Online research in philosophy

Philosophy can begin neither by making claims about the given nor by investigating knowing, since, in either way, unjustified assumptions must be made. In the face of this predicament, Hegel presents his Phenomenology of Spirit as the only viable introduction to philosophy, introducing presuppositionless science by immanently critiquing the construal of knowing which presumes that cognition always has assumptions, always confronts some given. Can the challenge of completing this immanent critique in all its daunting complexity be avoided by alternative shortcuts? (...) The article examines four such options: Hegel’s complementary introductions to the Science of Logic and arguments on how the self-referential inconsistencies of transcendental investigation and foundationalism resolve themselves. All these alternative shortcuts are shown to rest on assumptions that only the full phenomenological investigation can overcome. (shrink)

Introduction Nothing seems more accessible than mind, whose essential subjectivity always reveals mind to itself. Whether feeling its own feeling, ...

Machine generated contents note: AcknowledgmentsIntroductionHegels Challenge to the Philosophy of MindHegels Solution to the Mind-Body ProblemHegel, Mind and Mechanism: Why Machines Have No Psyche, Consciousness, Nor Intelligence Self-Consciousness and Intersubjectivity From Representation to Thought: Reflections on Hegels Determination of Intelligence The Psychology of Will and the Deduction of Right: Rethinking Hegels Theory of Practical Intelligence Beyond the Sociality of Reason: From Davidson to HegelReferencesIndex AcknowledgmentsIntroductionHegels Challenge to the Philosophy of MindHegels Solution to the Mind-Body ProblemHegel, Mind and Mechanism: Why Machines (...) Have No Psyche, Consciousness, Nor Intelligence Self-Consciousness and Intersubjectivity From Representation to Thought: Reflections on Hegels Determination of Intelligence The Psychology of Will and the Deduction of Right: Rethinking Hegels Theory of Practical Intelligence Beyond the Sociality of Reason: From Davidson to HegelReferencesIndex. (shrink)

Hegel presents two very different accounts of the initial categorization of essence in his Science of Logic and his later Encyclopedia Logic, thereby raising the question of whether this discrepancy undermines the univocal necessity of systematic logic. A close examination of these arguments reveals that the Science of Logic account captures a necessary ordering that is incompletely presented in the Encyclopedia. The details are provided for comprehending why the logic of essence must begin with a contrast of the essential and (...) the unessential, how this reverts to illusory being (whose determining entails three successive forms of reflection), and why identity depends upon the transformation of refl ection from being positing to being external to being determining in character. Significantly, the self-developing nature of these logical developments calls into question the foundationalism entailed by any privileging of the categories of essence. (shrink)

The logical investigation of thinking must not be confused with inquiry into the mental reality of thought, which properly falls within the philosophy of mind. Hegel provides an important, but much neglected contribution towards accounting for the psychological conditions of reason by detailing in his Philosophy of Subjective Spirit how intelligence can progress from representation to thought. By thinking through Hegel’s argument, we can comprehend why thinking is a matter of intelligence rather than consciousness, why representation cannot provide the universality (...) of conceptualization, and how semiotic imagination enables intelligence to leave representation behind and enter the domain of thought, unencumbered by the opposition of consciousness. Through this result, the philosophy of mind can account for the psychological conditions of its own theorizing. (shrink)

Although logic’s thinking of thinking overcomes the difference between subject and object of knowing, subjectivity and objectivity have distinct logical determinations presupposed by objectivity in nature and subjectivity in rational agency. An analysis of Hegel’s account of subjectivity and objectivity in his Logic of the Concept shows how both can be differentiated without relying upon any contents of nature and spirit. This logical distinction of subjectivity and objectivity is then employed to clarify how objectivity in nature can be irreducible to (...) objectivity in logic, independently of any empirical material, an insight bearing upon the whole relation between logic and reality and its formulation by Burbidge, Maker, and Halper. (shrink)