Thank you so much for your kindness! Especially because of people like you we will keep makimg these videos 😄

This is very interesting, but I think that the critique that the promoters of "negative dialectics" (like Wittgenstein, Adorno and probably Berger, whose work I don't know) levelled against Fichte, Novalis, Schelling and Hegel should itself be criticised. Does Berger ever takes into account spherical perspective/spherical geometry?

We're back!! Thanks for your enthusiasm! 😄

@@eversbrothersproductions1476 wow what a theory or as you say science of the self-conscious subject. it warrants rewatching and reading the related texts

Thank you for your reply! So, the basic premise is this: To be conscious of something means "to be aware". For you to be aware of something you need reflection. But then the question is, what do you reflect on? Answer, you reflect on a representation by relating it to other representations. So lets say there is a dog. And the dog sees a ball. The dog will start whipping its tail because it synthesized before that the representation of the "ball" equals "playing". The dog is aware of the ball and the signification thereof. However, when we talk about consciousness, we generally talk about self consciousness. This is reflecting on this reflection, or describing that we are describing, positing that we are positing, seeing that we are seeing, being conscious of being conscious, etc. So what de we use to reflect on our reflection? Answer, language. The only way we can reflect on ourselves and abstract our self from the other, is by using signifiers or words. When we say "I" or use our name, like "thomas" for example, we create a false being. A being that takes responsibility for the action, while only existing as a representation. Anyhow, Lacan thus says that it is not consciousness that creates language, it is that consciousness IS language. What we call consciousness, or self consciousness, is language, words, culture! I hope this helps! 🙂

That is actually a really good summary! Regarding your question about the representation, Fichte is not really clear on this. But I would say that your suggestion is correct. When the I posits the non-I, the non-I is still void of any content or representation. However, when the I goes on to reflect on the positing of the non-I, it creates this representation. Here the representation is not so much created, but more synthesized in the way Kant uses the word. When you see the other, you conceptualize different representations based on synthesis. So as an example, when you see an other person, you can never really see who they are (the signifiers are never the signified). You never really "know" the other. What you do know are the representations that the other signifies. So now lets take it to the extreme. Lets say you see a person wearing an expensive suit. Based on culture, or the Big Other, we synthesize what we already know and see: man, expensive, suit, posh, arrogant, etc. Based on the faculty of cause and effect, we synthesize a concept of the other based on representation. We imagine this other to be what we think he is, based on concepts given by the Big Other. Fichte is in line here with Kant, but Fichte explains the derivation of Kants system. Fichte also calls this ability of concept formation based on the categories, the power of judgement. Fichte goes one step further, where he explains that self-consciousness is just the ability to judge that the I is different from everything that is Other. To abstract from everything that I can think away. Since Fichte himself is not clear on this, and there is not much literature on Fichte, this would be my best guess. If it so happens that you find a better explanation, please let me know! 😄

@@eversbrothersproductions1476 OK thanks

Thank you for your question! And of course we can explain it in a simpler way, or at least I will try. So, Kant provided philosophy with the idea that the relation between objects is something subjective and not objective. We need certain “categories of the understanding” in order to think about representations of objects. Fichte read Kant, and noticed that Kant did not explain where he got the categories from, or how this would provide us with a theory on self-consciousness. Fichte starts where Kant ended. So what Fichte does is deconstruct consciousness from where we are now (conscious subjects), to what we need to begin with. And, according to Fichte, the first principle states that whatever is happening, whatever I experience, is MY experience. Even if I am delirious or hallucinating, the experience is true to me. So, I am I. We can however not be conscious if we are only an I, we need an opposition to the I, in order to recognise a difference between us and others. The second principle is thus, I am non a non-I. Or, I am not the other. The third principle must unify the I and non-I, and it does so by mutually limiting the I and non-I. Okay, this is still vague, so let us put it very simple. You as an I, as a subject, are continuously positing. That is, you are going forwards let’s say. However, by just going forward, you are not conscious of the fact that you are going forward. It is only when you run into something, that you can reflect and say: “ah, I was going forward, but not anymore.”. This is the point where we as subject run into the Other. The other in the broad sense of Lacan, is literally other subjects, but this is also language and culture. So, we can only become conscious of ourselves, if our activity is stopped and thrown back onto itself by the Other. The same happens to the other. Thus we need the other and the other needs us to be self-conscious. No I no you, no you no I. I hope this helps!

@@eversbrothersproductions1476 Oh thank you so much for the reply! Hmm I think I'm getting it. I'll try to explain my thoughts and please tell if they are going in the right direction: So positing simply means the "functioning of the subject", whatever appears in consciousness. Such that, from the subject's perpective, it would be the uninterrupted flow of one experience to the other. A subject in such uninterrupted state would not be consciouss of itself because its experiences would not have a representation of itself (its own internal processes, or actions). Since we are embodieded subjects, I'm led to interpret that the interruption of the positing of the subject is done physically, many of the times, and then linguistically, once we start to understand language. This interruption then leads to the feeling of impeded activity, which then leads the subject to represent its own actions and processes as well as the Other's. This has the result of conditioning the positing of the subject. And since the interruptions done by the Other follow patterns and the languange provides a structure for representation, the subject represents itself and the Other using the language's structure making it posit itself following certain patterns. This leads me to the following thoughts: While the Other is said to be other subjects, before contact with other subjects, the I has contact with the "external world" itself. Isn't the positing of the subject also interrupted by barriers that aren't other subjects? I'm thinking of situations like a baby repeatedly hitting some object, such that the experience of their hand moving through air is interrupted by the surface. Why doesn't this encounter with the "objective Other" lead to the subject representing itself and becoming self-consciouss? Plus, another thought: It is affirmed that the interrupting of the positing of the I leads to it representing itself. Although I understand that this is a necessary relationship for the emerging of self-consciousness, I see no explanation of what mechanism would lead to this. To answer this question would we need to appeal to the external world (even with not assuming it to be a material world) and say "brains have evolved to represent themselves whenever their actions are interrupted by external factors, resulting in alterations in behaviour"?

@@doctorinternet8695 I must really complement you on your summery! Its way better than my initial response! With regard to your remark on the other not being a literal other subject. Yess, this can be anything that is not the subject. This will be the first reflection (feeling of force). However, self-consciousness needs the abstraction from everything not the self, and the only way in which the subject can abstract like this is in language. And language is per definition "the language of the other" acourding to Lacan. Thats why accourding to lacan ot is not that we are conscious and then create language, it is that language is (self)consciousness. With regard to the mechanism: I would say that a subject needs two things: 1) memory and 2) synthesis. Memory is the physical structure of the brain where through evolution humams traited a large gut for more memory (neural pathways). Synthesis based on the categories of the understanding as described by Kant relate representations in memory. In this way, (human) brains are evolved to create a non-real world of representations that is used as a trial amd error playground so our ideal can die instead of ourselves. I personally believe this to be true based on both philosophy, neuroscience and psychoanalysis. I am curious what you think! 🙂

@@eversbrothersproductions1476 Thank you, I'm happy to hear! I've been quite interested in these subjects, but until now wasn't quite getting it and not sure if what I got made sense haha Oh I see, so, acording to lacan, language is what allows for self-consciousness to fully arise, because it offers a structure to represent and reflect our own functioning. Somehow I feel like a piece of this puzzle is missing, for me to fully comprehend it, but I can't pinpoint what it could be... Anyway this informtation made it much clearer to me the necessity of other subjects for self-consciousness, because we can observe that even our linguistic function can be an automatic self-sustaining process, in phenomena like people talking past each other, reasoning through simple problems, small talk, having preconceptions etc. In my experience, during these events we kinda lose ourselves into the act of speaking, basing our speach upon previous representations and structures. It's only once a challenge arises that we stop the automatic speach and reflect. This could be, for example, when a casual small talk develops into a personal conversation, and we begin gazing upon ourselves to speak about what is it that we are. And the two components that you suggest makes sense to me. Without memory, we have no representations to relate. And on our capacity for synthesis, it seems to me that maybe our brains are adapted to readily incorporate language as a substrate for relating and generating representations, on top of being particularly good at these tasks by themselves. What comes to mind is the description by hellen keller, the deaf and blind writer, of the moment she first learned the word for 'water'. If I remember correctly, she talked of an ecstatic moment of clarity when the signs someone was drawing on her hand became linked to the feeling of water. And furthermore she understood that future signs were to be related to other representations. Now that I think about it, language is an amazing tool for this task because it allows for representations to be related in an energy saving way. The brain, instead of simulating whole complex situations and memories that involve images, sounds, spatial information etc, can play with much simpler and already structured tokens. This idea is certainly not new, but only now it came to me... What comes to my mind is a video by vox about the dyslexic brain, claiming that while it has difficulty in reading (which could point to a difficulty in using language as a means for representation), it has greater capacity for mental visualization and global reasoning (which seems like a "more direct" way of relating representations)

Everything about Nietzsche 😎

@@eversbrothersproductions1476 Ohhh, interesting title

@@eversbrothersproductions1476 How long will it be to cover everything?

How can you compare Sapolsky's totally anti-philosophical method to what is being discussed here?