Phenomenology of Spirit, Introduction – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is about the “coming to be of knowledge.” Understanding the title of his book goes some way to help us understand what this complicated book is about. Phenomenology is the science of experience and so the phenomenology of spirit is the experience or journey that our consciousness makes, where consciousness “comprehends within itself the various SHAPES OF SPIRIT as stations on the way through which spirit becomes pure knowledge, that is, absolute spirit,” according to the ad that Hegel wrote to advertise this book. [p. 468] These shapes or stations are broadly five stages that we make, starting with consciousness, then self-consciousness, reason, spirit and finally absolute spirit. How this journey proceeds from an earlier stage to a later one is when an earlier stage finds in itself contradictions or oppositions which resolves, leading to a more advanced stage, which in turn runs into contradictions which then resolves, leading to a new stage and so on.

What is Art for? Alfred North Whitehead on Truth, Beauty and Art in Adventures of Ideas

To look at the purpose of art, we first have to understand what art is. Alfred North Whitehead relates art to truth and beauty in the final section on Civilisation in his book Adventures of Ideas published in 1930. He systematically examines each of these notions, so he explains first what truth is, then what beauty is and then what art is, finally relating them to the purpose of art. This essay will recount his theory of these notions but first, some words on the man.

What is Everything?

Democritus: What is everything?

Socrates: Everything is a thing. Nothing is also a thing.

Democritus: Why is everything a thing?

Socrates: Everything is a thing and are things.

First, let’s tackle how everything is a thing, i.e. how everything is one single thing. Everything contains many things, in fact every single thing. What makes everything one thing is that it is a concept that covers, that encompasses, that is used to conceive of all things, including the concept itself.

This means that everything is a thing, including (the concept of) everything.

Democritus: But isn’t the word ‘thing’ used only to refer to material things?

Socrates: Things can be material things or immaterial things.

Socrates’s Last Days

Credit: Eric Gaba, Wikimedia Commons user: Sting

I want to tell you a great story of heroism, bravery and tragedy. It is the story of Socrates’s last days, which took place about 2,300 years ago and remains an important touchstone for the history of philosophy today.

An Introduction to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

Immanuel Kant is an 18th century philosopher, belonging to the era of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment is an intellectual epoch where reason triumphed over faith. Kant is arguably one of the greatest intellectuals of all time, and his Critique of Pure Reason is considered his magnum opus. It was published when he was 57, so he had a whole lifetime to meditate upon the nature of reason. So don’t expect the book to be an easy read. It is precisely for this reason that an introduction to it can be helpful, to understand what his project is about and its broad strokes.

Kant wrote Critique to enquire into the nature of reason, laying the path for that by first examining how we perceive and understand things.

A Brief Meditation on Time

From the very beginning, when we emerge crying and screaming into the world, the clock starts ticking, its hands sweeping through space, marking our moments, and counting down towards the moment time will end for us.

Even before our birth, others, our mothers, our fathers, the doctors, our siblings, have already started counting our time for us, from conception to emergence. And then after to begin worrying for us, that our time here will be all too brief, and for some, all too long.

The clock, the calendar, they rule our lives. We worry when we have too little time, we are in too much of a rush; we fret when we have too much time, feeling as if we are stuck in a waiting room of our lives waiting for life itself to “begin,” when it has really carried on unabated. In our youths, we think we have forever, even if there are those who do die young. In our old age, we grieve over what time we have left. Yet if we allow ourselves to be ruled by the clock, we find ourselves almost as if we wish each event to be over so we can hurry on to the next. Yet if we don’t abide by time, we find ourselves missing opportunities, trains, examinations and appointments.

Superabundance and Excess: Is Bataille’s Conception of General Economy Credible?

Georges Bataille’s concept of general economy strikes at the core of our prevailing understanding of economics. He posits two contrasting premises in the first volume of The Accursed Share (TAS):

1) The condition of the world is one of superabundance rather than scarcity. Bataille proposes that all life and wealth derive from the sun, which is effectively an unlimited source of energy. In the general economy, what the world faces is not scarcity, as foundationally assumed in conventional economics, but superabundance. While pockets of poverty can be found, the world on aggregate has an excess of wealth.

2) However, there are limits to growth, because there is only so much space on the planet which life can occupy. Once the limits are reached, no further growth is possible. Hence the excess cannot be used for growth; it cannot be saved and it needs to be expended. The choice we have is to either expend it well or badly.

Is Bataille’s conception of general economy credible? In addition to examining these two premises, this paper investigates Bataille’s method to reconceptualise how we can understand the world by adopting a radical position on political economy so as to derive novel insights. Specifically, I analyse his idea of limits and savings, his empirical approach and his critique of scarcity and utility in conventional economics. I contrast his views of capitalism and potlatch with Jean-Joseph Goux’s critique that Bataille’s solution of consumption has already come to pass in today’s capitalist economies and George Gilder’s notion that giving is central to entrepreneurial capitalism, and propose a possible Bataillean response. I then consider Andrew Abbott’s extension to Bataille’s theory of general economy, which Abbott draws on to argue that problems of excess are fundamentally different from problems of scarcity, hence requiring their own solutions. I conclude by assessing whether Bataille has been successful in challenging conventional economics and the applicability of TAS to political economy today.

Leibniz Explains How to Become Happy

Human beings are never at rest, not even in sleep, according to Gottfried Leibniz. We are constantly bombarded by small perceptions, most of which we are unaware of, which incline us to certain actions. Because our nature wants to be more at ease, these small perceptions give rise to small impulses to overcome small obstacles. This overcoming gives us small joys, which can translate into a larger happiness if we use our experience and our reason to guide us in deciding which small impulses to allow and which to forbid.

Leibniz’s Solution to the Mind-Body Problem

The aim of philosophy, according to Leibniz, is to explain how God does things, “how things are brought about by the Divine Wisdom in conformity with the particular concept of the subject.”[1] In his Discourse on Metaphysics, he already establishes that each substance’s nature already contains all the predicates[2] and is like a “mirror” of all that is in the universe.[3] Leibniz explicitly assumes that God is the creator of all things and the universe – He is the “architect of the machine of the universe,”[4] and being omniscient, knows all the predicates contained in each thing including the future, which is hence predetermined.

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

Each substance is acting in its own “sphere”[5] but yet there seems to be an “appearance”[6] of communication between things. For instance, when ball A hits ball B on a billiard table, it seems to cause ball B to move, even though based on Leibniz’s metaphysics, both balls are independent, each doing what it does because it is already predetermined in its nature rather than because of a causal interaction with each other. Leibniz attempts to explain how this is possible in his article, A New System of the Nature and the Communication of Substances. He then builds on this theory to explain the mind-body problem, or how can an immaterial soul and a material body of a person interact.

Leibniz’s Solution to the Problem of Evil

Leibniz believes that God is omniscient. An omniscient god would know everything about his creations including the future, which is hence predetermined. Leibniz then has to explain how evil, which is seen everywhere in the world, is possible under such a perfect God. 

 

Is Artificial Consciousness Possible?

Image by Comfreak from Pixabay

Can machines become conscious or is artificial consciousness (AC) an impossible dream? If AC is possible, would we want to create it? This paper will attempt to answer the first question using Hartmann’s framework developed in New Ways of Ontology, where he carries out an ontological investigation into the structure of the world. I will contrast his four ontological strata with potentially fruitful approaches in the development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and consider what is needed to remain on the right track. The answer to the second question depends on the first – to aim for AC or to avoid it, we need to understand whether and how it can happen.

Kant’s Solution to Hume’s Problem

Kant aims to put metaphysics on a firm footing to make it a science in his Critique of Pure Reason. However, Hume’s attack on cause and effect suggests metaphysics is not possible. Hence Kant needs to solve the Humean challenge.

Does Everything Have a Reason?

Do you agree that everything has a reason? That there are no brute, unexplainable facts? Then you believe in the Principle of Sufficient Reason or PSR.