That is, you were not able to follow the argument.

I begin by proposing the concept of an argument form. I point out that this is no different in its eventual identity, according to Hegel's premises, with either a concept, a proposition or an argument ("syllogism") indifferently.

The reason I give is that just as the acceptability of an argument, inclusive of an acceptability of its validity, depends upon someone or ones "following" it, as you say, so the situation of an "argument form" is no different and cannot be shown to be different. They are, accordignly, simply very general arguments. This is the point made by the Victorian logician Lewis Caroll Dodgson, just incidentally.

I maintain further, in view of Hegel's Aufhebung of matter and form in one, that the notion of Form you and many logicians or meta-logicians are working with is ultimately Kantian and abstract.

What I have suggested in previous (pre-Hegelian) work, following on a suggestion of Peter Geach, the well-known logician,  is that arguments are adjudged by how they go on all fours, as he puts it, with arguments already accepted, qand a fortiori simply (and nothing more) with so-called argument forms, e.g. modus ponens or the 19 or so rules or laws (De Morgan's I think they are called) you will find listed in Copi's Introduction to Logic or his other book, just for example of the general thoughtlessness involved. This is also how the Venn diagrams work. You are supposed to just see that the argument the "form" of which you have just generalised "fits" with something yet more general you simply and immediately see, i.e. it is put beyond the reach of argument, or so it looks. In reality it is just a retreat back into abstract or schematised mathematics, geometry even.

This has nothing to do with the Concept or with any concept, however. It is an invitation to forget about logic and its problems which, as Hegel shows, bears as nothing else does upon the nature of reality, upon being, finally identified by Hegel with what he calls the Idea or, with a touch of representation, God.

This idea of Geach's I myself related to the notion of arguing from analogy (see my shortish paper "Argument Forms and Argument from Analogy", Acta Philosophica, Rome, no further details to hand just now and here: it also appears as a chapter in my Hegel's Apotheosis of Logic). It corresponds also to Dodgson's "You might as well say", though he himself reduced this to deliberate and comic absurdity.

To follow this further, and perhaps correct it, one could not do better than read Hegel on Concept, Judgment and Syllogism, those sections, of either EL or GL.

In conclusion, Hegel says somewhere, or implies, in harmony with Aquinas, that God is "pure form". What does he mean by that? Not, for sure, simply, that God lacks matter or anything else. It is, anyhow, the Idea as final conclusion of "The Science of Logic". This both is and is not an argument, if we recall Hegel's claim that the entire syllogism is its conclusion (called Schluss in either case in Hegel's language, if I am not wrong).

From: hegel@yahoogroups.com <hegel@yahoogroups.com> on behalf of 'Alan Ponikvar' ponikvaraj@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 13 November 2018 17:55
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [hegel] Hegel's Dash