No More Learning

Once the attempt to define the material as the extended is frustrat- ed, one could want to define it as the sensible; but that would be to incur once again in the maneuver 'we only know the sensible', which has been deemed a fraudulent relative of the liar's paradox. In addi- tion, as curious data, the sensible does not have a common sensible denominator or referent to the object; smells, sounds, and colors are among the most heterogeneous things we may find. The only common denominator between them is that they are perceived by the subject in a non-intellectual operation. Therefore, the general expression 'the sensible' does not have meaning without reference to the subject --that very same subject that they want to scare away. In sum, the material can only be defined as "the other of the spirit".
We have referred to the frustrated attempt to define it as that 'which occupies space'. It is obvious that such pseudo-definition does not tell us what the material is in itself, but only attends to an extrinsic relation that leaves us as ignorant as before. Since there is no intrinsic content, we would be rightly entitled to say that nothingness occupies space. The authors or this pseudo-definition have to provide a content if they want to distinguish between the material and nothingness. But there is something even worse: they would have to define space, an enterprise in which they fail because space is not an empirical data, and hence they cannot point out something with the finger as if that was a defi- nition. If they define space as "what is occupied by matter", the circu- larity would be outrageous, and neither we nor they would know what the material is. Other aims to define space employ the word extension, but we already made clear that they cannot define it.
Leaving aside the variant of coup d'e? tat that says 'we refer to the ma- terial', let us now move to the more interesting one: 'we refer to the real, we are not interested in the subject. '
The solution to this problem, which is, by the way, of utmost im- portance, lies in clarifying what does the expression 'the real' mean.
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Otherwise, neither the authors of the coup d'e? tat nor we would know what they are talking about. All metaphysics, considered as science of being, is here at stake. Scholastic Philosophers also believed that they could understand being without studying the subject, a supposition that makes their entire system perishable.
It would be a relapse, of course, to define the real as 'the empirical'. We refuted those who adopt that position. Electrons and electromag- netic fields are not empirical and yet the promoters of this coup d'e? tat consider these organs to be real. Not to mention that there are empiri- cal data in hallucinations and these very gentlemen consider that no reality corresponds to those data: it is clear that even they distinguish between reality and the empirical data. Consequently, it is false that they understand the sensible.
When they say that they refer to the real and that the subject does not interest them, it is obvious that they are uncritically assuming the recurrent and frivolous conception according to which the real can be defined independently from the self. This definition revolts furiously against itself as a tornado. They are actually defining the real in func- tion of the self. The more independently the real is defined from the self, the more dependent the former becomes to the latter. Without the content of the 'self' it is impossible that something 'distinct from the self has meaning. ' "For the self is that which explains and has a mean- ing by itself. " (A? sth II 435).
There is a very similar definition, which deserves to be commented here because it detonates, with all its explosiveness, the problem we are dealing with. It states: the real is what is outside the mind, outside of thought.
The time has arrived to settle this question once and for all: since thought is neither something spatial nor a tub nor a salon, the expression 'outside of thought' lacks any kind of meaning.
Hegel says: "it is not outside of thought, but the thought from out- side of thought". (GP III 145).
It is useless for them to say that what they mean is 'outside the head', for the encephalic mass and the hypothalamus are inside the head, and these gentlemen consider them to be real. Going back to the first defi- nition, he who defines the real as what is distinguished from the self: does he suppose that the self is real or unreal? In the first case, it is false because the self is not distinguished from the self and yet it is real. In the second one, the definition thereby advanced tries to define the real
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in terms of the unreal, which is an absurd, for the definiendum would lack any characteristic content of the real, and we would still not know what "the real" means. It is obvious that the real would have to be de- fined in function of the real and not vice versa.
But against all their intentions, this recurrent conception hits the mark with the main point: it is impossible to define the real indepen- dently from the self. If the characteristic content of the real is contained in the definiendum due to the relation with the self, the only content possible is this: the self.
We could have conjectured this even a priori: there is nothing more real to the self than the self itself. Which other meaning could the terms 'real' or 'being' have other than 'self'? The first being we know is known to us by means of introspection: "Because in thinking the spirit knows itself as truly existent and real" (GP I 377).
This conclusion should not surprise us, for the present chapter has demonstrated that the cause of the concepts is not exterior and that their origin is not an empirical data. Moreover, the meaning of 'being' is not an empirical data. Neither color nor smell means 'being'. Hegel says: "one cannot see or smell the being". (GP I 517).
[. . . ] the distinction between he who feels and what he has felt, between the touching subject and the touched object, as well as the relation which con- sists in that the object cause an impression in the subject, and this is affected by the object and the object is cause or stimulus, etcetera. None of these distinctions belongs to the point of view of sensation itself, but they all be- long to a posterior reflection of the soul when it has determined itself as self and spirit - [. . . ] this a distinction that does not concern sensation as such (BS 542).
Our next chapter will turn back again to the subject of 'being', but here it is fit to say that Thomas Aquinas had already noticed that being is not an empirical data: "Although there is being in the sensible things, being as such, the formality of being, is not apprehended by the senses [. . . ], since they only apprehend the sensible accidents". (I Sent 19, 5, 1 ad 6um).
Kant also noticed this: "the being of a real object outside of me [. . . ] is never given by perception, but can only be added by thought to per- ception" (KRV A367).
Likewise, Aristotle said: "nor indeed can any of the 'intelligibles', e. g. Unity or Being, be an element; for these apply in every case, even to composite things". (Met XII 1070b 7).
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And Plato as well stated: "Then knowledge is not in the sensations, but in the process of reasoning about them; for it is possible, apparently, to apprehend being and truth by reasoning, but not by sensation. " (Teethetus 186 D). Also Fedon 65 C, and Fedro 247 C
All this authors only base themselves on intellectual honesty of analysis: should we strictly refer to empirical data only, we would have never come up with the idea of being, with the idea that something is real. Of course the object is real; but the senses do not provide us with such metaphysical and perceptive ideas.
It is inevitable to remember the warning we made against the stub- born illusion of those who believe that, for a concept to take form in the mind, it is enough that the object that lies before us is as that concept describes it.
There is no harm in saying that also the empiricists tell us that sensibility does not capture the being as such. For instance, Hume said: ". . . tho' every impression and idea we remember be considered as existent, the idea of existence is not deriv'd from any particular impression. " (Treatise I, II, v i).
Believing the dogma that one can only demonstrate by means of empirical impressions, Popper says: "My thesis is that realism is nei- ther demonstrable nor refutable. " (1973, 38). The idea of Popper is the following one: if the real as such were a sensible data, we could dem- onstrate by sensible data that a reality corresponds to our subjective impressions.
Carnap is also explicit: ". . . the ascription of the property 'real' to any substance (be it matter, energy, electromagnetic field, or what- ever) cannot be derived from any experience and hence would be metaphysical. " (1969, 287)
In short, because the character of 'the real' is not an empirical data, the meaning of this term can only be obtained by introspection and identified with the existence itself of the subject. Real means: like the subject. What happens is that those, who believe that by a coup d'e? tat they only refer to the real in order to do away with the subject, end up emitting meaningless sounds if they do not define real, and if they do define it, they flagrantly return to the subject.
In the light of this result, the authors who evade the subject will decide to take a strategic turn of one hundred eighty degrees and deny that the human mind is capable of knowing reality. This negation is void skepticism, the most modern shape that the Kantian thesis of
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the thing-in-itself has adopted. Their theses are 'there are no absolute truths' or 'everything is uncertain'.
We already said there is no reason to make a fuss about the second formulation: if science is quitted (which, by definition, is true knowl- edge), then the subject is avoidable. Besides, one should notice that the thesis 'everything is uncertain' is one of those funny propositions that, in order to have meaning and be understandable, needs to be false. In fact, the word 'uncertain' can only have meaning by contrast with something certain we know: therefore, automatically, not everything is uncertain. We would have never called something uncertain if it was not by contrast with what is certain. The thesis 'all is hypothetical' would also be uncertain, for hypothetical is something that is put to test in order to see if it is true or false, but a part of a test consists in a comparison with something that is not hypothetical, because, without something that is true, we would embark upon an indefinite process and the expression 'put to test' would lack any meaning.
The first formulation, 'there are no absolute truths', is more famous. In our first chapter we examined half-skepticism and we saw that scientific skepticism is the only radical one because it is the skepticism that thinks. However, the skepticism with which we are dealing now, although it believes itself to be very radical, is in fact an intellectual suicide and thus null and void. One must notice that, in real life, no one holds it, because every person is convinced of many absolute truths in the practice. But in theory this skepticism affirms with one hand that which the other denies, and hence it certainly does not say anything and becomes invalid. It affirms to know a truth about our cognitive capacity, and yet denies that truth is knowable. Formally speaking, the thesis 'there are no absolute truths' refutes itself: if it is an abso- lute truth, there are absolute truths and hence the content is false; if not, then its content may be false and it could be the case that there are absolute truths.
Such an opponent would try to elude us by saying: 'there is no abso- lute truth other than this one'. But he necessarily presupposes that I am capable of understanding what the word 'truth' means. Necessarily, he would be affirming that 'I am capable of distinguishing between my proposition and other propositions which I say are not absolute truths'. Hence there is another pair of absolute truths which are the conditions of possibility of the first one and which make it false. And let us not even discuss ulterior implications, for they practically encompass all
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the absolute truths of logic. For instance, if two propositions should be distinguished, they need to have a different subject, a different verb or a different predicate. Or even a more fundamental truth: there can be no proposition which is simultaneously true and false.
The only resort of this skepticism would be not to speak. But whatever is not expressed does not exist either to the theory or, in general, to the rest of men. It is void and null.
Hegel already told us: "So soon man speaks and there is a concept there" (GP I 336).
Notice that even one needs concepts; otherwise in order to deny something, one does not know what is denied. Even Carnap, who de- nies the cognoscibility of something real distinct from the empirical data, needs that this 'real' has a meaning; otherwise, all his famous theory about pseudo-problems is a confusing aggregate which lacks intelligibility.
8. meditioniSm
By the way, the closest thing to not speaking is not to hurl words but numbers in front of a phenomenon. And meditionism consists in that: it states that anything that is not measurable does not exist to science. "Mathematical knowledge displays proofs of the present object as such, but not as such object was understood; it lacks the concept com- pletely" (GP III 187).
Taking the meditionist thesis in a coarse and literal sense, it would be objectively ridiculous that a scientist, instead of telling us what he is supposed to --a task for which he would need concepts--, starts taking measurements left and right like a mathematician and babbling out numbers which do not make any sense. Anyone can start to count with all accuracy how many hairs does a cat have, how many times does the public sneeze at a concert, how many hats do people in the street have, and how many volutes does the smoke of a cigar make. But none of those things are science. It is clear that identifying science with measurements is, without further ado, mistaken. Not even if we add some systematization this would become science: I can count how many bald man there are in concerts and tennis games and how many hairs gray and brown cats have. I would be systematizing and taking measurements, but not making science.
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We shall look more closely upon three things about the meditionist theses. First, why they say what they say; second, what is what they formally say; and third, what do they actually mean to say. The three things turn out to be untenable.
Why do they say what they can be explained by the fact that one or- dinarily believes that the measurable is an empirical data. One simple (but important) reflection upon the most common thing to measure, namely, longitude, (which, by the way, falls into the definition of the other three basic measurements of Physics), suffices to show that such a belief is an illusion. As an empirical data, the longitude of this table depends of the distance and point of view from which one observes it. If I observe the table at 50 meters of distance the empirical data of the longitude would be completely different from the one I could obtain by an observation at twenty centimeters of distance. Since the distance and the angle can be infinitely varied, the number of empirical data which allegedly concretize the longitude of this table is infinite. Those are the only data which are completely empirical. The question imme- diately rises: to which of them do the meditionists refer? They answer: we refer to the longitude itself. My answer to this would: well said, but that is not an empirical data.
The reflection we just made is so obvious that, putting things the other way around, the measurement could seem to be more like a des- perate attempt to avoid the empirical data, something very similar to the absolute space of Newton. Naturally, this attempt fails. Meditionists would tell us that 'objective' longitude can be inferred with all accu- racy if we investigate the distance and angle at which we observe them, and thus we can do away with the innumerable optical appearances. But they forget that this distance is also a longitude, and that, in order to measure it 'objectively', one would need again to find out at which distance are we looking at it, and things would go on like this in indefi- nitum. It follows that the so-called objective longitude is not inferable.
And let us not forget the fact that the aimed objectivity would be to put everything in meters, but, what does 'meter' mean? If the meter of Paris, at once with all the other bodies, was ten thousand times bigger or smaller, we would not notice anything and there would be no dif- ference. One may then ask himself: what does the aimed 'objectivity' consist in?
Both the empiricity and the objectivity of the measurable are a de- ceit; and that is the reason of existance of the meditionist thesis.
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Let us examine now what it formally says: only what is measurable exists. In its excluding sense, this can be formulated the following way: 'there is no thing that is not measurable'. This thesis is the most typi- cal example of propositions which are essentially indemonstrable and hence unscientific, for its corroboration would suppose to cover inch by inch the universe, across past, present and future, in order to prove that there is no single object which is not measurable. In its assertive sense, 'all what is measurable exists', is an affirmative universal propo- sition, which only needs a singular negative case in order to be proven wrong. Now, that case exists, and we have seen it: the surface. If there is one thing that is easily measurable that thing is a surface; one mul- tiplies the base by the height and one ends up having the results in square meters. However, contemporary physics know well that sur- faces do not exist; subatomic particles, reduced to wave packets, do not have surfaces. Consequently, meditionism is false both in its including and its assertive sense.
What the meditionists really mean is that they refer to the mea- surable based on an arbitrary decision. But well, even that is false. Evidently, it is not the same to them to have four units of time than four units of mass. What are measurable are the four units, and in that there is no difference. The difference is that in the former case we deal with time and in the latter with mass. That difference is not measurable but intelligible, and yet it is a difference of utmost importance to them. Therefore, it is false that they rely on what is measurable.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? chapter iii
The Subject
? ? We will expose in this chapter, three characterizations of the subject. The second will simply be a deeper analysis of the first one (which is the most decisive one), and the third will make explicit what was contained in the former two. In fact, the definition of the subject is one and only, but one cannot say everything with a single catch of breath.
Once we provide the two first characterizations, we will answer two apparent objections, one that is based on the concept of substance and another based on the concept of time, both which will be useful for us in order to weigh up the whole dimension of what we exposed. Likewise, with the same purpose, once we provide the third characterization, we will analyze three objections, one based on causality, another based on the ideas of natural and physical law, and another one still, based on the idea of necessity.
1. concept
Here is the biggest discovery that man has ever made in his entire his- tory: spirit is thought.
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We do not say that the spirit has thoughts, as if the spirit consisted in one thing and had accidentally thoughts, or as if it were a non-thinking substratum, consisting in who-knows-what which was suddenly struck by thoughts. Neither have we meant to say that the spirit consists in its capacity or power of having thoughts. What is absolutely decisive is to realize that spirit consists in 'realizing' things, in being aware, and in thinking. Spirit is nothing aside from its own experiences.
Spirit consists in that ethereal and ideal thing which the idiots call 'mere ideas'. A couple whose love is not reduced to sex knows well that their reciprocal exchange of experiences, their communion, their marvel- ous mutual understanding and human flourishment are 'pure ideas'; but for this couple all of that is more real than the floor and the walls that surround them. That precisely is the spirit. Materialists are not mistaken when they say that the spirit is mere ideas; they are mistaken in saying that the matter to which they refer is more real than those ideas. The mere fact that they cannot define matter without the spirit demonstrates which of these two things is more real. In general, the objection against the thin- ness of the consistence of the spirit would only have strength if the objec- tors could indicate, independently from the spirit, what are they speaking about when they say matter. But we have seen that they cannot do this.
This unmatchable discovery was made by Aristotle: "being is to be- come aware or to think" (Eth. Nic. IX, iX, 9); "the mind is nothing before it thinks" (De anima 429b 32), "it has no actual existence before thinking" (ibid. 429a 24)
Also Descartes, independently from Aristotle, made this discovery. Hegel summarizes it thus: "his principle was: cogito, ergo sum, which cannot be understood as a syllogism in which the ergo denoted the con- sequence of the premises. It means rather: thinking and being are the same; it is a principle that is still valid today" (WG 915).
One must notice that, in fact, Descartes explicitly denies that his ergo indicates a deduction or an inference, for those operations would sup- pose premises. Hence, as Hegel correctly interprets it, Descartes can only be referring to the identity of thought and being.
But it was Hegel who demonstrated the truth of this discovery, and who gave it its authentic dimension in the formulations we are about to examine --the expression we have given it up to this moment, is still too poor--; Hegel was the first one to realize the importance of this for the sciences, because only on the grounds of this discovery it is possible to give meaning to words.
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"The first thing one has to do with the concept is to stop believing that the concept is something we have, something we do within us [. . . ] What we call soul is the concept; the concept as such becomes existing and it is spirit and consciousness" (PR I 220).
"What we call soul, what we call self, is the concept itself in its exis- tence (A? sth I 175).
"The concept, insofar it reaches an existence which is free in itself, does not consist in any other thing that in the self itself and in pure self- consciousness. To be sure, I have concepts, determined concepts, but the self is the pure concept itself that has reached existence as concept" (WL II 220).
This is essential: if ideas and concepts are not to be identified with nothingness (something which would be utterly absurd), if some reality should be undoubtedly granted to them, then ideas and concepts must necessarily be identical with the reality itself of the spirit; otherwise, it would be impossible for the self to be aware of them. It would be im- possible for the self to think if thinking itself (the ideas) was not iden- tified with the self. If, in the operation of understanding, the self was not identified with the concept, the former would need within itself another concept to understand the former concept, but then the first concept would be superfluous. "Self-consciousness is the category that becomes itself conscious" (PG 284).
If we remained in the mere imaginary representation of the self --as imagined by our ordinary conceptions--, it is a simple thing which is also called a soul, to which the concept is added as if it were a possession or a property. This imaginative representation that refuses to understand the self and the concept cannot be useful in order to make easy or possible the intellection of the concept (WL II 222s).
"In rational psychology, which is an abstract metaphysics, the soul is considered not as spirit but as a merely immediate being, as a soulthing. " (WL I 220)
That thing which spiritualists called the soul, insofar it did not con- sist in the activity itself of thinking and understanding, was not spirit: it was a bizarre species of matter they had the whim to call immaterial. They could not define it, they did not have the concept of it, and they only imagined it. Accordingly, it was extended, for only the extended is imaginable and hence was not spirit. For that reason Hegel says that
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they refuse to understand and remain only in the imagination. The mo- ment one says that he understands (and is not imagining things) is the moment he knows that the spirit consists precisely in that.
"The concept of self, as the act by which the thinking itself becomes an object for itself, and the object as the one self, are absolutely the same; without that act the self is nothing. " (GP III 427)
A substance without act or before the act, which consisted in some- thing different than the act itself of understanding, would be what is vulgarly called matter and would not be spirit.
"The spirit is that; not being immediately, but only as an object to itself" (PR III 14).