You begin by making an interesting claim that you then say should not be controversial as if claiming that the true metaphysics should appear to consciousness “somehow” - something Hegel neither says nor even intimates - should be beyond controversy.

Clearly, this is just a rhetorical ploy on your part as if you feel the need to fortify what more you have to say against the well-earned criticism that is sure to come.

One may wish to identify what you are calling the metaphysical theme of the one and the many as what the narrative in its broadest terms is about. Certainly, the epistemological theme that Hegel does address - the opposition of consciousness as a one that is also two - is a close cousin to the theme of the one and the many. But is there any advantage in switching out Hegel’s theme for this other theme? Does this switch in any way help to clarify the issue?

Hegel certainly does speak of consciousness in both the first and third person. As I mentioned, this itself is worth being noted because it will soon cease. What is curious is how the “experience” of perceptual consciousness has this consciousness trapped within its own thinking about its truth standard as it is unable to offer a coherent rendering of the thing with properties.

The entire exposition of this consciousness is caught in the equivocations that follow in the unsuccessful attempt to clarify its truth standard. This consciousness never gets to what most readers would recognize as the usual deceptions of perception where we mistakenly identify the object we perceive.

This is a structural issue we need to see. What appears to be unique to this mode of consciousness is that it never gets to the point where any actual knowing is examined by being compared with the presumed truth standard.

We are not deceived by the cube that with its properties is deemed to be sugar. We are deceived by the incoherence of the thought of a thing with properties, an incoherence evident a priori or evident even before we consider examples.

Moving on, the distinction between what is in-itself and for-itself is an inner difference of anything we might think. It is not an ontological distinction. Nor does Hegel ever say or even suggest that it is. There are not two sorts of entities, those that are in themselves and those that are for themselves. In fact, the failure to attempt to separate these two moments by attributing them to two things marks the breakdown of this mode of cognition.

So, what are we doing when we are reading? Well, in the spirit of Kant it can be said that we are enacting the unity of apperception. We are both conscious and self-conscious. We are to be sure observing or taking in what is being said, but we are also assessing what we are taking in. We are attempting to make sense of what we are observing.

And one of the peculiarities of a speculative exposition is that this assessment cannot be made in the moment. We are not following step-wise an argument where we are only justified in moving on if we know precisely what justifies the current move.

Given that Hegel’s readers are being educated to the standpoint of science by attending to a scientific account, the only way the question of what the readers know is not begged is if there is some way of reading through the exposition where their ignorance about what is happening does not prevent them from eventually coming to be educated.

In the broadest terms, the way this works is that Hegel’s readers only come to know the truth of what they observe at the end by means of a recollection that recasts what these readers have observed as having been an unwitting self-involved and self-evolving reading.

So, any reading that fails to recognize these features of how one is to read is in my view a misreading. And it goes a long way in explaining the multitude of unsatisfactory readings of this most difficult text.

As for the reader’s intrusions, I have already explained how the reader’s intrusions can help to explain why context is ignored in sense certain claims. You have not offered a creditable rebuttal explaining how this obvious gaff on Hegel’s part can be explained in some other way.

Here in perceptual consciousness there is a curious equipoise between reader and consciousness that has them meet as one - your issue of the one and many - with “experience” allowed to migrate up one level to the cognitive experience of making sense of the truth standard.

In Sense-Certainty and in what is to follow in the Understanding, the truth standard talk happens without the involvement of natural consciousness. But here in perceptual consciousness the only experience attributed to consciousness occurs on this meta-level.

So, no. What happens in paragraphs 117-131 is not about what you or I or anyone else would recognize as perceptual experience. As I noted, it is an a priori “experience” or a cognitive engagement with the putative truth standard prior to any engagement with objects we might perceive.

The indicator that something unusual is going on is that the deceptions of perception Hegel mentions have nothing to do with what we typically mean by such deceptions. We never get to the point of being deceived by what is “out there” in the way sense certain consciousness is deceived when it attempts to pin down a ‘here’ or a ‘now’. 

One of the problems of the typical dulled readings that attempt to just follow what Hegel is saying is that what is commonplace tends to be read into the exposition even though it is not there. There is not enough apperceptive cognition at work on the part of readers to save them from positing into the exposition their habitual ways of understanding what it means to sense or perceive. The ensuing muddle inhibits comprehension.

One such muddle is your misidentification of the unconditioned universal - the truth of perceptual consciousness - as a truth perceptual consciousness concludes must be true. This show a profound ignorance of the structural constraints orienting the exposition. The truth of a mode of consciousness is never a truth for this mode. It is always only a truth for us.

I notice that my decision to limit my comments to a few points is used against me as if I am avoiding what is at issue. Both in my post and here I have raised an issue that you should try to address: why is perceptual “experience” something that only occurs on the meta-level?

So, what I skip over is something you mis-identify as “experience” without noting what is distinctive about this experience.

It is this distinctive experience - an experience that everywhere else along the course of the exposition is reserved as Hegel’s discourse to the reader about the self-conflicted character of each truth standard - that needs to be explained.

I will just point to where I believe an explanation lies. Here in Perception, the reader is at the second stage of the educative process that began in Sense-Certainty with readers entirely lacking in self-understanding positing this lack as their object, sense certain cognition. I discussed how this helps to explain what is happening in Sense-Certainty.

In Perception, readers have the first two in one of their own cognitive journey and in this way the readers’ knowing resembles the two in one that is natural consciousness. But our two in one as an experience unique to us occurs on a meta-level. And just as sense certain cognition was distorted by the readers’ comportment, so is perceptual cognition distorted by referencing an “experience” on a level that is not properly perceptual.

Clearly, my reading is controversial. It is not in any way generally accepted. I take this to be one of its strengths given how other readings are not only misreadings but lazy readings in that there is little attention to the peculiarities of the way the text is structured and then works in accord with this structure.

• Alan