Civilization #55: Kant, Hegel, and the Theory of Everything

Okay. So today we will do Emanuel Kant and Frederick Hegel. So um my main argument is that Kant is really taking the main thesis of Dante um which is the imagination is the animating force of the universe and love is the unifying force of the universe. And and what he will do is he will use his epistomology. Epismology just means theory of knowledge.

How do we know what we know? And he will you and then he will uh do three things. He will clarify it. Okay. So if you read Dante, it's not very explicit what he's saying.

You have to interpret him properly. What Kant will do is make Dante explicit to the world. Then he will rationalize it. rationalize it just means that he will remove divinity. He will remove theology from it and create um a system of logic.

Okay? And so then he will systemize it. All right? So this is the mission of Kant to take the secret of the universe as first presented in Dante and then create a system of logic that then is able to incorporate itself into science and history and philosophy and the world that we know. All right.

So together Dante and Khan really did create the world that we live in today. All right. So um let's first talk about the background like why is Kant engaged in this project. Um so for most of western history there have been two major philosophers. They are um Plato and Aristotle.

And up until the point and up until Kant you could divide all philosophy into these two major camps. Um Plato ha believes that God is called the form of the good. Form of the good. So the form of the good it is this perfect immaculate eternal force that emits emanates breathes thinks and then he creates something called the ideals. And these are the per perfection perfect conceptions of beauty, reason, justice.

And then these ideals give rise to the forms. Okay. And these are the perfect encapsulation of these ideals. So think of the perfect horse or the perfect chair or the perfect square. Okay.

Um we live this is the real world. Okay. This is what is true and real. We live in the shadow world. So remember back to the allegory of the cave.

So everything in the shadow world is only a imitation of the forms. And so um in this conception what is good is to move towards the form of the good to return to the form of the good and what is evil is to move away from the form of the good. Okay. That's why for Plato art poetry is evil because you're imitating imitation. And what then why for Plato mathematics and philosophy are inherently good uh because it is teaching you how to return to the form of the good and Plato's important because what happens is that Plato's ideas become the basis for heaven and earth.

Right? And so this is the basis for Christianity. Remember in the Catholic Church doctrine um your life our life on this planet doesn't really matter. What matters is our return to heaven to be with God. Um and we say about Plato that he's very that he's a dualist.

Okay. So there are three conceptions of the universe. There is the materialistic worldview which is what Aristotle is. Materialistic just says that only things that you can see and touch matter. Um idealistic is what Hegel will represent which is that only ideas matter.

And then Plato believes that both um matter and ideas do matter. Okay. So he's a dualist whereas Aristotle is a materialist. All right. So that's Plato.

Uh pretty clear, right? Good. All right. Now let's move on to Aristotle. For Aristotle, his god is called a prime mover.

The prime mover is the first thing that moves because when the first thing moves it causes um things to move as well. Okay, there's cause and effect. So in this world what matters is movement. Okay, everything's moving towards what towards something called tilos which is what purpose is. It's it's a Greek word for purpose.

So for example as a teacher my tilos is to teach as well as I can and my mission in life is to constantly learn to improve and to practice so that my teacher becomes better and better okay that's the idea of tilos and we can understand through observation and experience what each things's tilos is and then you can start to categorize things okay and um Aristotle his ideas of course become the bas basis for science. Okay. And I and as I mentioned, Aristotle has a materialistic worldview as opposed to Plato's dualistic worldview. Aristotle doesn't really care about things outside the material world. He's only concerned about the here and now.

So these are the two major major school of thought um during integrity. Now um as I mentioned previously in class as a cath as a Catholic church um comes into power and and it has a monopoly power it suppresses these philosophical um inquiries. Okay. Um but after the renaissance uh these schools of thought Plato and Aristotle they will reemerge. All right.

So um they will reemerge into three major schools of thought. Okay. So um taking up Plato's perspective uh will be a people called the rationalist. Okay. So the three most famous rationalists are Rene Deart uh Lemnix and Spinosa.

Okay. But they are basically adopting Plato's worldview which is there is a god and through mathematics through logic we can from first principles um reason out the mind of god. All right. So the project of rationalism is towards omniscience and again this is best represented by um deart and this becomes of course the basis for the enlightenment right so that's the first major school of thought the rationalists um they're also called the continentals the continental uh philosophy because it's really based on the continent of Europe um opposing the rationalists are the empiricis Okay. And these are people who are adopting the Aristotle worldview.

Uh the emperorist, the most famous is John Lock. And what John Lock believes is our minds are born tabula rasa which just means blank slate meaning there's nothing in our minds. So the only way that we can acquire knowledge, acquire wisdom is through experience. Okay, experience and something called induction. So in logic there are two um meth methods.

The first is deduction where you take the generalize to the specific and then induction is to take the specific and then you generalize it into the abstract. Okay. So for example, if I see five boys wearing white shirts, then I can generalize and say that all boys wear uh white shirts. But if the general principle is all boys wear white shirt, then reduction I can say, well you're a boy, therefore you wear a white shirt. Okay, so that's the idea of empiricism.

And of course this becomes the basis for what we call the scientific method, right? Now, there's another school of philosophy called skepticism. And this was pioneered mainly by a man named David Hume. And so, what David Hume is going to do is he's going to look at this idea of induction and argue, no, you can't do that. You cannot generalize things.

Just because you meet 1 million swan that are white does not mean that all swan are white. It is entirely possible that there's a black swan out there. Okay. So, um what David Hume does is he negates induction. And what he argues is basically our understanding of the world is based primarily on custom.

For him, custom just means consensus. We agree this is right. Therefore, it is right. There's no inherent truth to this thing. All right.

So um David Hume is very controversial because he argues that knowledge true knowledge is just impossible which means that the inver the entire project of philosophy is pointless. Okay you know what you know through experience and through custom you cannot abstract things. You cannot reason out things beyond that and therefore what's the point of philosophy. All right so that's uh David Hume. Now um what's going to happen is Emanuel Khan is going to read David Hume and be so agonized over his conclusions that he writes something called the critique of pure reason.

Okay. And this is considered the greatest treatise of philosophy ever in human history. It's extremely dense, extremely complicated. Um and quite honestly I have not been able to complete it. Okay, I've tried my best but it is way too difficult uh for me.

So what I'm going to do today is I'm I'm going to oversimplify his argument in order to make it clear for us. Okay? He's so fundamental to development of human civilization that we need to study him. But I'm warning you that I am not in any way an expert on Kant. But I hope that today's class will become a basis for your further study and inquiry into uh Kant and philosophy.

Okay. All right. So in his critique critique of pure reason what K's going to do is he's going to show that all three schools of thought rationalism empiricism and skeptism are all in their own way problematic and and in doing so he's going to construct a new theory of everything a new theory of the world that will become the cornerstone for neuroscience um physics and um artificial intelligence. Okay. So his contribution to humani civilization cannot be understated.

All right. So for Kant this rational school is problematic because he believes that omniscience is just not possible. It is impossible for us to ever achieve the mind of God. There are limitations to the pursuit of knowledge. There are limitations to our capacity to reason.

Okay. So that's the first uh argument. Second argument is the empiricist argument of tabular rasa cannot possibly be true. He's going to show us through a lot of empirical proof that there's it's not just it's not possible for minds to be blank slates. We need to have certain mechanisms of thought already in place for us to uh engage with the world.

Okay. So that's the problem with um um the empiricist. His problem with Hume is he believes that there's knowledge that is real and inherent and true and it's and so knowledge can be pursued. Philosophy is important. In fact, for Khan, philosophy is the most important pursuit in human history.

Okay. So, um by responding to all three of these major schools, Khan in his critic of pure reason, he's going to create a radical new theory of the world. Okay? his own uh unique epestmology based on the thinking of Dante. All right.

So let's go into his argument very quickly and again this is an oversimplification. All right. So um we are all endowed with the capacity to reason. Okay. We all have minds and our minds engage reality.

Okay. What Kant says is this. The moment that we engage in reality, we create a new uh universe called parents. Okay. So, um let me first go over the the terminology.

It's very important you understand terminology in order to understand uh Kant. Okay. So um for Kant reality are things in themselves and here you he uses the Greek uh nomina. Okay, things in themselves. This is the world that is true and real.

And then the word of appearance are what I call things for us. things that we see but which may not be true. And he uses the Greek word phenomena. Okay. And what he's arguing is within us there is a mechanism in our minds that is always perceiving reality in a way that allows us to understand, interpret and manipulate it.

Okay. Okay. So this is his thesis. Okay. So um let me first explain how he got to this thesis.

So what Khan does is this. He reasons out he tries to reason out what is possible in espanology. Okay philosophy. And so what he does is he creates categories. So uh there are four major categories that we need to know.

Okay. And again this is a bit technical and complicated but we need to do this in order to fully understand Kant. So what Kant says is there are two types of um knowledge. There's a priority and there's a proster. Okay.

Um apriori is Latin for things that come before. Uh apostro is Latin for things that come after. All right. So aporei means knowledge that is independent of experience things that are universal and necessary things that are true in themselves and a story of course are things that uh you learn after you experience it. Okay.

Uh he also has two more categories of logic. The first is called the analytical. The analytical and then the second is called the synthetic. Okay, analytical just means things that are true in themselves. So they are true by definition.

So if I say for example, a square has four sides. A triangle has three sides. That's an analytical statement because it's true in itself. Okay, I can also say that A is a. I can also say that Mary is a woman.

Okay, these are all just identity statements, things that are true in themselves. synthetics. And so synthetic statements are statements that are not analytical, meaning that you need to um build these statements based on um other information and they could be false. Okay? So just think think of synthetic as non-analytical.

So um what Kant does then is says well then then if there are two by two there's four possibilities. Okay. And if you think about what apore analytical is, that's just what logic is, right? This is just what's logical. Apore story synthetic is just what we call empirical.

This is the John Lock project, right? Empiricism things that you know and learn after you experience it. Um analytical a story is just doesn't really matter, right? Because a square has four sides. It doesn't matter if you see a square, four sides, it doesn't really change anything.

The main conflict between David Hume and Emil Kant is whether or not a priority synthetic knowledge exists. For David Hume, he says this in in uh his writings. It is impossible for a synthetic knowledge to exist. But what Emanuel K will show us is it does exist and he calls it transcendental idealism. Transcendental idealism.

Okay. and he's going to spend his entire um book a critic of pure reason about a thousand pages explaining why this must be true. Why is it that you must have a priority synthetic knowledge in your brain in order to understand the world? All right. So again this is his main argument and what it will show us is this.

If you study mathematics, if you look at philosophy, if you look at uh classical physics, Newtonian physics and you break things down to the most fundamental level, what you will discover is we have to bring in certain assumptions into this field of knowledge for it to exist. Okay? And these two very basic um things that we bring in are called space and time. Space and time. Okay, space just mean sensation and time is sequence.

Okay, se time is just an order things. One, two, three, four, five. Space is just our interaction with the world around us. Unless we have two these two basic concepts, no knowledge is possible. Right?

Space and time. So this is really important and this is a hard concept to understand. What Connor is saying is that space and time do not exist in reality. Space and time is a projection of our minds in order to we can substitize reality in a way that allows us to understand it and manipulate it. Okay.

Space and time. All right. Um in other words, okay, a very simple way to understand this is our minds turn the world into a story. Why? Because if you have space and time, you have causality, cause and effect.

Okay? Spa, time movement, right? So now you have causality. Causality is a story. So what Khan is saying is we are just imagining reality into a story and that allows us to understand it.

All right. So um what Kant's going to do after he proves that space and time must exist a priority is he's now going to explain how we take reality and we turn it into appearance. Okay. And what he's going to show us is that our mind has a process of doing this. And this process is three stages.

There's apprehension, there's reproduction, and then there's recognition. Okay, so apprehension is just you're engaging the things in themselves and through space time, okay, by inputting space time into things themselves, you're able to reproduce it in your brain. you're able to create an image of it in your your brain and then what you're going to do in order to understand it is to filter spacetime using something he calls categories. Okay, categories just think of it as our algorithm. A better word is heristic.

Okay, horistic. Computers use algorithms, we use horistics, right? And there are 12 different categories but there are four major um categories. Okay. The first is quantity.

How much of thing it is? Quality. What what are the properties of this thing? Um relation is this thing logical or empirical? And then modality which is what's what is the strength of the relation of this thing.

Okay. Okay. I know it's complicated but later on we will use some examples from real life to better understand how this works. All right so and you don't really need to remember the the categories just remember that that what K is saying is inherent in our mind is a heristic an algorithm that allows us to turn information into knowledge. All right and when we do this what happens is we create a schema a representation of the world which allows for understanding the world.

Okay. Okay, so for example, we see a lot of triangles, but we don't actually have an image of a triangle in our head. We only have a concept of a triangle in our heads. Okay, and this is true for a lot of things. All right, so um and then the schema then enter returns to the categories which allows us to filter the world even more.

Okay, so it is a feedback loop. So does this all make sense? Okay, this is Kant's perception of the world. Again, if you want to know the proof, uh if you want to know his logic, then you have to read the book uh for yourself, uh which will take you about 10 years, right? Great.

All right. So, um all this is saying is this is called reaffirming the Dante believe that the imagination is the animating force of the world. Okay. So, without us, reality cannot be alive. It is our imagination that makes um reality alive to us.

All right. Now um this is from the critic of pure reason. He also wrote a book called the critic of practical reason where he presents like a theory of morality. All right. So let's go over it.

So for for K the highest ideal immorality is something called the categorical imperative. And this is separate and distinct from something called the hypothetical imperative. The hypothetical imperative is okay. If you are a child in a school, what how should you behave? Okay, this is specific.

This is circumstantial. The categorical is the absolute. This is how you should always behave. And for Kant, there are three major principles that underly all morality. Okay, so let's go over them one by one.

The first is um the idea of universal law. So Khan says imagine that each of your action will be universalized will be generalized so that everyone will behave the way you do. Okay? So for example you can choose to steal but imagine everyone stealing. Well what kind of world would that be?

You certainly would not want to live in that world, right? So behave as though everyone is watching you and everyone's going to do what you're going to do. Okay? be the best possible example to everyone. All right, so that's the first principle.

Second principle is see humans each as a me as an end onto itself and not as a means. Okay, do not manipulate people, do not use people, treat people with respect. Okay. And the third um is the idea of um autonomous will which means like everything you do must something that you reason out yourself. You're not coerced into it.

You're not manipulated into doing it. You're not tricked into do it. It's something that you sitting by yourself in a room, you're able to reason it out independently. Okay. So this is the idea of the categorical imperative which Kant believes is what we should all strive to and what we're all capable of doing because we're capable of reason okay we're capable of imagination we're capable of imagining a moral world and this is important because this becomes the basis for what we have today the United Nations human rights international law okay that's how influential Khan has been in development of human civiliz civilization All right.

So, how can we understand the categorical imperative? Well, let's go back to Jeanjac Rouso. Remember in Jeanjac Rouso he he proposed the idea of the general will. The general will is not democracy. Okay?

Democracy is simply you get everyone to vote. Okay? So, in this room I ask everyone what should what should we have for lunch? and then someone proposes let's have ice cream and everyone raises his hand and says yeah let's have ice cream okay that's democracy but for John Rouso what he argues is the general will is the best interest of people that you can derive from just by reaching out yourself okay so if you were all sit down by yourself and ask what should we have for lunch it wouldn't be ice cream because ice cream makes you uh fat um it's too much sugar it's bad for you okay you would probably think we should have salad so the general will represents the best interests of everyone involved. Okay?

So if I would ask you what should we have for lunch, everyone would say if if we are following a general will um a salad or maybe a chicken breast or Okay. So in other words, the kind imperative it is just the individualized general will. All right? It is a general will that you uh internalize to yourself and you behave as though you are the general will. Right?

So that's a way of understanding um the categorical imperative. Now there's another way of understanding the categorical imperative and just using Dante. So remember we read the divine colony and Dante's categorical imperative is very simple. Love someone. Okay?

Doesn't matter who could be your wife. It could be your mother and it could or it could be your child. It could be your best friend. But love that person and when you love that person then all three thing all three things are true. It means you are now going to be your best.

It means you are treating this person with respect. It means that you're choosing to love this person. Okay. So um love is the unifying force of the universe. All right.

So that's what Dante is really saying. And so in other words, Kant, he is just systemizing what Dante said, Divine Comedy. All right, does that make sense? All right. So, um, for us to better understand D, uh, Kant's argument, I want to give you three examples to better understand what Kant is saying.

All right, the first example is imagine you are writing a diary. All right, I want you to write a diary for a whole year. So every day you're writing what happened today. All right, so you have 365 separate entries. Okay?

Right? So every day um at night at 9:00 p.m. you're just reflecting on what happened today. And then at the end of the year, what I want you to do is write one long diary entry. Okay?

Now, if you think about it, in theory, these separate entries should add up to equal this one long entry, right? But what you'll find actually do this experiment is this long entry that you wrote almost has no relation at all with these 365 separate entries. Does that make sense? Right. Okay.

So in other words, what we're doing is constantly every day we are reimagining the world in a new way and we're building on top of this. Okay. So that's the first experiment. Another saying this is all we're doing is we're taking discrete data points which is what 365 diary entries is doing and then combine them into one complete story. All right.

Here's another uh experiment you can do. memory. So, organize 100 classmates and go to a park together and spend the whole day in a park and organize the day so that everyone's doing the same thing. All right? Everyone's doing the same thing.

And then next day, ask all 100 students to write down his experience all that one day. And I guarantee you every person will be the will be different. Each person's experience will be unique onto himself. thus confirming affirming what Kant said. Okay, the imagination is the animating force of the universe.

Right? So let's do one more experiment and this is a thought experiment. This something you can't do but let's just imagine it. Imagine you end up on a island. Okay?

And this island is very fertile, very opulent, lots of fruits, lots of fish. You don't have to worry about starving. But one day you go to sleep and then your mind is wiped clean. It becomes a tabular rasa as proposed by John Lock. Okay.

So you're you have no more memory. You can't speak. You've lost the capacity of language. You've lost capacity to reason. You don't know where you are.

You don't know who you are. Okay. You get up and now the question then is what will happen to you? Well, if you're John Lock, what's going to happen to you is you're going to starve to death because you don't know what to eat. Okay?

You take a stone and you put it in your mouth. You take a leaf, you put in your mouth. You don't know what to eat. You've lost all um knowledge. Okay?

But according to Kant what Kant would say is okay sure you've lost all knowledge but because you have a priority synthetic knowledge because you manipulate reality around you because your mind is very good at filtering information categories information it'll take you a very short amount of time to figure out what is edible. Okay, you know stones, wood, that's a category of stuff you cannot eat. But then you know fruits, water, fish is another category of things you can eat. All right. So and I think just just through pure intuition we can figure out you know what Kant makes more intuitive sense than John Lock.

Okay. So does that make sense? So again uh first experiment you can do um and you will discover like if you do one long entry it will not correlate to these these separate entries. Okay. Um the memory experiment you can also do you can also do the thought experiment you can't really do but you can reason it out and discover it uh to be true.

All right. So that is Kant a very short simple introduction to Kant. Any questions before I move on to Hegel? Yeah, a couple of combined questions. So, doing this critique of pure reason as a natural philosopher in maybe a way Newton might have like did he think he was doing science?

Yeah, that's a great question. I may just follow up quickly. Um, do do you do you know anything about K's current reputation in scientific community do scientists going back to okay so two great questions okay the first question is how did Kant perceive himself the second great uh question is how is science uh how does science perceive him today so um simple answer is Kant saw himself as a revolutionary thinker he saw himself as capernicus he's going to fundamentally change the way that we perceive the universe in fact he calls it what his critical pure reason a cop capernac revolution. I I'll discuss this later on. Okay.

Uh how how Khan actually perceived himself. Second is Kant's ideas. I'll show you later on is really the basis for modern for modern day science. Einstein was heavily influenced by Kant. Einstein read Kant when he was 16 and because of of Kant's theories of spaceime and through a synthetic knowledge that gives him the theory of relativity.

Okay. And if you study quantum mechanics um you will discover a lot of ideas were heavily influenced by Kant. So his influence on science is just incredible. It's it's and um and I but I'll discuss this moving on. Okay.

All right. Good. So now let's move on to Hegel. All right. So with Kant his philosophy is remember we interact with the nana which gives us the phenomena the things that we can see the appearance there are three major issues that are unresolved in Kant Kant acknowledges these issues and it doesn't really provide a solution okay these three issues are this the first issue of course is what is the nomen?

What are the things in themselves? And Khan says we can never know. Okay, that's the first major issue. Second issue is okay, sorry, but if our brains are capable of reason through uh a synthetic knowledge, where does knowledge come from? What's the source for our mind?

Right? And the third problem is uniformity. If it is true that we are in fact always uh projecting onto um nana to create phenomenon. How do we know that we're all doing it the same way? How do we know that that culturally all cultures are doing the same way?

Are you saying that the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Greeks, they all perceive the world in the same way? Okay. So these are the three major unresolved issues in Kant. Nomina. Okay.

What is it? And K says we can never know, right? Because we cannot imagine ourselves outside of space and time. What is the source for our minds? And K says we don't know.

It's it's just there. And the third is uniformity. How do we know what we see is consistent with each other? And Khan says we don't know but we have to believe it. Okay, otherwise the world doesn't make any sense.

How is it possible uh that without uniformity you can have mathematics and science? Okay, but it doesn't re but again the problem with Kant is this is not satisfying right? So Hegel is going to come along and he's and he's going to provide a theory of everything. He's going to resolve these three issues for Kant and create an entire system of thought that encompasses everything. Okay.

So, so let's now move on to Hegel. So, Hegel's major um insight is what if as we're perceiving the nana, the nman is projecting back onto us. So it becomes a source for our ability to perceive the nomina. Okay. The so in other words the nina is really the source which creates the uniformity.

All right. And so what is this nomina? And the word that heel uses is gist. The gist. Okay.

And this is a German word that we translate into mind or spirit. Okay. So Hegel's major work is called the themmonology of the mind which can also be translated into the theology of the spirit. Okay. So translators argue about um what the translation is.

The problem is mind and spirit don't really explain that much. Okay. So um imagine guys as and this is a bad metaphor. Okay. But imagine guys as the internet and we are individual computers.

We're always interacting with this internet. Okay. So that's that would give you a basic framework to understand what GI is. It is a uh collective consciousness almost. But that that's not accurate.

Okay. To to fully understand what Gist is, we need to go into the ethmology of the word. What words um were influenced uh in English by Gist. And there are three words that were influenced by Gist. Okay.

The first word is ghost. So ghost is the idea that the gist is coexisting with us, right? The guy the g is not separate from us. It is it is coexisting with us. It's here and now.

All right. Second word is uh geyser. Geyser and expansion a spawning up. Okay. So the gist is always growing.

It wants to grow and expand. The third uh English word that comes from guys is gist. the gist of an argument, the essence of an argument. So what Hegel is saying is the gist is the essence of reality. The gist comes first.

It's the source for who we are. Okay. So again to understand guys think of it as an internet but the internet that is coexisting with us that is always expanding forward and which is the essence of all life itself. That's why we say that um Hegel is an idealist right he he doesn't care about the material world he doesn't think it really matters what matters to him is the gist itself the ideas because that's what drives human history. All right.

Okay. So, let's talk about how he perceives the geyser. How does the guys actually move? And for him, what matters are not the things. What matters is not the ideas.

What matters is the movement of things. And so for Hegel, uh the the main thing that moves is the dialectic. Okay? And and this is famous because obviously from the dialectic we have the thesis which moves to the antithesis which moves into the symphysis and this is the movement of human history. Okay.

And the way to understand this is we all seek self-nowledge. But the way to seek self-nowledge is by asking who we are not which creates the antithesis and then we have when when we have the idea of who we are not this comes in conflict with who we are which then creates new knowledge. Okay. All right. So in order to understand this idea let's do a thought experiment.

Hey, the thought come is this. Okay, let's go back to the island and there's a there's 100 of us, okay? And we all sleep in different corners of the island. And again, during the night when we sleep, our minds are wiped clean. We're all now tableasa.

We have no more memory, okay? We wake up and we forget that there's other people there. We don't even know who we are. When we wake up, what we see is the universe, the space and time. And we think that we are the universe, that we are space and time, and there is a reconciliation between us and the world, okay?

And we're really happy. But as we move move along on the beach, we see someone else. And this other person threatens us because it's like us, but it's not like us. And now this person has destroyed my conception of the universe which is like I am the universe or I am God. And this creates conflict.

Okay. We fight. We might actually physically fight. We might argue. Okay.

But over time we create a symphysis which is like okay the two of us are now the universe. Problem is we walk along and we meet another person another person. Okay. So this is a constant process. But over time, um, even though there's conflict, even though there's violence, it's all a natural part of enlightenment.

It's all part of the process of reconciliation where eventually all 100 of us, we rediscover who we are through um conflict and differentiation and we form a collective consciousness. We become what con what Hegel says is the absolute spirit. Okay. Absolute spirit and that is the progress and the purpose of our lives. All right.

So let me frame it in a different way. All right. So what what um Hegel is saying. Okay. And again this these are not his words.

These are my words. So be careful. Okay. But I think this is the best way to explain what he's really saying about the movement of history. God has two forms.

God is the gist. Okay. But God is also the universe. Does that make sense? Okay.

So why would God do this? Why would God be both the universe and be the guys? Because because God is trying to create reconciliation between itself and all the things in the universe. It's trying to come to peace, a reconciliation, an awareness between itself and us. Okay.

So the gist through the dialect it is growing and growing until it becomes the universe itself and that is the end of history. All right and this is what we call a teological movement of history where things are moving towards their purpose. So what Hegel says is the world is becoming. Okay. Do not think of the world as being but becoming as constantly in a process of transformation of growth of expansion.

Why? Because it wants to become being. The being is when we are completely reconciled to God. All right? That's the end of the world.

That's the end of history. the the reconciliation between us and God. When we when we become when we we become God and but God become us, then there's no more differentiation. There's now no more conflict. We are moving towards this because the world is theological.

Every single thing that we do is moving towards the one reunion with God. Okay. Um the guys, so so to prove this, Hegel discusses the guys. How do we know the guys? Well, in culture, we know the guys through um sorry, art, philosophy, and religion.

And when you study these three things historically, what you will discover is they've they're all progressing. Okay. So, so in terms of art right now, you are we are in the romantic period, which is the highest period of art because it is synthesizing all previous periods of art. uh religion the highest the highest religion is Christianity because it is the beginning of a reconciliation between us and God. Jesus was the great democratic force that allow us to now all in our own way access God before God was captured and imprisoned by the priest and Jesus freed God from the priest and now and so Christianity is the highest religion and of course philosophy what's the highest philosophy he go right because this theory of the gist is the end point of all our knowledge from the gist we can now finally reconcile our we can move toward towards reconciliation.

Okay. And so from um this there are some major influences. Okay. So let's talk about the three major influences legacies of Hegel. By far the most influential of course is the creation of Marxism.

Because what K Marx will do is he will take this theory of Hegel uh the movement of history the dialectic and he will create something called dialect materialism. He will invert Hegel because Hegel says it's only ideas that matter. And what Marx will say is that nope only material things matter. Okay. He will invert um Hegel but he he will also adopt a lot of Hegelian thinking.

Okay. So um the dialectic becomes a very important part of Marxist um theology sorry ideology which we'll study next class. Okay. So that's the first major influence. Second major influence is um in the idea of God is dead.

Okay. So it was not Nichi actually who introduced this term. It was Hegel. And by God is dead. What Hegel is saying is we need to change our conception of God.

Okay. Before we thought God was aloof, distant and absolute. And now I'm presenting you a more advanced version of God which is a God that is moving in us towards itself. Okay. So God is that and of course the third major influence which we will discuss later on is the idea of the nation state because this theory of gist becomes um part of the nation state and so now because of Hegel we could believe that the nation state can have a soul.

Okay. And this will lead to a lot of problems which include imperialism war and other really fun things. Okay. But we cannot understate the influence of Hegel. All right.

So um that's Hegel. All right. So um any any questions before I move on to the legacy of Kant and Hegel? Was this clear? This was this clear?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Good.

Good. The the contrast is really interesting because like both both these philosophers make great intellectuals, right? And one thing I can picture living within right and being very comfortable saying something concrete about the world. Yeah. And I'm not sure about Hegel.

Do you think he How much do you think he really believed what he was talking about as opposed to like this is a very elegant explanation of the world, right? It seems it seems a little bit They're both abstract but but Hegel seems more abstract by almost scale. Yeah. So um that's a great point. Yeah.

I mean how I mean like I mean Kant is very logical Hegel is very abstract. Um so if you read the critic of pure reason um if you spend enough time on it you will get through it. Okay you will be able to master it. Whereas if you try to read Hegel, especially the phenology of spirit, it's it's just impossible. Uh it's like everyone who reads it will have like a different interpretation.

Uh and the reason why is what Hegel is trying to do, he's trying to synthesize all human knowledge. Okay? He's trying to take everything that's happened, everything that we know, and he's trying to synthesize it into a system, which Khan just basically said we can't really do. Okay. Um, so I mean I'm not an expert on Hegel.

Um, and I don't want to be an expert on Hegel actually because I think I will go crazy if I read too much Hegel. Um, so so but but but I I do know there's a lot of controversy around Hegel. He's he's actually gaining um he's actually regaining popularity in in our in our age because of the idea of the gist, right? Because we live in a two materialistic world. But um but yeah um sorry if I'm yeah rambling on.

Okay. All right. Let's move on to the legacy because the legacy will give us further insight into uh Khan and Hegel as well as help us better understand the world. Okay. So Emanuel Kant.

So remember like Emanuel Kant for him he was really aware of what it was doing and his argument was that the critical pure reason it marks a radical new stage in human history. It is like capernicus. Remember capernicus his major contribution was before we thought we were at the center of the universe right and then capernicus banish us to the margins of the universe. So it's a new way of perceiving the world and so trying to do the same thing. Okay.

So precaut the philosophers thought we we that there was an objective reality and that we were just observers of this objective reality. But through logic and experience we could ultimately access this objective reality. And Khan says no no no the world is entirely subjective. We project our imagination our ideas onto the universe. We are active participants in the world.

Um and this will give rise to idea of romanticism. Okay. Uh which is that the human imagination is the highest ideal. it is in in many ways um partake it participates in god itself right so that is Kant's major revolution uh this is fed Hegel and let's look really let's remind ourselves the difference between Kant and Hegel so what Kant would say is there are limits to reason okay we can never know the mind of God and where what Hegel says is no the mind of God is a dialectic okay and therefore we can know the mind of God All right. Um, Kot will say the world is what we will it to be meaning we have free will.

And then uh Hegel will say we are moving towards the end of history which we are progressing but this means we have no free will. Okay. Everything has been planned from the beginning. All these conflicts are part of a process of eventual enlightenment. And K will say we must believe in God for morality to exist.

This is really important point. So Khan is extremely logical. is very honest and he and he says there's no nothing I can do to prove God exists but we must believe God to exist otherwise we have no morality in this world okay he also says we must believe free will exists even though there's no there's no logical proof of free will otherwise what's the point of existence okay um Hegel says uh God is dead I've created a new god and is a theological god that is forcing us towards there. All right. So these are the three major differences between Kant and Hegel.

All right. So now let's look at the legacy of Kant. Okay. So what's amazing is the more science progresses, the more Kant is proving right. So neuroscience is telling us today that we hallucinate the reality.

All right? And there are lots of experiments that prove this. So let's go over some really quick uh uh examples. We see a triangle, right? Guess what, guys?

It doesn't exist. Okay, it's just part part of our imagination. These lines exist. The triangle doesn't exist. But the first thing we see is this triangle that does not exist.

All right. Um, this thing moves. Okay. But we know um it doesn't really move. Okay.

So, so our mind is playing tricks tricks on us. We see this as slanted. Okay. When we actually um take them side by side together, you'll see them as parallel. Another mind trick that's being played.

Which is bigger? Well, they're the same, but because of these circles, we think this is bigger than that. Okay, another mind trick that's playing that's being played on us. Um, A and B are different colors, right? They see it's obvious they're different colors, right?

But actually, they're the same color. Okay, another mind trick that's being played. So um neuroscientists have done a lot of experiments and they've proven to to us that we constantly participate in reality. We hallucinate reality which is what Kant originally proposed. All right, let's move on to artificial intelligence.

Okay, artificial intelligence shows us the limits of the blank slate theory. Okay, so let's imagine you actually had a blank slate in your minds. Well, that would be very that would be extremely problematic and we know because of how artificial intelligence works. All right, let's look at um supervised learning. So when we talk about artificial intelligence, it doesn't actually exist.

What exists is the idea of supervised learning. And the idea is this. We're trying to teach a machine, an algorithm to recognize a picture. Okay? So what we do is this.

We feed a lot of training data to into the algorithm. And we're talking like millions and millions of pictures. And then we label this data so that the machine is able to using um um its own analysis figure out the differences. Okay, it basically turns every picture into a mathematical concept and then if you if you if you um train it well enough then it's able to differentiate between a triangle and a circle. Okay, that's the idea of machine learning.

Okay, same concept here. Okay, you have to feed it millions millions of pictures and you have to label these different pictures and then the machine will mathematically be able to figure out which is which. Okay, how the machine does that we don't we're not really concerned about but we're but we need to train the machine and the problem with this is it's a very expensive it's very timeconuming. All right, now let's compare this with how a human does it right? at a human.

If I just give you a picture of a sheep, you're able to know what a sheep is. And why does that happen? Okay, so um a machine is able to tell you this is sheep. Okay, but what a machine is not able to tell you is is this sheep real or fake, right? Is it is this a real or fake sheep?

Well, we think it's fake, right? But what the machine says it we don't know. And the machine is correct. Real fake are categories of a mind. Right?

What how do we know this is a fake sheep and not a real sheep? Do you understand? So machine is saying you know if I don't know anything if I have no apore synthetic knowledge then I cannot differentiate between fake and real. But a child anyone can can know this is a fake sheep sheep because obviously we have categories in our minds. Okay.

A machine could not tell you what this is. Why? Because this has become a schema, a a concept. But any child can tell you this is a sheep. Okay.

And again, uh so this is artificial intelligence is showing us that Kant was correct. All right. As I mentioned, Kant inspired Einstein to dream up the theory of relativity. All right. So um so Einstein read Kant when he was 16.

It had a huge influence on Einstein. um spacetime curvature is influenced by it but also the theory of relativity. Okay. And the theory of relativity it's it's fairly straightforward. Let's just say that I'm sitting on a platform a train platform and you are and and and you guys are across from me.

Okay. Now we're not moving right and we know we're not moving but let's just say that for whatever reason simultaneously both platforms are moving at the same speed. Okay. from our perspective we're still not moving and that's the idea of relativity where the laws of physics are relative to where we are at the moment okay and this again is influenced by con what's really fun is to think about quantum mechanics okay so quantum mechanics confirms things in themselves nominal are not knowable to us so this is a major argument between Kant and Hegel okay and so um quantum mechanics so we looked at light and we want to know what the essence of light is. What are photons?

And um we discover something really problematic which is we discover that photons are both wavelike and particle-like. They're both wave movement and particle something static. And what's even more problematic is what we discovered is you're not able to figure out the state of the light if it's a wave or a particle until you actually measure it. So in other words before you measure light before you me measure particles they are simultaneously occupying many different possibilities something we call a superp position. Okay and this this idea of wave function a wave function is all the probabilities of of its position in space.

When you measure it it collapses into one data point. Okay does that make sense? All right. So, um, you know, in school we teach you the bore model of the atom, but in really it's an cloud, meaning we don't know where the electrons are at a certain state. We can only know the probability of where it could be.

Okay. And so, that's a problem here. All right. So, this idea of quantum mechanics, Einstein hated this theory. He thought this was disgusting.

There's too much random randomness. It's ugly. Um, he hated it. Okay. He he thought that God as an architect had an elegant mind and we come with these theories like quantum mechanics which actually makes absolutely no sense you're insulting God.

So to disprove quantum mechanics Einstein wrote a paper on something called quantum entanglement. The idea is this okay things cannot be measured. Oh sorry things we we cannot know the state of things of atoms until they are measured. Right? Well, in quantum mechanics, um, things also exist in opposition towards each other.

Okay? So, so these two, so maybe two atoms are aligned together and their two states are mirror images of each other. So, what you can do is this. If you split these two and you send them off in different corners of the universe, according to quantum mechanics, the moment you measure the first atom, the second atom must also reveal itself even though you have not measured it. and and also has to be simultaneous even though these two atoms could possibly at at different ends of the universe.

Okay, quantum entanglement and Einstein says this can't possibly be true. This is a stupid idea and this proves quantum mechanics doesn't work. The problem is this. The problem is we've done experiments to prove quant quantum entanglement actually does work and this is true. Okay, not only that, but quantum mechanics has proven itself to be the most successful theory in physics of all time because it's given rise to the transistor.

Okay, the idea of the transistor is if you can understand electrons then you can manipulate electrons in a way that allows you to manipulate it which allows you to make calculations on it. Okay. So the transition has given rise to the computer which has given rise to the internet. Okay, basically create the world that we live in today. So about quantum mechanics, we cannot have um the world we live in today.

Okay. So um but again even though we know quantum mechanics to be true, we don't know why it's true. Okay. There are lots of mysteries in quantum mechanics. One of the biggest problems in quantum mechanics is something called Shainger's cat.

So Shaner created a thought experiment to show you how problematic quantum mechanics is. Let's just say that you have a cat inside a box and there's radioactive material inside this box. Okay? And you don't know, you can never know if this cat is dead or alive. So, um the only thing you can say is it is both dead and alive, which is which again is problematic, but it's that that's not it.

It's even more problematic because another physicist Wner said, "Okay, let's do another thought experiment. Let's just say, okay, I'm a scientist. I open the box. Then I know the state of the cat now, right? I didn't know it before.

Once I open the box, I can see the cat is alive or dead. Now I know. But let's just say that there's a friend in my laboratory who is observing me, okay? And he doesn't he has not himself open the box. So when I open the box and I find the cat is dead, what happens to him?

Okay. Well, there are different possibilities. The first possibility is um he now knows. Okay. So reality has changed for him once he has this information.

The other possibility is he doesn't know but he thinks he knows. Okay. So this shows you how problematic um quantum mechanics is. And you can keep on going like this to the nth degree. Okay.

In other words, the question that they're trying to deal with, the question that quantum mechanics doesn't really isn't really able to resolve is, is reality subjective or objective? Can there be a one reality in which we all live in or is reality constantly multiplying subjectively? Okay. In other words, whenever we make a decision when whenever we um make whenever we act, it changes reality for us but not for for not but not for others. Okay, is it possible like we all live within our own universe that is unique to us?

Okay, that's a question quantum mechanics cannot answer and it creates a huge problem in quantum mechanics. But if we go back to Kant, well, the answer's obvious. It is true that we do create our own individual reality, right? The nomen is something we can never see. This is quantum mechanics.

The mind when it interfaces with um the thing itself, it creates the world that we live in. Okay. So this brings back to the point that the imagination is the animating force of the universe. When we use the imagination, we create our own reality that is distinct from other realities. Okay?

So does that make sense? Okay. So um okay um another way of framing this is what what is happening here is K describing the world we live in or did he create this reality that we live in? Okay. and and and and so this another saying this saying this that then is rather than artificial intelligence, neuroscience, quantum mechanics um all confirming what Kant first argued.

Another say of saying this is Kant gave them the intellectual capacity come up with these theories by themselves. Okay. Another thing of saying this is this philosophy creates the boundaries of the human imagination and science all science is doing is playing with these boundaries to confirm what is known within these boundaries. Okay, that's that's that's the radical statement that I want you I want you to think about. Okay, is science capable of come up with new ideas by itself?

And the argument I would make is no because you can have data. What matters is your interpretation of this data. And this interpretation of data comes from the gist. Okay. The the collective mind that philosophers like Kant and Hegel created.

And this is problematic because we live in a world today that is undervaluing philosophy and arts and overvaluing STEM, engineering, technology. Okay. And so what my my my argument to you is if that is the case, if we just spend all our money on science, it's all going to be useless. Okay? Because in the Dante world, Dante talks to God, writes the divine comedy.

Divine comedy then inspires Khan to write the critique of pure reason, which inspires Hegel. And then two and the two together will go inspire neuroscience, artificial intelligence and uh quantum mechanics. Okay. So in other words, it is imagination that creates all reality, not just our individual reality. There are some of us who are geniuses who are able to imagine a new reality in which we can now inhabit and participate in.

Right? Um and evidence for this is you know ever since the Germans uh so so Kant also um conceptualized the United Nations. Okay. Um ever since Connisburg fell ever since the Germans lost World War II we have not made major advances in science. Okay, remember the transisure is not a major advance.

It's just techn it's just a it's just technology. It's it's just taking a science and then um expressing it uh uh in in in the world that we live in today. Okay. So without culture, without the gist, is it possible to contribute uh to advanced science? Okay.

And I think the answer is no. I think we're stuck where we are because we've abandoned culture. We've abandoned gist. The gist. So um Emanuel Kant was a citizen of Connisburg.

In fact he was called the Connisburg clock. Why? Because he was so regimented. He took he made sure at a very specific time he he could he would take a walk somewhere. Okay.

And so so by observing where he was at a certain time the residents of Connorsburg would know what time it is. All right. So um you can make the argument that that Kant um created Connisburg because Connisburg would after Kant become the in intellectual scientific center of Europe but Kinsburg also created him. Okay, which is very uh an idea which would be very familiar to Hegel. All right.

So that is it for Kant. We now we will now move on to Marx and Freud. Okay. Um but was this clear? Any any questions?

Okay, great. So, uh next class we will do um marks