No More Learning

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.
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The Subject
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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).
Definitively, the spirit is not immediate; it does not exist in the way of immediacy. Natural things are immediate; they remain in the immediate being. However, the spirit only exists in so far it suppresses its immediate be- ing. If it only is, then it is not spirit; for its being consists precisely in being mediated to itself as a spirit which is for itself. The stone is immediate, com- pleted. (PR I 70).
"I exist as a spirit insofar I have knowledge of me" (GP I 51).
"The spirit is not natural; it is only that which it knows how to do" (GP II 494).
"The spirit itself is only this perceiving of itself" (GP III 193).
"The spirit is nothing else but a producing that becomes an object for itself" (GP III 427).
"The spirit is having oneself as an object" (PR I 65). "If we do with- out thought, the soul does not longer exist" (GP II 48).
"Self means simply to think. If I say: I think, this is a tautology. The self is perfectly simple. Thinking is the way I am, and this is always so (NH 164). "
"The child is only spirit in itself; he is not a fulfilled spirit; he is not real as spirit; it only has capacity, the potentiality of being spirit, of becoming real as spirit" (PR III 204).
"Although the embryo is in itself human, he is not a man to himself; to himself he would only be once he has a formed reason that makes itself what it itself is; only then there is man" (PG 22).
Let us draw our attention to that which Hegel notices:
"If this has seem new in recent times; that has its cause in the igno- rance of the concept of Aristotle" (GP II 158).
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It is one of the most impressive and sad facts of the history of thought that rational psychology (which is an abstract metaphysics), despite of proclaiming itself as a discipline which followed Aristotle, had let escape, in fact, the most important discovery made by the Greek phi- losopher. This false Aristotelism accepted (without understanding it) the notion of pure act in its application to the divine spirit, but not in regard to the human spirit. The discussion is not about a particular ap- plication, but rather about knowing what the spirit is in itself: "there are neither two kinds of reason nor two kinds of spirit" (PR I 43).
Both the human spirit and the divine spirit are spirit. What we want to know is what does being a spirit consists of. In what was a clear mis- understanding of the problem, scholastic and rationalist philosophers believed they could define the generic notion by means of a negative route: the immaterial. But we saw that it is impossible to define the material, except as the "other than the spirit", that is to say, as negation of the spiritual in terms of the spiritual. What is first understood is the spirit; if not, nothing is understood: "For the subject is that which has meaning by itself and which explains itself "(A? sth I 435).
In order to distinguish between the divine and the human spirit, scholastic philosophers and the followers of Wolff would first need to define spirit as such and for that purpose they turned to matter, but in order to define matter one needs to define spirit as such. The circularity is manifest, and there is no way out of this predicament. In one word, they did defined nothing.
"If we think the spirit as immediate, simple, quiet, it is not spirit; the spirit is essentially this: being in activity. Furthermore: the spirit is the activity of manifesting itself" (PR I 65).
"To such a degree this is its substance itself that we cannot speak of it as an invariable subject that makes or operates this or that, as if the activity was fortuitous and some kind of situation outside of which the spirit had consistency; its activity is rather its substantiality, the activity is its being" (BS 528).
"That movement itself is the self" (PG 22).
Scholastic philosophers did not understand that act means acting, moving, making, operating, effectuating. They thought that act meant feature, characteristic, quality, determination (a 'perfection', so they called it). But the spirit is the act itself of manifesting itself, the act of making an object of itself: "the spirit itself is nothing else but this per- ceiving itself" (GP I 93).
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It is not that the spirit exists first and then becomes aware of itself. In what could the existence of the spirit lie if it were not in taking con- sciousness of itself? This 'awareness' constitutes precisely the species of reality that is the being of the spirit, the peculiar kind of reality called spirit. If we have used in the previous chapter the term introspection in its vulgar sense, here we will not employ metaphors anymore. What we are dealing with is the pure act called consciousness.
2. SeLf-determination
Another way to express what we have been saying is this: the spirit determines itself. If the very same act of understanding and knowing are equal in it, and that act is carried out by itself, then the spirit gives itself the being. We already said with Hegel: "The spirit is not natural; it is only what it has made of itself" (GP II 494).
If spirit is not determined by itself, it is not spirit but other thing; for the spirit is not immediate, it does not exists in the mode of being of immediacy; it essentially consists in being mediated by itself.
It is not that something first exists which will later be perceived. That something would be the self, for no one can hold that the spirit exists without a self; but the self consists precisely in perceiving itself. It would be absurd to say that the self exists before the act of perceiv- ing. "The spirit exists only as its own result" (VG 58), since the spirit "is only this perceiving of itself" (GP I 93).
"To produce itself, to make an object to itself, to know itself --those are the things the spirit cares about. The natural things are not for themselves; that is why they are not free" (VG 55).
When Marx, as a materialist, greeted joyfully the Hegelian theory according to which man makes himself, he did not notice that Hegel posed the pure essence of the spirit in contrast to everything material, something, and he does this exactly in the sense in which the material cannot make itself: self-determination (or, if one prefers, free will). We will get back to this point in a different context, but for now it is obvi- ous that in order that self-consciousness exists there must be an inter- pellation from another self which has been self-conscious since always. "The Greeks did not have the idea according to which man was made to the image of God" (WG 577). "That the spirit is that which it makes itself being constitutes only one side of the subject" (WG 577).
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