Negative and positive reason-
attitudes towards dead end-
In the dialectical process when a beginning point advances towards the end, resolving what it is already, perspectives of the observer towards the void, the void is the end of a thought process where the end returns to the beginning, proving or demonstrating, the void or the singularity in an object can either be taken first, as a negative reason in the sense that the when a contradiction occurs, (add whitehead rota) the thought process takes that contradiction as a conclusion of the thought process and settles in its indeterminacy or a complexity of thought can be taken as positive reason that when a contradiction is met, reaching a dead end, that is seen as the potential for change. When the wall of a maze is hit, negative reason stays there and takes that as the feature characterizing the whole maze and by virtue of that makes the assumption that the maze is actually a trap whereas positive reasons sees that route as a dead end and catalogues that in its memory as a place not to go again and then proceed to go on different routes, moreover positive reasons can assume that if the maze as a whole is a dead end as negative reason suggests, then perhaps the very assumption that the maze is a maze is questionable, a maze in the positive sense becomes a puzzle needing to be solved
Reason vs understanding
Hegel says that when the understanding falls into a contradiction, it returns back to reason, which is in the world, for the resolution. The difference between reason and the understanding Reason belongs to the world and the understanding belongs to the particular human mind. But in belonging to the world, reason is present in the particular, and in being in the particular, the understanding needs to conceive the world. The understanding being the function of the particular mind still makes it an objective phenomena in nature, it is not something deatched from nature, but is a specific advanced stage in nature. Now reason is the substance of nature, the process and the acivity of nature. 2.12.Squaring the Circle- The Golden Contradiction The particular condition consciousness finds itself about the generality of things is as followed: we at this particular moment developed a face which looks out into the world. Out of our face looks out consciousness. Consciousness looks out through a body into an environment, the body is an external object in the environment, but both body and environment are internal within consciousness because they are disclosed within the conception that views body as external from environment. Consciousness however looks out of a body to conceive other bodies external to each other, but what these bodies external to each other have in common is that they have coming out of them a consciousness that nothing is external to, consciousness comes out through a body but there is no source to which it comes out from, it comes out to conceive something external but it cannot conceive the source from which it was external to as coming out from. Reason is distinguished from the understanding in two ways; first, reason exists naturally in the world external from the understanding, and second reason is the final resolution that the understanding arrives at. The understanding stands in the awkward position mediating the reason natural to the world, and the reason adopted as the formal system by the intellect. To understand the difference between natural logic and formal logic, let us turn to how the nature of the contradiction is conceived differently. In formal logic the understanding looks for the contradiction, finds it, and then flags it. However the understanding does not, by its own accord, solve the contradiction but instead sees it as a dead-end and ceaselessly looks for another contradiction, finds it, and then goes on to search for further contradictions. Formal logic in this sense is efficient in discovering the contradiction but it does not solve it because it sees the contradiction as something wholly independent from the resolution, in other words it is outside its solution, so that it just go outside the contradiction to find the solution somewhere else, but in doing so it only stumbles upon another contradiction because the initial contradiction itself is that a solution is supposedly found outside of it. The contradiction is seen as abstract bearing no concrete reality, it is seen as a problem in the head, and that the materialist look to the object exhibited to them empirically, and say that the solution always lays there. But the object itself is the route from where the intellect derived its contradictions in the first place. The reason why formal logic sees the contradiction as purely abstract is because this is related to the objective of the science, which is made to dispense with its subject matters in the abstract. Formal logic and natural Logic differ in this respect because the latter precisely answers the concern of the former. When logic is seen as something natural, the contradiction is not seen as an error devoid of content, i.e., matter, it is rather seen as the very concrete form that the material substance assumes. Let’s take for instance one of Aristotle’s favorite examples, and one of the oldest ancient contradictions: squaring the circle:
There is the common implication in the sciences that a contradiction is something that should be resolved, implied in this is the assumption that the solution is external and distinct from the problem. The science of metaphysics looks at this assumption and claims a logical error there, that is, the solution is not to find an answer that gets away from the problem, but rather the contradiction is itself the resolution. In other words, the contradiction includes all the aspects that explain it. When we conceive a problem in nature, the aspect of that problem that forces a limit of knowledge, is what discloses all the ingredients for the conflict to be known. In mathematics a solution involves “showing your work” and proving the calculus that already involves the solution in the given formula that needs to be used to “prove”. For example, squaring the circle is a contradiction it is impossible to construct a square with the same area of a given circle by using only a finite number of steps. this constitutes a limit for knowledge because you can never really fit one shape in the other without one being identical to the other and therefore loosing the distinction between both shapes. But the solution of this contradiction is not to make one shape fit into the other because than you would not have the distinction between both shapes. The solution is rather the demonstration or the “pointing out” the qualities of each shape that makes it unable to be the other. For instance, no matter how close you bring the curvature of the circle to the right angle of the triangle, there will always be space between the curve and the angle. The understanding looks at what is obviously true about the nature of the circle in relation to the square. That is, the quantitative properties of each geometric form are inconsistent and in this way they are contradictory. From the external point of view the understanding is right to say that the circle and the square do not match. The external relations between the circle and the square portray a contradictory relationship. What the understanding fails to recognize in the first place is the necessary internal relations that makes the circle and the square assume their respective form so as to then contradict each other. The understanding does not even ask the very basic question of what exactly is a circle that makes it contradictory with a square, and takes its given nature for granted. Knowing the logical properties of a circle indicates that the triangle and square follow as the next logical forms. Natural logic sees that the very structure of the circle in relation to the square constitutes the geometric form of matter itself. The contradiction in the realm of nature is no error; it is instead the aesthetic ideal of matter. In this way logic in its inherent nature is geometric, and this geometric nature of logic defines the fundamental form of matter as the quality that is able to take on qualities. In the realm of nature, squaring the circle is a concrete contradiction meaning that is it the logical structure necessary for matter to be a quality. The reason why squaring the circle is a contradiction that has not been solved from the ancient times until now should indicate that it is not meant to be provide a resolution beyond itself, but rather that the contradictions itself in its respective way is the resolution. Squaring the circle is the primary ratio describing the quantitative interception of form and matter. The ratio between form and matter indicates the primary structure of the form required for all proceeding forms. Squaring the circle is the initial relation taking on form that enables all further relations to take on form. This fact is evident from the nature of the internal relation constituting the circle in transition to the square. The circle is the necessary self-relation, and the identity that must be true at the same time anything external can be said to be true. Whereas the square, or more primarily the triangle, is the external relations of the circle itself. In the next chapter, it is important to explain exactly what the laws of thought mean, before we can see how the logical principles take on the geometric forms that are essential for the continuity of material substances. Chapter three will involve actual demonstrations of what has been discussed thus far. The organic circle Understanding and reason- connection between theoretical and concrete (connect this with the circle as light) Knowing the difference between the faculty of the understanding and reason in the world is one of the most important distinctions in science. The understanding is the faculty of judgment and representation. It is analytical in that it separates a general whole into particular properties and assigns such properties as abstractions. The representations of the understanding are not wrong in depicting the nature of reason, however its depictions are limited. That is, it is limited to abstractions. This means that the understanding is only able to grasp the theoretical conception of a concrete phenomenon. In the same sense, the organs of sensation capture the sensible forms, the so called concrete properties of the substance, but that is also limited because whether we see, feel, taste something just means there are experiences of substances that are perceptual, composite, sensory, which are all properties of substance that indicates it’s real existence, “real” since the very meaning of real means to possess properties. We still require an explanation of those properties. The difficulty rises when science aims to synthesize the abstract concepts of pure reason with the concrete modes of sensations. The difficulty lies in the inability to dispense with sensation and reason. The inability is grounded in the misapprehension of the relationship between the abstract and the concrete. The limitation of human cognition lies in the aspiration for forcing sensation onto reason and reason onto sensation. Human cognation fails when it wants to feel the abstract concepts in the same way sensation feels the concrete forms, and wants to understand the concrete forms in the same way reason understands the abstract concepts. This way of dispensing with the modes of cognition is the opposite way the two ought to be related. They are indispensable in this way Now our senses see a limited conception of the phenomenon in its concrete form, whereas our intellect sees the absolute nature of it without its concreteness. There is a knowledge inaccessible to us in the fullest sense, namely, what is the concrete nature of the abstract? This is slowly being discovered by science and making accessible to our senses natures d a phenomenon beyond the ordinary natural ability of our senses to comprehend by itself. Take for example the common statement that “there is no such thing as a circle in nature”. This conclusion is a fallacy produced from the confusion between the understanding and reason. The circle as it is understood by the understanding, is a geometric shape. That itself explains a relation, or rather it is an abstraction of an activity. The form it portrays however precisely only explains content of this activity. The circle as an abstract shape does not portray the concrete nature of essential relation it is depicting. Yet this does not mean that the circle has no place in nature. In fact the opposite true. If the circle is an abstraction from a fundamental relation, it necessarily has a fundamental role in nature. Except not in the way it appears to the understanding as the circle. The concrete form circle in nature does not look like the same way the understanding depicts it. This is why we have to be cautious of the representations produced by the understanding. For accuracy and precision, we need to dispense with the truth in the abstract and contrast that with the truth in the concrete sought out by the senses, and formulate a snythesis that captures a closer approximation of the true form of the phenomenon. For example, while it is true that there is no such thing as a circle in nature as represented by the understanding, there is however an organic element that is characterized by the nature of the circle as depicted by the understanding. This fundamental element for instance is light. The circle in nature is light. We simply have to examine the nature of the photon to make the connection. The nature of the photon and the nature of a circle, the nature being the fundamental representations of the activities that makes each thing a circle or light. Photon exhibits both wave and particle properties. This is the same as the circle consists of a point leading into a line in the plain. Light in its pure form is a spherical phenomenon. One that takes its in breakable identity as its own externality, so that its identity is that which is always external from it. This is why it defines the basic nature of matter. It is the limit of matter that nothing can go beyond, because the second a different properties in light takes on an external relation, that external relation is met externally with the identity of light itself. So to speak, light is that which always keeps a thing identifiable. It is the ultimate observer per say. Skepticism Scepticism in its positive form is an initial route to true knowledge but at the same time that route comes with it the hesitation and fear of venturing into truth because the truth involves the same principle of indeterminacy which it is trying to escape from. the means for its conception has the same variable that lead it out. skepticism is vulgar when it assumes that because external experiences conforms to “my” internal thought, then it convinces itself that its speculation somehow forms the world. This results in mysticism, which is a word used as a rule to designate what is mysterious and incomprehensible. This is used as grounds for the understanding to conjure up notions of reality, which is positive because it is a generator of ideas, but it does not come with a self-confirming mechanism so that whether such ideas are truely reflective of reality or not is unknowable. mysticism seems not to concern itself with demonstrating truth but only speaking what it feels to be true otherwise it moves beyond the place of dealing with the mysterious and into the realm of what is known. (Logic 4;16;05) 4;11;50 (add notes on Hume audiobook here) There are various types of Skepticism. Skepticism should not only be looked at as the doctrine of doubt because in the first instance, the skeptic has no doubt that there is nothing aside from what he doubts, and that it logically makes sense that the skeptic doubts his own doubt because his doubt is self-applicable. It is at the same time is self-contradictory because the doubt is assumed to be absolute and should it be doubted as a beginning point. He who doubts must clings to the hope that his doubt may be resolved because the ability to doubt rests on the positive grounds from which it can be produced. That to resolve the doubt is by no means the end goal of skepticism but the resolution already exists beforehand and its doubt is the recognition of it (doubt is to confirm the truth). Skepticism properly explained demonstrates that the ever continuity of thought is built on a foundation of truth and doubt is the efficient realization of that. But in modern times, thinkers like Hume and others, expounding the dogmatic skepticism of Stoicism and Epicurus, deny the truth of reality beyond the immediately sensible. Dogmatic skepticism accounts the world as being a phenomena derived from the observer’s understanding, and they stop short here and do nothing to explain how the understanding of the observer is a phenomena of the world. The world therefore becomes a segment derived from the subjective understanding pertaining to individuals, and in what way we can make objective facts about our own thinking? That is only a byproduct of personal understandings and not in any way explain how the thought of the individual can expand beyond him to produce his realization of it. (?) In this way dogmatic skepticism takes the portion of thought that is concerned with critical thinking as the first way by which the world produces knowledge. Denying the objective truth of the world in this way is assumed to be the first and positive principle and the actual truth as it exists objectively in the world is taken to be the negative principle following from its denial. The dogmatic skeptic mistakes the true value of his result when he supposes that the negation pure and simple is first, and then knowledge follows after. This misses the true value of the negation that it contains what it results from, the positive, which makes part of its own nature the logical necessity that it is undeniably true and then negates that while maintaining the ideal that it is true. Skepticism in its positive form is the speculative method which apprehends the oppositions of principles as an original source marked by an integration of inverse principles that transition into each other. The result of dialectic is positive because its definite content begins off not as empty nothing, is the integration between inverse propositions (4;14;00). —-