In
last week's class we discussed how "Sense Certainty" failed, by the
very fact that, in describing itself, it uses universals in their least
descriptive form. By using the universals as explanation for understanding, there
is an inherent failure to understand. I understood Hegel's process that guided
us to this realization and don't argue with the chain of logic. However, one
point that seems to be troublesome for me is that Hegel seems to never address
one concept. What if knowledge doesn't need to be described to another person?
Sense Certainty seems to have failed at the basic level of explanation due to
its inability to describe what it knows without using universal such as the
"here," "now," and "this.” What if Sense Certainty
knows, but needs not describe? Hegel seems to be grappling with the problem of
description and public understanding of what is known, but what if Sense
Certainty can know in that it knows and has no need to explain. For it is
explanation itself that leads to a lack of true understanding. There are some
religious groups that experience their environment and do not speak of their
understanding because it is internal, personal, and indescribable. Could it be
possible that in Hegel's attempt to extract what each stage "knows"
he fails to understand what it knows, but it still knows? Maybe the religious group
doesn't necessarily capture Sense Certainty, since part of those beliefs and
practices are what Hegel would consider to be illogical, but for me it presents
an interesting example of how there could be a failure in language to describe
what it knows and not a failure in Sense Certainty. It almost seems to be that Sense Certainty is the ability to live and sense and react in the here and now, but without having to use those terms we place on it. Although one problem with this questioning is that I fail to address is the idea of constant rediscovery and unfamiliarness of everything around us. Potentially, this idea of constant confusion, and everything being Sensed as a blur of constant rediscovery, isn't illogical, but rather a process of coming to terms with the individuality of the world. Because when I really think about it, how often are two things complete identical? This is potential a question that Hegel answers more thoroughly elsewhere, or I completely missed this point, but I wanted to address it since I didn't ask during class.
To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world looks rationally back. --G.W.F. Hegel
So one of the main claims I'm hearing in your post is that one can have knowledge of something but may not posses the ability to demonstrate their possession of that knowledge in language and to others. I agree with you that having knowledge of x does not require being able to explain/describe x TO someone else, but I don't think this is what Hegel is wanting to challenge. The problem with self certainty is that it has to use universals to even have knowledge in the first place, it must use the universal "I" to even be able to start constructing explanations or be a self-consciousness in the first place, and since it set out to not use universals it fails on its own account regardless of whether or not one needs to be able to convey ones knowledge in language to another.
ReplyDeleteI see what Ben is saying, to even have a thought one must have already reduced things to some universals (such as words), but I also think I agree with Will, not all though is conceptual thought, and not even all transferable thought is conceptual thought. What about feelings? Are they not types of thoughts in a way, and they are certainly not always conceptual. Think of an abstract painting, the artist had a certain feeling, not necessarily a named one, which transferred into the work, which then has the power to evoke a feeling in the viewer, and even if the feeling is not the same, there has none-the-less been a sort of transference.
ReplyDeleteWill raised the topic of religious groups, and that got me thinking. We have been dismissive in class of certain "mystical" religious thinking for being overly monistic. What about Zen Buddhism though? It is not overly monistic, yet it is incredibly skeptical of conceptual thought. The goal in Zen is to understand the reality beyond/above the level of the conceptual. Zen masters are known for various methods of helping students to become awakened such as hitting them with a stick, or offering them Koans which are basically paradoxical riddles designed to disturb binary logic and conceptual thinking in general, to achieve a "wordless" transmission of the Dharma (teaching). Even outside of the Zen example, is not a hit or other form of physical violence a sort of concept-less transference of information. Even if I don't realize I was hit because another person is angry (a concept), I will still feel pain (a feeling).
I guess what I am wondering is whether thought has to be conceptual, and how things like feelings or nonverbal language fit in? What about things like synesthesia or savantsism? I once saw a TV program about a man who could memorize impossibly long numbers (concepts) using what amounted to visualizations of shapes, colors, smells, and tastes (sort of concepts?).
In short, I agree with Ben. Here’s why… Hegel is talking about knowing and knowledge as it appears in consciousness. Paragraph 82 of the introduction makes this point more clear: “[…] if we call to mind the abstract determinations of truth and knowledge as they occur in consciousness. Consciousness simultaneously distinguishes itself from something, and at the same time relates itself to it, or, as it is said , this something exists for consciousness; and the determinate aspect of this relating, or of the being of something for a consciousness, is knowing.” The kind of knowledge Hegel is talking about then is only possible with a consciousness that relates and distinguishes itself from the world around it. So it is no the explanation of the unit of possible knowledge, but whether or not consciousness can interact with it. Now, I am not very confident in this following assertion, but I think Hegel’s descriptive terms regarding the “Here-ness” and “Now-ness” is how consciousness actually perceives the objects of sense certainty; in other words, it is how consciousness would relate to the object. I think Hegel’s point regarding sense certainty is ultimately that it is not possible for a consciousness. So he is not considering knowledge the way you are. The issue here is simply what we take as the definition of knowledge and which definition we find the most suitable.
ReplyDeleteI think that Hegel would disagree that there are types of knowledge that could avoid this recognition, i.e. knowledge that can be known without being recognized in some way by the consciousness.
On a personal note, I completely disagree. If you cannot explain something, then you do not really know it in the sense that whatever it is would be knowledge. This is also contingent on what you mean by “explain.” Explain in the sense of verbal exposition? Or explain in the sense of you actually understand everything, but are only capable of recognizing in your own terms? Yet, this is a rabbit-hole I’d rather not go down.
Also, your post is in black or some other dark color and that makes it hard to read. Don't know if this difficulty is purely my own, but I decided to point it out just in case it was unintentional.
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ReplyDeleteI am not going to bring up many new points. Pierce covered most of what I wanted to talk about, but I will put it in my own words.
DeleteFor me, Hegel is not merely saying that you just have to employ concepts in order to have knowledge. Rather Hegel is claiming that in the act of trying to understand the world, one inevitably finds the Sense-Certainty inadequate and therefore adopts the language of determinate objects (subjects and predicates) goes on from there. The difference is between Kant who argues from the atemporal possibility, and Hegel, who argues from temporal act of coming to need concepts.
As for the condition for communicating ideas, I think for Hegel, it is unsatisfactory for consciousness to just have knowledge it cannot have externalized or recognized in another consciousness. The test of the adequacy of knowledge is this externalizing process because for knowledge to be knowledge, that a truth in the whole truth, it must not be trapped in my particular consciousness but rather show itself as part of the whole world. In other words, there is no true private knowledge, and all those secret internal truths we call knowledge are only nominal rather than actual.
In more other words, the act of expressing knowledge is Historical in so far as the act is moving consciousness to a global way of thinking. The 'knowledge' of pure sense-certainty does nothing for consciousness if it doesn't result in motion, but for Hegel, it does result in motion because we naturally move from mere certainty to the test of the certainty. The test is negation, and we move on from this naive epistemology to this slightly less naive epistemology and metaphysics, which will in turn be negated as one after another way of thinking faces the chopping block of communication.
The communication component for Sense-certainty is when one mediates their experience in the terms of 'Here' and 'Now' and recognizes that those can be different. Now can be Night or Day. Here can be Paris or America. The Here and Now way of thinking is therefore inadequate for really knowing, that is univesalizing, what I am sensing.