cognize through our rational faculties (this is the world of science and matter).

Our capacity to understand this world is predicated on the subjective unity of our self-consciousness (Kant called this the fundamental unity of apperception). If we had no self-awareness, and no awareness of our self-awareness, we would have no knowledge of the world.

The Self, therefore, is simultaneously an object in the world (we interact with other people every day) and a subject transcendental TO the world (you are not the object of your own experience - you are the vector through which experience is possible).

This becomes more clear as we consider freedom and free will, which directly contradicts the deterministic laws of nature upon which science is possible. We are both determined objects of nature AND self-determined subjects of free will. This contradiction cannot be rationalized away, because it extends beyond the limits of our cognition, and yet we still know it to be the case.

This leaves the Self as the isolated viewpoint of experience. When we try to experience the Self, we simply shift our perspective, in much the same way that we cannot isolate the boundaries of our field of vision without changing it. The question of morality then becomes: what is the way in which I should interface with the Other, that which is the "Not Me" but still possesses that same agency and self-determination as Me?

This cannot be a conditional hypothetical, because those change with the tastes of the person and their desires. Anybody can determine arbitrary rules of conduct (and indeed, the constantly evolving landscape of moral norms proves this), but it's something quite different to derive a moral law that is universally applicable in all cases. This is the categorical imperative, which has three formulations:

Act in such a way that the maxim of your action (the will informing it) should be established as a universal law.

Treat other rational beings (including yourself) always as ends in themselves, and never as means only.

From the following two, it follows that the will of every rational being must be regarded as though it were a universally legislating will.

The end result of this is an almost common-sensical notion of fairness and justice, a sentiment we all know personally when we are honest about our interpersonal relationships. The "golden rule," as we call it, has had a nearly permanent presence in the moral discourses of all sufficiently civilized societies throughout recorded human history specifically for this reason. When we lie or cheat or steal, we know it to be wrong on a level more fundamental than arbitrary rules or regulations of society: we are violating an imperative that impels us to act with the same sense of duty to others that we would expect from them. This is why even white lies feel "off," because in the process of sparing our interlocutor the pain of the truth, we are denying them their right to full agency as a rational subject. We treat them as a means instead of as an end in themselves. The autonomous will, the truly moral agent, therefore consists of the agent that identifies the moral law within themselves and intentionally acts in accordance to it by virtue of their freedom. Willing oneself to obey the moral law IS freedom, because in doing so we release ourselves from the cage of desires, appetites, and incentives that would otherwise inform and inhibit our practical reason.

Obviously this is a prescriptive system and not a descriptive one, because human beings do not behave in this way. We are fallen creatures, we lie and cheat and steal where we can afford it, and we make excuses to rationalize our own moral failures in the face of scrutiny. But in that rationalization, we vindicate the categorical imperative, because it is only when we know we have violated it that we feel compelled to make excuses for ourselves (I only lied because X, I cheated because I deserve Y, if Z didn't happen then I wouldn't have to steal, etc).

As for readings on Kant, I advise you stay away from Kant himself. His work is an incredibly complex analysis of thought, and that makes it impenetrable for those who lack either the means or time to commit to him. Instead, I offer these recommendations to introductory texts on Kant, which are sadly insufficient as a substitute but good as a supplement:

"Kant and German Idealism," from The Story of Philosophy, by Will Durant (audio version available on youtube, highly recommended)

Kant: A Very Short Introduction, by Roger Scruton

Introductory Lectures by Dan Robinson, a personal hero of mine, found on youtube or here:

Let me know if you have any more questions, I absolutely love talking about this stuff

[the-perfect-wagnerite-returns]

*desperate for pussy voice* so you're saying you think the fundamental feature of self-conscious beings is the transcendental unity of apperception? 😍

[humanperson105]

Gabriel Catren and Meta-Transcendental Philosophy

Gabriel Catren's project (as well as the work of Francois Laruelle) represents a continuation and radicalization of the Kantian/Copernican turn in philosophy that can be called meta-transcendental. “[If we read Laruelle not as a “non-philosopher” but as a meta-transcendental philosopher], [i]t then becomes possible to re-interpret the term ‘decision’ in Laruelle’s work as a synonym for transcendental synthesis [...] In this regard, Laruelle can be interpreted as a kind of renegade Kantian whose internal subversion of transcendental idealism not only rehabilitates the possibility of transcendental realism but also provides Kantianism’s posthumous rejoinder to Hegelian idealism in all its guises [...]” Ray Brassier - Nihil unbound pg 134.If Kantian transcendental philosophy is an account of the conditions by which experience and knowledge are possible, then meta-transcendental philosophy is an account of not just the genesis of the conditions by which experience is possible but the genesis of all possible conditions of experience. Insofar as the practicalist Aristotelian/Fichtean/Kantian orientation subordinates intelligibility to sensibility and roots experience in sensible intuition and apperception (rather than the Hegelian account of the self-determination of normativity, in which sensibility is subordinate to intelligibility), it then follows that possible experience is concomitant with possible sensible intuition, and given that the conditions of sensible intuition cannot be self-determinate, experience can be determined in the last instance by an external entity or unilateral immanence rather than a self-determinate universal totality and thus engender a multiplicity of possible forms of experience in which human experience is but one transcendental perspective among many.

In Catren's rewriting of Christian trinitarianism, the multiplicity of transcendental perspectives or types, what he calls the transcendental landscape, is knit together into a collective patchwork subject by Eros, understood as a force of binding together and integration, which is primary over the force of Thanatos in Catren's inversion of Freud. "... the drive par excellence is no longer the death drive but the drive for life (Eros). The will to remain relegated to the impersonal life, far from taking the form of a death drive that pulls the individual back to the undifferentiated one, manifests as an erotic desire to engender and federate the separated living beings into higher forms of living unity." (Pleromatica -Pg 359) The weak point of Catren's book Pleromatica is that, due to Catren's yolking intelligibility to the sensible, the speculative import of the transcendental landscape is rendered absurd as alien transcendental types become empty abstractions we can know and say nothing about that mirror Hegel's description and critique of the thing in itself as "total emptiness, only described still as an ‘other-world’ the negative of every image, feeling, and definite thought".

#gabriel catren #philosophy #theory #Pleromatica #Francois Laruelle

[robhorninginternalexile]

This is from Adorno’s lectures about Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. I have some inchoate thoughts about generative AI as part of this project of “dominating nature” through a forced kind of unity, a datafication and synthesis that forcibly reduces the real to what can be contained in media. This seems to serve as a proof of human mastery, but as Adorno notes here (and throughout his work) is that this re-enchants the heterogenous, the non-identical, what necessarily escapes the model or establishes its limits, makes them perceivable. But this nonidentical material may be conflated with irrationality and serve as its warrant.

In principle it would be possible to imagine hybrids of human and machine, cyborg style, that resist unity as a principle and subvert it, but LLMs are built on voracious absorption, on synthesizing diversity into sameness. It seems a tenuous form of resistance to the domination inherent in AI.

It may also be that LLMs reveal Kant’s transcendental apperception of unity, the sort of generic grounding of the “subject”, as an algorithmic process itself, and a more substantial notion of the self to be entirely illusory. That is, you can read the models as working out Kantian epistemology to the effect of nullifying the special claim of specifically human thought — thereby turning the “domination” project into a kind of self-destruction.

At A141 in CPR, Kant makes a claim that jumps out amid the general attempt to establish how the transcendental mind machine works with no recourse to metaphysics. When it comes to explaining how we “schematize” concepts to determine empirical things, how we can think “dog” without specifying a particular breed, Kant says that it “is an art concealed in the depths of the human soul, whose real modes of activity nature is hardly likely ever to allow us to discover, and to have open to our gaze.” What? Suddenly we are talking about souls? 

If that black box is really where the human soul ultimately resides, a lot is at stake in whether you think LLMs’ clusters of weighted parameters can be understood as spontaneously developing schema or if you think that all the parameters in the world can’t ever replicate that unknowable instant of magic, a practice that itself can’t be schematized.

In one of J.M. Bernstein’s lectures on CPR, he offers this assessment: 

the understanding contains no rules for the application of rules—no rules for judgment. Why is this the case? Kant’s first answer is that to ask for a rule for the application of a rule—when do I apply the rule ‘dog’—this is going to be a problem because it opens up an infinite regress. Because if I need a rule for when I apply the rule of dog—then I would need a rule for when I apply the rule of applying the rule of a dog, and we get an infinite regress. So there cannot be a rule for the application of rules.  

Thus judgment requires — and this is what he is saying at A 133 — “a peculiar talent which can be practiced only, and cannot be taught.  It is the specific quality of so-called mother-wit; and its lack no school can make good.” ...  You cannot have an algorithm for everything, you cannot have a rule for everything. There is a notion of ‘mother-wit’ involved.  Practice, training, discrimination.

The tech world is trying to convince us that you can have an algorithm for everything, and it may drag us all into the abyss of infinite regress.

[nihmue]

A 250–51. In an interesting note from around 1778–79 (presumably on the Amphiboly), Kant does in fact allow this transcendental object to be called ‘noumenon,’ but cautions against an ontological misinterpretation: “‘Noumenon’ properly always means the same thing, namely the transcendental object of sensible intuition. (This is, however, no real object or given thing, but a concept, in relation to which appearances have unity.)” (18:230; my emphasis). The unity here, of course, is the apperceptive form that appearances assume through intuitions, concepts, judgments, etc. But this concept of noumenon is “merely a boundary concept, in order to limit the pretension of sensibility, and therefore only of negative use” (A 255/B 310–11; see also A 288/B 344–A 289/B 345).

Pollok, Kant’s Theory of Normativity

#kant #me

[perkwunos]

When talking about the schemata for applying the modal categories (possibility, actuality, necessity) to sensation, Kant differentiates the schemata of possibility and necessity from the schema of actuality, by having the former involve a quantification of objects in time (possibility represents an object at some time; necessity represents an object existing at all times), whereas the latter represents an object at a determinate time. This does not seem that far off from my (admittedly shallow) understanding of the possible world semantics of modal logic, in which possibility and necessity is understood in terms of quantifying over possible worlds (where something is possible when true in some possible world, and necessary when true in all possible worlds). Of course, Kantian time as a form of sensibility, and a range of possible worlds, may be different kinds of entities ultimately. The former temporal interpretation reminds me of Hartshorne’s own emphasis on Aristotle as providing the basis for an interpretation of modal logic as a kind of ontology of time and becoming. In fact, Hartshorne wrote: “In somewhat Kantian terms, we might say that, already for Aristotle, time (as including eternity...) provides the “schema” for modal and indeed for all basic conceptions.”

Thinking of a game-theoretic (and Peirce-influenced) interpretation of quantification (which must be closer to what is involved in transcendental categories insofar as the original unity of apperception is taken to be not the inferential coherence of an isolated ego but of an intersubjective dialogue), an existential quantification reserves for the one asserting the proposition the privilege to select what parts of reality it is tested against, whereas a universal quantification gives that privilege to the opposite interrogator. Modal judgments would then concern whether the partner in discourse is allowed or disallowed to be the one to select where in time the thing being judged about is; I’m not sure if that is the full or adequate game-theoretic interpretation. What exactly, though, does it mean to situate the necessary conditions for (rational) discourse in time? The schemata guide the imagination in reproducing and associating bodily sensations--and, we may say, is inherently socialized in conducting such activity for intersubjective communication--so how must the imagination act within the constraints of time (insofar, at least, as it is engaging in discourse concerning the truth or falsity of judged propositions)?

[lbuffat]

perceive (v.), conceive (v.)

perceive (v.) c. 1300, via Anglo-French parceif, Old North French *perceivre (Old French perçoivre) "perceive, notice, see; recognize, understand," from Latin percipere "obtain, gather, seize entirely, take possession of," also, figuratively, "to grasp with the mind, learn, comprehend," literally "to take entirely," from per "thoroughly" (see per) + capere "to grasp, take," from PIE root *kap- "to grasp."

conceive (v.) late 13c., conceiven, "take (seed) into the womb, become pregnant," from stem of Old French conceveir (Modern French concevoir), from Latin concipere (past participle conceptus) "to take in and hold; become pregnant" (source also of Spanish concebir, Portuguese concebre, Italian concepere), from con-, here probably an intensive prefix (see con-), + combining form of capere "to take," from PIE root *kap- "to grasp."

to perceiveis the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses

to conceive is the ability to form something in the mind and to develop an understanding.

Immanuel Kant distinguished transcendental apperception from empirical apperception.  The first is the perception of an object as involving the consciousness of the pure self as subject--"the pure, original, unchangeable consciousness that is the necessary condition of experience and the ultimate foundation of the unity of experience."  The second is "the consciousness of the concrete actual self with its changing states", the so-called "inner sense.”  Transcendental apperception is almost equivalent to self-consciousness; the existence of the ego may be more or less prominent, but it is always involved.

#paradise #conept

[irinache]

Gilles Deleuze

was a French philosopher

Gilles Deleuze (French: [ʒil dəløz]; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), both co-written with psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. His metaphysical treatise Difference and Repetition (1968) is considered by many scholars to be his magnum opus.[9] A. W. Moore, citing Bernard Williams's criteria for a great thinker, ranks Deleuze among the "greatest philosophers".[10] His work has influenced a variety of disciplines across philosophy and art, including literary theory, post-structuralism and postmodernism.[11]

Life

Early life

Deleuze was born into a middle-class family in Paris and lived there for most of his life. His initial schooling was undertaken during World War II, during which time he attended the Lycée Carnot. He also spent a year in khâgne at the Lycée Henri IV. During the Nazi occupation of France, Deleuze's older brother, Georges, was arrested for his participation in the French Resistance, and died while in transit to a concentration camp.[12] In 1944, Deleuze went to study at the Sorbonne. His teachers there included several noted specialists in the history of philosophy, such as Georges Canguilhem, Jean Hyppolite, Ferdinand Alquié, and Maurice de Gandillac, and Deleuze's lifelong interest in the canonical figures of modern philosophy owed much to these teachers. In addition, Deleuze found the work of non-academic writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre attractive.[13]

Career

Deleuze passed the agrégation in philosophy in 1948, and taught at various lycées (Amiens, Orléans, Louis le Grand) until 1957, when he took up a position at the University of Paris. In 1953, he published his first monograph, Empiricism and Subjectivity, on David Hume. This monograph was based on his DES thesis (diplôme d'études supérieures (fr), roughly equivalent to an MA thesis) which was conducted under the direction of Hyppolite and Canguilhem.[14] From 1960 to 1964 he held a position at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique. During this time he published the seminal Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962) and befriended Michel Foucault. From 1964 to 1969 he was a professor at the University of Lyon. In 1968 he published his two dissertations, Difference and Repetition (supervised by Gandillac) and Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (supervised by Alquié).

In 1969 he was appointed to the University of Paris VIII at Vincennes/St. Denis, an experimental school organized to implement educational reform. This new university drew a number of talented scholars, including Foucault (who suggested Deleuze's hiring), and the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. Deleuze taught at Vincennes until his retirement in 1987.

Personal life

He married Denise Paul "Fanny" Grandjouan in 1956.

Deleuze himself found little to no interest in the composition of an autobiography. When once asked to talk about his life, he replied: "Academics' lives are seldom interesting."[15] Deleuze concludes his reply to this critic thus:

"What do you know about me, given that I believe in secrecy? ... If I stick where I am, if I don't travel around, like anyone else I make my inner journeys that I can only measure by my emotions, and express very obliquely and circuitously in what I write. ... Arguments from one's own privileged experience are bad and reactionary arguments."

[16]

Like many of his contemporaries, including Sartre and Foucault, Deleuze was an atheist.[17][18]

Death

Deleuze, who had suffered from respiratory ailments from a young age,[19] developed tuberculosis in 1968 and underwent a thoracoplasty (lung removal).[20] He suffered increasingly severe respiratory symptoms for the rest of his life.[21] In the last years of his life, simple tasks such as handwriting required laborious effort. On November 4, 1995, he committed suicide, throwing himself from the window of his apartment.[22]

Prior to his death, Deleuze had announced his intention to write a book entitled La Grandeur de Marx (The Greatness of Marx), and left behind two chapters of an unfinished project entitled Ensembles and Multiplicities (these chapters have been published as the essays "Immanence: A Life" and "The Actual and the Virtual").[23]He is buried in the cemetery of the village of Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat.[24]

Philosophy

Deleuze's works fall into two groups: on one hand, monographs interpreting the work of other philosophers (Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, Michel Foucault) and artists (Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Francis Bacon); on the other, eclectic philosophical tomes organized by concept (e.g., difference, sense, events, schizophrenia, cinema, philosophy). Regardless of topic, however, Deleuze consistently develops variations on similar ideas.[citation needed]

Metaphysics[

Deleuze's main philosophical project in the works he wrote prior to his collaborations with Guattari can be baldly summarized as an inversion of the traditional metaphysical relationship between identity and difference. Traditionally, difference is seen as derivative from identity: e.g., to say that "X is different from Y" assumes some X and Y with at least relatively stable identities (as in Plato's forms). To the contrary, Deleuze claims that all identities are effects of difference. Identities are neither logically nor metaphysically prior to difference, Deleuze argues, "given that there exist differences of nature between things of the same genus."[25] That is, not only are no two things ever the same, the categories we use to identify individuals in the first place derive from differences. Apparent identities such as "X" are composed of endless series of differences, where "X" = "the difference between x and x'", and "x'" = "the difference between...", and so forth. Difference, in other words, goes all the way down. To confront reality honestly, Deleuze argues, we must grasp beings exactly as they are, and concepts of identity (forms, categories, resemblances, unities of apperception, predicates, etc.) fail to attain what he calls "difference in itself." "If philosophy has a positive and direct relation to things, it is only insofar as philosophy claims to grasp the thing itself, according to what it is, in its difference from everything it is not, in other words, in its internal difference."[26]

Like Kant and Bergson, Deleuze considers traditional notions of space and time as unifying forms imposed by the subject. He therefore concludes that pure difference is non-spatio-temporal; it is an idea, what Deleuze calls "the virtual". (The coinage refers to Proust's definition of what is constant in both the past and the present: "real without being actual, ideal without being abstract.")[27] While Deleuze's virtual ideas superficially resemble Plato's forms and Kant's ideas of pure reason, they are not originals or models, nor do they transcend possible experience; instead they are the conditions of actual experience, the internal difference in itself. "The concept they [the conditions] form is identical to its object."[28] A Deleuzean idea or concept of difference is therefore not a wraith-like abstraction of an experienced thing, it is a real system of differential relations that creates actual spaces, times, and sensations.[29]

Thus, Deleuze at times refers to his philosophy as a transcendental empiricism (empirisme transcendantal), alluding to Kant and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. In Kant's transcendental idealism, experience only makes sense when organized by forms of sensibility (namely, space, and time) and intellectual categories (such as causality). Assuming the content of these forms and categories to be qualities of the world as it exists independently of our perceptual access, according to Kant, spawns seductive but senseless metaphysical beliefs (for example, extending the concept of causality beyond possible experience results in unverifiable speculation about a first cause). Deleuze inverts the Kantian arrangement: experience exceeds our concepts by presenting novelty, and this raw experience of difference actualizes an idea, unfettered by our prior categories, forcing us to invent new ways of thinking (see below, Epistemology).

Simultaneously, Deleuze claims that being is univocal, i.e., that all of its senses are affirmed in one voice. Deleuze borrows the doctrine of ontological univocity from the medieval philosopher John Duns Scotus. In medieval disputes over the nature of God, many eminent theologians and philosophers (such as Thomas Aquinas) held that when one says that "God is good", God's goodness is only analogous to human goodness. Scotus argued to the contrary that when one says that "God is good", the goodness in question is exactly the same sort of goodness that is meant when one says "Jane is good". That is, God only differs from us in degree, and properties such as goodness, power, reason, and so forth are univocally applied, regardless of whether one is talking about God, a person, or a flea.

Deleuze adapts the doctrine of univocity to claim that being is, univocally, difference. "With univocity, however, it is not the differences which are and must be: it is being which is Difference, in the sense that it is said of difference. Moreover, it is not we who are univocal in a Being which is not; it is we and our individuality which remains equivocal in and for a univocal Being."[30] Here Deleuze at once echoes and inverts Spinoza, who maintained that everything that exists is a modification of the one substance, God or Nature. For Deleuze, there is no one substance, only an always-differentiating process, an origami cosmos, always folding, unfolding, refolding. Deleuze summarizes this ontology in the paradoxical formula "pluralism = monism".[31]

Difference and Repetition (1968) is Deleuze's most sustained and systematic attempt to work out the details of such a metaphysics, but his other works develop similar ideas. In Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962), for example, reality is a play of forces; in Anti-Oedipus (1972), a "body without organs"; in What is Philosophy? (1991), a "plane of immanence" or "chaosmos".

Epistemology

Deleuze's unusual metaphysics entails an equally atypical epistemology, or what he calls a transformation of "the image of thought". According to Deleuze, the traditional image of thought, found in philosophers such as Aristotle, René Descartes, and Edmund Husserl, misconceives of thinking as a mostly unproblematic business. Truth may be hard to discover—it may require a life of pure theorizing, or rigorous computation, or systematic doubt—but thinking is able, at least in principle, to correctly grasp facts, forms, ideas, etc. It may be practically impossible to attain a God's-eye, neutral point of view, but that is the ideal to approximate: a disinterested pursuit that results in a determinate, fixed truth; an orderly extension of common sense. Deleuze rejects this view as papering over the metaphysical flux, instead claiming that genuine thinking is a violent confrontation with reality, an involuntary rupture of established categories. Truth changes what we think; it alters what we think is possible. By setting aside the assumption that thinking has a natural ability to recognize the truth, Deleuze says, we attain a "thought without image", a thought always determined by problems rather than solving them. "All this, however, presupposes codes or axioms which do not result by chance, but which do not have an intrinsic rationality either. It's just like theology: everything about it is quite rational if you accept sin, the immaculate conception, and the incarnation. Reason is always a region carved out of the irrational—not sheltered from the irrational at all, but traversed by it and only defined by a particular kind of relationship among irrational factors. Underneath all reason lies delirium, and drift."[32]

Deleuze's peculiar readings of the history of philosophy stem from this unusual epistemological perspective. To read a philosopher is no longer to aim at finding a single, correct interpretation, but is instead to present a philosopher's attempt to grapple with the problematic nature of reality. "Philosophers introduce new concepts, they explain them, but they don't tell us, not completely anyway, the problems to which those concepts are a response. [...] The history of philosophy, rather than repeating what a philosopher says, has to say what he must have taken for granted, what he didn't say but is nonetheless present in what he did say."[33]

Likewise, rather than seeing philosophy as a timeless pursuit of truth, reason, or universals, Deleuze defines philosophy as the creation of concepts. For Deleuze, concepts are not identity conditions or propositions, but metaphysical constructions that define a range of thinking, such as Plato's ideas, Descartes's cogito, or Kant's doctrine of the faculties. A philosophical concept "posits itself and its object at the same time as it is created."[34] In Deleuze's view, then, philosophy more closely resembles practical or artistic production than it does an adjunct to a definitive scientific description of a pre-existing world (as in the tradition of John Locke or Willard Van Orman Quine).

In his later work (from roughly 1981 onward), Deleuze sharply distinguishes art, philosophy, and science as three distinct disciplines, each analyzing reality in different ways. While philosophy creates concepts, the arts create novel qualitative combinations of sensation and feeling (what Deleuze calls "percepts" and "affects"), and the sciences create quantitative theories based on fixed points of reference such as the speed of light or absolute zero (which Deleuze calls "functives"). According to Deleuze, none of these disciplines enjoy primacy over the others:[35] they are different ways of organizing the metaphysical flux, "separate melodic lines in constant interplay with one another."[36] For example, Deleuze does not treat cinema as an art representing an external reality, but as an ontological practice that creates different ways of organizing movement and time.[37] Philosophy, science, and art are equally, and essentially, creative and practical. Hence, instead of asking traditional questions of identity such as "is it true?" or "what is it?", Deleuze proposes that inquiries should be functional or practical: "what does it do?" or "how does it work?"[38]

Values

In ethics and politics, Deleuze again echoes Spinoza, albeit in a sharply Nietzschean key. In a classical liberal model of society, morality begins from individuals, who bear abstract natural rights or duties set by themselves or a God. Following his rejection of any metaphysics based on identity, Deleuze criticizes the notion of an individual as an arresting or halting of differentiation (as the etymology of the word "individual" suggests). Guided by the naturalistic ethics of Spinoza and Nietzsche, Deleuze instead seeks to understand individuals and their moralities as products of the organization of pre-individual desires and powers. In the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Deleuze and Guattari describe history as a congealing and regimentation of "desiring-production" (a concept combining features of Freudian drives and Marxist labor) into the modern individual (typically neurotic and repressed), the nation-state (a society of continuous control), and capitalism (an anarchy domesticated into infantilizing commodification). Deleuze, following Karl Marx, welcomes capitalism's destruction of traditional social hierarchies as liberating, but inveighs against its homogenization of all values to the aims of the market. In a 1990 Postscript on the Societies of Control, Deleuze claims that institutions and technologies introduced since World War II have moved social coercion and discipline from only physical enclosures (such as schools, factories, prisons, office buildings, etc.) into the lives of individuals considered as "masses, samples, data, markets, or 'banks'." The mechanisms of modern "societies of control" will be continuous, following and tracking individuals throughout their existence via transaction records, mobile location tracking, and other personally identifiable information.[39]

But how does Deleuze square his pessimistic diagnoses with his ethical naturalism? Deleuze claims that standards of value are internal or immanent: to live well is to fully express one's power, to go to the limits of one's potential, rather than to judge what exists by non-empirical, transcendent standards. Modern society still suppresses difference and alienates persons from what they can do. To affirm reality, which is a flux of change and difference, we must overturn established identities and so become all that we can become—though we cannot know what that is in advance. The pinnacle of Deleuzean practice, then, is creativity. "Herein, perhaps, lies the secret: to bring into existence and not to judge. If it is so disgusting to judge, it is not because everything is of equal value, but on the contrary because what has value can be made or distinguished only by defying judgment. What expert judgment, in art, could ever bear on the work to come?"[40]

Deleuze's interpretations

Deleuze's studies of individual philosophers and artists are purposely heterodox. In Nietzsche and Philosophy, for example, Deleuze claims that Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) is an attempt to rewrite Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781),[41] even though Nietzsche nowhere mentions the First Critique in the Genealogy, and the Genealogy's moral topics are far removed from the epistemological focus of Kant's book. Likewise, Deleuze claims that univocity is the organizing principle of Spinoza's philosophy, despite the total absence of the term from any of Spinoza's works. Deleuze once famously described his method of interpreting philosophers as "buggery (enculage)", as sneaking behind an author and producing an offspring which is recognizably his, yet also monstrous and different.[42]

The various monographs thus are not attempts to present what Nietzsche or Spinoza strictly intended, but re-stagings of their ideas in different and unexpected ways. Deleuze's peculiar readings aim to enact the creativity he believes is the acme of philosophical practice.[43] A parallel in painting Deleuze points to is Francis Bacon's Study after Velázquez—it is quite beside the point to say that Bacon "gets Velasquez wrong".[44] Similar considerations apply, in Deleuze's view, to his own uses of mathematical and scientific terms, pace critics such as Alan Sokal: "I'm not saying that Resnais and Prigogine, or Godard and Thom, are doing the same thing. I'm pointing out, rather, that there are remarkable similarities between scientific creators of functions and cinematic creators of images. And the same goes for philosophical concepts, since there are distinct concepts of these spaces."[45]

Reception

In the 1960s, Deleuze's portrayal of Nietzsche as a metaphysician of difference rather than a reactionary mystic contributed greatly to the plausibility and popularity of "left-wing Nietzscheanism" as an intellectual stance.[46] His books Difference and Repetition (1968) and The Logic of Sense (1969) led Michel Foucault to declare that "one day, perhaps, this century will be called Deleuzian."[47] (Deleuze, for his part, said Foucault's comment was "a joke meant to make people who like us laugh, and make everyone else livid."[48]) In the 1970s, the Anti-Oedipus, written in a style by turns vulgar and esoteric,[49] offering a sweeping analysis of the family, language, capitalism, and history via eclectic borrowings from Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, and dozens of other writers, was received as a theoretical embodiment of the anarchic spirit of May 1968. In 1994 and 1995, L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze, an eight-hour series of interviews between Deleuze and Claire Parnet, aired on France's Arte Channel.[50]

In the 1980s and 1990s, almost all of Deleuze's books were translated into English. Deleuze's work is frequently cited in English-speaking academia (in 2007, e.g., he was the 11th most frequently cited author in English-speaking publications in the humanities, between Freud and Kant).[51] Like his contemporaries Foucault, Derrida, and Jean-François Lyotard, Deleuze's influence has been most strongly felt in North American humanities departments, particularly in literary theory, where Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus are oft regarded as major statements of post-structuralism and postmodernism,[11] though neither Deleuze nor Guattari described their work in those terms. Likewise in the English-speaking academy, Deleuze's work is typically classified as continental philosophy.[52]

Deleuze has attracted critics as well. The following list is not exhaustive, and gives only the briefest of summaries.

Among French philosophers, Vincent Descombes argues that Deleuze's account of a difference that is not derived from identity (in Nietzsche and Philosophy) is incoherent, and that his analysis of history in Anti-Oedipus is 'utter idealism', criticizing reality for falling short of a non-existent ideal of schizophrenic becoming.[53]According to Pascal Engel, Deleuze's metaphilosophical approach makes it impossible to reasonably disagree with a philosophical system, and so destroys meaning, truth, and philosophy itself. Engel summarizes Deleuze's metaphilosophy thus: "When faced with a beautiful philosophical concept you should just sit back and admire it. You should not question it."[54] Alain Badiou claims that Deleuze's metaphysics only apparently embraces plurality and diversity, remaining at bottom monist. Badiou further argues that, in practical matters, Deleuze's monism entails an ascetic, aristocratic fatalism akin to ancient Stoicism.[55]

Other European philosophers have criticized Deleuze's theory of subjectivity. For example, Manfred Frank claims that Deleuze's theory of individuation as a process of bottomless differentiation fails to explain the unity of consciousness.[56] Slavoj Žižek claims that Deleuze's ontology oscillates between materialism and idealism,[57] and that the Deleuze of Anti-Oedipus ("arguably Deleuze's worst book"),[58] the "political" Deleuze under the "'bad' influence" of Guattari, ends up, despite protestations to the contrary, as "the ideologist of late capitalism".[59] Žižek also calls Deleuze to task for allegedly reducing the subject to "just another" substance and thereby failing to grasp the nothingness that, according to Lacan and Žižek, defines subjectivity. What remains worthwhile in Deleuze's oeuvre, Žižek finds, are precisely those concepts closest to Žižek's own ideas.[60]

English-speaking philosophers have also criticized aspects of Deleuze's work. Stanley Rosen objects to Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche's eternal return.[61] Todd May argues that Deleuze's claim that difference is ontologically primary ultimately contradicts his embrace of immanence, i.e., his monism. However, May believes that Deleuze can discard the primacy-of-difference thesis, and accept a Wittgensteinian holism without significantly altering his practical philosophy.[62] Peter Hallward argues that Deleuze's insistence that being is necessarily creative and always-differentiating entails that his philosophy can offer no insight into, and is supremely indifferent to, the material, actual conditions of existence. Thus Hallward claims that Deleuze's thought is literally other-worldly, aiming only at a passive contemplation of the dissolution of all identity into the theophanic self-creation of nature.[63]

In Fashionable Nonsense (1997), physicists Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont accuse Deleuze of abusing mathematical and scientific terms, particularly by sliding between accepted technical meanings and his own idiosyncratic use of those terms in his works. Sokal and Bricmont state that they don't object to metaphorical reasoning, including with mathematical concepts, but mathematical and scientific terms are useful only insofar as they are precise. They give examples of mathematical concepts being "abused" by taking them out of their intended meaning, rendering the idea into normal language reduces it to truism or nonsense. In their opinion, Deleuze used mathematical concepts about which the typical reader might be not knowledgeable, and thus served to display erudition rather than enlightening the reader. Sokal and Bricmont state that they only deal with the "abuse" of mathematical and scientific concepts and explicitly suspend judgment about Deleuze's wider contributions.[64]

Bibliography

Single-authored

Empirisme et subjectivité (1953). Trans. Empiricism and Subjectivity (1991).

Nietzsche et la philosophie (1962). Trans. Nietzsche and Philosophy (1983).

La philosophie critique de Kant (1963). Trans. Kant's Critical Philosophy (1983).

Proust et les signes (1964, 2nd exp. ed. 1976). Trans. Proust and Signs (1973, 2nd exp. ed. 2000).

Nietzsche (1965). Trans. in Pure Immanence (2001).

Le Bergsonisme (1966). Trans. Bergsonism (1988).

Présentation de Sacher-Masoch (1967). Trans. Masochism: Coldness and Cruelty (1989).

Différence et répétition (1968). Trans. Difference and Repetition (1994).

Spinoza et le problème de l'expression (1968). Trans. Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (1990).

Logique du sens (1969). Trans. The Logic of Sense (1990).

Spinoza - Philosophie pratique (1970, 2nd ed. 1981). Trans. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (1988).

Dialogues (1977, 2nd exp. ed. 1996, with Claire Parnet). Trans. Dialogues II (1987, 2nd exp. ed. 2002).

'One Less Manifesto' (1978) in Superpositions (with Carmelo Bene).

Francis Bacon - Logique de la sensation (1981). Trans. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (2003).

Cinéma I: L'image-mouvement (1983). Trans. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (1986).

Cinéma II: L'image-temps (1985). Trans. Cinema 2: The Time-Image (1989).

Foucault (1986). Trans. Foucault (1988).

Le pli - Leibniz et le baroque (1988). Trans. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (1993).

Périclès et Verdi: La philosophie de Francois Châtelet (1988). Trans. in Dialogues II, revised ed. (2007).

Pourparlers (1990). Trans. Negotiations (1995).

Critique et clinique (1993). Trans. Essays Critical and Clinical (1997).

Pure Immanence (2001).

L'île déserte et autres textes (2002). Trans. Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953-1974 (2003).

Deux régimes de fous et autres textes (2004). Trans. Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975-1995 (2006).

In collaboration with

Félix Guattari

Capitalisme et Schizophrénie 1. L'Anti-Œdipe (1972). Trans. Anti-Oedipus (1977).

Kafka: Pour une Littérature Mineure (1975). Trans. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (1986).

Rhizome (1976). Trans., in revised form, in A Thousand Plateaus (1987)

Nomadology: The War Machine (1986). Trans. in A Thousand Plateaus (1987)

Capitalisme et Schizophrénie 2. Mille Plateaux (1980). Trans. A Thousand Plateaus (1987).

Qu'est-ce que la philosophie? (1991). Trans. What Is Philosophy? (1994).

"Part I: Deleuze and Guattari on Anti-Oedipus" of Chaosophy: Texts and Interviews 1972-77 (2009) Edited by Sylvere Lotringer. (pp.35-118)

In collaboration with

Michel Foucault

"Intellectuals and Power: A Discussion Between Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault". TELOS 16 (Summer 1973). New York: Telos Press (Reprinted in L'île déserte et autres textes / Desert Islands and Other Texts, above.)

Documentary

L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze, with Claire Parnet, produced by Pierre-André Boutang. Éditions Montparnasse.

#Gilles Deleuze #philosophy #French #the 20th century #post-structuralism #postmodernism #literature #currently reading

[jerneyinterventiondesign]

Identity

Personal Identity and the Self in the Online and Offline World. (2011)

The emergence of social networking sites has created a problem of how the self is to be understood in the online world. As these sites are social, they relate someone with others in a network. Thus there seems to emerge a new kind of self which exists in the online world. Accounting for the online self here also has implications on how the self in the outside world should be understood. It is argued that, as the use of online social media has become more widespread, the line between the two kinds of self is becoming fuzzier. Furthermore, there seems to be a fusion between the online and the offline selves, which reflects the view that reality itself is informational.

Ultimately speaking, both kinds of selves do not have any essence, i.e., any characteristic inherent to them that serves to show that these selves are what they are and none other. Instead an externalist account of the identity of the self is offered that locates the identity in question in the self’s relations with other selves as well as other events and objects. This account can both be used to explain the nature of the self both in the online and the offline worlds.

“An externalist account of the identity of the self is offered that can both be used to explain the nature of the self both in the online and the offline worlds.”

NOTE: Hier wordt verteld dat er op een psychologisch niveau geen verschil zit tussen een Online en Offline persona, maar dat het om een overkoepelende identiteit gaat. Die identiteit staat voor hoe mensen in beide werelden ( On- en Offline) interacteren met elkaar en de wereld.

The most intimate thing that we can have, our own persons and our own selves, are being affected significantly by the technologies. Many people are constructing their own alternate personas online; even in social networking media, which are assumed to be a place where one reveals oneself to others, are also being used in such a way as to present entirely new personae to the public.

These personae do share deep seated metaphysical affinities with the real-life, offline individuals, and the strategies used by those in the offline world to construct their identities are also used in the online world.

I have argued that personal identity is constituted more by external factors such as social perception and various sorts of documentation and physical traits than by the internal ones such as memory and the subjective feeling of being oneself through time. However, this does not seem to carry over for the identity of the self, since this is more a matter of being referent of the first-person pronoun, which points deeply to the sense of being the subject of the various thoughts and feelings. Kant’s view on the Transcendental Unity of Apperception might at first sight be able to explain how the identity of the self is fixed, but as we have seen Kant’s view succeeds only in fixing identity, but not uniqueness. It seems that external factors are still required for the latter. In the online world, things are again similar.

We can find an analog Kant’s TUA in the online world. There must be something functioning as the ‘I think’ that binds up all of the various texts and images posted online as belonging to one and the same self. This binding, again, does not have much to do at all with the content of what is posted. For that we need the external factors to construe their meanings and how they are received and perceived by the community of other online users, who all together form the social network. But if all this is tenable, then the two worlds— online and offline—seem to collapse into one, and we cannot really tell this collapsed world to be either strictly one or the other.

NOTE: De auteur legt hier uit dat, zoals in Kant’s TUA, in de online wereld er ook een soort bindende factor moet zijn die een identiteit geeft aan ‘alle content die door dezelfde persoon is gepost’ waarbij de inhoudt van de content niet relevant is; de logica achter het posten van een bepaalde reeks content zegt meer over de identiteit van een persoon dan de daadwerkelijke content zelf. Dat resulteert in de eindconclusie van dit artikel, waarin de online en offline identiteit in elkaar overgaan en daarmee één persoon vormen. Op een psychologisch niveau maakt het niet uit of een handeling on- of offline plaatsvindt want de beredenering blijft hetzelfde/unaltered.

#research

[svenseamus]

Luigi Pirandello on Film L'Umorismo and Confronting the Other of the Self

Luigi Pirandello on Film L'Umorismo and Confronting the Other of the Self: The fact that they contradict one another does not make one superior or more real than the other—only a sort of transcendental unity of apperception ...

[perkwunos]

The a priori categories and principles of the understanding overgeneralize and underdetermine to such a degree that judgment finds itself helpless when faced with empirical, material nature. As Allison writes: “How, for example, could one apply the concept of causality to a given occurrence unless it were already conceived as an event of a certain kind, for example, the freezing of water?” Thus, although Kant is suggesting that we must resort to experience to acquire special laws, it appears that absent any empirical concepts and laws, the a priori categories themselves cannot be applied to particular cases in a way that constitutes knowledge.

Two points are worth noting here with respect to the underdetermination of the categories and the threat of empirical chaos. The first is that the transcendental unity of apperception—the all-important thesis of the Deductions that self-consciousness is the ultimate and spontaneous source of unity in experience—does not suffice to address how it is that we can make determinate judgments regarding empirical, material nature. Self-consciousness guarantees the unity of nature in general for experience at a transcendental level, but on its own and without further resources, it cannot secure the possibility of empirical concepts that are required for the experience of nature at the empirical level. … what the problem of underdetermination minimally suggests is that a theory of self-consciousness and its a priori concepts does not on its own suffice to account for the possibility or actuality of knowledge. Even for Kant, what will be required is, second, an account of the lawfulness of the contingent at the empirical level, what he calls the purposiveness of nature, to ward off empirical chaos and guarantee the possibility of acquiring empirical concepts that allow us to experience empirical nature as rule-governed. Purposiveness comes to pick up the slack of the categories, so to speak, by ensuring that there is a cognizable order at the empirical level where the categories can operate alongside the requisite empirical concepts to produce knowledge of empirical nature. …

…

… As with the problem of underdetermination, the account of empirical concept acquisition turns out to be implausible and incomplete without the introduction of a principle of purposiveness that can guide the logical operations involved in the formation of concepts—most notably, the logical operation of reflection— by guaranteeing that empirical nature displays a sufficient degree of order in relation to our cognitive capacities.

Karen Ng, Hegel’s Concept of Life

#karen ng #immanuel kant

[perkwunos]

Reductive physicalists are still subject to the Kantian critique: given these objects of knowledge, what are the conditions for this act of knowing? But the aim is to no longer make this a transcendental critique but rather an immanental or naturalist critique: the subjective unity of apperception in which knowing occurs is now considered a natural event entirely inside the environment, its knowing now understood as inter-acting. The categories necessarily determining this process of interactive knowing must be understood more widely as the categories determining the construction of experiences-as-natural-processes: logic is understood not only as semiotic, but also only understood by a metaphysics, by an account of the actual existence of knowers as natural events. This would be a nonreified physicalism—ie a theory that includes the creative knower within its own account—and this more superior form of physicalism is equal to a panpsychism.

[perkwunos]

… Redding recommends the more fully conceptual inferentialism of Hegel, which explicates the logic of perceptual and reflective or inferential judgments differently: the former as judgments of the inherence of a specific individual in a kind (“This chair is yellow”) and the latter as judgments of subsumption between two kinds (“Yellow is a warm colour”) (2014, 672). Whereas the latter kind of judgment is true or false in some overall sense, the former’s truth-value is “context specific” (2014, 674), as it depends on the nature of the specific individual (such as a chair) that one is interacting with perceptually, that kind of openness being what constitutes perception. In a subtle and interesting argument, Redding suggests that, whereas Brandom essentially reduces the de re to the de dicto by simply denying that there is such a thing as nonconceptual content, for Hegel the de re is aufgehoben in (“preserved within, integrated into”) the de dicto (2014, 675). This means that, whereas Kant demanded a unified space of reasons in his transcendental unity of apperception, in which “logical structure must reflect the logical relations among diverse judgements that apply to different aspects of a single world” (2014, 676), Hegel considers it more appropriate to admit some unreconstructed perspectivalism (in more contemporary terminology one might well say “essential indexicality”) into Thought. In a way, this means that, although Kant and Hegel both imported Aristotle’s categories from ontology into epistemology, rendering them forms of judgment, Hegel’s “idealist understanding of logical form” (2014, 676) is more complete than Kant’s, because in his demand for a single world through transcendental unity of apperception, Kant essentially retains the notion of a God’s-eye view—a realist holdover. One is truer to Mind when one recognizes, with Hegel, that it is essentially embodied and located.

Catherine Legg, Idealism Operationalized: How Peirce’s Pragmatism Can Help Explicate and Motivate the Possibly Surprising Idea of Reality as Representational

#catherine legg #hegel

[perkwunos]

I follow you to remind myself that philosophers are an enemy <3

The a priori rules for my transcendental unity of apperception weren’t able to synthesize this into a coherent object of experience, sorry