There is a certain self-contradictory aspect of your terminology. A concept is a universal. So it is somewhat contradictory to refer to "a particular concept", if we maintain a category separation between the particular and the universal. Therefore this is a form of language which might best be negated. But language itself is counterproductive in apprehending the non-conceptual — Metaphysician Undercover

If that is true it is not my language that is incoherent but the entire notion of non-conceptual. Even the word itself is nonsensical if what you are saying is correct.

Are there not particular concepts? Concept of capitalism. Concept of a car. Etc.

I really think the only way to make sense of the nonconceptual is as the negation of the concept.

The problem is that the non-conceptual, by its name, is fundamentally unintelligible. So trying to understand it, or conceptualize it, is sort of self-defeating. The three putative theories here are each just as correct as the others, but in a deeper sense, they are all equally incorrect. — Metaphysician Undercover

Hmm, maybe the idea is not "non-conceptuality" as such, the non-conceptual as distinct from the conceptual. Rather, perhaps the "non-conceptual" is instead to be understood as the negation of [a particular] concept. In that way, it is not failing to be a concept, but is the unrendering of a specific concept.

Adorno calls consciousness "universal mediation."

Some questions:

When does idealism become ideological? How are we to define ideology?

Thought is still negative in the Phenomenology of Spirit. That which does not think tends towards the bad positive, i.e. the conceptual being interpreted as if we are seeing the thing. This difference between the positive and the negative is easy to see in that we can renounce thinking and yet then may still encounter the object as it is (a positive, non-conceptual); but a thought will always be negatable (leaving a negative) — Moliere

This looks right to me. What confuses me, is how can non-thinking lead to a "bad positive" and at the same time enable seeing something "as it is." In the "that which does not think" section I thought he was referring to the naive consciousness. But again, I am confused by this apparent contradiction. I think you retold the paragraph well Moliere, I just do not understand it.

Similarly in paragraph 6, we have an apparent contradiction where immediate consciousness both appears to be entirely unsubjective, and at the same time the subjective moment.

:up: thanks

. "Since Hegelian logic always had to do with the medium of the
concept and only generally reflected on the relationship of the concept
to its content, the non-conceptual,"

Seems to me that he explicitly defines the content as the non-conceptual.

material in nature — Metaphysician Undercover

I think this is right because materiality is non-conceptual in its thingness; that is, its concretality. Meanwhile, I read "solidified" as a kind of appropriation of the non-conceptual into thought; the conceptualization of it.


"So the content here is not something like sense-data or the given, i.e., the content of experience in AP terms, but the content of philosophy (philosophy as it should be, i.e., negative dialectics)."

Right, I think, because sense-data and the given are what they are for consciousness, not as such.

What does AP refer to?

Unless we read it as saying the content is the non-conceptual only for Hegelian logic.

To summarize, we have 3 putative theories of "content." 1. Philosophical content. 2. Material kernel of consciousness. 3. The non-conceptual.

What would nonexploitative labor look like? And do you maintain that such labor is necessarily inconsistent with a capitalist system? (And if so, please explain why this inconsistency)

I think you are right that we can extract some positives from Marxist theory, especially the concern over fair and safe work conditions as well as the denunciation of exploitative working conditions. I would also agree that Adorno is critical of Marx, but only insofar as he is a revisionist of Marxist thought. As I understand it, mass culture and media play a much more important role for Adorno than they did for Marx.

I look at communist regimes historically and they are all terrible, so that is why I am wary of Marxist thought whether it is from Marx himself or even from Adorno. The promise of utopia always seems to lead to hell on earth.

Do you think exploitation of labor is definitive of capitalism or could extra capital be achieved through other avenues like technological development?

Thanks for delineating some of the contours of Adorno's thinking.

I see irony in the way Marxism purports to have pierced the veil of ideology. Yet, it presents itself as non-ideological, when precisely some of the features you mentioned (revolution of the proletariat, economic determinism, superstructure of culture etc.) seem to me to be highly ideological and that precisely because they purport to be non-ideological.

I do think at some point we may have to confront these theories (Freudian thought, Marxist thought) that weave throughout Adorno's writing and ask whether the reliance on them contradicts the overall aim of negative dialectics or if they serve a wider literary objective.

Lastly, I will just comment on the prose itself. I find it remarkably difficult. Maybe even intentionally opaque? There are a lot of allusions I do not understand and the method of expression is not in any way explicit or easy to elucidate. Still, I appreciate the level of interpretation the text allows because of its complexity.

Do you think Adorno talks about Marxism as if it were objectively true? If so, why? Given the terrible things done under Stalin during Adorno's lifetime, does it really make sense to read Adorno as a Marxist? Or, does criticality towards capitalism not imply Marxism?

This seems to be a tension inherent in the book; ND rejects abstract theorizing, why is Marxism the exception to this rule? Or, do you disagree that Marxism is theoretical and abstract?

To analyze is to objectify, but not in a way that allows the objectified to be what it is, rather it appropriates the other as a kind of thought-meat; analysis is the rendering of an object into a thought-object.

In negative dialectics, on the other hand, you bite the bullet. You accept that you won't be able to encompass the object of thought completely, you expose yourself to the vertigo of bottomlessness (reading ND as philosophical exposure therapy), and you relinquish the consolation that the truth cannot be lost. — Jamal

Well said.

The object is the face of non-identity; it is beyond thought in its objectivity. ND works because it aims to unravel, not the object, but thought itself, that is, negativity, thus the name: ND. Thought is undefined; it is fungible; in its formation (information? Information for what?) it negates the object through determinate negation through presenting, portraying, the moments of thought (philosophical therapy). Moving from untruth to Truth.

The Truth can be lost in philosophy, in any thought, scientific, etc. because Truth lives, and so can be killed. Can be forgotten. Can be lost. Can be buried. But then its not really Truth who dies when Truth dies but us instead, or Truth in us.

Adorno says that the concept of certainty has degenerated from a liberating one—Descartes, as a presursor to the Enlightenment, made his philosophy depend not on religious authority but on his own reason — Jamal

I would be interested to see what Adorno would have to say about Descartes. My take on Adorno's ND project is that he wants us to avoid imposing reality (read ideology), our own version of reality, upon reality as it really is. That way, Truth isn't merely "my truth;" but the Truth in entirety.

I think Adorno adopts a more combative stance against the supremacy of reason, ratio. The Enlightenment expected to build a world out of reason, only to realize its baselessness, its lack of any foundation, for reason - thought, is nothing other than pure negativity. Ratio, analysis, it seems to me, is a kind of destruction, a rending apart, into subcomponents, atomistically; reason is not a real rending, but a mental one, a negative one, until actualized. "Knowledge is power" as "Enlightenment is dominion" over nature, over others, even over self.

Reason qua analysis (of persons including self), in contrast to a more intimate knowing by means of intellectus, understanding, is, at least at times, a kind of distancing, an unwillingness to feel or experience, ultimately a "no" to Truth, to reality. It is detachment from reality. Rationalization. Analysis is cold, procedural, dead, there's no love in it is there?

Rational human beings rebel against this idea — Metaphysician Undercover

But God is not an idea. And I am a rational human being who does not rebel against God. God is simple in being, yes, but I should think the creator of all things is even more complex than the greatest complexity found in creation. God is truth and the source of the objective law. And what is this objective law? Jesus spoke it, you know it already: it is to love God with all your heart, mind, and soul and to love your neighbor as yourself.

if all objective laws are actually fictions — Metaphysician Undercover

I personally don't think all objective laws are fictions. And I think you are correct that Adorno also believes in objective laws and truth. There must be a reality in the first place for the project of negative dialectics to make any kind of sense.

You seem to be suggesting that if both P1 and P2 are true then it's possible that C1 is false? — Michael

Right.

I think P2 excludes the possibility of the C1 disjunctive introduction and therefore foils the entire argument.

I agree with the way you defined validity. If I remember correctly, Tones in Deep Freeze defined it formally as an argument whereby there is no interpretation such that all the premises are true and the conclusion is false. I am unclear of what you mean by deduce and deduction. For me, to deduce is to come to a conclusion based on premises where logical principles or inference rules govern the arrival at that conclusion. I see no inference rules being applied in an explosion hypothesis and therefore cannot see it as a deduction at all.

I am also not concerned about including any modals in the argument. Let me consider what you stated:

(1 ^ 2) → 3
(1 ^ 2)
∴ 3
— Leontiskos


...which would be:

([If MP could be false, then RAA could be false] ^ [RAA is not false]) → [MP is not false]
[If MP could be false, then RAA could be false] ^ [RAA is not false]
∴ [MP is not false] — Leontiskos

All I am doing is giving more detail to "1."
1 = (¬3 → ¬2)

Given that replacement, premise 2 of the argument as well as the conclusion in line 3 may be written as:

(¬3 → ¬2) ^ 2
∴ 3

My understanding of modus tollens is that it is a logical operation of this form:

(¬A → ¬B)
B
∴ A

But that is the same form as
(¬3 → ¬2) ^ 2
∴ 3

or written otherwise

(¬3 → ¬2)
2
∴ 3

that is why I refer to the second and third lines of the argument as a "modus tollens."

Using the terms you suggested, the modus tollens would be:

(1 ^ 2)
∴ 3

which of course is no modus tollens at all. However that is only because without the detailed replacement for "1" we cannot see that the second and third lines are a veritable modus tollens.

The "objective law" is objective for someone who has consented to its objectivity, its reality; it is not truly objective but the one who consents to that "reality" thereby reifies it and lends it its objective aura. The objectively necessary consciousness is the thinking that goes in to sustaining the non-thought objectivity - that is, the ideology. That ideology could be capitalism as much as it could be Marxist communism. The relevant part is the attitude I think Adorno would have us take to theories and that attitude is one that acknowledges fictions as fictions. The point of such reflections must surely be intended as critique of the operant ideology. That is not to say that all ideologies are equal as the horrors of the twentieth century enacted by Marxist communist regimes indict themselves.

Right, ideology is properly more than is thought qua thought, but I think Adorno would say it is thought nonetheless. In other words, ideology has yet to think itself as thought. Ideology qua ideology is enacted and unquestioned because it is "reality" or "the way things are" in opposition to the way things could be. That is perhaps one reading anyways.

I get what you are saying. However, I maintain that it is strange for me to think of the initial argument of this thread as "valid." In fact, it makes about as much sense to me as
A
¬A
therefore,
(B∨¬B)

being "valid." I guess you would say "yeah, but principle of explosion..." but the principle of explosion is also nonsensical to me.

Here is the rewritten formulation of my interpretation of your representation of my argument:

A. ((¬3 → ¬2) ^ 2) → 3
B. ((¬3 → ¬2) ^ 2)
C. ∴ 3

Premise B and conclusion C complete the modus tollens. Premise A seems to be something extra. And actually, I think it would make more sense to make premise A a second conclusion as herein:

B. ((¬3 → ¬2) ^ 2)
C. ∴ 3
C2. ((¬3 → ¬2) ^ 2) → 3

It is a second conclusion because it is more of a conclusion derived from premise B, rather than an independent premise that is doing work in the argument.

I do not mind saying my argument metalogically can involve modus ponens, but only incidental to and dependent on it first requiring modus tollens.

I really think Adorno is aiming at exposing thought for what it is, namely thought; he wants to show thought qua thought. This is achieved through concretization as a mode of thought, (non-conceptual cognition?).

I think Adorno would say social process is equivalent to ideology. In that way, it is most distinct from Hegel's Absolute Spirit because Absolute Spirit thinks itself to have achieved objectivity. Negative Dialectics, on the other hand, is not a peering into reality, it is not truth through dialectic, rather it is a revelation about the presuppositions that sustain the ideological system.

Negative dialectics stands opposed and is not committed to reality qua thought or thought qua reality. To expose Hegel's Absolute Spirit for what it is, namely subjective thinking is to have achieved a negative dialectics by means of concretized and particularized cognition that is able to discard all non-fundamental elements of the ideology. I think that in this specific paragraph, Adorno's use of the terms "truth" and "objective" may be taken in quotes.

The most obvious problem is that you seem to be misrepresenting your own argument. — Leontiskos

I would not say I misrepresented my own argument, I would say I miswrote your representation of my argument.

Would you agree that your representation of my argument:

(1 ^ 2) → 3
(1 ^ 2)
∴ 3 — Leontiskos

could also be written as follows...

A. not-3 then not-2. And 2. Then 3.
B. not-3 then not-2. And 2.
C. Therefore 3.

If you agree that this is accurate, it seems to me that we can see that the argument will be correct because of modus tollens. In particular, we can see that the "A" premise is already agreeable because of modus tollens. If you had instead forwarded premise "A" to be "not-3 then not-2. And 2. Then not-3...," then it's clear that the conditional would not be doing any of the work. The modus tollens makes all the difference does it not? It confirms the truth of the conditional in premise "A" that serves as the basis for the argument's modus ponens. In other words, premise "A" is true "a priori" (if I can use that term here) because of the modus tollens logic, and the truth of that premise gives the basis for the rest of the argument. Premise "B" becomes the only questionable premise. Given it's truth, the argument necessarily works because premise "A" thanks to modus tollens, cannot be questioned.

So maybe you are right that any argument can be written metalogically as a modus ponens, but I think it cannot be so written without the logical inferences that the argument require, in this case a modus tollens is necessary to the argument and cannot be written off as being a hidden modus ponens.

What do you think?

Good questions. I would tend to think MT is another inference rule that cannot be "derived" from a different inference rule like MP; that is, MT is not a theorem that can be derived from MP. At that point I think we are left to our intuitions about what inference rules to assent to. I think MP, MT, and RAA are all equally intuitive and so they all fall or stand together; that's the idea behind the coherence argument I forwarded earlier in the thread with RAA, MP, and MT. In effect, you can prove, or argue for, MP based on affirming RAA and MT. Or, you could instead argue for MT based on affirming RAA and MP.

Not that it is an instance of MP, which is a logical "move," not a merely formal property.

My point in these last few comments is just that MT is not an instance of MP metalogically. I think it would be more accurate to say that formally, the argument you just stated makes use of a material conditional that when applied to natural language will turn out to not make any sense or be an instance of bad argumentation.

Negative dialectics is a term of irony. Thought negatively appropriates the thing in the conceptual, a concept that is broken off from the non-conceptual (experience, especially suffering is deadened in its conceptual 'reality').

On the other hand, a negative dialectics is...what? Is not a critique, is not a systematization. It is to go beyond the concept, to particularize. To disclose the moments of dialectic in the manner of their disclosure without implications. To realize thought as such.

The concept qua concept is mimetic, but it does not present itself as mimesis. It is as though philosophy were a really good work of art that one has become absorbed in, mistaking the art for the real.

Thinking, conceptual analysis, fails to grasp the thing itself in its totality, though thought pretends that it can do this, imagining itself to have a hold of the essence of things and eschewing the infinite.

I thought we were differentiating between a use of the material conditional versus modus ponens as a mode of discursive thought. In what world is "1 and 2 therefore not 1. 1 and 2. Therefore, not 1." a sensible or logical maneuver? It most certainly is not modus ponens so understood.

You're right that the conclusion utilizes modus tollens, but here is the way that modus ponens is operating metalogically:

(1 ^ 2) → 3
(1 ^ 2)
∴ 3 — Leontiskos

I was reviewing this thread and it occurs to me that I disagree with the contention that the argument I stated:

1. If MP could be false, then RAA could be false.
2. But RAA is not false.
3. Therefore neither is MP. — NotAristotle

is metalogically an MP argument. In fact, I think the argument is metalogically neither MP nor simply making use of a material conditional. Instead, I think it is independently an MT argument structurally and does not collapse into MP. If it were a conditional metalogically, it would have to be a degenerative case. Instead of:
1 and 2 therefore 3.
1 and 2.
Therefore, 3.

The initial argument I forwarded would, I think, be more like:
1 and 2 then not 1.
1 and 2.
Therefore not 1.

But, whether such an argument is valid, an argument of this form surely is not convincing, and is therefore a bad argument. And so, if I am correct that the initial argument concerning RAA, MT, and MP is a good argument, then it must not be a degenerative instance of a conditional and must instead be a true to form example of MT structurally and irreducible to MP.

I am a novice with quantum mechanics, and it has been awhile since I've seen Schrodinger's wavefunction equation. Could you spell out what you mean by "evolves" and "quantum state?" It will help me evaluate the implications of your statement.

admitting the autonomy of inertial motion — SophistiCat

Going to have to disagree with you here as it appears to me that all motion, including inertial motion (by which I understand you to mean constant velocity) depends to some degree on another. In fact, all motion is relative motion and insofar as it is relative to another, all motion, including inertial motion, depends on another. But then all that means is that the metaphysical foundation of everything, God, cannot be in motion.

Seems plausible to me although I do not have a specific argument in mind.

You say that change depends on time, I don't see why that would be wrong. But it also seems to me that a specific thing or substance cannot change itself and must rely on something else to change it.

For example, when a billiard ball moves and changes position, it does not do so of its own accord, but because another billiard ball has imparted motion to it. Similarly, and in accordance with Newton's (1st?) Law, the billiard ball will remain moving unless it strikes another ball or hits the boundary of the table, or encounters friction. And so, all change (of some thing) really depends on another to change it.

I'm not a scientist so I have no idea what you mean by a "pure state quantum system" or that it "evolves." Would you explain?

If you have an argument for God's existence on the basis of belief, truth, or justification, I'm all ears.

Because I think change or alteration implies a kind of dependence on another. If the foundation merely changes form, then it is dependent on what changes it and so is not really a foundation. That is why I think a metaphysical foundation has to create, not merely transform.

Point being: "A" would have to creatively make everything else in order to be a veritable metaphysical foundation. A mere alteration of "A" would render it no longer foundational.

I would think that the metaphysical foundation of everything must be different than what it is the foundation of. If it were not, then the metaphysical foundation would not be a foundation at all. Put another way, if "A" changes, then there must be something that changes "A," but in that case "A" would not be the foundation because there would be something else changing it of which it is not the foundation. What do you think?

The argument doesn't prove a "God" exists. It proves there is an autonomous, bottom layer of reality. This is metaphysical foundationalism. — Relativist

Are you suggesting any other candidates?

To say there is a way the world ought to be seems, to me, (and whether it were actually that way) to make a transcendent statement.

Okay, hmm, so we both agree with premise 1. When I say there is a way the world ought to be, I have in mind the sorts of things people say from a rationalistic or emotional frame of mind: "I wish x" or "I want/desire x" "x is wrong." These sorts of statements seem to imply an "ought."

Would it make sense to say that, while an offense may be against one with infinite dignity, if the effects of the sin are only finite, not infinite, a proportional punishment may justly be finite?

Doesn't sound plausible given that the God of the bible is anything but kind. — Janus

Why do you say that?

I think there must be a source of kindness. People aren't always kind, so people can't be the source of kindness. Only one who is kind necessarily, God, could be the source of kindness. People are sometimes kind. And so there must be a God who is the source of that kindness.