CONSCIOUSNESS - Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit

The next live Philosophy Portal course focused on the Écrits starts September 3rd 2023: philosophyportal.online/ecrits
In this video we explore the chapter A. Consciousness in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. First published in 1807 the foundation of philosophy was forever transformed after Hegel was capable of articulating a higher order understanding of the becoming of spirit in history.
This video is based on a 1977 publication of Phenomenology of Spirit which was translated by A.V. Miller with a foreword by J.N. Findlay. You can find an official publication of this work if you follow the links below:
www.worldcat.org/title/phenome...
www.amazon.com/Phenomenology-...
books.google.be/books/about/P...
Blog/Transcript for the episode: cadelllast.com/2018/11/27/con...
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[@PhilosophyPortal]

Phenomenology of Spirit playlist: kzbin.info/aero/PLZpRs2zXm-VdeiLxeNmMZudwy2BCfGIIY

[@ellategenbos1705]

I'm writing my thesis on Hegel and Fanon and this is the clearest way in which someone has ever explained Hegel to me. True geniality, thank you very much!

[@damonzex1017]

An extremely insightful explanation of Consciousness. I have always understood first the dialectic between perception and perceived, unity and negation, but you did an excellent job of clarifying how he arrives at self consciousness as well as how the inner rebounds against the sense perception creating appearance. This inspires me to go back and read this chapter again. Thank you.

[@RekzaFS]

Welp. It's incredible people can actually understand and articulate Hegel's writings. Thank you for this video, I tried to read Hegel but didn't understand a single thing.

[@york_zacharias1996]

This is so good

[@forme1593]

I maintained a very close relationship with my coffee maker while watching this (not because it’s boring but because there is so much in it 👍) and after finishing here’s where I’m at (open to critique). ‘What is the inner world of my coffee maker?.. I am the inner world of my coffee maker’ ‘What is the inner world of me?.. The inversion of the notion of my coffee maker’

[@kylegiambra6885]

At the diagram of sensation in which you explain mechanical dialectics the idea occurred to me wherein that of the epochē is revealed through the unconscious.

[@palantir6165]

You make a strange interpretation of paragraph 150. You says that the law can be expressed differently through history/scientific paradigmes. I say that is not what the paragraph is about: it merely states that laws do not express all the peculiarity of any instance but are abstracting ceteris-paribus-laws. That is why the law "is not the entire presence of appearance" and why appearance is not completely superseded/accounted for in the kingdom of laws.

[@palantir6165]

@@ev29xyro Nice! Then I am not crazy haha. I must say, I think he interprets Hegel very politically / socially in every respect and often deviates from the evident meaning of the text. Just IMO. Stopped watching these videos.

[@romanovrex]

Look, I like Hegel a lot, but in this respect I feel that this is not consciousness he is describing but rather the development of thought. Consciousness is closer to heideger’s dasein and exists in the absence of thought. It is a priory to logic and different from it... IE: a pocket calculator has logic but not consciousness. For me the problem of consciousness is the central problem of philosophy especially at the present time when it is referred to as an illusion by science. It really means everything at the moment. What Hegel is referring to could be called the uses of consciousness rather then the thing itself.

[@PhilosophyPortal]

Hi Petr, just a few points: (1) The chapter in Phenomenology of Spirit is titled "A. Consciousness". Throughout the series I want to stay true to the book and try to give it the best general overview I can for those interested in understanding its contents. (2) Your comment differentiating consciousness and thought (or logic) is an interesting one. It makes me think of a distinction I often make between "artificial intelligence" and "artificial consciousness", namely, that one (AI) does not presuppose the other (AC). We could easily design highly intelligent artificial systems which have nothing at all to do with consciousness. In that respect I totally agree with this distinction. Thought may be a feature of consciousness but not the "thing itself", as you say. (3) I also recently attended a philosophy meet up where we discussed Heidegger's work on the nature of thinking, and he does indeed make this critical move of differentiating Dasein and consciousness from systematic or conceptual thinking. However, I wouldn't go so far as to say that Hegel is not discussing consciousness in this chapter. If you take a look over the main schemas I produced for this chapter I think you will see that there is more than just thought and logic which is explored in the development of consciousness: cadelllast.com/2018/11/27/consciousness-hegels-phenomenology-of-spirit/ For example, Hegel starts with pure sense experience (qualitative experience, individual immediacy). In this level there is not really anything like "thought" or "logic" at work. Furthermore, Hegel also speaks on how, on the highest level of the understanding, absence or void which consciousness "fills up" with images is an essential feature of the second order. However, I will also say that I am not an expert in Heidegger's thinking and have yet to systematically analyze his work in the same way I am analyzing Hegel's work here.

[@romanovrex]

Hi Cadell, thank you for replying to me and for you wonderful videos. Hegel's assessment seems very insightful there is no doubt. The subject of consciousness is a very interesting at present with the advances in neuroscience. On the one hand it seems that there is no part of the brain in which consciousness resides, so therefore it is said that consciousness is an illusion, on the other hand if there is an illusion it posits there has to be someone being the victim of this illusion. Another interesting thought is... if an AI entity is created which is apparently conscious - how can that be proved, what test will prove that it is not a well made simulation? Consciousness is a problem which even the best minds seem only able to skirt around, always somehow missing the point ( Heidegger included). From a Lacanian standpoint I would place consciousness in the area of The Real - like 'the thing in itself' which cannot be processed by the symbolic system. Hmmm... Again thank you for putting out your videos. P.

[@PhilosophyPortal]

@@romanovrex In terms of your question on AI the answer from the field has always been the "Turing Test", but that certainly still leaves many ontological questions. The Turing Test seems to only satisfy practical considerations, since if an AI was impossible to differentiate from a human being in conversation presumably we would simply treat them like another conscious entity. After all, as it stands right now, we have no way of actually knowing whether we are the only conscious entity and other people are just simulations. It is just pragmatic to assume that other people are conscious if they tell us that they are. In terms of approaching the question of consciousness from an ontological point of view I would be spontaneously in agreement with your identification of the Lacanian system being a useful tool. What is always left out of scientific discussions on the nature of consciousness is the ontological reality of the unconscious and the way in which the unconscious relates to consciousness and vice versa. From the perspective of psychoanalysis (and specifically the Lacanian Real) consciousness only exists in relationship to its internal obstacle as an absence, constraint, or impossibility (subject qua Real). In that sense consciousness represents a certain emergent reflectivity that seems to be required to deal with a certain structural problem that is inherent to being itself (which I'm sure Heidegger would be sympathetic with on some level).

[@AB-ok7hu]

great stuff. thank you. i am sure hegel and jung would had an awesome conversation. are you going to continue your series on maps of meaning? i know as much as you do that jordan peterson has some great content. it is sad that he was characterized as a huge conservative straw man because his ideas don't match with the current hegemonic views of humanities and the new ideological radicalism of post structuralism.

[@PhilosophyPortal]

I would definitely love to have a great long dinner with Hegel and Jung! I am not sure yet whether I will continue the series on Maps of Meaning. For a few reasons: (1) I have taken on a lot of work on this channel already and want to see through the projects I've already started, and (2) I did a Patreon poll asking those who support my work which books they were most interested in seeing further developed and What Is Sex? won out over Maps of Meaning. However, its possible I will continue with Maps of Meaning one day, it is just not on my to do list this moment.