Everything follows the law of physics. We're just a few decades or centuries away from understanding them. — Copernicus
Can you elaborate? — Copernicus
III. Evolutionary Foundations
From the first single-celled organisms, life has evolved mechanisms to process information about its surroundings. Bacteria move toward nutrients (chemotaxis) and away from toxins; while simple, these are proto-cognitive behaviors—rudimentary information processing loops.
As organisms developed nervous systems, the ability to distinguish pain from pleasure, safety from danger, and kin from stranger conferred adaptive advantages.
Human consciousness, therefore, is not a cosmic anomaly but the peak of an ancient biological trajectory—the culmination of matter learning to model and predict itself. — Copernicus
IV. Emergence: When Physics Becomes Experience
Though each neuron obeys physical law, the collective pattern of billions of neurons yields subjective experience. This phenomenon, known as emergence, marks the transition from matter behaving mechanically to matter behaving meaningfully.
A single water molecule is not “wet,” yet collective behavior gives rise to wetness. Likewise, a single neuron does not “think,” but structured neural networks do.
Hence, consciousness does not violate physical law—it is physical law in a higher-order configuration. — Copernicus
However, I don't think we'll agree on those details. I enjoyed the idea that Aristotle's accidents are equivalent to Adorno's non-identical, but in the end of course, they are very different. I'm not sure I understand the rest. If your central point is that for Adorno, concepts = bad and intuitions = good, that's not right at all. — Jamal
What in the object goes beyond the determinations laid upon it by
thinking, returns firstly to the subject as something immediate; where
the subject feels itself to be quite certain of itself, in the primary
experience, it is once again least of all a subject.
Hegel’s aversion towards this denies the very state of
affairs [Sachverhalt] which he underlined, where it suited him: how
much the universal dwells within that which is individual.
That which is general in the subject is
simply not to be grasped any other way than in the movement of
particular human consciousness.
The isolated individual [Individuum] however,
unencumbered by the ukase, may at times perceive the objectivity more
clearly than a collective, which in any case is only the ideology of its
committees.
So it's through participation in language and thought (the "discursive medium") that the individual finds its grounding in the universal. At the same time, the individual becomes subject. These two moments are two sides of the same coin: (1) a reciprocal conditioning where the universal provides concepts and the necessary logical form for self-objectification—including the identification of oneself as a member of a class of objects; (2) the act of self-objectification—becoming a self-aware "I"—is how the universal is actualized in a thinking being. — Jamal
These two moments are two sides of the same coin: (1) a reciprocal conditioning where the universal provides concepts and the necessary logical form for self-objectification—including the identification of oneself as a member of a class of objects; (2) the act of self-objectification—becoming a self-aware "I"—is how the universal is actualized in a thinking being. — Jamal
But the grounding in the universal only comes to be actualized in the subject, so the former is both the condition and the result of the latter. — Jamal
He is standing up for individualism: an expansive critical reason just isn't possible without autonomous subjectivity. "The people," though above and beyond the subject, is not thereby in a better to position to determine the objective. On the contrary, it is the autonomous subject, unshackled in its thoughts by the ukase (official decree), which can better perceive the truth. — Jamal
To those who have had the undeserved good fortune to not be
completely adjusted in their inner intellectual composition to the
prevailing norms – a stroke of luck, which they often enough have to
pay for in terms of their relationship to the immediate environment –
it is incumbent to make the moralistic and, as it were, representative
effort to express what the majority, for whom they say it, are not
capable of seeing or, to do justice to reality, will not allow themselves
to see.
The Party is supposed to
have a cognitive power a priori superior to that of every individual
solely due to the number of its members, even if it is terrorized or
blinded.
The isolated individual [Individuum] however,
unencumbered by the ukase, may at times perceive the objectivity more
clearly than a collective, which in any case is only the ideology of its
committees.
I'm not willing to engage with it any more. — Jamal
Although I obviously don’t think this relation itself is “within the individual person,” it’s true that Adorno is interested, in the introduction, in intellectual experience, so the precise way that the philosophical subject relates to the object is the main focus at this stage. So I think we probably agree on at least this: that he wants to see subjective qualitative judgement make a comeback. — Jamal
Another dialectical twist. Does it mean that only in our alienated modern society in which everyone must be an exclusive specialist of some sort could there be people, like Adorno and his peers, capable of focusing intently and deeply on the qualities of things? If so, this is a natural follow-on from the "Privilege" section. — Jamal
There is no quantifiable insight which does not first receive its
meaning, its terminus ad quem [Latin: end-point], in the retranslation
into the qualitative.
The qualitative subject awaits the potential of its qualities in the thing, not its transcendental
residue, although the subject is strengthened solely thereto by means of restrictions based on the division of labor.
The qualitative moment is dismissed within the social context, as "subjective", and therefore is neglected and escapes cognition. This relates back to what he said about truth in "Privilege of experience".The more meanwhile its own reactions are denounced as presumably merely subjective, the more the qualitative determinations in things escape cognition.
I don't know whether a complete catalogue of possible mistakes is possible. Perhaps it is. — Ludwig V
I stake it or claim that, yes, if a being cannot ever experience suffering, it cannot ever experience pleasure, if it cannot experience emotion, it is not conscious per largely established and widely-agreed upon definition. So one cannot simply act like the legs that form a chair do not exist, or otherwise have no meaning, and still talk about the thing as if were a chair. — Outlander
Ah, why didn't you say so! The answer is no. This notion of philosophy is exactly what Adorno is against. Never forget that for Adorno, the need to let suffering speak is the condition of all truth. The suffering of the victims of genocide is an utterly external, material reality. To claim that philosophy should only be interested in our concepts of that suffering, and not in the way the reality of that suffering shatters our concepts, is to make philosophy ethically monstrous. This is Adorno's deep motivation. — Jamal
He's arguing that a philosophy which only looks inward at its own concepts... — Jamal
So if we want to compromise, maybe here is where we can do it: Adorno's philosophy is about the relation between concepts and things, where concepts are subjective and things are "external to the subject". If we can agree on that then we've made progress. — Jamal
But where? I don't see the evidence in those quotations. — Jamal
For the mediation in the midst of what is non-conceptual is no
remainder of a complete subtraction, nor is it something which would
refer to the bad infinity of such procedures. On the contrary, the
mediation is the hyle [Greek: primary matter] of its implicit history.
Philosophy creates, wherever it is still legitimate, out of something
negative: that in its attitude of things-are-so-and-not-otherwise, the
indissolubility before which it capitulates, and from which idealism
veers away, is merely a fetish; that of the irrevocability of the existent.
This dissolves before the insight that things are not simply so and not
otherwise, but came to be under conditions. This becoming disappears
and dwells in the thing, and is no more to be brought to a halt in its
concept than to be split off from its result and forgotten. Temporal
experience resembles it. In the reading of the existent as a text of its
becoming, idealistic and materialistic dialectics touch. However, while
idealism justifies the inner history of immediacy as a stage of the
concept, it becomes materialistically the measure not only of the
untruth of concepts, but also that of the existing immediacy. — ND p66-67
And here he says that they, the given facts (by which he means the immediate, since he is contrasting it with "universal mediation"), "are not the truth". Therefore the non-conceptual is not the immediate. — Jamal
Generally speaking, the idea that the very thing Adorno is interested in is something internal to the subject is the opposite of Adorno's meaning, to put it very mildly. — Jamal
For Adorno, this is very much not the case. Can you remember which passages made you so convinced of this? — Jamal
I always thought it was the user who mastered the circumstances by using the tool. — Ludwig V
But isn't there a case for describing the tool as adjusted to or fitting in with the relevant circumstances. A carpenter's saw is good for cutting wood. For metal, you need a hacksaw. Hammers for nails (appropriate in some circumstances). Screwdrivers or spanners in others. Certainly, the enterprise is to adjust circumstances in certain ways; but one needs to recognize what can be changed and what can't. — Ludwig V
In other words, try to remember that "dialectics" is in the title. That is the framework for all that follows. — frank
Agreed! It seemed to me that rather than trying to understand, you were just automatically gainsaying anything I said, scoring points by fisking. Years of TPF will normalize that kind of behaviour, but it's not the best way. However, if that's your style I can deal with it — Jamal
The difficulty he has been at pains to describe, especially in the lectures, is that negative dialectics seeks to understand the nonconceptual by means of the concept, which is to say, to circumvent the falsifying nature of the concepts, by means of concepts themselves. He is aware that this looks impossible on the surface. — Jamal
According to what I've said so far, this here is a faulty argument. The implied premise, which you state elsewhere, is that if there is no such thing as a 100% successful identity relation, identity-thinking must be rejected. But this is not Adorno's view. So the focus on the relationship between the concept and the conconceptual is not an alternative to identity-thinking, but a way of pushing it through to breaking point, whereupon the nonconceptual might be revealed. But there is a kind of alternative, a supplement to coercive identity-thinking, which is mimesis, the kind of understanding embodied in art. — Jamal
ncidentally, my impression is that despite appearances I don't think we're too far apart in our interpretations. But you just seem too eager to come down on one side or the other, and to reify and hypostasize and systematize all over the place with the result that the elements of Adorno's thought become frozen and static. — Jamal
But I disagree with "unacceptable". What he finds unacceptable is not identity-thinking per se, but its dominance and coerciveness in modern thought. — Jamal
Of course, it is a concept, but he wants it to remain just a pointer, a bit like the thing in itself, which is a signpost without much positive content. — Jamal
Anyway, concept/thing, subject/object, and mediation seem to be covered extensively later, so maybe we should hold off getting too deep into it now. — Jamal
That's quite a tall order. But still, if they can all be determined as mistakes, it follows that there must be a truth of the matter, beyond appearances. — Ludwig V
So now I need to know what kind of relationship you think there is between the representation and what it is a representation of. — Ludwig V
What will you be throwing at me next? — Jamal
The ontological status of concepts is a red herring. It doesn't follow from the fact that concepts are part of the material world that there is no legitimate distinction to be made between concepts and the world. ND is full of the distinction and utterly relies on it. This doesn't imply a mind vs. matter ontology. One can maintain a materialist ontology, where both concepts and objects are part of a single, material world, and still insist on a functional or critical distinction between the act of identifying (the concept) and that which is to be identified (the object). — Jamal
One can ... still insist on a functional or critical distinction between the act of identifying (the concept) and that which is to be identified (the object).
If we could not make this distinction, Adorno's whole cricial project would be dead in the water, because he could no longer say that the conventional concept of capitalism fails to capture the reality of the economic system. — Jamal
The concept is a kind of material object that attempts to subjugate others. The non-conceptual and non-identical are what resists or escapes such domination. — Jamal
It should now be clear that I'm not promoting any form of idealism. But I've certainly simplified Adorno to make my points. The 16th-century economic system did not have a "capitalism" nametag. Our historical concept of capitalism came later, and was used to organize, understand, and indeed, partly constitute that past as a specific object of analysis. This mediation is where identity thinking happens, e.g., the modern concept can easily impose itself retrospectively, smoothing over the non-conceptual particularity and internal contradictions of that historical reality. — Jamal
But this mediation, or "partial constitution," does not erase the fundamental distinction. — Jamal
On the contrary. The goal of negative dialectics is to use the concept to push against its own mediating function, to expose the gap between our conceptual "capitalism" and the heterogeneous, non-identical reality of the 16th-century economic life it tries to capture. To say the object is conceptually mediated is not to say it's conceptually created. Conflating the two is what allows the concept to dominate the object apparently without remainder. — Jamal
So I'm not promoting a simplistic dualist interpretation. I'm basing things on Adorno's underlying dialectical maintenance of subject vs. object, a "separation" (but not an ontological one) which is both true and false: — Jamal
What in the object goes beyond the determinations laid upon it by
thinking, returns firstly to the subject as something immediate; where
the subject feels itself to be quite certain of itself, in the primary
experience, it is once again least of all a subject.
We've been here before. Remember that what we're doing is trying to understand what Adorno means. It's clear that he does not think that when we talk about economic systems, we are talking about concepts; he thinks we are talking about a material reality to which concepts are applied (the response of "material reality itself is just a concept!" is equally inappropriate, an intrusion of idealist dogma). — Jamal
The idea of something immutable, identical to itself, would also thereby collapse. It is derived from the domination of the concept, which wished to be constant towards its content, precisely its “matter”, and for that reason is blind to such. — frank
Concepts like "economic system" are not just abstract categories; they're crystallizations of real social relations, and the nonconceptual is the lived experience of those relations, including, say, exploitation and homelessness. Or are exploitation and homelessness just concepts too? — Jamal
Generally you are being pedantic, failing to take my analogy in the spirit it was intended, and stubbornly upholding an idealist viewpoint while trying to understand an anti-idealist philosopher. — Jamal
Adorno also refers to the non-conceptual within the concept. This more obscure aspect of it might be what frank and @NotAristotle are thinking of. I think it's a way of describing (b) while emphasizing that the inadequacy of the attempted conceptual capture is intrinsic to the concept. — Jamal
But I see that as a consequence of the basic concept<->(non-conceptual) object relationship. A good way to think about that is to see the non-conceptual as the thing in itself, if you can imagine this to be immanent to experience, decoupled from Kant's formal apparatus, and potentially determinate. In my opinion, Adorno is as Kantian as he is Hegelian, and often more so. You see it especially here. — Jamal
It's hard to disagree with that. But if we accept that possibility, should we not, by the same token, accept the possibility that there is no mistake. We could then ask which of those possibilities is actually the case. Or even question the framing of the question. — Ludwig V
Deciding what is a mistake in Kant is more difficult. We don't have the object of representation in hand to compare with another supposed object in the unexperienced bush. — Paine
Are there not particular concepts? Concept of capitalism. Concept of a car. Etc. — NotAristotle
I really think the only way to make sense of the nonconceptual is as the negation of the concept. — NotAristotle
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. — NotAristotle
Hegel’s doctrine, that the object
would reflect itself in itself, survives its idealistic version, because in a
changed dialectics the subject, disrobed of its sovereignty, virtually
becomes thereby the reflection-form of objectivity.
Perhaps. But is it likely that someone who thinks they are perceiving an object is actually viewing an activity? — Patterner
That error comes up a lot in Aristotle. Perhaps you could point out where that happens with Kant. — Paine
Can you give an example of something a person is actually perceiving that fits not have temporal extension? — Patterner
Seems to me that he explicitly defines the content as the non-conceptual. — NotAristotle
To summarize, we have 3 putative theories of "content." 1. Philosophical content. 2. Material kernel of consciousness. 3. The non-conceptual. — NotAristotle
5. If consciousness were not naive -- taking the immediately perceived as the real-deal rather than a phenomena -- then thought would not think of itself. There would be no negative. Thought would get on with the task of perceiving reality and never think of itself. Thought here would be a "dim copy" of the perceived. — Moliere
6. The immediate reflection on the object which reflects upon the non-conceptual beyond the intuitions laid about the object is the least subject-like experience of all, and yet even here we must acknowledge that our experience is not the object as per paragraph 5. — Moliere
That which is most subjective of all, the immediately given, eludes its grasp."
Our experience is the object, but thinking only grasps a part of it, i.e the conceptual.
7. That confidence in the immediate is an idealistic appearance. — Moliere
Perhaps I'm not grasping this, but if someone is perceiving "something" then that is "objects" broadly (and in the way i suggest it be used here - I'm not suggesting there are (or that we could know that there are) actual, physical objects beyond the senses). These could simply be that which is required as an assumption for hte perception to obtain. I content roughly that — AmadeusD
The "physical objects" we experience in our sensations and judgements are representations made possible through combinations of our intuitions of space and time. — Paine
What are the criteria? — Patterner
Surely the non-immediacy, i.e., the mediatedness, of content is the whole point of this section: the appearance is the bad positive and behind it lies some internally contradictory thing, which I take to be the content. Despite this terminological difference I suspect we agree more than disagree.
What do we even mean by "content"? The content is surely what Adorno is referring to with "the thing" here: — Jamal
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, it is already assured in advance of
the absoluteness of the concept, which it was bent on proving.
Adorno, being interested in the the non-identity of concept and thing, reveals through the analysis of mediation a different thing (different from the appearance). 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). — Jamal
Yes. They are perceiving something. Things are objects. That fact we can't know what/which (and similar questions) doesn't change that part of the position. (and, as above, Kant knows this too). — AmadeusD
I found this section difficult, and what I've said here avoids getting caught up in the details, which I didn't really untangle—so I'd be interested in what others think. — Jamal
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, it is already assured in advance of
the absoluteness of the concept, which it was bent on proving. The more
the autonomy of subjectivity is seen through critically, the more it
becomes aware of itself as something mediated for its part, the more
conclusive the obligation of thought to take up what solidity has
brought to it, which it does not have in itself. Otherwise there could not
even be that dynamic, by which dialectics moved the burden of that
which is solid.
It occurs to me that rather than induction or deduction, there are two alternative ways of characterizing his reasoning: abductive reasoning (inference to the best explanation) and transcendental argument. In fact, looking at the SEP entry for transcendental arguments, I notice the suggestion has been made that transcendental arguments are abductive rather than deductive as they are commonly taken to be. This means that abductive reasoning and transcendental argumentation might be two ways of describing the same process of reasoning. — Jamal
1. The entrepreneur
Adorno begins with the fact of objectively necessary false consciousness: a capitalist must believe in a fair exchange between himself and the worker, even though this belief is objectively false. The transcendetal question is "What must be the case for this illusion to be—not just possible, but necessary?" Or "What must be the case for the maintenance of this paradox to be possible?" And here is where the abductive reasoning comes in to hypothesize the social whole as the best explanation, completing the transcendental argument by identifying the conditions. (Obviously this is just an outline) — Jamal
2. Free time — Jamal
This inference has no implication at all as to the characteristics of this (so called) God. All we know is that this "God" is some thing that kicked off the sequence of universe states. — Relativist
Non-sequitur. Even if the universe was created by Yahweh, it entails an initial state of Yahweh (and nothing else). So it's self-defeating to rule out an initial state. — Relativist
But my argument is that time is generated from rotation. — apokrisis
This is of course the quick and dirty account. But it’s based on the maths of the symmetries underpinning quantum field theory. How SO(3) breaks down into its double cover of SU(2). You can get the fluctuation that is a vector gauge boson. A particle that exists as it has the dimensional structure that is an action in a direction. A translational degree of freedom which carries with it a transverse plane of rotation - a spin that cashes out an intrinsic energy. The constant field strength of a quantum oscillator. — apokrisis
So even if you can’t follow these details, you can see how time is an emergent description of what the universe is doing as a material system. — apokrisis
Some people develop areas of expertise, e.g. auto mechanics and MDs — wonderer1
Do you really think that is an accurate claim about yourself? Or do you recognize that an MD is apt to know more than most people, about why your body behaves the way it does? — wonderer1
That's an unjustified conclusion. The evidence implies either an infinite series or something unique to initiate the series. — Relativist
Because an initial state (a unique thing) with potential to produce a subsequent state is also consistent with the evidence. So you need a rational reason to rule this out. — Relativist