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- Oct 16 11:52 AMMy goodness, Chuck, you were the one that used the spatial metaphor: a "higher form of awareness". I was just following your lead.Essentially the matter is quite simple and straight forward. The "concept", while one, has three moments: universal, particular, and individual.Everything, if it is properly understood, is a one with three moments. And the middle moment, the particular, is representation (or, if you like, picture-thinking).It has a moment" below" it which is, basically, the underlying structure of representation. And it has a moment "above" it which is, basically, the I.John-----Original Message-----
From: C A V cavermette@... [hegel] <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
To: hegel <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wed, Oct 16, 2019 10:10 am
Subject: Re: [hegel] "Picture-Thinking" and Scientific Knowledge
Hi John, Hi All,
I'm happy to multitask everyone. There are many philosophical interests I have independent of Hegel, but I have realized that it is good practice to keep him as an interlocutor around just because he did entertain many important and fascinating thoughts, some of which I think are good candidates for truth.
So I have no problem responding directly to multiple conversations here, with all present and welcome.I'm very much involved with reading Deleuze right now--and this is, basically, the question that he addresses.
Great. I'm happy to welcome more “interlocutors” into the discussion which I'm opening, but I will try my best to keep the subject based around Hegel's views in the main, per the board's rules. My discussion here is inspired by thoughts I've had about Hegel, Spinoza, Robert Brandom, Wilfrid Sellars, Thomas Kuhn, Carl Hempel, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Donald Davidson, Mark Johnson and George Lakoff. There are plenty thoughts I have here... each of which is a discussion topic that would take us too far afield. Much of it has to do with the structure of our what Wilfrid Sellars calls “conceptual frameworks”, stuff that I would think Kant was more concerned with than Hegel ultimately. I'm nevertheless curious about what Hegel would have to say... does he have any explicit remarks about Metaphor in his lectures on aesthetics?To begin with, I find the translation "picture-thinking" to be quite offensive. What we are talking about is representations.
Ok.And, second, the "superior" manner of "awareness" isn't really above representation. It would better be said to be below representation.
I'm listening... Ok, upon reflection upon what you go on to say here, you are trying to say that what I am calling the “superior” form of awareness is better said to be “below” representation, in the sense that it is what ultimately determines the (if I may) “outer” coating of representation which it (the awareness) is “beneath”.
Your use of a spatial metaphor here caught me off guard. Lakoff and Johnson call these “orientation” metaphors. I pay close attention to mine. You will find that they are in all cases arbitrary, and determined by convention, personal preference, or a combination of the two. This is one of those places where Art enters the language and the tools of analytic philosophy are rendered somewhat useless.
So, I think that this topic which you and Deleuze are concerned with is fascinating, and I am happy to discuss it with you, possibly off-site.
But returning to our discussion: this topic which we are engaging upon... this is the question of what the thing in-itself, as such, is. This, I take it, is what you are calling the question addressed by Deleuze. For, you go on to give me a couple more candidates for answers:
Schopenhauer: The in-itself = Will.
Science: The in-itself = Particles.
Biology: The in-itself = Processes.
You go on to write:“But you are right that representation is important. It is, basically, the middle term between us and the underlying structure of the world. It is the particular moment in the syllogism.”
Yes. I would contend that there is nothing more for us than the representation, but I would also point out that we are indeed a part of what makes that which (as you put it) underlies our experiences possible. Much of the world we find ourselves living in is built out of things others have put in our path. You might explain to me, someone ignorant of meta-logical Aristotlean concepts how I am to make use of this use of “middle term” here. I've seen Hegel make this move a lot, and in context I would often try to write out the premises of the syllogistic inference to which he appears to be making reference, but I would confess I have seldom succeeded.So there are two aspects, the inner and the outer. The inner is the underlying structure that makes things possible. The outer, the set of representations that make up our world, is the story in which we live.
Yes.One possible confusion here is to mix up representations of the underlying reality with representation more properly speaking. So, for instance, the periodic table is a representation of the underlying structure of the world. But most of its elements are not really accessible to us in the real world. We can look at a picture of the periodic table, and we can do the experiments needed to isolate many of the elements. But this has very little to do with the actual world of representation. I have a couple of gold rings I could show you. Neither of them is pure gold though.And both rings are far more symbolic than material. That higher symbolic meaning of the blue corvette or of my rings is something higher than representation proper. If representation is the particular moment, then this symbolic awareness would be the individual moment in the syllogism.Another spatial metaphor. With reference to what scale is symbolic meaning “higher”?But just to conclude, it is interesting to see some "whole" that goes from science to the real world to poetry. Probably "picture-thinking" will take many different forms in this development.
Ok there are a couple interesting potential discussions here but I wonder why you are making reference to these things, I confess. I would also request that you tell me where you are seeing this “whole” that you are talking about, are you intending to refer to the metaphorical/analogical/Picturing form of awareness which I have made reference too? I don't see how you could be, but I do think that that form of awareness is alive for us in our experience of the real world, and science, and poetry. Wilfrid Sellars distinguished between the manifest image of the world (which poetry is often about, not that Sellars mentions this, I'm just pointing it out) and the scientific image of the world (which the research of natural science is about) and once depicted philosophy as the process of finding ways in which both of these things are telling us one and the same truth about the reality we live in.
I have found that a greater appreciation for metaphor, simple explanation, analogy, and modest representations of true facts goes a far greater distance in finding truths about the world than an intense focus on what lies underneath literal uses of language, which is the focus of the analytic philosopher or the linguist.
My concern though is that Hegel is as bad about this as the analytic philosophers are... but let's talk more about him.
I've heard Hegel assimilated romanticist writing styles into his philosophical writing. That doesn't surprise me.
What does surprise me is that he would, at critical moments for discerning his views, denounce picture-thinking, and claim that there is a higher form of awareness than that.
My point is more epistemological, or, to use the 19th century term, transcendental.
I think that Hegel would've said that metaphors and analogies are artifacts of picture-thought, and that picture-thought can't tell use the most important parts of the truth. I think that they can, do, and are, if not our most useful and efficient ways of interacting with the truth, then very high on the list.
(and it is a Hegelian theme, that to not tell the whole of the truth is to say something false. I disagree with Hegel completely on this theme, but that's another topic.)
I think not only that picture-thought can tell us the most important parts of the truth, we know the most important parts of the truth to a larger extent than philosophers are typically willing to admit, and the only way we know these truths is via picture-thought!
I'm not concerned with the question of whether or not science is possible, I think it's actual and I think we have accumulated a modest helping of knowledge of the thing in-itself. (Just look at the iPhone. Just look.)
What I'm concerned with is that Hegel has this thought here which I think if he had thought more clearly he would have ceased to entertain. And that thought is that there is a form of awareness that transcends picture-thinking, there is some form of awareness higher than a representation in the form of a picture.
I have a suspicion that that is a promise which no one can keep.
Any shape of awareness that Hegel can talk about is just a description (a picture!) of another picture-thought, a picture-thought which is just one among many others, ready to be overcome, represented by some other picture with some other set of referential connections to the original form of awareness.
If Hegel kept his promise to someone else here, they might take the floor. I'm looking for someone who can tell me about this higher form of awareness. I've heard mathematicians speak of entities which defy representation, but which we can nevertheless talk about. I think of this issue as very similar, and related to the question of you and Deleuze.
Best,
-Chuck
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