John,

Thanks so much for this, which is a fascinating integration, and new to me:

"Special metaphysics, then, has to do with the three Ideas of Reason
called by Kant the cosmological, psychological and theological Ideas.
This has to do, ultimately, with infinite thought, with thought
thinking itself--hence with reason. This has to do with the third part
of the SL. Here the three ideas are called Life, Cognition and the
Absolute Idea. So Life corresponds to the cosmological idea, cognition
to the psychological idea and the absolute idea to the theological
idea. And Hegel's system as a whole is a special metaphysics. The
three moments of the system, logic, nature and spirit, correspond to
the three ideas, with logic corresponding to the theological idea,
nature to the cosmological idea, and spirit to the psychological
idea."

Re the re-casting of experience, I assume that Alan is referring to
Kant's "metaphysics of experience" which pertains to the synthesis of
the object qua experience, etc.
and /or to Kant's grounding of the "ideas of reason" in Practical
Reason, e.g. as found in the Critique of Practical Reason-- as opposed
to the grounding of these ideas in speculative reason, which is
forewarn during the dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason.

Note that Kant assigns fecundity to Practical Reason, which generates
its own ends, as opposed to the receptivity of theoretical reason,
which does not engender its objects. This practical fecundity is then
relevant to the fecundity that Hegel imputes to self-thinking thought,
in a global manner.

Bruce