James Kreines: Reason in the World: Hegel’s Metaphysics and Its Philosophical Appeal

Vries, Willem A. de

doi:10.1515/9783110651546-017

Cited by 7 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…Their causal roles are determined solely within the transient 'Humean mosaic' they presently belong to. Kreines (2015) has portrayed Hegel's account of mechanism as a shift from 'conceptless' to 'reasonable' mechanism. Conceptless mechanism implies a conception of causal roles as extrinsic to their bearers, while reasonable mechanism acknowledges that mechanical objects have inherent causal powers.…”

Section: From Categorical Properties To Network Of Intrinsic Powersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This chapter comes at the end of a section ("Objectivity") where teleology is addressed after an in-depth assessment of the notion of mechanism. The relation between mechanism and teleology is seldom addressed in this literature, despite being of pivotal importance to understand Hegel's views on the matter (with the exception of Kreines, 2015, andYeomans, 2012 discussed below).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Teleology and mechanism: a dialectical approach

Gambarotto

2023

Synthese

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The paper proposes a dialectical approach to our understanding of the relation between teleology and mechanism. This approach is dialectical both in form and content. In form, it proposes a contemporary interpretation of Hegel’s metaphysical account of teleology. This account is grounded in a dialectical methodology, which consists in scrutinizing the inherent limitations of a theoretical position that lead it to suppress itself and evolve into a better one. I apply the same methodology to the function debate. For Hegel, teleology can be understood in three main variants, which can be fruitfully mapped onto the three main positions in the function debate, the key conceptual distinction being whether teleological principles are understood as extrinsic or intrinsic. When it comes to autonomous systems, i.e. systems that embody the regime of Geist, extrinsic functionality must be grounded in intrinsic functionality. My approach is dialectical also in content, insofar as it concludes that intrinsic functional ascriptions rely on the relation of co-determination between the parts and the whole of a system, as well as between the system and its environment.

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Section: From Categorical Properties To Network Of Intrinsic Powersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teleology and mechanism: a dialectical approach

Gambarotto

2023

Synthese

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“…In our preferred reading of Hegel's metaphysics, he treats the structure of the Concept-the unity of universality, particularity and individuality-as a basic structure that articulates both reality and thought. Our cognitive endeavours ultimately aim at understanding or 'comprehension' (Begreifen), and we really understand something if we can explain it in a way that employs the structure of the Concept (Stern 1990;Kreines 2015;Knappik 2016). Such an explanation must make an individual thing or phenomenon intelligible as an instance of a relevant 'objective concept' (WdL: 16/21: 14; cf.…”

Section: Metaphysical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Metaphysics of Hegel's Racism: The Teleology of the ‘Concept’ and the Taxonomy of Races

James

Knappik²

2022

Hegel Bulletin

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This article interprets Hegel's hierarchical theory of race as an application of his general views about the metaphysics of classification and explanation. We begin by offering a reconstruction of Hegel's hierarchical theory of race based on the critical edition of relevant lecture transcripts: we argue that Hegel's position on race is appropriately classified as racist, that it postulates innate mental deficits of some races, and that it turns racism from an anthropological into a metaphysical doctrine by claiming that the division of humankind into races (at least in the Old World) is not a brute fact, but follows a ‘higher necessity’. We then summarize our interpretation of the relevant metaphysical background to this theory. On our reading, Hegel postulates an essentialist form of explanation that explains given kinds as stages in a teleological, non-temporal process through which the nature of a superordinate kind is realized. We argue that Hegel's views about a hierarchical and necessary division of humankind into races are an application of this model to the case of human diversity, motivated by explanatory considerations and subject to confirmation bias. By way of conclusion, we address two possible attempts to ‘save’ Hegelian philosophy from its racist baggage.

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“…Whilst 'indifference' entails 'externality', 'externality' does not always entail 'indifference'. 8 Again, pace Kreines (2015) who reads the externality of the Concept to the mechanical object as their separation, the Concept is external to the mechanical object in so far as each determination of the Concept is a mechanical object that is external to every other determination of the Concept. It is in this sense that the Concept is external to the mechanical object.…”

Section: Hegel's Account Of Mechanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Critical Reflection on James Kreines's Interpretation of Hegel's Account of ‘Mechanism’

Rokni¹

2022

Hegel Bulletin

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James Kreines's Reason in the World (2015) offers an engaging and thought-provoking examination of Hegel's ambitions in the Science of Logic. However, it has gone unnoticed that there are two fundamental misinterpretations in his account of ‘Mechanism’ from the Logic. First, Kreines interprets the chapter as beginning with a ‘pure mechanism’ hypothesis that investigates the coherence of a purely mechanistic explanation of the world that makes no appeal to the immanent concept of things. Thus, according to Kreines, the Concept is absent from the beginning of ‘Mechanism’ and only appears in the final section of the chapter, in ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’ in the subsection on the law, what Kreines conceptualizes as ‘reasonable mechanism’. Second, within his overall interpretation of ‘Mechanism’ as the development from the ‘pure mechanism’ hypothesis to ‘reasonable mechanism’ Kreines claims that there are logical moments that are explanatorily relevant and some that are not. Thus, Kreines will want to claim that Hegel's analysis of ‘pure mechanism’ reveals that ‘pure mechanism’ fails to be explanatorily relevant because, a) the logical moments do not have a concept immanent to them, and b) have ‘indifference’. It is only in the law that mechanistic explanations become explanatorily relevant because of the appearance of the Concept and the disappearance of ‘indifference’. I argue against both these positions. First, I think that there is no textual support for the idea that ‘Mechanism’ begins without the Concept immanent to it. Second, I think that Kreines is mistaken to equate ‘indifference’ with explanatory irrelevance and the absence of the Concept. My approach in this paper is to give my own analysis of the relevant passages from ‘Mechanism’ and, in doing so, to both show the misgivings of Kreines's interpretation and to offer an alternative way of reading the chapter.

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James Kreines: Reason in the World: Hegel’s Metaphysics and Its Philosophical Appeal

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Teleology and mechanism: a dialectical approach

Teleology and mechanism: a dialectical approach

Exploring the Metaphysics of Hegel's Racism: The Teleology of the ‘Concept’ and the Taxonomy of Races

A Critical Reflection on James Kreines's Interpretation of Hegel's Account of ‘Mechanism’

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