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Mediating the Immediate: Consciousness and the Inferential Articulation of Determinate Empirical Conceptual Content

Part One:

Introduction and Overview

At least some of our thoughts have content; at least some of our sentences express meanings. At least some of our contentful thoughts and meaningful sentences represent or are about things, in the sense that they answer for their correctness (in an important sense of correctness) to the properties those represented things really have. A perennial pro lem of modern philosophy has een understanding the relation etween the contents or meanings we grasp in thin!ing and deploy in tal!ing, on the one hand, and the o "ects, properties, and states of affairs they represent, on the other. At the heart of #egels writings as $ read them lies a novel, sophisticated and interesting account of the relations among these roadly semantic dimensions of our discursive activity. $ elieve oth that this account has not generally een appreciated, certainly not in detail, and that understanding it would e of the first importance for our contemporary thin!ing a out these issues. $n this essay $ want to egin to lay out the structure of the semantic story $ see #egel telling.

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+arly modern philosophers worried a out how !nowledge is possi le. #ow, they wondered, could we show that things ever really are as they appear to e, -e !now how they appear to us, how we ta!e things to e, how we represent them. -e !now that "ust y having the ideas that are our representings of things other than those ideas. But how do we !now whether those things ever really are as they appear,

A central lesson emerging from the new science was that one could no longer thin! of the relation etween appearance and reality in traditional terms of relations of resemblance etween how things seem and how they are. .opernicus explained the appearance of the sun revolving around a stationary earth y appeal to the reality of the earth rotating while revolving around a stationary sun. -hat is in reality at rest appears in motion, what in reality is in motion is at rest, and the motions are mischaracteri/ed as well as misplaced. 0o astronomical things are not at all what they seem. 1he appearances stand only in a much more a stract relation to the facts2 they represent them, without resem ling them. 3alileo descri ed the motions of terrestrial odies in the language of geometry, y representing periods of time and speeds y the lengths of lines, accelerations y the areas of triangles. -hat could e more different, -hat properties do representing and represented share, 4escartes then showed how this newly geometri/ed reality could e represented alge raically, providing a new model of the relation of representing mind to represented world2 that of the discursive alge raic e5uation to the extended spatial figure it determines. 1he circle that appears as*is represented y*the string of sym ols 6x78y79': is as unli!e that representation as well could e.' (1he significance of the fact that the sort of isomorphism that underlies these various representational relations can e
1his way of thin!ing a out the advent of seventeenth century representationalism is due to my colleague, ;ohn #augeland. 0ee Artificial Intelligence: The Very Idea <.am ridge =ass. =.$.1 >ress, Bradford, '%)?@, pp. '?ABC.
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appreciated only at the level of whole systems of representings and representeds, and not atomistically, would not e appreciated for some time.)

1he conceptual sea change from thin!ing of the relation etween appearance and reality in terms of resem lance to thin!ing of it in more a stract terms of representation re5uired a corresponding change in the understanding of error. .orrect representation is compati le with radical differences etween representing and represented. 3etting things wrong is misrepresenting them. But on that conception, a regress looms if one considers the possi ility of error a out ones representings. Dor to e wrong a out them must e to misrepresent them, and the 5uestion rearises for those representings of representings. 1he conclusion then seems unavoida le that if error is to e possi le a out how things really are, there must e something, some level of representings, a out which error is not possi le. 1here must e some representings that we !now nonrepresentationally2 y having them, rather than y representing (having representations of) them. $ might e o liged to ac!nowledge that $ am wrong a out the distant towers being round; perhaps it only seems (or loo!s) round to me. But $ cannot in the same way e forced to retreat from my claim that it seems round, falling ac! to the possi ility that it merely seems to seem round to me. $n the context of an understanding of appearances as representations of reality, the intelligi ility of so much as the possi ility of ma!ing mista!es a out how things really are re5uires privileged cognitive access to at least some of our representings.7

Ene way of putting this point that has proven tempting is to retain the representational paradigm of !nowledge and error, and to thin! of privileged access to some representings as a special case, where representing representing and represented representing stand to one another in the peculiarly intimate relation of identity , so that the (now only in a degenerate sense) inferential relation etween them is infalli le. $ thin! this is an ultimately unhelpful way of thin!ing a out the phenomenon, ut it was of considera le importance for some strains of postAFantian idealism.
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-hile on the one hand the representational paradigm of the relation etween appearance and reality secures an especially intimate relation etween !nowers and their representations, on the other hand it opens up a gulf etween those representations and what they represent. 1hat gulf ma!es it difficult to see how we could ever e warranted in ma!ing the move from appearance to reality that is re5uired for us to count as !nowing anything but our own representings. En this picture, an inference is re5uired to move from what we have*representations, appearances*to conclusions a out the represented reality that is the cognitive target of those representations. 0uch inferences are ris!y; things are not always as they appear or are represented as eing. 3iven the possi ility of error, it is appropriate to loo! for a "ustification for relying on various !inds of inference from how things appear to how they are. Get if our only cognitive access to anything other than our own representings is representational, then that access always depends upon such a representational inference2 a move from what we !now of our representings to a conclusion a out what is represented. $n that case there is no noncircular way to test the validity of such representational inferences in general, y comparing representing and represented directly*that is, y a comparison of representings with the represented itself, rather than with a representation of it to which it must e lin!ed y a falli le inference of the same !ind whose validity is in 5uestion. -e then seem loc!ed into a circle of representations. -ithin this representational conceptual framewor!, the options are star!2 either a s!epticism a out the possi ility of !nowledge, which urges at least agnosticism a out the correctness of any of our eliefs whose su "ect matter is not our own representations, or finding a way to extend the immediate (in the sense of nonrepresentational, hence noninferential) ac5uaintance we have with our own

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representings to encompass other things, hitherto thought of as merely represented or representa le.

II

1he sort of idealism that responds to this impasse y denying the distinction etween representings and things that are merely representa le, ut not themselves representings* y treating everything as a representing*merely plumps for one unpalata le alternative framed y the early modern representational paradigm. 1he pro"ect of 3erman idealism, eginning with Fant, is rather to rea! out of that frame entirely. (1hat is not to say that there was no ac!sliding, or that the attempt was wholly successful.) Fant starts his in5uiry farther ac! than his predecessors did. 1hey wanted to understand the conditions under which we could "ustifia ly expect our representations to e correct*expect things to e as they are represented as eing. Fant wants to understand what it is for something to e a representation in the first place2 that is, to e the sort of thing that can e correct or incorrect, depending on how it is with something else, which accordingly counts as represented y it. 1his is to as! after the nature of representational purport, the way in which representings point eyond themselves to something represented. $t is to as! what ma!es it possi le for us so much as to thin! that our ideas are about something. 1he threat that Fant is concerned to address is not epistemological s!epticism, ut a !ind of semantic s!epticism*not the potential unintelligi ility of !nowledge or correct representation, ut the potential unintelligi ility of o "ective representational content itself, whether correct or incorrect. 4escartes had ta!en it for granted that he understood the content of his own ideas, in the sense of !nowing how things would have to e for them to

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e true or correct. #is pro lem was how to "ustify the elief that things were as he too! them to e. Fants deeper pro lem is how to understand ta!ing things to e one way rather than another*not how to get from appearance to reality, ut how to understand appearings themselves.

Fant was the first to thin! of representation in explicitly normative terms. 1o treat something as a representation is to ta!e it to e su "ect to a distinctive !ind of assessment of correctness. $t is to grant a distinctive !ind of authority with respect to such assessments to what one there y ta!es to e represented y the item su "ect to those evaluations. 1o represent things as thusAandAso is to bind oneself, to ma!e oneself responsible to the things for the correctness of ones representation. 1he fundamental tas! Fant sets himself in this vicinity can accordingly e understood as ma!ing intelligi le the sort of authority and responsi ility distinctive of representations.

;udgments (and actions) are, for Fant, most importantly acts we can e responsi le for. 1he norms (he says rules) that determine in each case "ust what we are responsi le for in "udging (and acting), he calls concepts. 1he concepts that articulate our "udgments settle how we have made ourselves responsi le to o "ects for the correctness of those "udgments, in the sense relevant to assessments of their truth and falsity. 1he concepts that articulate our actions settle how we have made ourselves responsi le to o "ects for the correctness of those actions, in the sense relevant to assessments of their success or failure. 1he constitutive responsi ility of representings to what is represented can e thought of as a !ind of normative dependence2 the way in which the normative status of the representing as correct or incorrect (the "udgment as true or false, the action as

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succeeding or failing) depends on how it is with what is represented. .onceiving of them as exercising this sort of authority re5uires that the o "ects represented e ta!en to have a certain sort of independence from representings of them over which they are authoritative. 1al! of the represented o "ects as eing something 6in themselves: potentially distinct from what they are represented to e (how they are 6for us: or 6for consciousness:, as #egel will sayB) aims at articulating the sense in which what is represented must e capa le of eing understood as independent of representings of it.

Fant sees three interloc!ing issues that need to e addressed. Dirst, we must understand the normative force of "udging (and acting), the validity or bindingness of the concepts we apply therein, the sense in which we are responsible for the "udgments (and actions). 0econd, we must understand the sort of content articulated y concepts2 what we are responsi le for in ma!ing a "udgment (or performing an action). Dinally, tying these two together, we must understand the distinctively representational character of conceptually contentful responsi ility we underta!e in "udgment and action2 the way we there y ma!e ourselves responsi le to o "ects. 1his triadic constellation of concerns is what Fant means when he sums up the explanatory target of his enterprise as determining the nature and conditions of the 6objective validity of concepts.: 1he o "ective validity of concepts is the way their use ma!es the user su "ect to or ound y the authority of o "ects, the way the user ecomes responsi le to those o "ects y applying those concepts.

III
<promissory note]: When discussing ep!Introduction" har# $ac# to this $it" and tal# a$out %egel&s non'reif(ing understanding of appearances and phenomena)
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1he issues Fant rings together under the heading 6the o "ective validity of concepts: are also among #egels principle explanatory targets. ( #is approach to normativity is 5uite different from Fants. #e understands normative statuses such as commitment and entitlement, authority and responsi ility, as essentially social statuses*more specifically as products of processes of reciprocal recognition. #is approach to the representational dimension of conceptual content is also 5uite different from Fants. #e understands our conceptually articulated responsi ility to o "ects our "udgments are about as an essentially historical achievement. Both of these differences, $ thin!, can e understood as responses to a focal concern of #egels with an issue he does not see Fant as addressing with similar seriousness2 the determinateness of conceptual norms.

Applications of concepts in the ma!ing of "udgments can e correct or incorrect, accordingly as the "udgments are true or false. -e might call a concept weakly determinate (determinate in the wea! sense) if it has een settled for some actual applications whether they were correct or not. -e could then say that a concept is strongly determinate (determinate in the strong sense) if it has een settled for some possi le applications that have not actually een made, whether they would e correct or not. And we could say that a concept is completely determinate if it has een settled for all possi le application whether they would e correct or not. A concept that is not even wea!ly determinate is completely indeterminate; in that case there is pro a ly no point in tal!ing a out there eing a concept in play at all. #egel thin!s that Fant assumes that all concepts are completely determinate*that for each concept a !nower applies in

cf. >ippin <ref.@

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"udgment, there is always already a fact of the matter as to which other representations fall under (could correctly e synthesi/ed according to) that rule.? And #egel thin!s that a wholeheartedly critical philosophy would investigate not only the conditions of the possi ility of objectively valid concepts, ut also of determinately contentful concepts.

0o #egel is o liged to start his story farther ac! than Fant does. Dor the concepts of which we as! whether, in what sense, and under what conditions they are o "ectively valid *i.e. represent independent o "ects which are authoritative for the correctness of applications of those concepts*are already construed as determinate rules for the synthesis of other representations. $t is a out rules so understood that Fant wants to go on to in5uire a out the conditions of their o "ective validity. #egel wants us first to as! how, in what sense, and under what conditions it is possi le for rules or norms for the application of concepts in "udgment to e determinately contentful, and how, in what sense, and under what conditions empirical !nowers can deploy such concepts in "udgments. #ow and in what sense do we manage to ind ourselves in thought and action y underta!ing commitments that have determinate contents,

#egels approach egins with the idea that we will only understand the determinateness of conceptual norms y loo!ing at the process y which their content is determined, as those concepts are actually applied in experience, that is, in "udgment and action. Ene of his conclusions will e that although there is a sense in which conceptual norms can e completely determinate, they cannot e completely determinate in the static, onceAandAforA all sense that he thin!s characteri/es empirical concepts on the Fantian construal. 1he
<ref.@ <promissory note] <>ic! some passages from the discussion of the dead, static conception of concepts of Ierstehen.@
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5uestion of how any history of actual applications of concepts could determine how in every*or indeed, any*case that has not yet arisen it would e correct to apply (or withhold application of) them is one that has een emphasi/ed in our own time y Frip!es reading of -ittgenstein.C #egels posing of these 5uestions a out the determinate contentfulness of conceptual norms is of the first importance in appreciating his philosophical advance over Fant, as Fants posing his 5uestions a out the o "ective validity of empirical concepts (his replacement of epistemological y roadly semantic concerns) is of the first importance in understanding his philosophical advance over his early modern predecessors. $ thin! that #egels deep and original response to these concerns, centered on his novel account of the sense in which conceptual norms can e determinate, lies at the center of the most valua le philosophical lessons he has to teach us today.

Because he is not prepared to ta!e for granted at the outset of his enterprise the notion of a rule or norm that settles, in advance of actual experiences of applying it, what applications would e correct, #egel is o liged to find other raw materials out of which to construct a concept of conceptual content*a out which one could then go on to in5uire as to the nature and conditions of its determinateness and representational purport (6o "ective validity:). #e starts his story, in the opening Consciousness section of the Phenomenology, with an account of how concepts are articulated y mediation and determinate negation. 1he central interpretive claim $ want to ma!e a out this stretch of text is that in introduces #egels understanding of conceptual content in terms of relations of material inference and material incompatibility. $ ta!e this roadly inferential approach

<ref.@

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to semantics to e one of the ma"or axes around which #egels thought revolves. 1he general idea is to understand conceptual content in the first instance in terms of role in reasoning, rather than in terms of representation. Because of the way he com ines it with his other distinctive organi/ing concerns and commitments, #egel develops this thought in an a solutely original way. But the idea itself is the core of the rationalism #egel inherits from his preAFantian for ears, in particular, Kei ni/.

I*

>reAFantian empiricists and rationalists ali!e were notoriously disposed to run together causal and conceptual issues, largely through insufficient appreciation of the normative character of the Lorder and connection of ideasL that matters for concepts. But there is another, perhaps less appreciated, contrast in play here, esides that of the causal and the conceptual. +nlightenment epistemology was always the home for two somewhat uneasily coexisting conceptions of the conceptual. 1he fundamental concept of the dominant and characteristic understanding of cognitive contentfulness in the period initiated y 4escartes is of course representation. #owever there is a minority semantic tradition that ta!es inference rather than representation as its master concept.

Mationalists such as 0pino/a and Kei ni/ accepted the central role of the concept of representation in explaining human cognitive activity, ut were not prepared to accept 4escartesN strategy of treating the possession of representational content as an unexplained explainer. +ach of them developed instead an account of what it is for one thing to represent another, in terms of the inferential significance of the representing. 1hey were

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explicitly concerned, as 4escartes was not, to e a le to explain what it is for something to e understood, treated, or employed as a representing y the su "ect, what it is for it to e a representing to or for that su "ect (to e Ltan5uam remL, as if of things, as 4escartes puts it). 1heir idea was that the way in which representings point eyond themselves to something represented is to e understood in terms of inferential relations among representings. 0tates and acts ac5uire content y eing caught up in inferences, as premises and conclusions.

1hus a ig divide within +nlightenment epistemology concerns the relative explanatory priority accorded to the concepts of representation and inference. 1he British empiricists were more pu//led than 4escartes a out representational purport, the property of so much as seeming to e a out something else. But they were clear in see!ing to derive inferential relations from the contents of representings, rather than the other way around. $n this regard they elong to the stillAdominant tradition that reads inferential correctnesses off from representational correctnesses, which are assumed to antecedently intelligi le. 1he postA.artesian rationalists, the claim is, give rise to a tradition ased on a complementary semantically reductive order of explanation. 1hese inferentialists see! to define representational properties in terms of inferential ones, which must accordingly e capa le of eing understood antecedently. 1hey start with a notion of content as determining what is a reason for what, and understand truth and representation as features of ideas that are not only manifested in, ut actually consist in their role in reasoning. $ thin! that the division of preAFantian philosophers into representationalists and inferentialists cuts according to deeper principles of their thought than does the nearly

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coextensional division of them into empiricists and rationalists, though that is not a point $ will pursue here.

Fant synthesi/ed these traditions. 1he genus of which intuitions and concepts are species is representation. But to e a representation of either of these sorts is to ma!e a certain !ind of contri ution to judgments. ;udgments say (claim, thin!) something of something. $n virtue of the contri ution of intuitions, they represent some o "ect or o "ects. $n virtue of the contri ution of concepts, they represent it as having some property, as falling under some universal or concept, as having something true of it. 1he "udgment is the minimal unit of awareness, cognition, or experience*that y reference to which anything else can e understood as a representation. $t is so ecause "udgments are the atoms of responsi ility, in the sense of eing the minimal unit one can e responsi le for.H 1he form of "udgment, what ma!es something into a "udgment, is in turn understood in terms of the possi ility of synthesi/ing a collection of them into a certain sort of higher unity2 a transcendental unity of apperception. 1his is the unit of responsi ility in the sense of what is responsi le for the "udgments. -hen we as! what it is to e responsi le for a "udgment *for instance, what eing held responsi le for it consists in, and what would count as satisfying or not satisfying that responsi ility*we see that we must loo! to its relations to other "udgments (its mediation by other "udgments). Dor holding someone so responsi le is a matter of holding him responsi le also for other "udgments, related to the first as its inferential conse5uences, and of confronting him with incompati le "udgments for which one also holds him responsi le. 1a!ing a "udgment to e his "udgment, to belong to him in the sense of his eing responsi le for it, is to ta!e it to e part of a larger whole. -hat
En the theoretical or cognitive side. En the practical or active side, actions are the atoms of responsi ility.
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he is responsi le for doing is fitting it into that larger whole appropriately* y drawing conse5uences and eliminating incompati ilities.

0o the transcendental unity of apperception is a coAresponsi ility class or structure, defined y relations of inference and incompati ility. Dor it is the 1OA, what is responsi le for "udgments (which there y in that sense count as its "udgments), that is committed to whenever it "udges that p, if p entails . And it the 1OA, the !nowing

agent, that is precluded from eing entitled to r whenever it "udges that p, if p is incompati le with r. 1he sense in which the !nower is responsi le for its "udgments is articulated y a dual condition of systematicity2 eing responsi le for the inferential conse5uences of its commitments, and for eliminating incompati ilities among its commitments. $t is for this reason that the ideal of systematicity incorporated in the ideas of Meason is already implicit in the very concept of a responsi le !nower, and hence in the concept of "udgment, which structures those responsi ilities. Dor Fant, the idea of representation, on the one hand, and the ideas of inferential and incompati ility relations among "udgea le contents, on the other, are e5ually indispensa le, indissolu ly lin!ed, mutually presupposing elements of the complex structure that is empirical cognition as he understands it.

#egel ta!es over from Fant a vision of representation and inference as two sides of one coin, as two essential dimensions of cognitive content. #is development of this idea is 5uite different, however. Ene of the ways Fant distinguished intuitions from concepts was to see the former as the locus of immediacy, and the latter as representations that are oth mediating and mediated. Adapting this terminology (which we will e concerned to

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explicate farther along), #egel descri es empirical cognition in terms of a distinctively structured colla oration of immediacy and mediation. 1he primary textual locus for this discussion is the Consciousness section of the Phenomenology. #egels asic idea for moving eyond this roadly inferential approach treatment of conceptual content to incorporate also the representational dimension of cognition is presented to egin with already in the Introduction to the Phenomenology. $ll discuss the two issues, and the corresponding texts, in that order here.

1he first three large sections of the Phenomenology, called Consciousness, !elf" Consciousness# and $eason, descri ed different aspects of discursive activity.) Consciousness deals with empirical !nowledge. $eason deals with rational action. !elf" Consciousness deals with the social constitution of !nowers and agents. 1o put the same point another way2 Consciousness considers the contri ution of language entry transitions or o servations to determinate, inferentially articulated conceptual contents; !elf" Consciousness considers the contri ution of the community of language users to the institution of determinately contentful conceptual norms; $eason considers the contri ution of language exit transitions or intentional actions to determinate, inferentially articulated conceptual contents and norms. 1he section called !pirit then draws all these aspects together, offering a rational reconstruction of a process of historical development y which mem ers of a linguistic community come to e a le to ma!e explicit to

$ will o serve the convention that capitali/ed, italici/ed expressions refer to sections of the text under discussion.
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themselves the role they play as at once creatures and creators of determinately contentful conceptual norms.

0ome readers of the Phenomenology have een misled y the fact that there is a retrospectively discerned historical progression within the discussions of each of Consciousness# !elf"Consciousness# and $eason into supposing that these three sections themselves form a single historical progression. But the largest divisions in the Phenomenology are not related to one another li!e this. 1he movements of selfA consciousness do not come after those of consciousness, nor do they come before those of Meason, except in the exposition of the oo!. 1o understand the oo! in the traditional way is to mista!e the order of exposition for the order of the developments it relates. #yppolite was already 5uite explicit on this fundamental point2 #egel 5uite clearly insists that the three moments, consciousness, selfA consciousness, and reason, are not to e considered a succession. 1hey are not in time2 they are a stractions contrived from within the whole of spirit and studied in their separate development. Enly the specific forms of these moments AA sensuous certainty, perception, understanding, etc., which represent a concrete totality AA can e considered to e successive within the moment of which they are a part. %
;ean #yppolite Introduction to the $eading of %egel <ref.@ pp. BCAH. #is view could e ac!ed up y passages such as the following2 L1he moments are consciousness, self'consciousness, eason, and +pirit AA0pirit that is, as immediate 0pirit, which is not yet consciousness of 0pirit. 1heir totality, ta#en together, constitutes 0pirit in its mundane existence generally; 0pirit as such contains the previous structured shapes in universal determinations, in the moments "ust named...Enly the totality of 0pirit is in 1ime, and the NshapesN, which are NshapesN of the totality of +pirit, display themselves in a temporal succession; for only the whole has true actuality and therefore the form of pure freedom in the face of an NotherN, a form which expresses itself in 1ime. But the moments of the whole, consciousness, selfAconsciousness, Meason, and 0pirit, "ust ecause they are moments, have no existence in separation from one another.L <paragraph CH%@ and 61hus while the previous single series in its advance mar!ed the retrogressive steps in it y nodes, ut continued itself again from them in a single line, it is now, as it were, ro!en at these nodes, at these
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After (in the order of exposition of the Phenomenology) we have learned various lessons a out the different aspects of discursive activity discussed severally in Consciousness# !elf"Consciousness# and $eason, we can put all three of them together and discuss the whole phenomenon they are aspects of, in !pirit. (1here is a lot of fuss in the secondary literature a out how we should understand ourselves, the readers of the Phenomenology, as ma!ing the transitions etween different parts of the oo!. At a smaller scale, there can e a real point to this, ut at the larger scale of the movement from Consciousness to !elf" Consciousness and from !elf" Consciousness to $eason, $ elieve we should ma!e the transitions simply y turning the page.)

$ said a ove that $ ta!e the topic of Consciousness to e the relations etween immediacy and mediation in empirical cognition. =ediation <Iermittlung@ is the term #egel uses to tal! a out inference. 1he origin of the terminology lies in traditional logics treatment of syllogisms. $n All cats are verte rates. All verte rates are mammals. All cats are mammals. verte rates is the middle term, and cats and mammals are the extremes. 1he middle term mediates the inference from one extreme to the other. All inferences are construed as mediated y some concept or concepts. Being a le to play this role is understood as an

universal moments, and falls apart into many lines, which, gathered up into a single undle, at the same time com ine symmetrically so that the similar differences in which each particular moment too! shape within itself meet together.: <C)'@ ($ ta!e it that the inclusion of immediate 0pirit along with consciousness, selfAconsciousness, and reason in the first passage is explicitly to mar! the role of the community, which is the other side of individual selfAconsciousness.)

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essential feature of concepts. But concepts can also e used to express "udgments that are not arrived at as the result of inferences, for instance when a claim such as 1his cat is a verte rate, is used to report an o served fact. 1his is the immediate use of concepts. Fant is appealing to this tradition when he says2 All certainty is either mediated or not mediated, that is, it either re5uires proof or is neither suscepti le nor in need of any proof. 1here may e ever so much in our cognition that is mediately certain only, that is only through proof, yet there must also e something indemonstra le or immediately certain, and all our cognition must start from immediately certain propositions.'J $n the first .riti5ue, Fant consistently descri es intuitions as representations that are immediately related to their o "ects, while concepts are only mediately related to them, y means of the intuitions that fall under them. Fants residual empiricism consists in his insistence that only through their incorporation of intuitions do "udgments succeed in referring to objects.

#egel is a semantic inferentialist, in that he thin!s that to e a concept is to e a le to mediate inferences. But he also thin!s that the immediate use of concepts can ma!e an essential contri ution to their determinate contentfulness. Ene of the central lessons of !ense Certainty is that nothing that is merely immediate can e cognitively significant. An immediate response to ones environmental situation must involve the application of a
&ogic <ref.@, p. H%. 1his sort of use of certainty <3ewissheit@ is also important for #egels use of the important dyad certainty&truth, which he uses to try terminologically to loosen the grip of the picture of su "ects and o "ects as independent things, in favor of one in which we can appreciate thoughts and facts as having in favored cases the very same conceptually articulated contents. <ref. to my discussion of this@.
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concept if it is to count as knowing anything. And for it to e a concept that is applied*in uttering a linguistic expression or performing a mental act*is a matter of its specifically inferential significance. Although o servations are not themselves the products of processes of inference, they must nonetheless e capa le of playing an inferential role2 specifically, of serving as premises from which further conclusions can e drawn. +mpirical cognition re5uires the mediation (in the sense of inferential articulation) of the immediate itself.

Onderlying this paradoxicalAsounding formulation is a crucial distinction that emerges as we move from !ense Certainty to Perception*a distinction etween two different things one might mean y immediate or noninferential. .ognitive acts, "udgments or putative !nowings, can e immediate in the sense of eing noninferentially elicited. 1hey have what might e called immediacy of origin in case they are not produced as the products of processes of inference, as o servations are not. But they cannot e immediate in the sense of not eing inferentially significant, not playing a role in inference, at least as premise. 1hey cannot have what might e called immediacy of content. 1o e cognitively significant, to have any content at all, is to have specifically conceptual content; and that is to e inferentially significant. Munning these two notions together, as is all too easy using an undifferentiated term such as immediacy, results in what 0ellars calls the 6=yth of the 3iven:2 the idea of episodes that simply occur, or states one simply has, independently of ones mastery of any specifically conceptual a ilities, which nonetheless count as knowing something.'' 1o avoid this mista!e, #egel must sort out for us the ways in which it is appropriate to understand immediacy as eing mediated. 1he

''

-ilfrid 0ellars L+mpiricism and the >hilosophy of =indL <ref.@

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topic of Perception is accordingly sense universals2 concepts that are fully mediated and mediating, capa le of playing inferential roles oth in premises and in conclusions, ut which also have noninferential uses in o servational and perceptual "udgments.

1he role of concepts in mediating inferences is not purely formal. Although the syllogistic inference of the example a ove is one that is good in virtue of its form (Bar ara) alone, that the concept verte rate can mediate an inference from the applica ility of the concept cat to the applica ility of the concept mammal is not a matter of the form of that concept, ut of its content. 3rasping the content of a determinate empirical concept such as verte rate re5uires !nowing which inferences it can mediate2 which other concepts can serve as appropriate grounds for applying it (as cat does), and which other concepts serve as conse uences of applying it (as mammal does). $nvolving and articulating as they do the contents of the nonlogical concepts caught up in them, these inferences are what 0ellars calls material inferences, not formal ones.'7 1he mediating role of a concept can e expressed explicitly in formally valid syllogistic inferences such as the one a ove, ut the inferential connections that articulate its content depend on the truth of the ma"or and minor premises, which use logical voca ulary such as all (or ifPthenQQQ) to express the propriety of the inferences from cat to verte rate, and from verte rate to mammal.

1he goodness of those implicit material inferences, which partly articulate the determinate content of the empirical concept verte rate, and so the truth of the ma"or and minor premises of the syllogism, which codify them, depend on the sorts of nonlogical states of affairs that are revealed to us empirically in o servation. 1he immediacy of o servations

'7

-ilfrid 0ellars 6$nference and =eaning: <ref.@ 0ee also .hapter 1wo of 'aking It ()plicit .

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(such as might e expressed y a noninferentially elicited to!ening of 61his cat is a verte rate,:) is incorporated into the content of determinate empirical (nonlogical) concepts such as verte rate. 0o determinate empirical conceptual content re5uires not only that the immediate e mediated, ut also that mediation incorporate immediacy. 1he sense universals (concepts with noninferential as well as inferential uses) #egel investigates in his discussion of Perception are the first locus of such determination of (in the sense of 6constraint on:) inferentially articulated content (mediation) y noninferential uses (immediacy).

Perception also gives us our first glimpse of the complementary roles played y particulars and universals in articulating the inferential content of "udgments*in this case o servation "udgments. Both of these logical concepts pic! out aspects of mediation. 1hat is, they are distinguished y their roles in inference. 1he roadly inferential relation in terms of which the roles distinctive of particulars and universals are specified is what #egel calls 6determinate negation.: By this he means a relation of material incompatibility2 the relation two concepts stand in when the applica ility of one precludes or rules out the applica ility of the other. Med stands in this relation to green; it follows from the applica ility of the one universal to some particular that the other universal does not apply to that same particular. Dormal negation may e thought of as resulting from determinate negation y a straction (which is why #egel calls it a stract negation)2 notA red is what green, lue, yellow, and all the other determinate negations of red have in common, the universal whose applica ility is entailed y the applica ility of any universal that is a determinate negation of red.

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A it farther along $ll descri e in more detail how #egel distinguishes particularity and universality in terms of their roadly inferential roles with respect to material incompati ility relations. Dor now it suffices to point out that y doing this he esta lishes that particulars can and should e thought of as no less conceptual, no less inferentially articulated, no less mediated than universals. 1hat is, although there is a sense in which particulars are the loci of immediacy, and so contrast with universals, as the loci of mediation, in fact particulars do not stand in opposition to the sort of mediation characteristic of universals, as immediate in a sense intelligi le apart from mediation. 1hus immediacy is mediated along two dimensions2 immediacy of origin of o servations y the mediated character of their content, and o serva le particulars y their inferential roles. A further topic in which we will e much interested is how the determinate content of empirical concepts that is articulated y material inferences develops y incorporating immediacy (in the sense of noninferentially elicited o servations). Onderstanding how the immediate revelation of particulars in o servation can affect the mediating inferences relating universals it is appropriate to endorse will (later in our story) e seen to e one of the !eys to understanding the representational dimension of conceptual content.

$n *orce and +nderstanding, #egel turns his attention to purely theoretical concepts. 1hese are concepts whose only use is inferential*that is, concepts of uno serva les, in the sense of concepts that can only e applied as the result of a process of inference. #ere we see a genuine asymmetry etween mediation and immediacy. A central lesson of !ense Certainty was that pure or unmediated immediacy would e of no cognitive significance. >ure mediation, however*concepts that have only inferential roles and cannot e used noninferentially*is entirely intelligi le. (1hough even these concepts are

%&'(&%)*77

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inferentially related to concepts that have immediate uses.) #egel uses the term force <Fraft@ as a standAin for all purely theoretical entities. 1he most important lesson of this section is that the distinction etween theoretical and o serva le entities is not an ontological distinction etween two different !inds of thing, ut a methodological distinction, etween two different ways we can come to !now a out things2 y exercising purely inferential capacities, and y exercising o servational capacities that are not themselves inferential, though their products must e capa le of playing a role in inferences at least as premises.'B 1he topic of the Consciousness section is how to understand the distinctive contri ution made y "udgments that are immediate, in the sense of eing noninferentially elicited, to the content and "ustification of empirical !nowledge more generally. 1he overall conclusion of these three chapters is that immediacy can e construed as conferring cognitive authority only in the context of a cognitive economy that includes also mediation *that is, material inferential and material incompati ility relations among possi le contents of "udgments. $t is only in such a context that a response to ones percepti le environment can e understood as having the significance of underta!ing a cognitive commitment. $n this section of the Phenomenology , as $ understand it, #egel introduces and egins to develop the inferential side of his account of determinate conceptual contents. #is account of the representational aspect of determinate conceptual contents, which includes the crucial story a out the relationship etween phenomena and noumena (appearance and reality, things as they are for consciousness and things as they are in themselves), can only e appreciated against the ac!ground of his understanding of this inferential dimension of conceptual contents. $ elieve that #egels novel rethin!ing of the
Ence again, this is 0ellars way of putting the point. 0ee L+mpiricism and the >hilosophy of =indL <ref.@
'B

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relations etween inference and representation is oth at the very core of his thought, and an account from which we could learn a lot today. =y main aim in this essay is to expound and explain what $ ta!e to e the structure of his account. 1o that end, in the next part of this paper, $ll loo! in more detail at the philosophical lessons we are to learn a out the inferential articulation of conceptual content from each of the three su sections2 !ense Certainty, Perception, and *orce and +nderstanding. +5uipped with these lessons, we will then e in a position to address the essentially historical articulation of the representational dimension of conceptual content, which is s!etched in a preliminary fashion in #egels $ntroduction to the Phenomenology.

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Part ,wo:

Sense Certainty

1he 6shapes of consciousness: #egel investigates in the Phenomenology are all ways of misunderstanding various aspects of discursive practice. 1hey have in common eing structured y defective conceptions of independence. As $ understand them, #egels notions of independence and dependence are normative notions. 1o tal! a out one element of our practice as dependent in some way on another is to ta!e the second to exercise some sort of authority over the first, or e5uivalently, for the first to e in some way responsible to it. $ thin! #egels most asic idea concerns the metaphysical structure of normativity in general. #e thin!s that there can e no authority not alanced y a reciprocal responsi ility*not in the trivial sense that if R has authority over G then G is in so far such responsi le to R, ut in the strong sense that if R has authority over G, then G has a corresponding (though different sort of) authority over R. $ve said some general things a out how $ thin! this wor!s, in another essay.'( Dor present purposes what matters is that $ interpret saying that a conception of some aspect of our discursive practice is structured y categories of independence as indicating that it centers on a !ind of authority that is understood apart from any corresponding reciprocal responsi ility.

60ense certainty: <sinnliche 3ewiSheit@ is #egels term for a conception of the source and nature of the authority of empirical !nowledge*its credi ility, its claim to correctness, its right to e relied on*that ta!es it to e independent in this sense. At the center of this

'(

60ome >ragmatist 1hemes in #egels $dealism: <ref.@

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conception lies the idea of an autonomous stratum of cognitive episodes whose authority derives from their immediacy. 1hey are authoritative in the sense of eing asic in the order of "ustification2 our entitlement to any empirical claim or commitment derives ultimately from the way it is anchored in these immediate experiential episodes. 1hey are autonomous in the sense that the capacity to have such episodes is ta!en not to depend on any other capacities. 1his means in particular that it does not depend on any capacities to deploy concepts. Dor if the capacity to have such episodes did depend on the capacity to deploy concepts, those episodes would e answera le for their correctness to the norms governing the application of those concepts. 1heir authority would accordingly involve a coordinate, reciprocal responsi ility*it would involve the ac!nowledgment of another locus of authority, potentially conflicting, and so limiting. Onderstanding the authority of immediacy as eing in this way independent is the deformation that defines this conception of empirical !nowledge. As suggested earlier, another way of descri ing the same defect is to say that sense certainty cannot see how to construe the distinctive cognitive authority of perceptions as deriving from the immediacy of their origin, a feature of the act of endorsing*that is, their eing arrived at noninferentially, in that sense as direct responses to what we there y come to !now a out*except in terms that demand also immediacy of their content, a feature of what is endorsed.

-e saw a ove that one route to such a conception goes through a representationalist paradigm of !nowledge. Dor that paradigm re5uires, on pain of an infinite regress, that if anything e capa le of eing !nown y eing represented, some things (indeed, if even error is to e possi le), representings, must e !nown otherwise, simply y eing had. Fnowledge of representeds or representa les mediated y ( y means of) representings,

%&'(&%)*7C

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presupposes immediate !nowledge of at least some representings. Moom opens up for error in our cognition "ust when we attempt to move eyond what we immediately have, our representings, y drawing (inevita ly ris!y) inferences a out what they represent. 1he "ustificatory asis of any falli le claims a out representeds must e our infalli le !nowledge of our representings*!nowledge we ac5uire "ust y having those representings, finding ourselves with them, y their eing given to us.

$n its roadly cartesian form, this sort of empiricist foundationalism has een widely discredited. =y favorite treatment is 0ellars classic discussion in L+mpiricism and the >hilosophy of =ind,L ut his is "ust one particularly perspicuous voice in a thundering chorus. 1he theme of that chorus is the lesson Fant too! over from the rationalists (and #egel from him)2 no !nowledge without concepts. 1he !antian lesson 0ellars teaches is that it is a radical mista!e to thin! of !nowledge of appearances as autonomous, as a !ind of !nowledge one could have independently of ones falli le !nowledge of how things actually are. Eur capacity to !now how things appear to us in fact depends on our capacity to apply concepts in thoughts a out how things really are. Fnowledge of appearings is accordingly not primitive or prior to our !nowledge of reality, and in that sense, is not foundational. As long as that point is !ept firmly in mind, one can allow that in another sense noninferential reports, including reports of how things merely appear, can e ac!nowledged to have an epistemically privileged status as something li!e the court of last resort with respect to the "ustification of empirical claims.'?

0ee my commentary in ,ilfrid !ellars- .(mpiricism and the Philosophy of 'ind. <#arvard Oniversity >ress, '%%H@, and 61he .entrality of 0ellars 1woA>ly Account of E servation to the Arguments of L+mpiricism and the >hilosophy of =indL: <ref.@
'?

%&'(&%)*7H

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But some elements of the earlier picture endure. A reasona ly widely held view among contemporary philosophers of language is that the sort of causal contact with the percepti le world that is expressed in explicit form y the use of demonstratives should e understood as nonA or preAconceptual. 1his de re element in empirical !nowledge is contrasted with the conceptually articulated de dicto element. 0ome thin!ers appeal to a primitive stratum of 6pure de re: eliefs, which would e expressed y using only demonstratives (though they could e possessed y creatures without language, and so without demonstratives).'C 0tripped of its overtly cartesian trappings, there seems to e much that is still attractive a out the idea of a minimal !ind of cognition that consists in an exercise of mere receptivity, simply registering, noticing, or pointing out what sense delivers. 1his would e a !ind of cognition that, while it need not e ta!en to e infalli le (since the causal mechanisms might go wrong sometimes), nonetheless would e particularly secure. Dor it would at least e immune to errors of misAassimilation, misclassification, and mista!en inference, on the grounds that the su "ect has not done anything with or to what is merely passively registered, noticed, or pointed out, and so not anything that could have een done incorrectly.

0o the authority of immediacy is conceived y senseAcertainty as deriving precisely from the passivity of the !nower, from the fact that the sensing consciousness is careful to incur no o ligations. 1he cognitive authority of immediacy is to come with no corresponding responsibility on the part of those to whom it is addressed. -hat drives the arguments $
<En the general issue, see the articles y 0osa and Burge that =c4owell tal!s a out in 64e Me 0enses: <ref.@. =ention that essay as usefully setting out the issues, in a way congenial to the approach ta!en and attri uted to #egel here. En 6pure de re eliefs:, see 4rets!e, late in FD$ <ref.@. 1he view that there is a distinctive role for demonstrative, o "ectAinvolving thoughts (6strong de re commitments: in the idiom of .hapter +ight of 'aking It ()plicit ), ut that they are through and through conceptual is introduced y +vans, endorsed y =c4owell (for instance, in the essay referred to a ove), and developed in a somewhat different direction in 'aking It ()plicit .@
'C

%&'(&%)*7)

Brandom

am discussing is the incompati ility of two features of senseAcertaintys conception of the cognitive authority of immediacy2 immediacy of content (in the sense that endorsing it imposes no responsibilities on the part of the endorser that could fail to e fulfilled, no o ligation to ma!e distinctions or grasp relations among immediacies*things that could e done correctly or incorrectly), and even minimal determinateness of content. Mecovering some sustaina le sort of cognitive authority associated with immediacy then o liges the candidate !nower (consciousness) to do something, to ma!e distinctions and invo!e relations among the various instances of authority of this !ind.

Ef course, the -ittgensteinean thought that where there is no room to go wrong, it does not ma!e sense to tal! a out going right either, is a familiar one to us today. 0uch a principle does emerge as a conse5uence of #egels treatment of normativity, ut he approaches sense certainty from another direction*not from the side of normative force, ut from the side of conceptual content. #is argument is that seeing sensory episodes as cognitively significant re5uires attri uting to them contents that are at least minimally determinate, in the sense that distinct, unrepeata le sensory episodes must e cosntrued as a le oth to share the authority of immediacy (of their origin), and to differ from one another in their significance*in the contents they evince, or in what they are registrations, noticings, or pointingsAout of. 1hey must e understood as differing not "ust as data le representings or !nowings, ut also in terms of what is purportedly represented or !nown y them. .onsidered apart from this possi ility, they are merely events or episodes, ut not even putatively cognitive ones.'H And he argues that eing cognitively significant or
'H

cf. Drege2 0tanding y a river one often sees eddies in the water. Tow would it not e a surd to claim that such an eddy of water was sound or true, . . . they <the phantasms that pass efore the mind of the typhus victim@ are simply processes, as an eddy in water is a process. And if we

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contentful even in this attenuated a sense presupposes their em edding in a complex, twoA dimensional, specifically conceptually and historically articulated apparatus, within which alone what is immediate in the sense made explicit y the use of demonstrative expressions can play its distinctive cognitive role.

II

$ "ust said that y the end of !ense Certainty, we are to have learned that the cognitive authority conferred on the deliverances of sense y their immediacy of origin*their eing noninferentially elicited y the states of affairs they (partly, ut only partly) there y count as registering, noticing, or pointing out in the least committal possi le sense*must e understood as depending upon those sensory episodes eing em edded in a two dimensional conceptual structure. Iiewed from vantage point of the twoA arreled lesson $ will claim we should learn from this part of the oo!, commentators on the Phenomenology typically overloo! one of these dimensions, or run together indiscriminately considerations advanced in furtherance of the two distinct points #egel is ma!ing. >artly, $ thin!, this is a confusion #egels own language invites and mode of presentation. 1he second point is a novel, difficult, and delicate one that wor! in the philosophy of language over the past fifty years has e5uipped us with much etter expressive resources for addressing than were availa le when it first swam dar!ly into #egels !en. >artly, though, $ thin! this point has een invisi le to most of his readers simply ecause, unli!e the first, it has not played a prominent role in philosophical thin!ing a out the demonstrative element in sensory experience since #egels time. 1his is dou ly
are to spea! of a right, it can only e the right of things to happen as they do. Ene phantasm contradicts another no more than one eddy in water contradicts another. (')%H Kogic, p. '(( in Posthumous ,ritings <ref.@)

%&'(&%)*BJ

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unfortunate, for $ thin! it is oth an important point in its own right, and an a solutely essential element in #egels account of the institution and development of determinate conceptual contents.

1he first, more familiar, lesson $ have in mind is that for a sensory episode to e understood as a cognitive episode in even the most minimal sense, it must at least implicitly involve the application of a concept, predicate, or universal. $t cannot simply consist in the pointing out of some particular this. $f it is to count as even a purely demonstrative pointing out, noticing# or registration of something at all, it cannot just do that. $t must also somehow characteri/e or classify what it points out, notices, or registers2 the minimal unit of awareness or cognition is not a this, ut a this"such.') Fant incorporates this insight into his doctrine that the minimal unit of awareness, experience, or cognition is the judgment. $ claimed a ove that this is ecause of Fants normative insight* ecause he distinguishes "udgments (and actions) from the responses of merely natural creatures in the first instance as things that we are in a distinctive way responsible for. ;udgments are the minimal units of responsi ility or commitment. And they accordingly necessarily involve concepts, which are the rules that articulate what a given "udgment ma!es one responsi le for, what it commits one to. #egels route to the indispensa ility of concepts to cognition is different, ut the conclusion is a familiar one.

1he second, less familiar lesson $ was tal!ing a out a ove is that deictic or demonstrative expressions do not form an autonomous stratum of the language*a language game one
')

cf. Aristotle2 Tor can one understand through perception. Dor even if perception is of what is such and such# and not of individuals# still one necessarily perceives an individual at a place and at a time, and it is impossi le to perceive what is universal and holds in every caseP<emphasis added@ < Posterior Analytics '((@.

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could play though one played no other*and would not even if what was demonstrated had the shape of facts or "udgea le contents. 4eictic to!enings as such are unrepeata le in the sense of eing uni5ue, data le occurrences. But to e cognitively significant, what they point out, notice, or register must e repeata ly availa le, for instance to appear in the premise of inferences, em edded as the antecedent of a conditional used to draw hypothetical conse5uences, and em edded inside a negation so that its denial can at least e contemplated. 4emonstratives have the potential to ma!e a cognitive difference, to do some cognitive wor!, only insofar as they can e pic!ed up y other expressions, typically pronouns, which do not function demonstratively. 4eixis presupposes anaphora. -hen $ say that this lesson is not a philosophical commonplace in the way the first is, $ mean that the philosophers who have seen in what is expressed y demonstratives a crucial nonconceptual asis for our capacity to ma!e conceptually articulated claims a out the empirical world have not typically emphasi/ed or loo!ed closely at the anaphoric mechanisms y which what uses of demonstratives ma!e availa le to !nowing su "ects is ta!en up into the conceptual realm. 1his is a lesson we y and large still need to learn from #egel.

III

#egel does not leave any possi ility that we will fail to see that one of the central lessons of the discussion of !ense Certainty is that immediacy is ultimately unintelligi le apart from its relation to universals. #e repeatedly says things li!e 6sense certainty has demonstrated in its own self that the truth of its o "ect is the universal.:'% $f one does not
'%

<=%%@. Ether examples include2 0o it is in fact the universal that is the true <content@ of senseAcertainty <=%C@.

%&'(&%)*B7

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carefully distinguish the two different conclusions that #egel is arguing for in this section *that demonstratives are intelligi le only in a context that includes oth universals and anaphora*then one is lia le to misunderstand his argument for the first point. -orse, the argument he is lia le to e ta!en to e ma!ing is a dreadful one. 0o it is worth eing a little careful here.

-hen we try to express explicitly sense certaintys understanding of its immediate experience as a passive registration, without comparison or classification, or committing ourselves to any determinate inferential conse5uences) of what is merely there (a way of tal!ing a out immediacy in the sense of independence on the side of the thing), we can do so y using a are demonstrative2 this. 1he use of the demonstrative is as a device of direct reference. $t is a !ind of reference, ecause it is merely pointing out what is there *not saying anything about it. $t is direct (immediate) in the sense of not relying on or otherwise employing ( eing mediated y) concepts; it does not involve the application of concepts at all. (1his is one !ind of immediacy of content. 1he to!ening is also immediate as a process, that is, as pertains to its origin, since it does not result from a process of inference. But that is not the current point.)

1here is a danger of seeing #egels argument in the first two movements of !ense Certainty7J as moving far too 5uic!ly to the conclusion that cognition must involve universals. Dor it looks as though he is "ust saying that since anything can e responded to

-hat consciousness will learn from experience in all senseAcertainty is, in truth, only what we have seen, vi/. the 1his as a universalP <='J%@. 7J Eriginally eginning in <=%?A%C@ directed toward !nowledge of the immediate, repeated in <='JJA 'J7@ with respect to immediate !nowledge.

%&'(&%)*BB

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appropriately y a directly referential this, the this must e understood as a universal, indeed, as an a solutely general concept. 1hus he says (summing up his initial discussion)2 $t is as a universal too that we utter what the sensuous <content@ is. -hat we say is2 1his, i.e. the universal 1his; or, it is, i.e. /eing in generalP7' 0imilarly, when $ say $, this singular $, $ say in general all $s; everyone is what $ say, everyone is $, this singular $.77 1he argument would then ta!e the form of an analogy. 1he repeata le expression Med applies to a lot of particulars. 0o red is a predicate, which expresses a concept and stands for a universal or property2 the universal or property shared y all things that are properly called red. $n the same way, the repeata le expression this ($) applies to lots of particulars. $ndeed, for any particular (in the case of $, particular self) it is possi le to refer to it y using a to!ening of the repeata le type this. 0o this ($) is a predicate, which expresses a concept and stands for a universal or property2 the universal or property shared y all things that are properly called this ($), that is, all particulars (or particular selves).

0pelled out this way, the fallacy should e o vious. Although this is a repeata le expression type that can e applied to any particular thing or situation, it is not predicated of them, it is not describing them, it is not a universal in the sense of expressing a property that they share or a concept that they fall under. 1o refer to something as this is not to characteri/e it in any way, certainly not to attri ute a property to it, even a very general one. 1his, $, and red are all repeata le expressions, and can e applied on different occasions to different particulars. But the sense of apply is 5uite different2
7' 77

<=%H@. <='J7@.

%&'(&%)*B(

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referential in the first case, predicative in the second. 1his and $ are not true of anything. >ut another way, there is a perfectly good sense in which this and $ mean something different on different occasions of their to!ening. $n order to !now what is meant y this, or who is meant y $, it is not enough to understand the use of the expression type in general. Ene must also !now the circumstances of its particular to!ening. $n this sense the demonstrative and indexical expression types are ambiguous. But that is not the same as saying they express universals. Ban! is not a universal that applies oth to the shores of rivers and to financial institutions. Ef course in another sense, these words are not am iguous. Dor what each to!ening means is determined in a uniform way from the circumstances in which it is produced. As Faplan has taught us to say, different to!enings of expressions li!e this have the same character (type), ut express different contents.7B To distinction of this sort applies to expressions such as red. 1he predicate&term (universal&particular) distinction and the character&content distinction are actually orthogonal to one another, since in addition to singular term types where a single character determines different contents for different to!enings (such as this and $) and predicate types whose characters assign the same content to all to!enings (such as red), there are singular term types whose characters assign the same content to all to!enings (such as #egel, or a suita le lengthening of that name) and predicate types where a single character determines different contents for different to!enings (such as 6Pis the same color as this sample,:).

Ene might, $ suppose, construct or define a sense of universal gerrymandered so as to see these as species of a genus. But the result will not e anything li!e the ordinary use of

7B

<ref.@ to Faplan on content&character.

%&'(&%)*B?

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universal, and in particular, will not yield the use of universal that #egel employs in the immediately su se5uent discussion of Perception, which is supposed to ta!e as its raw materials the conclusions yielded y !ense Certainty. Any argument that started from considerations such as those indicated a ove concerning demonstrative and indexical expressions li!e this and $ and drew conclusions a out the necessity of ac!nowledging the role in perception of sense universals such as red (the topic of Perception) would e fallacious, through dependence on an illegitimate assimilation.

I*

$n fact, the argument to the conclusion that even purely demonstrative awareness implicitly involves universals does not have this o "ectiona le form. #egel claims in !ense Certainty that the authority of immediacy that invests acts of sensory awareness implicitly involves two sorts of repeata ility of the content of those acts. -e might distinguish them as classificatory and recollective repeata ility. 1he first is the classificatory or characteri/ing repeata ility of predicates and concepts, which #egel calls 6universals:. 1he second, which in the context of endorsements whose cognitive authority depends on their immediacy turns out to e presupposed y the first, is epitomi/ed y the way pronouns pic! up, repeat, and so preserve the content of demonstratives serving as their antecedents. Enly y !eeping the considerations proper to each of these two sorts of repeata ility rigorously separate can we learn the lessons #egel is trying to teach us in this section. 1he ad argument "ust considered results from running them together. 7( 1hat is,
#egels presentation invites this, since the considerations a out recollective repeata ility are introduced already in the first two movement of !ense Certainty , where the point is to see the necessity of classificatory repeata les or true universals. 1he reason for this way of presenting things, $ thin!, is that receollective repeata ility is presupposed already y classificatory repeata ility, and so is already implicitly in play when the latter is discussed.
7(

%&'(&%)*BC

Brandom

if one "um les all the considerations #egel raises together, they constitute a ad argument for one of the conclusions he evidently draws. $f they are sorted out properly, they yield two good arguments, for two different conclusions. 1hroughout the Consciousness section, #egel is discussing a collision etween various misconstruals of immediacy*ali!e in seeing it as a feature of the contents its authority is invested in rather than how that authority attaches to those contents*on the one hand, and various aspects of the conception of the !nowledge delivered y immediate sense experience as having a !ind of content that is determinate in various respects, on the other. 1he two different sorts of repeata ility we must disentangle in order to understand what #egel is doing in !ense Certainty emerge as conditions of determinateness of the content of sensory !nowledge.

1he first sort of repeata ility of content emerges from the reali/ation that the authority of immediacy is itself a repeata le kind of authority. An actual senseAcertainty is not merely this pure immediacy, ut an instance of it.7? -e see this ecause the same authority can e accorded to different contents. Ene to!ening of this pic!s out a tree, another a house.7C Dor convenience in our discussion, we might adopt the convention of referring to to!enings y placing expressions within slanted lines, and su scripting to distinguish to!enings of the same expression type. 1hen &this&i, which pic!s out a tree, has a different content from &this&", which pic!s out a house, and a different content yet from some &this&!, which pic!s out a stone. +ach has the

<=%7@. #egel splits up the pure indication that would e made explicit y a to!ening of this into temporal and spatial dimensions, which would e made explicit y to!enings of now and here, and ma!es the point indicated in terms of a 6now that is night: and a 6now that is day:, on the one hand (in <=%C@), and a 6here that is a house: and a 6here that is a tree: on the other (in <='J'@). But the importation of this distinction is irrelevant to the point $ am discussing.
7? 7C

%&'(&%)*BH

Brandom

authority of immediacy, that is, of experiences, putative or candidate !nowings, with which one simply finds oneself. But the content*what is given or presented to the su "ect, what ma!es sense !nowledge 6appear as the richest !ind of !nowledge:7H*is in each case different. 1hat the contents of different acts of sensory !nowing can at least arely differ from one another is the very wea!est sense in which those contents could e thought of as determinate. (As we loo! to ever stronger necessary conditions of determinateness of content, we will find the implicit faults in different conceptions of immediacy.)

1he conception of empirically ac5uired commitments that #egel calls 6sense certainty: understands the content of any such commitment as immediate, in the sense that the capacity to grasp, entertain, apprehend, or mean it on any particular occasion is independent of all other capacities, and indeed, of any other exercises on other occasions of what we might otherwise thin! of as this same capacity. 1hat is why in tal!ing a out it we imagine the experience made explicit y the su "ect in the use of a are this, which does not compare, classify, or characteri/e, ut merely pic!s out what prompts it. ,e, who are descri ing the situation, can la el those contents for our own purposes y words such as tree, house, and stone, ut this is for our convenience alone*not ecause we are supposing the su "ect of the experiences to e deploying such concepts, whose mastery does re5uire active capacities to compare, classify, and characteri/e.

But the mere fact that the same sort of authority, the authority of the immediacy of the origin, of the process y which the experience is elicited, is invested on different occasions

7H

<=%'@.

%&'(&%)*B)

Brandom

in contents that must*for them to count as having the significance even of are referrings or pointingsAout at all* e recogni/a le as different already implicitly rings into play a certain !ind of universal applying to them. Dor &this&" and &this&! have in common their difference from &this&i. Osing to indicate mere difference or distinguisha ility of content, this is the fact that &this&"&this&i and &this&!&this&i . $f we adopt the convention of using angle rac!ets to indicate repeata le !inds, then they are oth of the !ind U&this&iV. =erely to distinguish instances of immediacy from one another, to see them as different instances of one !ind of authority, is already in a wea! sense implicitly to classify, compare, and characteri/e them.

0till, this is a pretty minimal sort of classification2 each episode is what it is, and not another. (As #egel says it gets classified only as a 6notAthis:*for some other to!ening of this.7)) But the degenerate character of the universals we can see as implicitly rought into play in this way is a conse5uence of the wea!ness of the relation of mere difference. +xperiences that would e made explicit y the application of the concepts red and s5uare are different, ut they are not different in the way tree and stone are. Dor the latter e)clude one another2 the applica ility of one rules out the applica ility of the other. $n the ordinary sense, the concepts tree and stone cannot apply to the same thing, while red and s5uare can.7% $ll say that the first two are 6strongly contrastive:, and the last two are only 6wea!ly contrastive:.

in <=%C@. $t is irrelevant for the present point that some of these terms are common nouns or sortals, which individuate what they apply to (such as tree and s5uare), while others (such as red) are not.
7) 7%

%&'(&%)*B%

Brandom

#egel claims that the stronger, exclusive sense of different is also implicitly in play in determinately contentful experience, even according to the severely restricted conception of sense certainty. 4ay and night exclude one another, the experience of one cancels or opposes the experience of the other. 1his is to say that experiences can appear as incompatible, in the sense that their contents cannot oth simultaneously have the authority of immediacy*they cannot e endorsed in a single act. 0ince the authority of immediacy can e invested in incompati le contents, it can contradict itself2 authori/e materially incompatible commitments, commitments that undercut or cancel each other out. #egel says of one such example2 Both truths have the same authentication <Beglau igung 9 warrant, credentials@, vi/. the immediacy of seeing, and the certainty and assurance that oth have a out their !nowing; ut the one truth vanishes <verschwindet@ in the other.BJ Tow if the authority of immediacy simply contradicts itself, then it is no authority at all. $n treating immediacy as conferring some sort of credi ility or right to endorse, we are implicitly distinguishing etween the kind of authority, and the contents of its instances. -e are, in effect treating the incompati ility as a feature of the contents in which the authority of immediacy is invested. 1he content that $ merely indicate at one time we might express (using the least committal featureAplacing language) y saying 6$t is night,: is not only different from ut incompati le with the content $ might similarly indicate at another time, which we could express as 6$t is day.: ($t would eg the 5uestion against sense certainty to insist that the consciousness involved must apply these concepts. 1he idea is that we use those concepts "ust to !eep trac! of the rich nonconceptual content that

BJ

<='J'@.

%&'(&%)*(J

Brandom

the consciousness in 5uestion, according to the conception of senseAcertainty, merely points out, entertains, or contemplates.) 1o recogni/e any sort of content here at all is to ac!nowledge that two such contents can contradict (strongly contrast with) one another.

1his relation of incompati ility, which #egel often tal!s a out using the term entgegenset/en,B' is stronger than mere difference, and it induces a correspondingly richer sort of universal. -e might use W to indicate the notion of incompati ility, and so express the fact that a this (or now) that is night (that is, a content that could e pic!ed out y a to!ening of this produced at night) 6vanishes: into one that is day2 this&lW&this&m. $ncompati ility of contents in this sense is y no means as promiscuous a relation as mere difference among contents. Dor instance, it need not e the case that this&lW&this&i*for trees can appear at night or in the day. 1he universal UW&this&mV, which #egel calls 6not dayPa negative in general,:B7 is a genuine universal, under which &this&l, ut not &this&i or &this&" falls. $n fact, for many purposes we can represent the repeata le content of an experience or claim y the set of experiences or claims that are incompati le with it. 1he contents of commitments are determinate insofar as the class of other commitments they exclude or are incompati le with differ from one another.

$n his discussion of sense certainty #egel tal!s a out certainties or truths appearing and vanishing. ($ll tal! a out the relation etween these tropes further along.) $t is difficult to e sufficiently noncommittal in characteri/ing the vehicles of the authority of the immediacy of sense, given the impoverished expressive resources that the conception of sense certainty insists on. (=y use of 6experience or claim: "ust a ove is meant to span
B' B7

for instance, in <=%)@. <=%)@

%&'(&%)*('

Brandom

the field.) $n the end, we will learn to thin! of them as !inds of commitments, or endorsements. 1he experience (in a much more centrally #egelian sense) of one certainty (commitment, endorsement) vanishing in another consists in its having its authority undercut y the advent of a contrary, incompati le certainty with credentials of exactly the same !ind.

1he first claim $ am ta!ing #egel to e ma!ing in !ense Certainty is that the possi ility of such an experience shows that sense certainty already implicitly ac!nowledges the presence of a universal element in its conception of the authority of immediacy. -hat is pic!ed out y a arely referring &this&n that is a raining can e seen to e like what is pic!ed out y a arely referring &this&o that is a snowing in that oth of them are incompati le with (rule out, exclude, would vanish in, cannot e com ined in a single act with) a &this&p that is fine, ut not with a &this&m that is day or a &this&l that is night (though these exclude each other). >atterns of incompati ility and compati ility that can e shared y different acts of sensory awareness group them into !inds exhi iting repeata le contents that are determinate in a sense stronger than that induced y their mere distinguisha ility. $nsisting that the cognitive 6richness: of acts of sensory awareness re5uires ac!nowledging them as determinately contentful in at least this contrastive sense rules out a particular way of thin!ing a out their contents as immediate. $t rules out their eing immediate in the sense of eing merely particular, as involving no generality, no awareness of universals, and so no even implicit classification, comparison, or characteri0ing. $ve not said why #egel thin!s we must treat our sense experience as determinately contentful in this sense in order to e entitled to thin! of it as !nowledge, experience, or even a pointingAout of something. ($ll address that 5uestion later. <X$n the su se5uent discussion of representation and the

%&'(&%)*(7

Brandom

lesson of #egels Introduction, where ofAness, representational purport, will e traced to the experience of error, which re5uires material incompati ilities.@) $ve "ust attri uted to him endorsement of a conditional2 if one thin!s of the deliverances of sense as determinately contentful in this sense, then one may not thin! of that content as immediate in the sense of purely particular.

1here is a second line of thought entangled with this one throughout !ense Certainty, which comes to e the central focus in the third movement of the section.BB 1he issue it addresses is what is re5uired for a datea le, intrinsically unrepeata le act or event*a uni5ue occurrence*to e associated with a content that can e 6held onto: or 6preserved: after the expiration of the act itself, so as to e availa le for comparison with the contents of other such acts. 0ome such possi ility is evidently presupposed y the possi ility of ac!nowledging that the contents of two acts of immediate awareness that are not simultaneous have different, even incompati le, contents. 1he acts do not occur simultaneously. ($n the case of acts with incompati le contents, they cannot occur simultaneously.) -hen one is occurring, the other is not occurring. 0o the possi ility of someones eing aware of the contents of different acts as incompati le depends upon the possi ility of the content of such an act eing in some sense availa le to awareness even after the event that introduced it has ended.

BB

<='JBA)@

%&'(&%)*(B

Brandom

>utting the point another way, if we are to succeed in treating the unrepeata le (not merely particular, ut uni5ue as an occurrence) act of sensing as the source of epistemic authority, it must e possi le to treat that authority as invested in a content in a way that is not undercut y the fact that the same sort of authority may in a different, su se5uent act e invested in an incompati le content. 1o do that, we have to e a le to focus on that content, the one that the first act entitles us to endorse, independently of what contents may e introduced or validated y other acts. 1he act as such is intrinsically unrepeata le. But unless its content is in some sense repeata le, we cannot see the act as introducing or endorsing a content at all. 1he challenge is to see what is presupposed in ma!ing an act&content distinction of this sort. 1he conclusion will e that there is no way to ma!e sense of this distinction if we "ust loo! at the single act, independently of its relations to other acts. 1he other acts we must consider, however, are not acts with the same !ind of authority ut different (even incompati le) contents, as was the case with the argument against immediacy as pure particularity. 1hey are other acts with the same content, and with an authority that is inherited from the authority of the immediacy of the original act. 1he later act will not e immediate in the same sense as the original one, ut will loo! to its immediacy as the source of its secondAhand authority. Altogether these considerations will rule out thin!ing of the content as immediate in the sense of eing unrepeata le in the way the uni5uely occurring act is.

#egel introduces the idea that the evanescence of the now (e5ually the this) raises pro lems for the conception of immediacy of content already in the first movement of experience expounded under the heading of sense certainty (and is then repeated in the second). 1he content indicated y phenomenal consciousness*which from our

%&'(&%)*((

Brandom

phenomenological perspective we can pic! out y attri uting a to!ening of NTowN* spontaneously changes to an incompati le content, and then to yet another incompati le with it. 1he strategy explored in third movement is to rescue an understanding of the authority of immediacy y showing how the content introduced in an evanescent act can e 6fixed: or 6held fast: y another sort of act, a 6pointingAout: of the first that preserves it y ma!ing its content repeata le.B( 0o we need to thin! a out the distinction and relation etween two sorts of acts, one essentially evanescent, which might e made explicit y a to!ening of now (or this), and the other which points to the first, inheriting its content and authority from it.

#ere it is worth loo!ing a it more closely at how #egel tells this story. At the outset $ point out the Tow, and it is asserted as the truth. $ point it out, however, as something that has een, or as something that has een superseded <etwas aufgeho ene@; $ set aside the first truth. B? Dor that act has vanished, perhaps to e replaced y another with an incompati le content and an e5ual claim to endorsement. But we ignore its replacement and thin! "ust a out the original claim. $ now assert as the second truth that it has been, that it is superseded.BC 1his, #egel says, is a !ind of negation of the first claim. (But notice that it is a very different sort of negation of a &now&5 that is day from that constituted y a su se5uent &now&r that is night.) Text

B( B? BC

thus for instance 6festhalte:, 6Blei ende:, 6aufge/eigte: in <='J)@. <='JH@ i id.

%&'(&%)*(?

Brandom

But what has een is not; $ set aside the second truth, its having been, its supersession, and there y negate the negation of the NTowN, and thus return to the first assertion, that the N1owN is.BH 0o at the second stage, it is apparent that what is true is that the immediate is not. $t only has een. 1he past, which is the truth of the future, the only reality it has, is a negation of the present. But this negation is in turn negated. 1he original unrepeata le event was authoritative precisely as the sort of thing that has een and has eing as vanished. $t is now ta!en to e and indicated as something whose authority resides in eing an unrepeata le event. $ts authority, properly understood, thus involves mediation, relation, contrast, and comparison, as the negation of the negation of immediate unrepeata le eing. $t has significance for now precisely y not eing now. 1o treat the authority as consisting and residing in the unrepeata le event, one must recollect it. Mecollection <-iederholung@ refers to something that is no longer, as something that is no longer. 1he authority it has now depends on this reference to what no longer exists, ecause of what it was when it simply existed. $t is y the sacrifice of its immediacy, y its relation to a future that negates its negation as past, that the immediate ac5uires a significance.

1his is 5uite dar!. $ interpret it as follows. 1he 5uestion is how a NnowN, which is unrepeata le and unenduring in the sense that any other to!ening of that type will have a different content, can nonetheless e understood as investing its authority in a determinate content. 1he passing away of the moment during which alone one can immediately indicate the content meant does seem to negate the possi ility of investing such authority in a determinate content. But it does so only if the only tools we have availa le to invo!e that

BH

i id.

%&'(&%)*(C

Brandom

authority are repeata le to!enAreflexive types, such as NnowN itself (or NthisN or N$N), on the one hand, and unrepeata le tokens of those types, on the other hand. -hat is needed is another sort of meaning entirely, one whose content is recollected from a to!ening of such a type. -hat is re5uired is some expression such as NthenN, which will inherit the content and authority of the original demonstrative. 4emonstratives can only sensi ly e used when there are anaphoric pronouns availa le to pic! them up and use them, and so give their epistemic authority some significance for the rest of thought.

Totice for instance the emphasi/ed NitNs in the passages cited a ove in which #egel is Lholding fast to the Tow pointed outL. N1henN can function "ust li!e NitN, as a pronoun pic!ing up its reference from its anaphoric antecedent. 0uch NthenNs are repeata le and reusa le. +ach to!ening of LnowL $ utter indicates something different, ut $ can use many different thens to indicate whatever it is that that one LnowL indicated. $t is the possi ility of recollection later y such an expression that ma!es an utterance of NnowN or NthisN a move in a language game, and not "ust a noise (flatus vocii) or an e"aculation li!e NouchN. 1he immediate in the sense of the unrepeata le re5uires this mediation in the sense of relation to other to!enings as (contentA) repetitions of it for it to have any cognitive significance or content*even one incompati le with what would e expressed y later to!enings of the same type. Any such to!ening can, accordingly, only e understood as investing a content with the authority of immediacy if it is seen as an element (#egel says 6moment:) in a larger, temporally extended, whole comprising also acts of different types.B)
Dor future reference, it should e registered that this structure could e invo!ed y tal! of the future, viewing the present as past, and there y ma!ing the present into something. -ell see further along that for #egel future interpretations 5uite generally determine what our acts are in themselves. $t is this openA ended potential for interpretation they show to e something for future consciousness that is what we mean y the inAitself. 1his is "ust the doctrine of the historical significance of the distinction etween noumena, reality, or what is in itself, on the one hand, and its phenomenal appearance, what it is for consciousness on the other, that was announced in the Introduction .
B)

%&'(&%)*(H

Brandom

1he resulting understanding is of the Tow, and hence immediacy in general as thoroughly mediated. Dor eing preserva le or recollecta le in the anaphoric way, we now reali/e, is the eing of the Tow, an essential presupposition of the possi ility of immediacy conferring epistemic authority on a determinate content. 1he possi ility of Lholding fastL to the Tow (in fact anaphorically), ma!ing it into something repeatable while preserving its selfsame content, y contrast to the type UnowV, which though repeata le does not preserve the content of a single to!ening or &now&, is essential to the notion of immediacy investing a particular content with its authority2 1he NTowN and the pointing out of the NTowN are thus so constituted that neither the one nor the other is something immediate and simple, ut a movement which contains various moments.B% 1his account presents a crucial fact a out the use of demonstratives and similar indexical expressions in contri uting to empirical !nowledge. 2ei)is presupposes anaphora3 $t is a fact that is too often overloo!ed y contemporary theorists of demonstratives, who are prone to suppose that an autonomous language or fragment thereof might consist entirely of demonstrative expressions. ($n the discussion of Perception we will find #egel offering a version of 0ellars structurally analogous argument against the supposition that an autonomous language fragment might consist entirely of noninferential reports.)

$f one focuses "ust on the immediacy of contact that is genuinely involved in a particular use of a demonstrative expression such as NthisN, it is easy to forget that what ma!es such immediate contact have an significance for knowledge, for instance what ma!es the content it raises to salience availa le for use as a premise in inference, to draw a conclusion or learn

B%

<='JH@

%&'(&%)*()

Brandom

something from it that one could remem er and use again, is the possi ility of pic!ing up that content and ma!ing it repeata le, y treating it as initiating an anaphoric chain2 L1his chal! is white, it is also cylindrical, and if it were to e ru ed on the oard, it would ma!e a mar!. (1his is anticipating our story a it, since inferential articulation as an essential element of cognitive significance will not e put into play y #egel until his discussion in Perception). 1he chain N1his chal!N...it...it...it is a repeata le expression that ma!es the content of the original demonstration repeata ly availa le, "ust as though we had christened the chal! originally with a proper name, say N.harlieN, and used other to!enings of that repeata le type to ma!e the reference. 1he use of demonstrative expressions presupposes the use of nondemonstrative expressions, in particular anaphoric ones. $n this sense, then, anaphora (the relation etween a pronoun and its antecedent) is more fundamental than, prior in the order of explanation to, deixis (the use of demonstratives)2 there can e an autonomous set of linguistic practices (ones one could engage in though one engaged in no others) that exhi it anaphoric reference ut not deictic reference (though it would not e an empirical language), while there could not e an autonomous set of linguistic practices that exhi it deictic reference ut not anaphoric reference.(J

1he second claim $ am ta!ing #egel to e ma!ing in !ense Certainty, then, is that the possi ility of determinately contentful sensory awareness implicitly re5uires the presence of something that ma!es the content of such acts recollectibly repeatable, in order to ma!e sense of the authority of immediacy. -hat is re5uired is another sort of act, one that is not an act of immediate sensory awareness, ut is rather one that has its content and credi ility or authority indirectly, y inheritance from such an act of immediate sensory

(J

$ ela orate this point (without reference to #egel) in .hapter 0even of 'aking It ()plicit .

%&'(&%)*(%

Brandom

awareness. $mmediacy of content in the sense of the unrepeata ility of that content as a uni5ue occurrence is accordingly ruled out, as incompati le with the authority of immediacy eing invested in determinate contents. -e already saw that immediacy of content in the sense of particularity of that content is also ruled out y the demand that content e determinate in a relatively wea! sense.

1he conception of empirical !nowledge that #egel calls 6sense certainty: mista!enly tries to understand the role of immediacy of origin*the immediacy of the act of endorsing a content*in terms of various conceptions of immediacy of content*the immediacy of what is endorsed. $mmediacy is a category of independence, in the normative sense of authority without correlative responsi ility. !ense Certainty dismisses two senses in which one might ta!e sensory content to e immediate. .ontent immediacy as particularity is the denial of contrastive repeata ility, or the involvement of universals or generality in any form. 1his means that possession (or grasp) of some sensory content is independent of any relation to other acts with contents that are similar in some respect, or that have incompati le contents*which induce respects of similarity among contents, as it were, hori/ontally. 1he idea is that classifying or characteri/ing a particular content y ringing it under a universal involves comparing it with others, which accordingly have a certain sort of reciprocal authority over the content of the original particular. 1hat the content of one act should in this way e responsi le to the contents of other acts*so that what it is depends on what they are*is what this sort of content immediacy rules out. $t turns out that content cannot e immediate in this sense and still e determinate in a minimal sense. .ontent immediacy as temporal uni5ueness is the denial of recollective repeata ility. 1his means that possession (or grasp) of some sensory content is

%&'(&%)*?J

Brandom

independent of any relation to other acts with the very same content (not "ust in some respects, ut in all respects). But apart from their as it were vertical relation to other acts that inherit their content and authority from acts of immediate sensory awareness, the contents of those acts are as evanescent as the acts themselves. 0o no determinate content can e immediate in this sense either.

$t may e worth pointing out that the structural presuppositions for sensory awareness $ am claiming #egel is insisting upon here are not "ust innovations of his. Dor they can e seen as developments of the structure of transcendental syntheses culminating in experience that Fant offers in the A edition deduction of the categories in the first .riti5ue.(' 1o yield anything recogni/a le as experience, apprehension in intuition must e capa le of reproduction in imagination, and these reproductions must then e suita le for recognition in a concept. 1o e cognitively significant, the sort of pointingAout that we would express explicitly y the use of demonstratives must e capa le of eing pic!ed up and reproduced (preserved) y an act of the sort we would express explicitly y the use of anaphorically dependent pronouns. 1o amount to anything recogni/a le as even minimally determinate contents, the repeata les so constituted must then e capa le of eing classified under various distinguisha le and contrasting !inds or universals. 1he two senses in which we are to conclude that the contents of our sensory experiences can not e construed as immediate then correspond to denying that in order to have them we must e a le to reproduce or to recogni/e them.

('

A%)A'JC.

%&'(&%)*?'

Brandom

-e turn next to Perception, which discusses another way in which one might try to conceive sensory content as immediate.

%&'(&%)*?7

Brandom

Part ,hree:

Perception

Perception egins where !ense Certainty leaves off2 with a notion of acts of sensory awareness that have determinate contents that are repeata le in oth senses2 they are recollecta le, and they essentially involve universals or general concepts. Ence again, a num er of related, ut different considerations are !ept in play throughout this discussion, which must e separated efore the various philosophical points eing made can properly e appreciated. All the ways of thin!ing discussed in the ody of the Phenomenology are variant tropes of what #egel calls independence2 strategies that aim at ma!ing intelligi le the normative force and determinate content of some sort of authority apart from any consideration of the coordinate responsibilities that he wants to teach us to see as essential aspects of any such authority. Consciousness narrows the topic to the presuppositions implicit in determinately contentful cognitive authority. Docusing even further, Perception investigates the pathologies that result from trying to use metaconceptual categories of independence to articulate the sense in which the authority of empirical !nowledge is rooted in the immediacy of perceptual episodes. -e have learned that those episodes should e understood as essentially involving the application of reidentifia le concepts. But for all that has een said so far, the contents of those universals could still e construed as immediate or independent in several other senses.

Ene of these is atomism a out perceptual concepts or universals2 the idea that sense can e made of the determinate content of each all on its own, without underta!ing any

%&'(&%)*?B

Brandom

commitments regarding its relations to the contents of others. 1he thought is that one !nows all a out the contents of the concepts of o serva le properties, such as red "ust y immediately perceiving them, 5uite apart from ones capacity to recogni/e any other properties. #egels view, y contrast, is that grasping the determinate content of any concept re5uires grasping its material incompati ilities with other concepts (its 6determinate negation: of them) and its material inferential relations to them (its 6mediation: of and y them).

Another sense in which one might ta!e sense universals to have a content that is immediate is to ta!e it to e independent of their relation to particulars2 categorial independence. +ventually we will discuss #egels commitment to a sense of 6content: such that the determinate conceptual content expressed y a word is not intelligi ly separa le from its having een applied to exactly the particulars to which it has in fact een applied. But the present point regards only the relation etween universality and particularity in general. 1o try to thin! a out cognition that involves universals ut not particulars, one might loo! to what 0trawson called 6feature placing: expressions, such as 6$t is raining.:(7 $f we persist in thin!ing of the use of these expressions in terms of classification or characteri/ation, we have to say that the characteri/e everything, or nothing; they apply only to the general situation, in the sense that no distinction of different o "ects or particulars is ever made with them. (1here is, of course, an issue a out different times or occasions of use, and that will e important further along.) Tonetheless, what is expressed y 6$t is raining,: can e different from what is expressed y 6$t is snowing,: 6$t is fine,: and 6$t is precipitating,: so feature placing expressions can

(7

<ref.@ to >eter 0trawsons Individuals.

%&'(&%)*?(

Brandom

have at least minimally determinate contents. #egels claim, however, is that such expressions do not support an autonomous language game involving conceptual contents that are determinate in the stronger sense in which the contents of our actual perceptions are*a sense re5uired for the deliverances of perception to amount to cognition. Dor that, the distinction etween characteri/ing or classifying universals and the particulars they are applied to is needed. $mmediacy of content as categorial independence of sense universals is incompati le with the determinateness of that conceptual content.

$n Perception, #egel uses the conclusions of his discussion of the first two forms of immediacy of content to address a third. 3rasping a determinately contentful concept re5uires ma!ing oth assimilations and distinctions. 1he claim here is that the sort of content that is articulated y the colla oration of these two capacities ecomes unintelligi le if they are treated as independent of one another. Er, putting the point in terms of the contents themselves rather than our grasp of them, one cannot ma!e sense of conceptual norms as determinately contentful if one assigns responsi ility for the assimilation of particulars that norm induces to one locus of responsi ility and responsi ility for the distinctions among them to another. -hile the discussion of the first two sorts of misunderstanding of immediacy in terms of independence applies considerations raised already in !ense Certainty, the discussion of the third introduces important new considerations into #egels developing account of determinateness of conceptual content.

II

%&'(&%)*??

Brandom

#egel opens Perception with an account of how 6the 1hing of perception is constituted: 6for us or in itself,:(B*that is, how it really is, as viewed retrospectively y us, the phenomenological consciousness eing rought along y #egel to A solute Fnowledge, rather than how it appears to the phenomenal consciousness whose experience and education he is rationally reconstructing in the Phenomenology, in order to educate us. <$ll have more to say a out this revealing trope elsewhere. ((@ 1he 6thing of perception: is the 6thing with many properties.:(? -hat is the relation etween the sense universals we have learned from !ense Certainty are involved in perception, on the one hand, and the propertied 6thing of perception: on the other, 1his is not "ust a 5uestion a out #egels text; it is at least e5ually a 5uestion a out the relation etween a purely featureAplacing stratum of discourse and one structured y the attri ution of properties to distinguisha le o "ects. And that, in turn, can e understood as a 5uestion a out two sorts (or conceptions) of classifying universals.(C

Both are understood as sense universals2 <1@he senseAelement is still present, ut not in the way it was supposed to e y immediate certainty, not as the singular item that is meant, ut as a universal, or as that which will e determined as a property.(H

1his discussion is paragraphs <='''A'C@. 1he first 5uoted passage is from <=''C@, the second from <='''@. (( <promissory note@*in the discussion of representation and $nsichsein, with respect to #egels Introduction . (? <=''7@. (C 6$mmediate certainty does not ta!e over the truth, for its truth is the universal, whereas certainty wants to apprehend the 1his. >erception, on the other hand, ta!es what is present to it as a universalPDor us or in itself, the universal as principle is the essence of perceptionP:<='''@. (H <=''B@. $ have put 6determined: where =iller has 6defined: here. (1he original is 6 estimmen wird.:)
(B

%&'(&%)*?C

Brandom

1he immediacy that characteri/ed the conception of empirical !nowledge discussed in !ense Certainty is preserved as a 6sensuous, utPuniversal immediacy.:() 1hat is, the universals in 5uestions are observable properties. 1hey are immediate in the sense that they have noninferential circumstances of application2 they can correctly e applied as a direct perceptual response to the particulars they characteri/e. -e will see in *orce and +nderstanding that the restriction to concepts of o serva le properties must itself e relaxed if we are to understand our empirical !nowledge. But the issue in Perception is rather with how to understand sensuous properties, ta!ing for granted the restriction to o serva les. 1he challenge is to see how immediacy and universality can e com ined. -e are to learn here that it would e a mista!e to ta!e the immediacy of origin of sense universals (their noninferential applica ility) as entailing immediacy of content either in the sense of independence of other sense universals (atomicity, lac! of essential inferential articulation) or in the sense of categorial independence from relation to particulars. Both the restriction of universals to sense universals, and the inappropriate understanding of such universals are conse5uences of a misguided commitment to construing the determinate universals that articulate the content of empirical !nowledge as immediate in the sense of eing independent*of each other, of the particulars to which they are applied, and of the activity of applying them. 4escri ed in terms of the capacities of the su "ect, this thought ta!es the form of a re5uirement that one e a le to understand the content of the perceptual !nowledge claim independently of oneNs understanding of any other content or the ma!ing of any other claim. 4escri ed in terms of features of what is !nown, it ta!es the form of a re5uirement that each o "ect and property e what it is Lon its own accountL, independently of what any other o "ects or properties are. But no

()

i id.

%&'(&%)*?H

Brandom

conception of determinately contentful universals*even restricted to universals of sense *can meet these re5uirements.

1he !ey point, #egel says, is that BeingPis a universal in virtue of its having mediation or the negative within it; when it e)presses this in its immediacy it is a differentiated# determinate property.(% 1he wealth of sense !nowledge elongs to perception, not to immediate certainty...; for only perception contains negation, that is, difference or manifoldness, within its own essence.?J -hat does this mean, -hat is the relation etween negation, differentiation, determinateness, and sensuous properties, #egel insisted already in !ense Certainty that sensi le repeata les must e understood not only as differing from one another (wea!ly contrasting), ut also as excluding one another (strongly contrasting). >roperties are only determinate insofar as they differentiate themselves, yet relate themselves to others as their opposites. <''(@ >roperties can e materially incompatible with one another2 the applica ility of one universal precludes or rules out the applica ility of another, as night and day or cu ical and spherical do. 0uch modal relations of exclusion (Ausschlielich!eit) or opposition (+ntgegenset/ung) are an essential element of determinateness of content, as #egel conceives it. 1hey are much stronger than the mere difference that characteri/es distinguisha le ut compati le properties such as night and raining or cu ical and white.
6unterschiedene, estimmte +igenschaft: <=''B@. <=''7@. 1he restriction to and the deformed conception of specifically sensuous universality "ust adverted to as attempts to hold on to the idea of immediacy of content are expressions of the fact that 6sensuous universality <is@ the immediate unity of eing and the negative.: <=''?@
(% ?J

%&'(&%)*?)

Brandom

(#egel tal!s a out the latter sort of distinction in terms of 6Ongleichheit: or 6Onterscheidung:.?') 1hese are material incompati ilities rather than formal contradictions, in that the particular contents of the concepts involved are what exclude one another. #egel says that properties that in this sense strongly contrast with one another determinately negate each other. $ ta!e the tas! of understanding and unpac!ing the presuppositions of such relations*ma!ing explicit what is implicit in the possession of the !ind of determinate content they articulate*to e a solutely central to what #egel is up to in the Phenomenology, and, indeed (though in a different way), in the &ogic.?7

$n these early sections of the Phenomenology, #egel does not, as far as $ can see, specifically argue for the claim that determinateness of content (initially sensory, later conceptual) depends on relations of material incompati ility (9determinate negation). Mather, he follows out the conse5uences of such a conception of what determinate content re5uires.?B Ene fairly immediate conse5uence is the denial of a !ind of atomism, one way in which one might try to understand conceptual content as immediate. $f the identity of a determinate content consists in (or has as an essential feature) its determinate differences
0ometimes he uses 6Onterscheidung: as generic for difference, with Ongleichheit and +ntgegenset/ung as species. -hen he is eing most careful (in the section on 64er Onterschied: in the second chapter of the first part of the second oo! of the Kogic < !cience of &ogic pp. ('HA((B@), he reserves 6Ierschiedenheit: for a particular misunderstanding of difference, as independent of a larger identity encompassing the distinguished elements. ?7 $n ta!ing the need to understand the conditions of the possi ility of modal features of experience as his guiding thread, #egel is of course selfAconsciously following out a Fantian pro"ect. As $ understand him, #egel goes on to ground alethic modalities in more roadly normative terms. Dor he explicates concepts such as law and necessity in terms of material incompati ility of conceptual contents (and not "ust on the theoretical or cognitive side). #e goes on to explicate those incompati ilities in terms of normative statuses of elievers and agents. (Ene way to do that is to understand ta!ing two claims to e incompati le as ta!ing it that commitment to one precludes entitlement to the other.) An account of the social context within which alone such normative statuses arise*the social synthesis of normative statuses y determinate mutual recognition*then leads to the concept of 0pirit. ?B $ thin! there is a great deal to e said for such a claim. $n 'aking It ()plicit , $ show some of the wor! that can e done y a roadly #egelian notion of material incompati ility, in the context of an independently motivated theory of conceptual content. An important rationalist antecedent of #egels claim here is Kei ni/N argument in the 1ew (ssays, against Koc!e, that its relations to other properties are intrinsic to each property.
?'

%&'(&%)*?%

Brandom

from and exclusions of other contents, then a certain !ind of holism a out such contents results. $f we represent the content of a claim or concept y the set of claims or concepts that are materially incompati le with it, we induce inferential relations among them y inclusion relations among their incompati ility sets. 1hat 1hera is a dog entails that 1hera is a mammal, ecause everything incompati le with eing a mammal is incompati le with eing a dog. =aterial incompatibility relations induce material inferential relations*or as #egel would say, relations of determinate negation are at once relations of mediation. $ ta!e it that this is the thought ehind #egels use of expressions such 6mediation or the negative: in the passage 5uoted a ove. 1hat passage continues y explicitly drawing the holist conclusion2 As a result <of universals having mediation or then negative within them, so that each is a differentiated, determinate property@ many such properties are esta lished simultaneously, one eing the negative of another. 0o immediacy of content as atomism, as the independence of each sense universal of every other, is incompati le with their having determinate content, in the sense of strongly contrasting with (excluding, opposing, determinately negating) others.

$t is also clear on this account how determinate negation, treated as the prior and primitive contentAconstituting semantic notion, gives rise to abstract or logical negation. ;ust as #egel tells us, it arises precisely y stripping away everything positive from determinate negation. 1he claim 4p is the least incompati le of p. 1hat is, its content is what all the claims incompati le with p have in common. 0ince we are representing the content of a claim y the set of claims incompati le with it, it follows that the content of 4p, the set of claims incompati le with it, should e the set of claims that are

%&'(&%)*CJ

Brandom

incompati le with all of the claims incompati le with p, that is, the intersection of their incompati ility sets. 3iven the definition a ove of entailment in terms of the incompati ility semantic primitive, this means that 4p will e entailed y everything materially incompati le with p, that is, will e its least incompati le.

E serva le properties are the properties they are only in virtue of the other properties they contrast with and exclude, and so those they entail. =astery of the use of an o serva le predicate accordingly presupposes mastery of the use of others. 1his is a point that 0ellars drives home in L+mpiricism and the >hilosophy of =indL. 1he noninferential use of predicates in o servation reports presupposes a ac!ground of use that essentially includes inferential lin!s to other predicates. $f a noninferential report is to have a determinate content, so that uttering it is claiming something, it is not enough that it e issued as the result of a relia le differential responsive disposition. 1he significance of the response must e an a determinately contentful*it must commit the reporter to certain further claims, ut not others, and it must preclude commitment to certain further claims, ut not others. =astery of the concept of some o serva le property re5uires not only eing a le to discriminate appropriate noninferential circumstances of application for an expression, ut also eing a le to distinguish appropriate inferential conse uences of application. >arrots and photocells may relia ly respond differentially to the presence of red things. But if they canNt tell that it follows from somethingNs eing red that it is colored and that it is not green, they havenNt mastered the concept, and canNt report or "udge that something is red. Dor they donNt understand what they would e saying in calling something red. 1hus although it is possi le to ecome noninferentially entitled to a claim, that is, to issue a report appropriately as a noninferential response to the environment, the

%&'(&%)*C'

Brandom

capacity to do so re5uires mastery also of inferential and incompati ility connections etween what is reported and other properties. 0o noninferential reports donNt form an autonomous language game, one that could e played though one played no other. Onless such reports can play the role of premises in inferences, and so e appealed to in "ustification of claims that are not issued as o servation reports, they are not reports at all, donNt express the application of concepts, ut are merely responses. ?( 1he authority of noninferential immediacy is accordingly not prior to, ut coeval with the authority of mediation as inference.

1he structure of this account can usefully e compared with that offered regarding the immediacy of singular demonstrative reference in the discussion of sense certainty. Dor there it was claimed that while !nowledge of the immediate in the sense of pic!ing out an unrepeata le particular demonstratively is indeed possi le, the capacity for singular demonstrative reference presupposes the capacity to Lhold fast toL such a demonstration and raise it to the form of universality in the sense of repeata ility y pic!ing it up anaphorically, initiating a chain that permits the reference to e repeated and situated in a pu lic space of o "ects that can e repeata le referred to. 1hus while some expressions can e used deictically (compare2 noninferentially) and so have the special authority of the immediacy of the particular, deictic uses do not form an autonomous stratum of language. Tothing could e said in a purely demonstrative language. 0ome expressions must e
1here can e a language that deals only in o serva les. 1hat is a language all of whose voca ulary can appropriately e applied noninferentially. But those same concepts will also have inferential uses. -hat is for idden is that all applications of the voca ulary e noninferential applications. 0o there are no claims that one can only ecome entitled to noninferentially. .laims that one can ecome entitled to inferentially are theoretical claims, and voca ulary that only occurs essentially in such claims is theoretical voca ulary, expressing theoretical concepts and attri uting theoretical properties. >henomenal consciousness that allows such theoretical claims is dealing with thoughts, and exhi its the structure of understanding rather than of perception (cf. <='B7@). 1his is the topic of *orce and +nderstanding , discussed elow.
?(

%&'(&%)*C7

Brandom

used in a nondeictic (e.g. anaphoric) way, if any are to e usa le deictically, "ust as some expressions must e usa le inferentially if any are to e usa le noninferentially. $n each case, immediacy is understood as a genuine component in our !nowledge, ut as one that presupposes various !inds of mediation. $n each case, immediacy emerges as an aspect of our !nowledge, not an independent asis on which it could e erected or out of which it could e constructed.

III

0o we can see the difficulties inherent in conceiving of the percepti le world as one in which ...many properties are present as sensuous universalities, each existing on its own account <that is, understood as independent@, and as determinate, excluding others.?? 1he supposed independence of sensuous universals, in this atomistic sense, is incompati le with their determinateness, in the sense that re5uires material incompati ility with others. Ene form of immediacy of content one might have sought to attri ute to sense universals is accordingly ruled out. -hat a out categorial independence*the intelligi ility of sense universals apart from consideration of their relation to particulars, 1he unintelligi ility of this sort of immediacy of content follows from the fact that esides determinately negating each other, sense universals can also merely differ, without eing incompati le. 1he strong contrast etween strongly and merely wea!ly contrasting universals turns out implicitly to ring with it the strong categorial contrast etween classifiers and classified.

??

<=''H@.

%&'(&%)*CB

Brandom

Dor "ust as each sensuous property is materially incompati le with some others, there are still others with which it is compati le. -hat is pic!ed out y one use of now can e oth night and raining; what is pic!ed out y one here can e oth cu ical and white. Onpac!ing the difference etween compati le and incompati le sense universals re5uires putting in play an idea of ...the medium in which all these determinacies are...1his a stract universal medium, which can e called simply NthinghoodN...is nothing else than #ere and Tow, as these have proven themselves to e, vi/., simple togetherness of a pluralityP 1his salt is a simple <einfach@ #ere, and at the same time manifold <vielfach@; it is white, also tart, also cu ical in shape, of a specific gravity, etc.. All these many properties are in a single simple #ere, in which therefore, they interpenetrate <durchdringen@; none has a different #ere from the others, ut each is everywhere, in the same #ere in which the others are. And at the same time, without eing separated <geschieden /u sein@ y different #eres, they do not affect each other in this interpenetration. 1he whiteness does not affect the cu ical shape, and neither affects the tart taste, etc; on the contrary, since each is itself a simple relating of self to self it leaves the others alone, and is connected with them only y the indifferent Also. 1his Also is thus the pure universal itself, or the medium, the NthinghoodN, which holds them together in this way.?C

?C

<=''B@.

%&'(&%)*C(

Brandom

1al! of properties as incompati le already implicitly involves the idea of different centers or loci to which the properties can e attached. Dor its eing night at one time does not exclude its eing day at another, and one things eing cu ical does not exclude anothers eing spherical. 1he notion of opposition, exclusion, or incompati ility re5uires that properties e grouped into coAinstantiation classes2 things exhi iting those properties. Dor such properties2 as thus opposed to one another they cannot e together in the simple unity of their medium, which is "ust as essential to them as negation; the differentiation of the properties, insofar as it is...exclusive, each property negating the others, thus falls outside of this simple medium.?H $f two properties are merely different, if they only wea!ly contrast with and do not exclude one another*properties expressed y predicates that do not rule out the applica ility of each other*then they are compati le. >roperties li!e this, which are not materially incompati le with one another, do not strongly contrast with one another, are "ust those that are candidates for eing "oined y an also. 1hat is, they can e exhi ited y a single earer. 1he idea that some universals are indifferent to each other, in the sense that they can e com ined in a single o "ect, while others cannot, is accordingly e5uivalent to the idea of a distinction etween universals that only wea!ly contrast with one another (i.e. which merely differ) and those that strongly contrast with one another (i.e. which are incompati le). >ut another way, the strong contrast etween merely wea!ly contrasting universals and strongly contrasting universals entails (and so implicitly contains) the distinction etween properties and what they are properties of.

?H

<=''(@.

%&'(&%)*C?

Brandom

According to #egel, that a property or universal is merely distinct from others is not enough for it to count as determinately contentful. 4eterminateness re5uires (and at least partially consists in) the distinction, among the other properties that differ from the one whose content is in 5uestion, of some, ut not all, as materially incompatible with it. 0o to understand a property (or universal) as having a determinate content, we must thin! of it as standing in two sorts of relations to other properties2 relations of incompati ility or exclusion, and relations of compati ility or com ina ility in a single thing. #egel couches his discussion of this point a out two sorts of difference and two sorts of relations among properties or universals in terms of negation, and y following out some of the details of his claims we can learn something important oth a out what he is saying a out o "ects and properties, and a out how he thin!s a out negation. -eve already seen that he thin!s of determinate negation*or as $ve urged it e read, material incompati ility*as essential to the articulation of the determinate content of universals and that this relation contrasts with the relation etween properties that share an o "ect2 Tegation is inherent in a property as a determinateness which is immediately one with the immediacy of eing, an immediacy which, through this unity with negation, is universality. As a Ene, however, the determinateness is set free from this unity with its opposite <3egenteil@, and exists in and for itself.?) But #egel also ta!es it that in virtue of this latter relation, the thing itself appears as a certain !ind of negative2 the category of o "ects is the opposite of the category of properties. >roperties or universals are directly defined (their content determined) y relations of material incompati ility, and o "ects are defined y their strong contrast with

?)

<=''(@.

%&'(&%)*CC

Brandom

the category of properties, which is defined y such strong contrasts. 0o the o "ect, too, is defined, indirectly, y determinate negation. 1he Ene is the moment of negation; it is itself 5uite simply a relation of self to self and it excludes another; and it is that y which NthinghoodN is determined as a 1hingP<''(@ 1he category of o "ects can, accordingly, e thought of as arising as the (determinate) negation of a (determinate) negation, as strongly contrasting with what is defined y strong contrasts. <1@he differentiation <Onterscheidung@ of the properties, in so far as it is not an indifferent differentiation <eine gleichgYltige@ ut is exclusive <ausschlieSende@, each property negating the others, thus falls outside of this simple medium; and the medium, therefore, is not merely an Also, an indifferent unity <gleichgYltige +inheit@, ut a Ene as well, a unity which e)cludes another <ausschlieSende +inheit@. <''(@ -hat it excludes is properties incompati le with its own. 1he determinateness of the thing consists in the way it com ines inclusion of compati le properties and exclusion of incompati le ones. Ene understands the category of o "ect or thing "ust insofar as one understands what it is to enforce such a distinction.

0o within the scope of his commitment to understanding determinateness of content in terms of material incompati ility, #egel sees a structured relationship etween the notion of incompati ility and that of o "ecthood. -e may, as #egel does, tal! a out what is materially incompati le with a property as an opposite of it, provided we remem er that in this sense things can have more than one opposite (since white is thus opposed not

%&'(&%)*CH

Brandom

only to green, ut also to lue, and yellow, and so on). 1hen the asic structural o servations eing made a out o "ects and properties ta!e the form of deep relations etween 3egensZt/e (opposites) and 3egenstZnde (o "ects). >roperties are defined y having opposites, in this sense, and o "ects are the opposite of what has opposites. Dor the only sense in which o "ects exclude one another is that two o "ects can have properties that are incompati le with each other. But this is what mere difference, wea! contrast, among o "ects consists in. And for o "ects there is no further sense of strong contrast. Dor as we have seen, wherever material incompati ility is defina le, so is formal contradiction. 1he contradictory of a property (or claim) is its least incompati le, what is entailed y everything incompati le with that property. ?% 1he contradictory of a property P will then e a property exhi ited y all and only those o "ects that do not exhi it P. 1he contradictory of an o "ect 5 would e an o "ect that exhi ited all and only the properties not exhi ited y 5. But, as Aristotle already reali/ed, this notion ma!es no sense. Dor many of the properties (not "ust different from ut) incompati le with properties of 5 will e (not "ust different from ut) incompati le with each other. $f 5 is white, its contradictory would have to e green and lue and yellow, and so on. $f 5 is not identical to the num er 'H and not identical to my left ig toe, then 5 would have to e oth identical to the num er 'H and identical to my left ig toe. And so on.

0o although each universal can e thought of as grouping (uniting, assimilating) particulars, namely those that fall under it, and each particular can e thought of as grouping (uniting, assimilating) universals, namely those it falls under, there is a fundamental asymmetry underlying this superficial symmetry. 0ince properties can
$n a sense of entailment itself defina le in terms of incompati ility2 p entails incompati le with is incompati le with p.
?%

"ust in case everything

%&'(&%)*C)

Brandom

strongly contrast with one another, o "ects cannot. CJ 0o properties and o "ects have incompati le categorial properties*the former can strongly contrast with one another, the latter not*and are in that sense opposites. #aving specified the contents of properties or universals in terms of (determinate) negation, it then ma!es perfect sense to tal! of o "ects as coming into view as a (determinate) negation of that negation.

I*

-e are now, $ thin!, in a position to understand the summary #egel offers of this discussion2 1he 1hing as the truth of perception...is completed. $t is2 a) an indifferent, passive universality, the Also of the many properties or other NmattersN; ) negation, e5ually simply; or the 5ne, which excludes opposite properties; and c) the many properties themselves, the relation of the first two moments, or negation as it relates to the indifferent element, and therein expands into a host of differences; the point of singular individuality in the medium of su sistence radiating forth into plurality. <''?@ 1he notion of a thing as a earer of properties turns out to have een implicit already in the notion of sense universals that emerged from the discussion of !ense Certainty. 1hey came into view as a result of thin!ing a out the presuppositions of ta!ing sense experience to have a rich determinate content, according to a conception of determinateness as articulated y determinate negation, that is, material incompati ility. -e have seen how that notion suffices to delineate contentful universals, inferential relations among them
$ exploit this deep fact a out o "ects and properties (singular terms and predicates) to draw large metaphysical conclusions in .hapter 0ix of 'aking It ()plicit , entitled 6-hat Are 0ingular 1erms, and -hy Are 1here Any,:.
CJ

%&'(&%)*C%

Brandom

(mediation). And we have seen that the distinction etween merely different universals (wea! contrast, Onterscheidung, Ongleichheit) and incompatible universals (strong contrast, +ntgegenset/ung, Ausschlielich!eit) implicitly contains all that is needed to ela orate the relations and (strong) categorial contrast etween universals and the particulars they characteri/e. 1o e determinate, in #egels sense, the content of sense experience must e articulated; it must exhi it at least the structure of universals characteri/ing particulars.

1he discussion of Consciousness ela orates conse5uences of the re5uirement that empirical !nowledge e determinately contentful, on the side of how we must conceive the objects of that !nowledge. Ene of the central lessons of the Perception section, we have seen, is that the intelligi ility of universals as determinately contentful depends on the possi ility of assigning them to different particulars, in such a way that incompati le universals are assigned to different particulars. Kater on in my story <not in this chapter@, a parallel claim will emerge on the side of the subjects of !nowledge. $n order to understand commitments as determinately contentful, we must see them as capa le of eing incompati le with one another (and so, as standing also in inferential relations). 1o say that two contents of possi le commitments are incompati le is to say that commitment to one precludes entitlement to the other. But to ma!e sense of this, we must see commitments as assigned to different selves. Dor in the right epistemic situations, $ might e entitled to my claim that p and you to your claim that 4p. $ncompati ilities of commitment matter only within the centers of responsi ility for those commitments that are selves*"ust as incompati ilities of properties matter only within the centers of responsi ility for those properties that are o "ects. $ndeed, "ust as particular o "ects can

%&'(&%)*HJ

Brandom

e individuated as coAcompati ility e5uivalence classes (loci which 6exclude opposite properties:, as #egel has it in the passage 5uoted a ove), so too can selves e individuated as centers of responsi ility for commitments, whose entitlements are constrained y incompati ility relations among their contents.

$t would e premature to pursue this analogy at this point; $ mention it only to mar! the topic for later consideration.C' But it will e worth !eeping in mind two large claims #egel wants to ma!e in the vicinity. Dirst, he sees the significance of the incompati ility of properties for understanding the nature of objects and the significance of the incompati ility of commitments for understanding the nature of subjects as not only parallel, ut as mutually presupposing elements of one indissolu le phenomenon2 two sides of one coin. 1o understand how and why this is so is to penetrate deeply into #egels radical rethin!ing of the relation etween su "ects and o "ects, focusing as it does on the nature of the determinate contents common to (true) thoughts and facts, rather than on a relation of representation construed as holding etween thoughts and facts (or things) that are what they are independently of their roles in this relation. 0econd, #egel offers an account of su "ects, and their determinately contentful theoretical and practical commitments, in terms of mutual recognition. #e ta!es reciprocal recognition instituting commitments structured y incompati ilities (determinate negations) on the side of su "ects to provide a model, not only of the way particulars relate to universals structured y incompati ilities on the side of o "ects, ut also of the relation etween the su "ective and the o "ective aspects of contentAconstitutive incompati ilities.C7
<$n .hapter $I, on 4eterminate Mecognition, Action, and the .ontents of $ntentions.@ <Meaders of the overview in .hapter $, on 0ome >ragmatist 1hemes in #egels $dealism, will alrady have some idea how this might go.@ 1hus for instance, we hear a out eing an o "ect2 1here are determinate properties in it only ecause they are a plurality of reciprocally selfA differentiating elements. <='7J@
C' C7

%&'(&%)*H'

Brandom

*-

Meturning to our immediate topic, the opening six paragraphs of Perception, it should e remar!ed that although the deployment of the notion of material incompati ility a ove entitles us to tal! a out universals as characteri/ing particulars, more wor! actually needs to e done to entitle ourselves to tal! also a out properties as characteri/ing objects (although $ have not mar!ed the somewhat su tle difference etween these in the discussion up to this point). Dor all that has een said so far a out understanding the concept of the earer of properties in terms of material compati ility and incompati ility relations among them could e addressed already to a merely featureAplacing language*a language in which no true su "ects of predication, and therefore no genuine o "ects, are discerni le. .laims in such a language associate general properties with uni5ue ut undifferentiated whole situations2 6$t is night,: (or 6Tow <it@ is night,:) and 6$t is raining.: $n these terms we can still ma!e the distinctions that articulate the determinate contents of properties, and so, derivatively, of their earers. 6$t is night,: and 6$t is raining,: are compati le with one another, so there can e such a situation as 6$t is night and raining.: A situation of this latter !ind will e incompati le with anything incompati le with either of the former two !inds* for instance with 6$t is day,: and 6$t is fine,:*and so will entail oth 6$t is night,: and 6$t is raining,: (as well as anything either of them entails, such as 6$t is precipitating,:). CB 1he contents of properties can then e individuated y the partition each induces among other properties into materially compati le and materially incompati le ones. 1hat in turn determines their inferential

1hough when using material incompati ility relations and the entailments they induce to individuate properties semantically, it is important to !eep in mind that the set of claims incompati le with p[ is not in general to e identified with the union of the set of claims incompati le with p and the set of claims incompati le with . Dor it is not in general the case that what p[ materially entails is "ust the union of what p materially entails and what materially entails. Drom the facts that something is a ripe apple and is a -inesap, it follows that it is red, which does not follow from either premise alone. And that is to say that there are properties, for instance, eing green, that are incompati le with the con"unction, though not with either of the con"uncts.
CB

%&'(&%)*H7

Brandom

significance. 0ituations, as the earers of those properties, can then e discriminated as loci that 6exclude opposite properties.:

Tonetheless, such a language does not yet permit the discrimination of genuine o "ects. Dor instance, no situation, construed in these terms, can intelligi ly e ta!en to contain oth an o "ect that is cu ical and one that is spherical. 1he earer of the properties discriminated in the pure featureAplacing language are always whole situations. 0o we might as!2 -hat further cognitive s!ills or conceptual resources are re5uired to pic! out o "ects as the earers of properties, rather than "ust situations, and 4oes #egels discussion up to this point provide those resources,

Drege, 0trawson, and +vansC( have taught us that the answer to the first 5uestion is that what is needed is a notion of identity that permits the possi ility of re"identifying o "ects2 recogni/ing one of them in one encounter as the same o "ect encountered on some other occasion, or in some other situation. Dor the uni5ue, intrinsically unrepeata le situations meant or pointed out in the demonstrative featureAplacing language that is all the conception of empirical !nowledge #egel calls 6sense certainty: admits that it understands, anaphoric recollection permits the earlier pic!ing out to e repeated, and so made availa le in inference. 1he utterance &Tow it is raining.&i at one time can e made availa le y the later use of pronouns dependent on that antecedent2 &Tow it is fine. 1hen(i) it was raining. !o, then(i) it was not fine, ut then(i) it was precipitating.&" 1o move from situations as reAidentifia le earers of glo al properties to particular o "ects as reAidentifia le earers of local properties re5uires the capacities oth to individuate distinct o "ects within a single situation, and to recollect or reAidentify those o "ects within other situations.

#egel does not explicitly address this issue in his compressed discussion of !ense Certainty and Perception. #e does, however, implicitly put in play the raw materials re5uired. 1hus in !ense
3ottlo Drege 6rundlagen der Arithmetik <ref.@, >eter 0trawson Individuals <ref.@, 3areth +vans Varieties of $eference <ref.@.
C(

%&'(&%)*HB

Brandom

Certainty he tells us that the 1his y which things are pointed out splits up into the Tow and the #ere.C? -ith this distinction we ta!e the first steps towards the spatiotemporal individuation of o "ects that is such a central element of Fants postATewtonian successor theory to the still on this point essentially Aristotelian understanding of individuation characteristic of his empiricist and rationalist predecessors. .ompleting that development re5uires, as we !now from +vans careful treatment, eing a le to map the egocentric space of demonstration onto the sort of pu lic, shared space familiarity with which is most explicit in the form of mastery of a system of coordinates defined y an o "ectively identified origin and unit of measurement. As we will see elow, #egel addresses this issue as part of the general discussion, in the Consciousness section of the Phenomenology, of the presuppositions implicit in the distinction that consciousness essentially involves*the distinction etween su "ect and o "ect (certainty and truth). 1he it of this story that gets told in the Perception section deploys the apparatus we have "ust reviewed to fund a distinction etween change of properties in the o "ect, and change of mind in the su "ect. 1he latter shows up for the first time as the capacity to ma!e intelligi le the possi ility of error. 4istinguishing changes in endorsed content for which the o "ect is responsi le from those for which the su "ect is responsi le is the eginning of understanding the two as potentially tracing out independent tra"ectories, with different perceptions resulting as they encounter and reAencounter each other. 1he point is then pursued in *orce and +nderstanding, where what we pic! out y to!enings of this show themselves as o serva le appearances of underlying theoretical o "ects. 1he capacity to carve up an otherwise undifferentiated situation (as it were, hori/ontally) y distinguishing different heres within a single now is the asis of the move from merely featureA placing to more structured o "ectAcharacteri/ing languages. 6#ere' is nowi white, tart, and cu ical, and here7 is nowi red, sweet, and spherical.: 1he !nower must e a le to recollect demonstrative heres (and not "ust nows) anaphorically2 6$t7 is now" rown, sour, and spherical,: (as the apple spoils). -ith demonstrative identifications (here', nowi) availa le, the individuation of o "ects

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%&'(&%)*H(

Brandom

is then fully determined y the principle of identity of indiscerni les*a principle that is not at all plausi le if the properties involved are restricted to nondemonstrative, nonindexical ones.

1hus both the protoconceptual elements put in play in !ense Certainty are needed in order to move from mere universals to the 6thing of perception:. =a!ing that transition is "ust exploiting explicitly what is already implicit in the strong contrast etween wea!ly and strongly contrasting universals, and repeata ility as recollection. By contrast to situations, properties do not form an autonomous ontologicalAsemantic category with respect to incompati ilities, since one thingNs eing s5uare is not incompati le with something else7s eing triangular. 1he incompati ilities only apply when the properties are ta!en to characteri/e the same o "ects. 0o o "ects must e postulated as well, as principles of grouping properties into the classes relevant for incompati ilities. 1he properties must e understood oth in terms of their determinate exclusions of other properties and in terms of their relations to the o "ects they characteri/e and so to determinate sets of properties they do not exclude. Enly when it elongs to a Ene is it a property, and only in relation to others is it

determinate.CC

*I

0o far $ have een tal!ing only a out the opening six paragraphs of Perception, in which #egel descri es what is involved in understanding the o "ects of empirical !nowledge as things with properties. 1he ul! of this section of the Phenomenology descri es how such characteri/ed individuals*o "ects with properties, particulars falling under universals*
CC

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Brandom

can appear mysterious or unintelligi le if one attempts to understand empirical content that is determinate in this sense as also immediate in a sense articulated according to the model of the independence of its various elements from one another. 1his discussion weaves together two themes that introduce crucial structural elements of #egels narrative. Ene is the idea that discerning determinate content re5uires integrating two sorts of capacity. En the one hand, one must e a le to assimilate o "ects to o "ects (as sharing properties), and properties to properties (as compati le or coinstantiata le). En the other hand, one must e a le to differentiate properties from properties (as incompati le), and o "ects from o "ects (as having incompati le properties). 1he 5uestion then arises of how to understand the union of unity and diversity, of identity and difference, that yields determinateness (whether of content or of o "ect). #egels entire enterprise can e seen as oriented y the intention to respond to this challenge.

Ene of his most asic thoughts is that the concepts of identity and nonAidentity in the traditional logical sense presuppose, and cannot e used to explain, determinateness of content (whether of claim or fact). 1hey are a stracted from (and can e defined in terms of) determinate material contents. Dor instance, properties are identical if they are true of the same (possi le) o "ects, otherwise they are different. And o "ects are identical if the same properties (including demonstratively specifia le ones) are true of them, otherwise they are different. But such an account presupposes the prior determinateness of the o "ects and properties (e5uivalently, of the contents of the terms and predicates used to specify them). #egels idea is to develop richer notions of identity and difference, notions that will e ade5uate to ma!e explicit the determinate contentfulness of the o "ects and properties appealed to in the a stractive definitions of the traditional notions. 1hese will

%&'(&%)*HC

Brandom

e materially contentful, and not merely formal concepts of identity and difference. 1hese speculative logical concepts must articulate the material assimilations and differentiations implicit in the reciprocally interrelated determinate contentfulness of properties and o "ects.

1his reversal of traditional orders of explanation is the asis for the pro"ect whose results find expression in slogans such as 6identity in difference:. 0uch formulae y themselves are of little use in explaining the constellation of concepts they la el. 1hey are intelligi le only in the context of the account of determinate conceptual content out of which they arise. Enly if we !eep in mind the explanatory strategy they serve, and the target conception at which they are aimed*namely, the determinateness of conceptual content *can we appreciate the criteria of ade5uacy appropriate to #egels underta!ing. 1he traditional formal notions of identity and difference are not understood as having the "o of explaining the determinate contentfulness of nonlogical concepts. 1hat is the "o #egel calls on his speculative concepts to perform, and the "o in virtue of which they deserve the epithet logical, in #egels idiom. Fant transformed the philosophical tradition y ta!ing as his central pro lem the explication of the nature and conditions of the possi ility of o "ective purport*the implicit claim of our empirical "udgments and concepts to represent, refer to, or e a out o "ects, in the sense of answering to those o "ects for their correctness in a distinctive sense. #is predecessors had focused on the pro lem of !nowledge, rather than of content, that is, of the nature and conditions of the success of the o "ective representational purport of our ideas, ta!ing that purport itself for granted. Fant called the tas! of developing and deploying concepts to ma!e explicit the nature and conditions of the possi ility of o "ective representational purport 6transcendental logic:,

%&'(&%)*HH

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and laid that study of content alongside the merely formal 6general logic: of the tradition. -hile applauding this advance, #egel thin!s that Fant has ta!en for granted the notion of the determinateness of conceptual content, y helping himself to notions li!e that of intuition and concept (immediacy and mediation), particulars and universals. 1he study of how distinctions li!e these articulate determinate contents, #egel calls 6speculative logic.: $t is the enterprise within which his notion of speculative identity, which always includes a moment of difference, is developed and deployed. And, as $ shall argue in the next chapter <$ntroMep@, he thin!s that a properly developed speculative logic will su sume the role of Fants transcendental logic. >roperly understanding the nature of determinate conceptual content will ena le us to understand the notion of o "ective representational purport.

1he other large, central theme #egel puts in play here is that of explaining the nature and significance of cognitive error. Dor the shift from thin!ing of the o "ect of immediate empirical !nowledge as something merely inarticulately pointed out to thin!ing of it as a thing with properties opens up the possi ility of understanding the immediacy of perception as compati le with the possi ility of mista!es. 0ince we do get things wrong, moving to a conception of empirical cognition that is not in principle lind to this possi ility is sheer advance. But commitment to construing the content of each perceptual episode as independent of that of any other*the residual misunderstanding of immediacy that still characteri/es the conception of empirical !nowledge #egel denominates perception*nonetheless threatens to ma!e unintelligi le the idea that while we sometimes get things wrong, we also sometimes get them right.

%&'(&%)*H)

Brandom

Because of the differentiation of the categories of property and o "ect, the discussion of the way in which identity can depend on difference, unity on multiplicity, ta!es place along a num er of different dimensions. 0uch a discussion must ta!e account of2 a) the way the identity of one property consists in its determinate relation to other properties (its intraAcategorial others), which it excludes, and in terms of which we can understand its entailment of others, and ) the way the identity of one o "ect consists in its determinate relation to properties (its interAcategorial others), partitioning the set of properties into those that characteri/e it and those that do not, and c) the way the identity of one o "ect consists in its determinate relation to other (possi le) o "ects (its intracategorial others), from which it is discrimina le in virtue of possessing properties (perhaps only demonstratively or indexically specifia le) incompati le with theirs. 0o we have in (a) the intracategorial determinate otherness relating properties to properties, in ( ) the intercategorial determinate otherness relating properties to o "ects, and in (c) the intracategorial determinate otherness relating o "ects to o "ects. 1he selective rehearsal of the experience of perceiving consciousness that is presented in the exposition of the three dialectics of perception is to show that each strategy for construing determinately contentful o "ects and properties according to a model of independence fails to do "ustice to one or more of these ways in which determinateness involves relations to a multiplicity of others. 1he dialectic unfolds as a series of strategies attempting the reconciliation, !nown to us ut not to perceptual consciousness to e impossi le, of determinateness of content with the independence of some of its elements from their relations to others.

%&'(&%)*H%

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Brea!ing down the determinate content of immediate cognition into elements in this way provides a map of the different places where there is room for error to creep into its upta!e. +rror is understood as the misAta!ing of what is given. -hat is given "ust is what it is, immediately. 0o error must arise from our activity2 6consciousness recogni/es that it is the untruth occurring in perception that falls within it.:CH 1he conception of empirical cognition #egel calls perception is committed to construing o "ects and properties in terms of categories of independence*to ta!ing it that each could e what it is apart from its relations to others. $n conse5uence, each of the various assimilations and differentiations involved in the o "ectsAwithAproperties structure ecomes a candidate for appearing either as part of what is given, or as a product of the ta!ing of it. 0o along the way, we consider the conse5uences of assigning authority over or responsi ility for unifying and distinguishing the determinate o "ects and properties on some schemes to the !nower and in others to what is !nown.

0o, where in the first dialectic of Perception, #egel considers the difficulties attendant upon trying to understand the o "ects and properties that structure perceptual content as the product of independent principles of unity and distinction in what is perceived, in the second dialectic he considers the effects of assigning one or the other of the functions of assimilating and distinguishing (still understood as independent of one another) to the perceiving consciousness, and the other to what is perceived.C) #ere what we learn is that the autonomy of determinate content is incompati le with an ade5uate account of the possi ility of perceptual error. Dor such an account must explain not only how error is
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%&'(&%)*)J

Brandom

possi le, ut e5ually how it is ever possi le to get things right. As well see in further detail when we discuss #egels $ntroduction to the Phenomenology, in the next chapter, <<$ntroMep@@ #egel ta!es any account that precludes in principle the possi ility that what things are for us should coincide with what they are in themselves to e structurally defective. Tot only the untruth, ut also the truth of perception must fall within consciousness.C% 1he fundamental difficulty with representational approaches to conceptual content, #egel thin!s, is that they conceive of represented and representing as at least in principle intelligi le independent of one another. As a result, how we represent things to e (what things are for consciousness) and how what is represented actually is (how they are in themselves) may glo ally, systematically diverge. 1he approach he suggest to replace this way of understanding things, eginning already in *orce and +nderstanding, is ased on a notion of e)pression2 ma!ing explicit, in a way articulated y relations of material incompati ility and inference*that is, in a way that is 6thoroughly mediated:*what is implicit in the immediate deliverances of sense. -hen things go well, what is made explicit "ust is what was hitherto implicit, and in that case, what things are for us "ust is what they are in themselves.

0uch an outcome is not possi le, however, if the assimilation and differentiation that interact so intricately to structure perceived o "ectsAwithAproperties are treated as independent of one another, and responsi ility for one assigned to the o "ect perceived, while responsi ility for the other is assigned to the perceiving su "ect. #egel considers the two ways in which the activity of the su "ect might e*and often in fact have een y philosophers*ta!en to structure its perceptual experience2 lumping and splitting. En the

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first alternative, what is given in experience is ta!en to e intrinsically and immediately particular and infinitely various. 1he assimilation of different particulars as falling under common repeata le universals is ta!en to e the contri ution of the perceiving mind, which a stracts commonalities y ignoring differences (there y 6synthesi/ing the manifold of intuition:). En the second, what is given is ta!en to e intrinsically and immediately undifferentiated. 4istinctions are artificially imported into it y the perceiver. 1his might e the view of the mystic <who@ tells us that intuition presents us with a unity*the white radiance of eternity*whereas conceptual thin!ing (li!e a dome of manyA colored glass) rea!s this up into a multiplicity.HJ 1he form #egel considers relativi/es things to our senses2 Pthe 1hing is white only to our eyes, also tart to our tongue, also cu ical to our touch, and so on. -e get the entire diversity of these aspects , not from the 1hing, ut from ourselves; and they fall asunder in this way for us, ecause the eye is 5uite distinct from the tongue, and so on. Dor this to wor!, there must e real, and not merely apparent, diversity in us, even though there is supposed not to e in the o "ects of our perception.

But the deeper pro lem with accounts of either of these shapes is that whatever lumping or splitting the perceiver does falsifies what is given to it. Dor according to these stories, the determinate content of perception, the thing with sensi le properties, is an appearance, rather than reality. 1he o "ects of perception are not really determinate, if the perceiver is responsi le for either the unity or the diversity that is essential to the determinate content
Michard Morty, Philosophy and the 'irror of 1ature <>rinceton Oniversity >ress, '%H%@ p. '?(n. 1he passage continues2 6#ow could we decide whether he or Fant was right a out whether unity was correlated with receptivity or with spontaneity, #ow could it matter,:
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%&'(&%)*)7

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of perception. Iiews of this sort are 6error theories: in =ac!ies senseH'2 they entail that our perceptual claims are never right a out what is perceived. 1hey convey only how things are for us, and never how they are in themselves. 1hus they fail to meet one of the criteria of ade5uacy for theories of perceptual error2 they show how cognitive failure is possi le, ut not how cognitive success is. 1he final section of Consciousness, *orce and +nderstanding, egins to introduce the expressive model on which #egel will ase his more ade5uate account of the nature and significance of empirical error.

*II

1here is a deep philosophical truth in the vicinity of #egels account of the deepening of understanding that consists in moving from seeing the errorAfree ( ecause noncommittal) mere pointing out of !ense Certainty as the asis of empirical !nowledge to seeing the errorAprone ( ecause more committal) application of sense universals of Perception as providing that asis. $ have in mind 0ellars account, in L+mpiricism and the >hilosophy of =indL, of how loo!s tal! presupposes is tal!.H7 Although #egel does not offer this argument, his conclusion is stri!ingly similar, and $ thin! his story is illuminated y considering it in the context of 0ellars discussion.

<ref.@ -ilfrid 0ellars, (mpiricism and the Philosophy of 'ind , with an $ntroduction y Michard Morty and a 0tudy 3uide y Mo ert Brandom <#arvard Oniversity >ress, '%%H@. $ discuss the particular argument in 5uestion on pages 'BCA'(H of that study guide.
H' H7

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Descartes was struck by the fact that the appearance/reality distinction seems not to apply to appearances. While I may be mistaken about whether something is red (or whether the tower, in the distance, is square), I cannot in the same way be mistaken about whether it looks red to me now.73 While I may legitimately be challenged by a doubter: Perhaps the item is not really red; perhaps it only seems red, there is no room for the further doubt, Perhaps the item does not even seem red; perhaps it only seems to seem red. If it seems to seem red, then it really does seem red. The looks, seems, or appears operators collapse if we try to iterate them. A contrast between appearance and reality is marked by the distinction between looks-F and F for ordinary (reality-indicating) predicates F. But no corresponding contrast is marked by the distinction between looks-to-look-F and looks-F. Appearances are reified by Descartes as things that really are just however they appear. He inferred that we do not know them mediately, by means of representings that introduce the possibility of mis-representing (a distinction between how they really are and how they merely appear, i.e. are represented as being). Rather, we know them immediatelysimply by having them. Thus appearingsthought of as a realm of entities reported on by noninferentially elicited claims about how things look (for the visual case), or more generally seem, or appearshow up as having the ideal qualifications for epistemologically secure foundations of knowledge: we cannot make mistakes about them. Just having an appearance (being appeared-to F-ly, in one of the variations Sellars discusses) counts as knowing something: not that something is F, to be sure, but at least that something looks-, seems-, or appears-F. The possibility accordingly arises of reconstructing our knowledge by starting out only with knowledge
$ might e mista!en a out whether red is what it loo!s, that is, whether the property expressed y the word red is the one it loo!s to have. But that, the thought goes, is another matter. $ cannot e mista!en that it loo!s that way, li!e that, where this latter phrase is understood as having a noncomparative use. $t looks"red, a distinctive phenomenal property, which we may inconveniently only happen to e a le to pic! out y its association with a word for a realAworld property.
HB

%&'(&%)*)(

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of this sortknowledge of how things look, seem, or appearand building up in some way to our knowledge (if any) of how things really are (outside the realm of appearance).

This project requires that concepts of the form looks-F be intelligible in principle in advance of grasping the corresponding concepts F (or is-F). Sellars is a linguistic pragmatist about the conceptual order; that is, for him grasp of a concept just is mastery of the use of a word. So he systematically pursues the methodology of translating questions of conceptual priority into questions about the relative autonomy of various language games. He will argue that in this case, Descartes got things backwards. Looks talk does not form an autonomous stratum of the languageit is not a languagegame one could play though one played no other. One must already be able to use is-F talk in order to master looks-F talk, which turns out to be parasitic on it. In this precise practical sense, is-F is conceptually (Sellars often says logically) prior to looks-F.

Sellars' alternative analysis depends on distinguishing two different dimensions of the use of a noninferential report. First, each report is the manifestation of some reliable differential responsive disposition. That is, it is the result of one's being trained to behave in a certain way when in certain environmental situations (like a pigeon trained to peck at the red square when the red light comes on). What is the difference between a parrot trained to utter Thats red! when and only when confronted by the visible presence of something red, and a genuine noninferential reporter of the same circumstance? Having the differential responsive dispositions is not enough to have the concept, else a chunk of iron that rusts in wet environments and not in dry ones would have to be counted as having the concepts of wet and dry environments. What more, besides the parrots

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sentience is required for the sapience that consists in responding differentially by applying a concept? Sellars answer, invoking the second dimension of reporting, is that the response must be taking up a position in the space of reasonsmaking a move in the game of giving and asking for reasons. The genuine noninferential reporter of red things has, and the parrot has not, mastered the inferential role played by reports of that type where inferential role is a matter of what conclusions one is entitled to draw from such a statement when it is overheard, what would count as a reason for it, and what is incompatible with it and so a reason against it. This is a matter of the inferentially articulated content of the assertional commitment undertaken by the reporter in virtue of the performance that is the reporting: what the reporter is responsible for. Sellars' term for this second dimension is endorsement, a matter of what one is linguistically committed to (the inferential consequences of ones claims) or responsible for (how it could be justified) in virtue of one's assertional performance. This notion of responsibility, or of what conclusions one has given others the right to draw, or has obliged oneself to draw, and what other commitments would count as entitling one to the commitment one has undertaken is the normative element in linguistic conduct.

Sellars idea is that where collateral beliefs indicate that systematic error is likely, the subject learns not to make the report 'x is F', to which his previously inculcated responsive dispositions incline him, but to make a new kind of claim: 'x looks (or seems) F'. Of course it is tempting to take this as a new kind of report, indeed a report of a special kind of particular, a sense datum. This report then is naturally thought of as reporting a minimal, noninferentially ascertainable, foundationally basic fact, about which each subject is incorrigible. So ifto use his examplethe clerk in a tie-shop

%&'(&%)*)C

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learns that he is often wrong in his noninferential judgments about the colors of his wares when he views them under electric lights, he may express both his otherwise reliable differential responsive disposition to call a tie green, and his unwillingness to endorse that claim (given that the disposition was elicited under conditions he now views as nonstandard, in the sense that his dispositions in those conditions are untrustworthy), by making the weaker looks claim.

This analysis of what one is doing in using looks explains the incorrigibility of looks talk. One can be wrong about whether something is green because the claim one endorses, the commitment one undertakes, may turn out to be incorrect. For instance, its inferential consequences may be incompatible with other facts one is or comes to be in a position to know independently. But in saying that something looks green, one is not endorsing a claim, but withholding endorsement from one. Such a reporter is merely evincing a disposition to do something that for other reasons (e.g. suspicion that the circumstances of observation lead to systematic error) he is unwilling to donamely, endorse a claim. Such a reporter cannot be wrong, because he has held back from making a commitment. This is why the looks, seems, and appears operators do not iterate. Their function is to express the withholding of endorsement from the sentence that appears within the scope of the operator. There is no sensible contrast between looks-to-look F and looks-F, of the sort there is between looks-F and (is-)F because the first looks has already withheld endorsement from the only content in the vicinity to which one might be committed (to somethings being F). There is no further withholding work for the second looks to do. There is nothing left to take back. Since asserting X looks F is not undertaking a propositionally contentful commitmentbut

%&'(&%)*)H

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only expressing an overrideable disposition to do sothere is no issue as to whether or not that commitment (which one?) is correct.

Sellars accordingly explains the incorrigibility of appearance-claims, which had so impressed Descartes. He does so in terms of the practices of using words, which are what grasp of the relevant appearance concepts must amount to, according to his methodological linguistic pragmatism. But once we have seen the source and nature of this incorrigibilityin down-to-earth, practical, resolutely nonmetaphysical termswe see also why it is precisely unsuited to use as an epistemological foundation for the rest of our (risky, corrigible) empirical knowledge. For, first, the incorrigibility of claims about how things merely look simply reflects their emptiness: the fact that they are not really claims at all. And second, the same story shows us that looks talk is not an autonomous language gameone that could be played though one played no other. It is entirely parasitic on the practice of making risky empirical reports of how things actually are. Thus Descartes seized on a genuine phenomenonthe incorrigibility of claims about appearances, reflecting the non-iterability of operators like looks, seems, and appearsbut misunderstood its nature, and so mistakenly thought it available to play an epistemologically foundational role for which it is in no way suited.

As we have seen, #egel also argues that in treating the incorrigi le demonstrative indication of what is given to me in sensory experience as determinately contentful, we implicitly appeal to the applica ility of sense universals. Onpac!ing the presuppositions of the determinate contentfulness of this sort of concept reveals its dependence on the full structure of the sensi le thing with properties, that is, particulars characteri/ed y sensi le

%&'(&%)*))

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universals that are articulated y material incompati ilities with and therefore material inferential relations to other such universals. Enly against the ac!ground of falli le "udgments with this sort of content can one ma!e sense of the capacity to !now infalli ly how things merely seem to one, what one merely means. 1he !ey, for #egel as for 0ellars, is the reali/ation that the determinate contentfulness of any sensory upta!e depends upon the application of concepts or universals, and that even sensory concepts (those that are immediate in the sense of eing noninferentially applica le) are essentially, and not merely accidentally, related to other such concepts y relations of material incompati ility and inference. $t follows that the immediacy of sensory cognition is intelligi le only as part of a larger story that includes mediation. And an essential feature of that context of mediation is the room it leaves for the possi ility of error, its recognition, and so for change of mind a out a topic common to the prior and the su se5uent attitude. (1his is where the need for the capacity to recollect, or hold onto an immediacy gets its grip.) Ene of #egels central aims is to develop notions of identity and difference that interact in such a way as to ma!e possi le an explanation of the nature of determinate conceptual contents that, while as determinate are thoroughly mediated, also can e applied immediately, and which are su "ect to the possi ility of errors, which can o lige empirical !nowers to revise their previous verdicts. #egel is fond of encapsulating this constellation of concerns under the heading of 6the negativity of the concept.: 1he primary explanatory aim of this oo! <<A !pirit of Trust@@ is to explain #egels conception of determinate conceptual content, and how the logical voca ulary he develops to ma!e that conception explicit wor!s.

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*III

1hese two versions of the second strategy fell down in two ways. Dirst, of course, determinateness and autonomy of contents and o "ects are still incompati le. 0econd, assigning responsi ility for either of the necessary elements of determinateness (unity and multiplicity) to consciousness ro s the thing of real determinateness. 0ince perception cannot appreciate the first difficulty without turning into understanding, the third and last form of perceptual consciousness attempts to avoid the second difficulty y once again putting oth sides of determinateness into the thing rather than consciousness. 1his strategy would simply repeat the very first form of perception, except that something has een learned from the second stage. Dor the second stage loo!ed for the ground of one of unity and diversity in the o "ect, and the other elsewhere. $t has now emerged that it is a mista!e to loo! for the source of the other in consciousness, ut the general idea of loo!ing elsewhere than in the o "ect itself need not e discarded ecause that special case didnNt wor! out. 0o in the third stage oth the elements which alternated etween eing assigned to the thing and to consciousness are to e assigned to things, ut only one of them to the thing which is the thing characteri/ed y perceptual properties.

$n particular, the thing is ta!en to e in itself a unity. 1he diversity which ma!es it determinate is then understood as a matter of the relations which that single thing stands in to other single things. .onsidered y itself, the thing is "ust what it is, ut in relation to other things it is white, sweet, etc., completely apart from how consciousness may ta!e it to e. 1he diverse properties of each unified thing, the thing insofar as it is white as

%&'(&%)*%J

Brandom

distinguished from the thing insofar as it is sweet, correspond to the diversity of other o "ects it is related to. $t is sweet or white for or in relation to them. 1he source of the diversity within each o "ect is then ta!en to consist in the diversity of other o "ects to which it is related.

$t should e clear that this strategy for com ining independent principles of unity and diversity will not wor!. Dor o "ects are diverse precisely insofar as they have different properties. $t is the properties that articulate the determinate differences (as well as similarities) or those o "ects. 0o invo!ing the determinate differences of o "ects to explain the properties of each is moving around in a circle. >ut differently, assuming that o "ects determinately differ from one another*so that the properties of one o "ect can e defined y appeal to its relations to other, different o "ects*"ust is assuming that those o "ects have different properties. To account of the unification of diverse properties in a single o "ect (the also), or of diverse o "ects characteri/ed y a single property (the insofar as) can e expressed in these terms.

0o one way of descri ing the failure of the third strategy*which puts oth identity and determinate difference into the inAitself, ut divides them etween different things*is that no coherent notion of determinate content can e made explicit according to this conception. 1he same difficulty can e seen from the other side2 as a failure to ma!e good on the conception of o "ects as eing what they are independently of their relations to other o "ects. Dor what they are, their determinate content and determinate differences from other o "ects, is ta!en to consist exactly in their relations to other o "ects. 0o this third approach must fail as a strategy that considers immediacy of content in terms of

%&'(&%)*%'

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independence.H( $t cannot give us an ade5uate picture of how the determinate contentfulness of empirical cognition is articulated at once y assimilation and y distinction* y identity and difference. 1he overall lesson is that in order to ma!e determinate contentfulness intelligi le, we will have to move from understanding assimilation and distinction under categories of independence to understanding them under categories of freedom. 1o do that will e to understand the relation etween universals and particulars according to the model of reciprocal recognition of selfAconscious selves.

H(

$ mean here to e epitomi/ing the argument of <='7BA7C@.

%&'(&%)*%7

Brandom

Part .our:

Force and Understanding

1he overall lesson of Perception is that the determinate content of perceptual experience is unintelligi le if we treat it as immediate in the sense that the structural elements articulating it are independent of one another. -e can ma!e sense of the category of properties only in a context that includes o "ects, and vice versa. And esides these intercategorial dependences, there are intracategorial ones. Onderstanding a property as determinate re5uires contrasting it with other properties, with which it is materially incompati le (in that no one o "ect can simultaneously exhi it oth). And understanding an o "ect as determinate re5uires contrasting it, as the earer of a set of merely 6indifferently different: propertiesH? with other possi le o "ects, exhi iting incompati le properties. >roperties and o "ects can each e thought of as structural principles of assimilation, or of differentiation. En the one hand, properties are universals, which unify their diverse particular instances*the o "ects that they characteri/e. En the other hand, o "ects can e thought of as unifying the various properties that characteri/e them, and which in turn differentiate one o "ect from another. 0o in learning a out the intercategorial dependence of properties on o "ects and o "ects on properties, and the way the identity of properties depends on their relations to strongly contrasting properties, and the derivative way the identity of o "ects depends on their relations to other possi le o "ects, perceiving consciousness learns that determinateness of empirical content is intelligi le only if its unifying and its distinguishing elements are conceived as reciprocally

H?

<='7B@.

%&'(&%)*%B

Brandom

dependent aspects of a single structure. As #egel puts the point in the hyper olic language characteristic of his speculative concept of identity2 6the a solute antithesis <3egensat/@ is posited as a selfAidentical essence.:HC 4eterminate contentfulness egins to appear as a !ind of differentiated identity, as identity in difference.

A metaconception of determinate empirical content that incorporates this lesson (even implicitly) is not called perception, ut thought.HH $t understands its o "ect, for the first time in our exposition, as specifically conceptual content. 1he conception of determinate conceptual content that #egel discusses in the third and final section of Consciousness is inade5uate, however. $t is still deformed y a residual commitment to conceiving different aspects of the articulation of that content as independent of one another. 1his conception, which #egel denominates understanding <Ierstand@, has only an implicit grasp of its topic, the .oncept. By the end of this section, #egel will have rehearsed a developmental tra"ectory along which enough of its features ecome explicit for the true nature of the .oncept to appear*its character as sinfinites, as #egel will say.H)

Ierstands conception of the content of empirical cognition is, li!e those of sense certainty and perception, marred y commitment to conceiving various essential aspects of such content as intelligi le independently of others. $t nonetheless 5ualifies as a conception at the level of thought*that is, as directed at content understood as conceptual* ecause it understands that determinate negation and (so) mediation play

<='B(@. <='B7@. H) $ mar! #egels distinctive and idiosyncratic speculative, 5ualitative, use of infinite, y putting it in special 5uotation mar!s, to distinguish it from the ordinary and mathematical, 5uantitative notion of the infinite, "ust as $ mar! off his special use of identity. 1he superscripts in sinfinites and sidentitys can e thought of as mnemonic for speculative. (But see also 'aking It ()plicit , pp?(?A?(H and pp.?))A?%J.
HC HH

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essential roles in articulating that content (even though the conceptual tools it permits itself are in principle not ade5uate to ma!e those roles explicit). -e have seen that even the immediately (that is, responsively, noninferentially) applica le universals of sense must e understood as essentially mediated in order to e intelligi le as determinately contentful. 1hat is, material relations of incompati ility and inference are essential elements of the articulation of the contents even of the universals of sense applied immediately in perception. $t follows that there are two ways in which one can ecome aware of something as falling under a sense universal2 immediately, as a direct perceptual response to an environing situation, and mediately, as an indirect, inferential conclusion drawn from some other "udgment (perhaps itself the result of perception). .onstruals of the content of empirical cognition that fall into the class #egel calls 6perception: restricted themselves to sensuous universals ecause they understood the content of universals as immediate in a sense that limits their applica ility to the direct, responsive, perceptual case. 1hey admit only universals we can noninferentially e aware of things as characteri/ing things, ecause the only authority they ac!nowledge as capa le of entitling us to apply universals is the authority of immediacy. But this turned out to e a mista!e. 1he authority of immediacy is intelligi le as determinately contentful only as part of a larger scheme, that involves also the authority of mediated (inferential) applications of concepts. 1he authority of immediacy is not independent of the authority of mediation.

1his reali/ation removes the rationale for the restriction to universals of sense. $t opens up the possi ility that the content of empirical !nowledge is articulated also y universals that are, as it were, only mediately immediate*in the sense that the only way their application can e authori/ed is y an inferential move from the applica ility (perhaps

%&'(&%)*%?

Brandom

immediate) of some other concept. 1he metaconception #egel calls understanding can, as that he calls perception could not, countenance theoretical, as well as observational concepts. As #egel puts it, we can move from considering only sensuously conditioned universals, to considering (sensuously) unconditioned ones.H% $ say that this possi ility is 6opened up:, and that we 6can: ma!e the move in 5uestion, rather than that we are o liged at this point to consider purely theoretical o "ects. Dor reali/ing the necessity of roadly inferential articulation of concepts*and so the possi ility of o "ects eing inferentially, and not "ust noninferentially, accessi le*is entirely compati le with all concepts having noninferential uses, and so eing in principle o serva le. $t is "ust that not all applications of those concepts can e noninferential. 0o sometimes one might o serve that something was red, and sometimes one might infer that fact from the o servation that it was crimson.

Although I elieve (following 0ellars) that the notion of an autonomous system of discursive practices restricted to o servational concepts is intelligi le, %egel may not. 1he important point is that one cannot intelligi ly descri e a set of discursive practices in which all the moves are noninferential o servations, with no inferential moves. $t may seem crucial to settle this issue, in order to understand the nature of the move from the metaconception of perception to that of understanding. But $ thin! it is less important than it appears to e. $n the next chapter $ll discuss the sort of retrospective expressive
#

necessity# that #egel ta!es these transitions to have2 roughly, that only y ma!ing these
cf. <='7%@, rehearsing this movement2 Drom a sensuous eing it turned into a universal; ut this universal, since it originates in the sensuous, is essentially conditioned y it, and hence is not a truly selfAidentical universality; for this reason the universality splits into the extremes of singular individuality and universality, into the Ene of the properties and the Also of the free mattersP0ince, however, oth are essentially in a single unity , what we now have is unconditioned absolute universality , and consciousness here for the first time truly enters the realm of the Onderstanding.

H%

%&'(&%)*%C

Brandom

moves can one see explicitly what turns out all along to have een implicit in more primitive conceptions. 1hey are necessary only in the sense that it can e seen retrospectively, from the vantage point of one who has an explicit grasp on what is at issue, that any other move would have failed to e expressively progressive. Dor now we need only e concerned with the ideas #egel is putting on the ta le in this section of the Phenomenology.

1he paradigm of a theoretical o "ect for #egel is Tewtonian force (a point underlined for him y the role that notion plays in the rationally reconstructed dynamics of Fants 'etaphysical *oundations of 1atural !cience). Dorces are only indirectly accessi le to us, via inferences from o served accelerations. But in this sense, mass is as much a theoretical concept as force. Although he couches his discussion exclusively in terms of forces, in *orce and +nderstanding #egel is addressing the whole genus of theoretically postulated o "ects, not "ust this particular paradigmatic species. #is overall topic is how we should thin! a out the process of inferentially finding out a out how things are, which has turned out to e implicitly involved in and presupposed y the possi ility of noninferentially (perceptually, immediately) finding out a out how things are. $t is important in reading this it of the oo! to !eep this topic firmly in mind, and not to e distracted or misled y the literary trope in which #egel couches his discussion*what might e called 6specific (conceptual) synechdoche:, in which a species is allowed to stand for its genus.)J

II
As in later chapters it is important to understand the nature of the conceptual allegories that #egel employs. (1hough no dou t some readers will suspect me of eing one of those 6that with allegories curious frame&Ef others children changelings use to ma!e,: as >hilip 0idney says in Arcadia.)
)J

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Brandom

0ometimes facts (e.g. that an o "ect has an o serva le property) that are immediately availa le to a !nower through perception can serve as premises from which to draw conclusions a out facts that are not immediately availa le. Ene might infer from the apples eing red that it is ripe, and so would taste sweet. 1hough the apples sweetness is something one also could find out a out perceptually, one need not, if there is an inferential route leading to it from another perceived fact. Ene of the most fruitful cognitive strategies*practiced formally already y the 3ree!s, and culminating in modern science*has een exploiting this sort of inferential access y postulating the existence of uno serva les. 1hese are o "ects and properties that are theoretical in the sense of eing cognitively accessi le only y means of inferences drawn, ultimately, from what is o serva le. -hat can we learn a out reality, and a out our !nowledge of it, from the fact that postulating theoretical entities that we cannot perceive is such a spectacularly successful strategy for understanding what we can perceive, $n *orce and +nderstanding #egel addresses himself to this 5uestion, which has so greatly exercised twentieth century philosophers of science.

-hat has emerged from the discussion of Perception is a new way of thin!ing a out immediacy. -here we started out considering what is immediately given to us in perception as an o "ect of !nowledge, we are now o liged to consider its role as a means y which we can come to !now a out something that is not itself immediate. $nstead of focusing on the noninferential process from which it perceptual !nowledge results, we focus on the inferences it supports2 loo!ing downstream rather than upstream. 4oing this is thin!ing of immediacy as mediating our access to theoretical o "ects, y providing

%&'(&%)*%)

Brandom

premises from which facts a out them can e inferred. 0ince they point eyond themselves inferentially, esides eing whatever they are immediately, noninferentially o serva le states of affairs serve also to manifest or reveal other states of affairs, including theoretical ones, which are only accessi le y means of such inferential mediation.

1his is the relation #egel tal!s a out under the heading of 6force and its expression: <]uSerung@*the relation, namely, etween a theoretical o "ect and its o serva le manifestations. +xpression, ma!ing the implicit explicit, is one of #egels master concepts. $t is (among other things) his preferred way of thin!ing a out the relation etween what we are thin!ing a out and what we thin! a out it. Fnowledge is what happens when what things are in themselves (6an sich:, that is, implicitly) is expressed, made explicit for someone. #egel develops this trope*a staple of 3erman romanticism, under the influence of #erder*to ela orate the relationship etween truth and certainty (his terms for the o "ective and su "ective poles of consciousness). #is detailed inferentialist understanding of expression is his candidate replacement for the dominant enlightenment idiom of representation. ($n the next chapter <$T1MEM+>@ well see how he reconstructs the latter notion y means of the former.) 1he rationalist emphasis on the roadly inferential articulation ( y determinate negation and mediation) of what counts as an explicit expression mar!s his decisive divergence from and transformation of that romantic heritage.

1he discussion of the expression of force is the first official appearance of this idea in the Phenomenology. 1he conception of expression involved is inevita ly crude and primitive *a seed we will watch grow and flower in what is to come. Ene important way in which

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this first notion of expression is crude (#egel would say 6oneAsided:) is that it assimilates the explicit to the immediate, to what is merely overt. En the other hand, this initial rendering of expression is oriented y the idea of inferential access to how things are, and so 5ualifies as a conception of empirical !nowledge at the level of thought. 0o it contains the germ of a more ade5uate understanding.

1he first development of the crudest conception consists in the move to considering 6independent opposing forces: and then 6reciprocal action or the play of forces:. )' $t is the dawning appreciation of the holistic nature of the inferences that connect us to theoretical o "ects. 0ince our only access to these o "ects is y means of their inferential connections, our grasp of the content of one theoretical claim cannot e independent of our grasp of other contents that stand to it in material inferential and incompati ility relations. #egel is here rehearsing difficulties and insights that arise in the course of developing more ade5uate conceptual tools for thin!ing a out the identity of each thought (thin!a le content) as essentially, and not "ust accidentally, involving relations to thoughts other than or different from it. 1his is the expressive tas! of the logical concepts that articulate his Identit8tsphilosophie, his account of identityAinAdifference.

-e see in this discussion more pathological manifestations of the attempt to construe various elements of a conception of the thought contents that present theoretical o "ects as simply independent of one another. 1he first lesson is that force ought to e on the one hand distinguished from or contrasted with its expressions or manifestations, and on the
Dorce and its expression are discussed at <='BCAH@. Before going on to the crucial discussion of the significance of the play of forces (at <='('A7@), he discusses supposedly independent opposing forces (at <='B)A(J@) as soliciting of and solicited y each other. By the end of the Phenomenology , we are supposed to e a le to see such solicitation as a crude natural reflection of recognition relations among selfAconscious individuals.
)'

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other hand that it can e understood or identified only in terms of such expressions or manifestations. 0o the fact that forces are only mediately (inferentially) accessi le to us, while their expressions can e immediately (noninferentially) accessi le to us must not e ta!en to imply that these two sorts of thing are intelligi le independently of one another. $f they are not, then we need a way of thin!ing of the unity or identity of a single Dorce )7 (theoretical o "ect) as essentially involving a diversity of possi le (o serva le) manifestations. Perception ended with a discussion of the suggestion that the unity of an o "ect might e reconciled with the diversity of its properties y seeing the properties as consisting in its relations to other o "ects. 1his is the idea that (in a phrase it is useful to !eep in mind in understanding #egels idiom in general)2 64ifference is nothing else than eing for another.:)B

0o we consider what happens when the restriction to o serva le o "ects is removed*that is, when the idea is generali/ed from applying to o "ects of perception to o "ects of thought in general. 1he result is the thought that it is the relation of one Dorce to others that is responsi le for the diversity of its manifestations. Ef course, if the thought of one theoretical state of affairs is unintelligi le apart from its relations to o serva les (which underwrite our inferential access to it), and those relations to o serva les (its manifestations) are unintelligi le apart from consideration of its relations to other uno serva les)(, then the thought of one theoretical state of affairs will in general essentially involve its relations to other theoretical states of affairs. 1hat is, we cannot
Dollowing =iller, $ will capitali/e Dorce as a reminder of #egels special, roader use of this term. <='BC@. 1his thought esta lishes a crucial terminological lin! etween tal! of difference (in the sense of the strong material contrast that is determinate negation), which articulates #egels notion of content, and tal! of eing for another. 1he latter is the genus whose most developed species is consciousness2 the relation of identityAinAdifference etween certainty and truth, our !nowing and what is !nown, the contents of our thoughts and the facts they (in favored cases) are !nowings of. )( Er, of course, o serva les. But the general case must include o "ects of thought, and not "ust of perception, as capa le of eliciting o serva le manifestations from theoretical o "ects.
)7 )B

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thin! of the manifestations as the result of interactions among 6wholly independent forces.:)? 1he essential interdependence of the various theoretical postulates that a theory endorses has emerged2 the inferences that lead to one theoretical claim typically re5uire other theoretical claims as premises. Dor example, the inference from the movement of the needle on voltmeter to the presence of a current with a certain voltage in the test wire depends upon all sorts of assumptions a out the functioning of the measuring device in the actual circumstances, not all of which are restricted to claims a out o serva le states of affairs.)C

1he conception of what is immediately o serva le as the "oint manifestation of a 6play of forces: accordingly incorporates a certain sort of holism a out the theoretically postulated entities2 6their essence consists simply and solely in this, that each is solely through the other.:)H #egel uses an explicitly inferential idiom, whose home language game is discussion of syllogisms, to express the holistic nature of the essentially interacting theoretical entities. 1he forces 6do not exist as extremes which retain for themselves something fixed and su stantial, transmitting to one another in their middle term and in their contact a merely external property; on the contrary, what they are, they are only in this middle term and this contact.: )) 1he nature of their determinateness precludes
<='B)@. 1he u i5uity of this sort of dependence the second great difficulty with the sort of phenomenalism that understands statements a out how things are as theoretical claims, which must e inferred from claims a out how things merely seem. 1he first difficulty is that claims a out how things seem do not form an autonomous discursive stratum*they do not involve a set of concepts one could master though one had mastered as yet no claims a out how things actually are (cf. 0ellars L+mpiricism and the >hilosophy of =indL <op. cit.@). But, in addition, inferences from how things seem to how things actually are*with their myriad implications for how things would seem if9*in general depend on further claims a out how things are. 1his difficulty proved insurmounta le for pro"ects such as that of .. $. Kewis in 'ind and the ,orld 5rder. If $ seem to go out the door of my office, it will seem to me as ifP.*what, -hat follows depends on whether $ actually go out the door of my office, or am merely imagining or dreaming (cf. 0ellars 6>henomenalism: <ref.@). )H <='('@. )) <='('@.
)? )C

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understanding the forces as independent of one another. 1he conceptual challenge is to understand what sort of unity each of them can have, given that it is the determinate entity that it is only in virtue of the diversity of its relation to other determinately different unities of the same sort. >ut telegraphically, we need a coherent way of tal!ing a out determinate identity as essentially constituted y determinate difference.

0tructurally, the difference is the same as at the end of Perception. 1here is no pro lem understanding the determinate identity of one individual as consisting in the determinate diversity of its relation to other individuals, if we are permitted to ta!e their determinate identities for granted in advance. But if we can not ta!e it for granted, ecause their determinate identities (what distinguishes them one from another) are ta!en li!ewise to consist in their relations to others similarly conceived, then the whole scheme is threatened y incoherence. 1he strategy amounts to seeing each individual as orrowing its moment of diversity from (depending for the intelligi ility of its determinate difference from others upon) that of other, different, individuals, which stand in diverse determinate relations to the first. But this only wor!s if we can already ma!e sense of this feature of those others. $f no identity or difference, no individual or its relation to others, is intelligi le prior to any other, how is any identity or difference constituted, 61hey have, thus, in fact, no su stances of their own that might support and maintain them.:)% $t seems that something determinate needs to e fixed first, to get the whole scheme off the ground. 1his is what one might have hoped that immediacy would supply. (1hus ^uine conceived his holistic we of elief as anchored at its edges y perceptual experience, construed as deriving its content noninferentially, from the pattern of stimulations of sensory surfaces that elicit

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them.) But this is "ust what the discovery of the essential, and not "ust accidental, inferential articulation of the determinate content of the immediate deliverances of sense de ars. ($t is why ac!nowledging the 6theoryAladenness of o servation:%J seems to threaten to ro the whole we of determinate constraint y how things anyway are.)

1his situation might e illuminated y comparing it to a later conceptual pic!le that is in some ways structurally analogous (and not historically unrelated) to the one #egel sees looming here. $t is a difficulty that plagued various late nineteenth century British idealists (a paradigm would e #.#. ;oachim, a prominent admirer of and commentator on 0pino/a, ut D.#. Bradley had similar pro lems). 1hey were tempted y the view that what there really is, the A solute, is an indissolu le unity. But certainly that is not how things appear to us. 1he explanation that seemed appropriate was that while in some sense the A solute can understand itself as a unity, this is not easily, certainly not immediately, achieva le y us. -e are only finite eings, after all, and so can only e expected to comprehend fragments of the A solute, or the A solute as fragmented. 1he whole is simply too rich for our poor capa ilities. $t is only y splitting it up, a stracting its from it, treating it as a collection of related, distinct, finite elements, that we are capa le of comprehending it at all. 1his is "ust a conse5uence of our incapacity. $t is in relation to an NotherN, namely our finite minds, that the Ene appears as =any. But what is the status of the finite chun!s of the A solute that are responsi le for this appearance, $f they are real then the A solute is not Ene and allAencompassing, ut contains within it the
As remar!ed a ove, the point can e made even for languages so primitive as to lac! purely theoretical terms, since all that it depends on is the point that any episode counts as potentially conceptually significant only in terms of its inferential articulation (the capacity to serve as premises and conclusions of inferences). But there are no actual languages li!e this, so philosophers of science, li!e #egel in the transition from Perception to *orce and +nderstanding , have a "ustification for concerning themselves with the relation etween o servation and theory, and not "ust that etween noninferential and inferential applications of concepts*so long as it is !ept in mind that the former distinction rests on the latter one.
%J

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diversity of finite minds, really distinct from one another and distinguisha le from the rest of $t. And if they are not real, how can they explain the appearance of division and diversity, $t does not seem useful to argue that they too are merely the products of finite minds trying vainly to comprehend the Ene*that "ust sets off a regress.%'

$ do not thin! that in our own day we have very good idioms for thin!ing a out the theoretical pro lems raised y conceptual holism. 1hey arise whenever we are tempted to thin! of concepts or eliefs as inferentially articulated networ!s in which each node is identified and individuated, determinately contentful and distinguished from the others solely y its relation to them. $ ta!e it that #egels speculative logic of determinate identity is a theory of concepts and the conceptual that is designed to address this difficulty. 0o insofar as that metatheory can itself e made intelligi le, we potentially have something to learn from him on this score. =ore particularly, $ thin! he has a sophisticated account of how immediacy ma!es the determinate contentfulness of such a thoroughly mediated (inferentially articulated) structure intelligi le. En the one hand, the nodes of the networ!*conceptually articulated commitments of one sort or another (applications of concepts in "udgment and action)*are tagged y performances ( oth speech acts and nonver al intentional actions) that can e held fast socially, in a pu lic space. ($n effect, they are tagged y sentences, since 6Kanguage is the existence of 0pirit.:%7) En the other hand, more is immediately percepti le than what !nowers and agents pu licly do. >erceptual o servations of things in general are not merely immediate, ut they are noninferentially elicited, and so provide a crucial friction for the inferentially
$t is important to e clear that $ am not claiming that this is %egel s pro lem*in spite of the de t that these figures owe to him. $ invo!e it only as an illustration of the general structure of the difficulty a out a thoroughgoing holism. %7 <=C?7@
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articulated .oncept2 a !ind of constraint without which the determinate contentfulness of ordinary empirical concepts would e unintelligi le. 1he concepts that are the medium of thought can e understood as determinately contentful, in spite of their holistic interrelations, only in virtue of the contri ution of particularity to the content of these universals. As urged in the previous chapter <<0>1#$@@, the relation etween them is to e modeled on that of reciprocal recognition. But this is to anticipate; we are still assem ling the raw materials needed for the telling of that story <in the next two chapters@. %B

III

#egel is considering, then, attempts to understand the determinateness of a theoretical o "ect in terms of its two crucial structural aspects2 the moment of unity, in virtue of which it one su stance, to which can e assigned responsi ility for its various actual manifestations, and the moment of diversity, y which that unity is as it were dissolved into the diversity of its relations to other theoretical o "ects, which result in its immediate manifestations. #e identifies the second, holistic, element as ma!ing Dorce visi le as an o "ect of thought2 theoretical o "ects as distinctively inferentially accessi le, and so as essentially conceptuali/ed in a stronger sense than merely perceiva le o "ects. 1his actual Dorce, when thought of as free from its expression and as eing for itself, is Dorce driven ac! into itself; ut in fact this determinateness, as we have found, is itself only a moment of Dorces expression. 1hus the
Totice that according to the account presented thus far, #egels treatment of Consciousness in the Phenomenology egins y arguing against the =yth of the 3iven that articulation y concepts or universals is an essential feature of cognition, and ends y considering the threat posed y a pure coherentism2 the possi ility that holistically related thoughts would end up without determinate content, spinning frictionless in a void, in a way that can e avoided only y assigning also an essential role to particularity and immediacy. .ontemporary readers will recogni/e these as the two possi ilities in terms of which =c4owell diagnoses the ills of modern philosophy, in 'ind and ,orld <#arvard Oniversity >ress, '%%(@.
%B

%&'(&%)*'JC

Brandom

truth of Dorce remains only the thought of it; the moments of its actuality, their su stances and their movement, collapse unresistingly ac! into an undifferentiated unity, a unity which is not Dorce driven ac! into itself (for this is itself only such a moment), ut its Concept ua Concept.%( Pthis second is determined as the negative of Dorce that is o "ective to sense; it is force in the form of its true essence in which it exists only as an object for the +nderstanding3 1he first universal would e Dorce driven ac! into itself, or Dorce as 0u stance; the second, however, isPthe .oncept of Dorce ua .oncept.%? 1hin!ing of Dorce as .oncept is thin!ing of theoretical o "ects as o "ects of the understanding*as raising the conceptual difficulties presented y the need for holistic principles of identification and individuation presented y their eing only inferentially accessi le.%C
<='('@. $ have used .oncept for =illers Totion as a translation of #egels Begriff, ut continue his practice of capitali/ing it, to distinguish it from empirical or determinate concepts such as red and mass. %? <='(7@. %C 1his is not (as it might appear) a shift in concern from the o "ective side of truth (in the presystematic representational terms native to Ierstand, of what is sout there, to e represented s) to the su "ective side of certainty (of our srepresentings, in here s). 1he topic is still what is !nown empirically, the objects of understanding and thought. Mather, we are to follow out some of the conse5uences of them eing understanda le, thin!a le*that is, inferentially (and only inferentially) accessi le*o "ects. #egel does not here ma!e a move that it is natural for us to consider at this point2 distinguishing etween sense and reference. 1heoretical thoughts and claims (in the sense of the content that is thought or claimed) may well e essentially inferentially articulated, so identifia le and distinguisha le only holistically, as part of a whole system of such things. But, we want to say, it y no means follows that the objects of our thoughts and claims, what we are thin!ing and tal!ing about, are correspondingly essentially, and not merely contingently, related to one another. 0enses might e holistic (6internally related: to each other, as the nineteenth century British idealists said) without this precluding an atomistic understanding of their referents. Onderstanding #egels conception of the relation etween Iernunft and Ierstand re5uires !eeping this deep and important issue in mind. #egel has not at this point put on the ta le the conceptual resources needed for his reconstruction of the relation etween what is represented and the contents of representings of it*what one needs to e entitled to appeal to a sense&reference distinction in this way. -hen he does, his notions will wor! somewhat differently. $t would e premature at this point to convict #egel of a confusion, efore we see where he is going. Totice that it is not o viously an o ligatory conse5uence of distinguishing etween, on the one hand, the concepts hammer and nail, and hammers and nails on the other, that one conclude that while the concept mutually presuppose and involve one another, the actual hammers and nails do not stand in any corresponding relationships. Ef course, these chun!s of wood and metal do not, ut the hammers and nails that occupy the same spatioAtemporal regions may re5uire thin!ing a out somewhat differently.
%(

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1he conceptual resources #egel inherited were not much use in ma!ing sense of the holistic character concepts must e ta!en to have once their roadly inferential articulation (the material inferential and incompati ility relations #egel discusses under the headings of 6mediation: and 6determinate negation:) is ta!en to e essential to their identity and individuation. 1his expressive impoverishment then carries over to the o "ective correlates (facts a out theoretical o "ects) expressed y such holistically related thoughts. 1he est logic #egel had availa le to him was that of Fant. At the center of Fants enterprise is his displacing of epistemological 5uestions, paradigmatically those in the vicinity of s!epticism a out the truth or "ustification of !nowledge claims, in favor of roadly semantic ones. #e set himself the tas! of ma!ing explicit the ac!ground against which alone it ma!es sense to ta!e something to e a representation or a putative act of awareness of something*to understand it as so much as purporting to e about some o "ect, in the normative sense of answering to it for its correctness, in a distinctive sense it is the usiness of a truly critical theory of our cognitive faculties to explicate. #e assigned this enterprise of understanding the content of !nowledge claims to logic, in a sense he extended for that purpose2 what he called transcendental logic, as opposed to traditional formal or general logic. But from #egels point of view, Fant did not extend the notion of logic far enough. Dor Fants fundamental insight into the normative character of conceptually articulated cognitive content is expressed in his privileging of judgments, which are ta!en to e the fundamental units of cognition ecause they are the minimal units for which the !nower can count as responsible. 1his much #egel properly sees as pure advance over the logical tradition, which had started with su A"udgmental singular

<>romissory Tote2 =ust return to this point in $T1MEM+>.@

%&'(&%)*'J)

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and general terms, whose representational semantic properties were simply and uncritically assumed to e unpro lematic. But from the holistic line of thought he has een led to y thin!ing a out the conditions of the intelligi ility of the determinateness of conceptual content, he concludes that the inferential commitments implicit in the concepts applied in "udgment (and action) should e treated on a par with the do)astic commitments made explicit in "udgment. Both sorts of commitment are essential to the articulation of the contents of determinate empirical concepts (a category that for oth Fant and #egel extends eyond concepts that have noninferential*i.e. intuitive, immediate* circumstances of appropriate application, to em race also theoretical concepts).

By contrast, for Fant, proprieties of inference cannot e underwritten y the contents of the concepts involved; all good inferences are good in virtue of their form alone. #e allows ( y contrast to Kei ni/) synthetic judgments, ut (following Kei ni/) not synthetic (i.e. material) inferences. $n his &ogic, Fant defines analytic propositions as those 6whose certainty rests on identity of concepts (of the predicate with the notion of the su "ect).:%H +lsewhere the point is put in terms of containment of one concept in another*a notion Fant thin!s of as a sort of generali/ation of identity. 0ynthetic propositions, 6whose truth is not grounded on identity of concepts,: turn rather on what falls under a concept, its extension rather than its intension.%) $n Fants traditional usage, metal is contained in gold, while my wedding ring falls or is contained under it. 0ynthetic "udgments relate different concepts. Ene way of putting #egels thought here is that the determinate contentfulness of concepts that is expressed in their material inferential and incompati ility relations (relations of determinate negation and mediation) to other such concepts cannot
&ogic <ref.@<go to .am ridge version@, p. ''H, \BC. ^uoted phrase is also from \BC. 1he distinction etween the intension and the extension ($nhalt and Omfang) of a concept is at \) (p. 'J7) ff..
%H %)

%&'(&%)*'J%

Brandom

e compounded (as Fant attempts to do) y com ining independent "udgments that express on the one hand the identity, and on the other hand, the difference of the concepts involved in those roadly inferential relations. $ndeed, for Fant, all good inferences are underwritten solely y the identities of concepts (which determine what is contained in, ut not what is contained under them).

Fants treatment of multipremise inferences shows most clearly how he presents the inferences that for #egel articulate the determinate content of nonlogical concepts as compounds of independent principles of identity and difference, in the form of analytic "udgments expressing the content of identical concepts, on the one hand, and synthetic "udgments expressing the relation etween different concepts, on the other. All conclusions are either immediate or mediate. An immediate conclusion (conse5uentia immediata) is the deduction of one "udgment from another without an intermediate "udgment ("udicium intermedium). A conclusion is mediate if eside the concept contained in a "udgment one needs others to deduce a cognition from it.%% =ediate*that is, multipremise*inferences are syllogisms <IernunftschluSe@.'JJ 1he principle of all syllogisms, he says, is that what falls under one concept falls under whatever concepts are contained in that concept. 'J' 0o although the minor premise in a syllogism such as All gold is metal.
\(B p. '7J. Er the chains of syllogisms (defina le entirely in terms of the identity of the concepts they involve, that constitute what Fant calls 6rationcinatio polysyllogistica .: cf. \)C,H. 'J' 6-hat stands under the condition of a rule stands also under the rule itself. <Tote2 1he syllogism premises a general rule and a su sumption under its condition. Ene there y cogni/es the conclusion a priori not y itself ut as conained in the general and as necessary under a certain condition.@: \?H of the 4octrine of +lements (p. '7?).
%% 'JJ

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Brandom

=y wedding ring is gold. =y wedding ring is metal. is a synthetic claim, relating different concepts y saying that the one falls under rather than is contained in the other, the goodness (soundness) of the inference turns only on the implicit identity of concepts made explicit in the statement concerning what is contained in what in the ma"or premise.'J7

#egel is after a new way of thin!ing a out concepts as nodes in a holistic inferential networ!*and so as having their identity consist (at least in part) in their relations to different concepts. #e needs a category of inference that is unintelligi le in Fantian terms2 synthetic, ut underwritten solely y relations among concepts. =aterial proprieties of inference, underwritten y the contents of the concepts involved, are still conceptual, ut not analytic. 1he apparatus Fant supplies for discussing conceptual content and inference does not put one in a position to thin! a out concepts and inferences in this holistic way. $t is inade5uate from #egels point of view in three ways. Dirst, Fant never allows that the correctness of multipremise inferences some of whose premises are synthetic could reach ac! through the "udgments involved as premises to infect the contents of the concepts presented in the analytic "udgments that also function as premises in those inferences. 1he concepts deployed in such inferences are 6ready made:, as far as inferences are concerned. 1hey serve as independent raw materials for inference2 uilding
61he identity of concepts in analytic "udgments can e either explicit <ausdrYc!liche@ (explicita) or nonAexplicit <nichtAausdrYc!liche@ (implicita). $n the former case analytic propositions are tautological. Tote '. 1autological propositions are virtualiter empty or void of conse5uences, for they are of no avail or use. 0uch is, for example, the tautological proposition =an is man. Dor if $ !now nothing else of man than that he is man, $ !now nothing else of him at all. $mplicitly <implicite@ identical propositions, on the contrary, are not void of conse5uences or fruitless, for they clarify the predicate which lay undeveloped <unentwic!elt@ (implicite) in the concept of the su "ect through development <+ntwic!elung@ (explicatio).: <\BH; p. '')@ <$ thin! this doctrine of Fants (and this way of expressing it) is of the utmost importance, not only for #egel, ut also for Drege. But that is a story for another occasion entirely.@
'J7

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Brandom

loc!s that are unaffected y the conclusions they can e com ined in "udgments collectively to yield inferentially. 0econd, Fant conse5uently does not conceive of the sort of content concepts antecedently have as essentially involving the potential for development through such feed ac! from the material inferences*that is, for Fant, multipremise inferences involving synthetic "udgments*they turn out to e involved in. 1hus he does not see such inferences as themselves licensed y the contents of the concepts that articulate their premises and conclusions. 1hat is, he does not see material inferences*those whose goodness depends on the contents of the particular concepts involved, rather than "ust on the form of the inference (and so on the form rather than the content of the "udgments that are its premises)*as underwritten y the concepts involved.

Dinally, as a result Fant cannot understand the process of determining the contents of concepts, ma!ing them (more) determinate. Addressing this issue is one of the primary tas!s of #egels replacement of tal! of containment y tal! of e)pression2 ma!ing explicit what is (in the context of all of the other concepts and "udgments) implicit in a particular concept. Dor #egel the contingency expressed y synthetic "udgments is incorporated into the (therefore) determinate necessity of concepts (in Fantian terms, into the rules for ma!ing "udgments) y the "oint evolution of doxastic commitments ("udgments) and inferential commitments (concepts) that results from extracting hitherto implicit inferential conse5uences of the "udgments and concepts one finds oneself with, and ad"usting oth sorts of commitments in the light of the materially incompati le commitments that emerge as their conse5uences. $n the same way the deliverances of immediacy (all of which will e synthetic "udgments in Fants sense) are incorporated into the mediated structure of concepts. 1al! a out the goodness of inferences and tal! a out the contents of concepts

%&'(&%)*''7

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are two sides of one coin. But what follows from what depends on what else is true. 0o the contents of concepts must not e thought of as settled independently and in advance of consideration of actual "udgments and inferences they figure in.

#egel thin!s that ade5uate conceptions of form and content, of identity and difference, cannot e adum rated in advance of consideration of their role in explicating features of this evolutionary developmental process. .oncepts are not to e thought of (as for Fant) "ust in terms of their role in "udgment. Dirst, we must thin! of their inferential potential. 0econd, we must thin! of that potential as actuali/ed y com ining those inferential commitments with doxastic commitments ("udgments, including synthetic ones) in multipremise inferences that may yield discordant (materially incompati le) conclusions. 1hen we must thin! of the roadly inferential commitments implicit in concepts as revisa le in the light of those conclusions they actually lead us to, in concert with the doxastic commitments we actually underta!e. Dinally, we must identify concepts with the second order potential to develop (in the context of other concepts and "udgments) their contents y this process. At this point we will e thin!ing of concepts as having #egelian negativity as their form2 as having their determinate identity consisting in the way they develop y giving rise to differences. 1he developing whole of holistically related inferential and doxastic commitments, concepts and "udgments, #egel calls 6the .oncept:. $n calling it 6infinite: at the end of his discussion of *orce and +nderstanding, he is mar!ing the conceptual shift he is urging from the atomistic Fantian picture of antecedently determinate concepts, each one what it is independently of its relation to any different concepts, only externally related to those others in synthetic "udgments whose

%&'(&%)*''B

Brandom

truth is irrelevant to the content of any concepts. $t is the shift from conceiving concepts according to the categories of Ierstand to using those of Iernunft.

I*

Ontil that shift is made, the holistic character of the theoretical concepts that provide inferential cognitive access to theoretical o "ects is more or less unintelligi le. Tonetheless, since the .oncept is always already implicit in any use of concepts whatsoever, partial progress is possi le along the expressive road that leads to an explicit grasp of it. .onsideration of the 6play of forces: has shown the insta ility of an approach that treats the concept of each force (theoretical o "ect) as independent of that of any other, when com ined first with an ac!nowledgment that the concept of a force is essentially, and not "ust accidentally, related to the concept of its expression (on the asis of which alone we have inferential access to the force itself), and second with the reali/ation that what is expressed is always a holistic system of interacting forces. 1he practical effect of this holism is that the only way to understand the forces that had een treated as having identities independent of their relations to each other is to focus instead precisely on those relations*for the nodes in the networ! are what they are only in virtue of their relations to each other. 1hose relations are the laws that determine how forces interact to produce their expressions2 the laws that determine how theoretical o "ects interact to produce o serva le manifestations.

#egel summari/es this development2

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$n this way there vanishes completely all distinction of separate, mutually contrasted *orces, which were supposed to e present in this movementP 1hus there is neither Dorce, nor the act of soliciting or eing solicited, nor the determinateness of eing a sta le medium and unity reflected into itself, there is neither something existing singly y itself, nor are there diverse antitheses; on the contrary, what there is in this a solute flux is only difference as a universal difference, or as a difference into which the many antitheses have een resolved. 1his difference as a universal difference, is conse5uently the simple element in the play of *orces itself and what is true in it. $t is the law of *orce.'JB By law #egel means what Fant meant2 a rule that has o "ective validity. A rule unifies a diverse set of instances, y applying to all of them. 0o we are now to loo! at the rules that relate theoretical o "ects to each other and to their o serva le expressions. And for present purposes, to say that the rule is o "ectively valid is "ust to say that the o "ects really conform to the law ( ehave as it says they must), as opposed to expressing "ust our su "ective view of them. As the element of unity within the diversity that is the expression of the play of forces, law is 6the sta le image of unsta le appearance.:'J( Kaws are what is 6true in: the play of forces ecause they express the regularities that support the inferences from the o serva le to the theoretical, in virtue of which we can !now anything at all a out the latter.

1he essence of the play of forces now appears in the form of the o "ective rules that govern it. 1hree features of these laws merit mention. Dirst, as rules, they are general2
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they apply to many actual and possi le instances. 0econd, they are conditional or conse5uential2 they say that if a specified condition is satisfied, then a conse5uence of a definite sort will occur. 1his is to say that the laws codify inferences. 1hird, the laws specify the ways in which the occurrence of one theoretical state of affairs can (in context) necessitate the occurrence of another2 they have a modal force. 1his is to say that they do not "ust specify what is in fact the case, ut rather what would happen, or must happen if a state of affairs of certain !ind were to occur. 1his last is a feature of laws that reflects the character of the counterfactual inferences they must support. Dor the inferential commitments that articulate the contents of oth o serva le and theoretical concepts are not restricted to those whose premises are "udgments that express my doxastic commitments. 1hey underwrite my concluding that if the meter needle had moved to the right, there would have een a higher voltage in the test wire, and vice versa.

1he lawli!eness, or lawfulness, of the conse5uential relations among !inds of theoretical states of affairs, which #egel is discussing in the middle of *orce and +nderstanding, is the correlate on the side of truth of the way one "udgment entails another inferentially, on the side of certainty. #egel here puts on the ta le, without much in the way of argument, Fants fundamental claim that necessity is an essential structure of empirical consciousness. 1his is the idea that there is an internal connection etween the way the modal rulishness of concepts involves commitments that go eyond the thisAhereAnow and what it is for them to have content in the sense of intentional purport2 to e about o "ects, in the sense of answering to them for the correctness of their applications to particulars in "udgment. Torms of thought and laws of nature are two expressions of the fact that one commitment may e inferentially implicit in another. -e are not yet in a position to lay

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out the relations etween these two aspects of consciousness2 truth and certainty, the o "ective and the su "ective. 1hat topic is first addressed in the next chapter. 'J?

-e can thin! a out the various conceptual points that have een made in the discussion of Consciousness in terms of the !inds of logical voca ulary that have een discovered to e necessary to ma!e explicit what is implicit in ordinary empirical !nowledge claims. Besides the demonstratives, with which we egan as the asic way of trying to say what is meant in immediate experience, we discovered that we need also anaphoric pronouns, to ma!e it possi le to hold onto and recollect what is indicated y the demonstratives2 to ma!e what is presented availa le for inference. 0ingular terms, predicates, and negation then turned out to e needed to articulate the propositional content of simple o servations. $t now emerges that 5uantifiers (for generality), conditionals (for the conse5uential element), and modal operators (for necessity) would e needed as well, to ma!e explicit the inferential connections that relate o servational and theoretical concepts *that is, to state laws.

1he focus is now on the features of things that underwrite inferences2 on the connections among the facts (and possi le states of affairs) presented in "udgments, rather than on those facts themselves. Although this reali/ation represents real metatheoretical progress, from #egels point of view the notion of law is fatally infected y its expressi ility in the form of "udgments. A law, as stata le, is a !ind of superfact. As a result, the concept of law still incorporates a conception of the determinateness of conceptual contents that is structured y categories of independence. To "udgment, including one that states a law,

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can e thought of as simply true or false, so long as the concepts it employs are defective. But they will e inade5uate so long as they contain the potential, when properly applied in concert with others to which they are inferentially related, to lead in empirical circumstances to incompati le "udgments. But that holistic potential is not a merely regretta le, ecause dispensa le, feature of the employment of empirical concepts. Dor #egel, as we are aiming to put ourselves in a position to see, that residual negativity of such concepts not only provides the normative motor for conceptual and doxastic change, and there y the mechanism where y immediacy and contingency are incorporated into concepts*mediated and given (made to have) the form of necessity* ut is what determines the content of such concepts, and so constitutes their determinateness.

0o stata le rules, even lawli!e claims that codify proprieties of inference, are the wrong sort of unit to loo! to for a solution to the unityAinAdifference pro lem raised y ac!nowledgment of the essential contri ution made y inferential relations to other concepts in the constitution of the content of one concept. Dor such rules or laws still presuppose, rather than articulate the nature and conditions of the intelligi ility of, the determinately contentful concepts in terms of which they are formulated. As #egel sees it, Fant has not told us how thin!ing of a concept as a rule helps us understand how it unifies the diversity of particulars that falls under that universal. And it is no help with that general pro lem to go on, as Fant does, to point out that rules can e expressed as hypothetical "udgments (so explicitly incorporating inferential commitments), relating a conse5uence to the satisfaction of some antecedent conditions. (Mecall the remar!s a out he principle underlying syllogistic reasoning a ove.) Dor such explicit rules (e.g. 6All gold

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is metal,:) still presuppose the determinate contentfulness*the unity in difference*of the concepts in terms of which they are couched.

1his is the line of thought underlying #egels rehearsal of the conceptual trou les with the concept of law. 1he initial conception is that of the Lcalm realm of lawsL, a unified, eternal, changeless order, contrasting in its repose with the motion of the diverse, everA changing usyAness that is its actual manifestation (including what is o serva le). 0tructurally, this position ought to e compared to the first conception of force, as confronting some sort of other that is responsi le for its expression. But this conception can e maintained no more than its antecedent, in spite of the progress made y moving up a level to consider connections among theoretical things, rather than "ust the things. Meflection on the role of the realm of laws reveals that the concept of law is doing two different things, that two different conceptions of law are really in play. (.ompare the Ndou lingN of forces into unifying force whose expression is solicited and diversifying force that solicits that expression.) En the one hand law is the principle of unity, of the unification of diverse appearances y exhi iting them as necessary, that is as instances of a rule that necessitates them. 1his is law as the principle of lawli!eness, law as the abstract form of law.'JC $t is the principle that ultimately demands the unity of science, what appears in FantNs philosophy of science as the ideal that science form a system, that all laws eventually e capa le of eing exhi ited as conse5uences of one law. Etherwise the realm of law, which unifies diverse appearances, itself contains an irreduci le contingency and diversity of laws. En the other hand, laws must have determinate content, if they are to unify the restless particularity of phenomena y exhi iting their connection as instances

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of rules. +xplanation cannot proceed according to empty or contentless laws, ut re5uires determinateness and content. Dor us, ut not for the consciousness undergoing this experience, this splitting of the realm of laws into a unifying principle or form and a set of diverse, determinately contentful particular laws manifests the re5uirement that anything with determinate content ac5uire that content in virtue of its role in a Totion, a system of relative identities constituted y their relative differences. 1his principle arose for us already in the exposition of perceiving consciousness. Kaw as unity must have diversity within itself if it is to have content. $t cannot e purely diverse if it is to e a le to perform its unifying function. 0o law is seen to Ndou leN itself, "ust as force did, when the idea of its confrontation with an NotherN is reflected upon, and its implicit presuppositions made explicit.

1he final movement of understanding consciousness operating according to the conception of supersensuous, necessitating law unfolds the conse5uences of the demand for determinate content in the laws appealed to y e)planation. +xplanation, which Lcondenses the law into *orce as the essence of the law,L finding in things a Lground constituted exactly the same as the lawL.'JH -ith the concept of explanation necessity ecomes not an a stract form or principle divorced from the determinate contents of the laws that govern actual appearance, ut rather a feature inherent in those laws themselves. 1he 5uestion is how understanding consciousness is to conceive the relation etween the diversity in virtue of which a law can have a determinate content and the unity that is its necessity, without which it would not e a law in the sense that explanation re5uires. $n ma!ing explicit this relation, understanding consciousness focuses on the necessity,

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asserted y a determinate law, of the relation etween the different terms that express the content of the law. A law of motion relates the distinct concepts of space and time, a fundamental law of chemistry relates temperature, pressure, and volume. And the lawli!eness of the law, not now thought of as a separa le component ut as a feature of determinate laws, consists in the necessity of the connection asserted etween these terms. 1he 5uestion is how to understand the necessary connection of genuinely distinct terms.

.onsider TewtonNs fundamental law D9ma. $s this a definition, say of force, $f it is, then we can understand how it has the special status mar!ed y calling it NnecessaryN. But in that case the distinctness of force from mass and acceleration is merely apparent. +xplanation y appeal to such an analytic NlawN then seems to e a cheat, a tric!. Dor it "ust consists in exhi iting or asserting the necessary interrelation of things that only appear to e distinct. En the other hand, if this claim is not analytic, that is, if force is not eing defined as the product of mass and acceleration, then the explanatory invocation of this law would not e misleading, and we would really learn something from it. But how in that case are we to understand the alleged necessity of the law, -hat does it mean to say that things that are really distinct are also necessarily related to one another, #ere, of course, #egel is as!ing #umeNs 5uestion. #ow is it possi le to ma!e sense of a natural necessity that does not collapse into uninformative analyticity or empirical contingency, $f consciousness does not respond as #ume does, ut treats the necessity as real, then two strategies ecome availa le, each of which turns out to e unsatisfactory as a resolution of the pro lem of the relation of the =any and the Ene. En the first horn of the dilemma, explanation appears as consciousness recogni/ing as necessary connections etween elements that are distinct only as consciousness has divided them up in appearance. #ere

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Brandom

once again the supersensi le in itself is conceived as a unity, with diversity eing merely an appearance for consciousness. En the second horn of the dilemma, it seems that the necessity must e an importation of consciousness, a feature of its formulation of laws or what things are for it, not something that could e considered as grounded in what things are in themselves. Tecessity resides in the Onderstanding, since the unification into a rule or law of what are in themselves distinct things is its wor!. 1his latter is of course FantNs strategy.

1hese two approaches are unsatisfactory, however. $n the end, they place too much of the responsi ility for the nature and existence of natural laws on the su "ect who uses them to explain the happenings of appearance. As the conception of force errs on the side of o "ectifying the movement of unity into diversity and its return to itself, so the conception of law errs on the side of su "ectifying that movement. $t is a primary explanatory criterion of ade5uacy that #egel places on his conception of the Totion that it e a le to avoid these a stract extremes and explain what they could not2 necessary connections etween the distinct determinate contents actually present in appearance ( oth sensuously immediate appearance and purely mediated appearance, and oth the appearing and what appears). 1he incompati ilities etween determinate contents within the Totion include a modal component. 1wo claimAcontents that are incompati le cannot e true together, they donNt "ust happen not to e. $t is these incompati ilities (determinate negations), and the inferential relations they determine (mediation) in virtue of which contents are the contents that they are. But these incompati ilities are not simply stipulated, or analytically true. 1hey are features of the contents comprised y a system, the Totion, that has produced them as the products of a course of concrete experience. 1hat experience is the

%&'(&%)*'77

Brandom

movement of the system in response to the immediate (noninferential in the sense of eing commitments that are not the results of a process of inferring, not in the sense of eing articulated without reference to their inferential roles) deliverances of perception, what is implicit in the world ecoming explicit for consciousness through o servation. And that experience is the movement of the system in response to the purely mediate deliverances of inference to the est explanation in response to the explicit confrontation of incompati ilities among its commitments, what is implicit in the system of concrete contents ecoming explicit for consciousness through reflection. 1hese meanings have not evolved and cannot e grasped independently of what is ta!en to e true. 1he necessity of their holistic interconnections cannot e reduced either to a reflection of an antecedent and independent o "ective reality, nor to a reflection of an antecedent and independent su "ective reality. 4eterminate diversity of content and universal unity of necessity as its form are aspects of the Totion that cannot e understood independently of one another.

* Docusing on explanation rings explicitly into view a topic that has een in the ac!ground throughout the discussion of theoretical entities2 the distinction etween appearance and reality. 5ur object is thus from now on the syllogism <0chluS@ which has for its extremes the inner eing of 1hings, and the Onderstanding, and for its middle term appearance; ut the movement <Bewegung@ of this syllogism yields the further determination of what the Onderstanding descries in this inner world though the

%&'(&%)*'7B

Brandom

middle term, and the experience from which the Onderstanding learns a out the closeAlin!ed unity of these terms.'J) 1he end of *orce and +nderstanding discusses the relationships among inference, explanation, and the distinction etween appearance and reality. 1he issues surrounding them are discussed in the context of three conceptions of a reality eyond or ehind appearance, which is inferentially revealed y appearance2 the first supersensi le world, the first inverted world, and the second inverted world. Dour crucial, interlin!ed distinctions are put in play in this discussion. 1o understand the position #egel is unfolding, we must distinguish them, so as to e in a position to appreciate their relations to one another. Dirst is the distinction etween two distinctions2 on the one hand, the distinction etween observable and theoretical entities, and on the other the distinction etween appearance and reality. 0econd is the distinction etween two ways of conceiving appearances2 as a !ind of thing distinct from realities, and as aspects of those realities, ways in which the real shows up or is expressed. 1hird is the distinction etween roadly inferential relations and inference as a process (movement). Dinally, there is the distinction etween two ways of understanding the inferential relations (or mediations) that conceptually articulate our !nowledge2 as a special !ind of reality ehind appearances, and as something that is implicit in and expressed y them.

1he first conception of a supersensi le world is what one gets y running together the distinction etween o serva le and theoretical things or states of affairs with the distinction etween appearance and reality. #egel wants to disa use us of the natural temptation to identity these two distinctions. 1o appreciate the temptation and the lesson,

'J)

<='(?@.

%&'(&%)*'7(

Brandom

we must e clear a out the difference etween the two distinctions. $t is one thing to reali/e that the capacity to ma!e inferences from what is immediate*which turns out to e implicit in the capacity to e immediately aware of anything*can give us cognitive access to things of which we cannot e immediately aware. $t is 5uite another to ta!e it that the things to which our only cognitive access is inferential (mediated), conceptual rather than perceptual, are more real than the things to which we (also) have perceptual (immediate) access. =a!ing this latter move is ta!ing it that what theory reveals is what is real, while what o servation reveals is merely the appearance of that reality2 the way it shows up to creatures with our sort of perceptual capacities. But what is this latter distinction, -hat is it to ta!e some things of which we can e aware ( y whatever means) as real, and others as merely their appearances to us,

#egel starts to use the language of appearance efore he answers this 5uestion2 -ithin this inner truthP<which@ has ecome the o "ect of the +nderstanding, there now opens up a ove the sensuous world, which is the world of appearance, a supersensible world, which henceforth is the true worldP'J% 1heoretical o "ects, as purely conceptual, as 6existing only as o "ects for the Onderstanding,: present 6the inner being of things, ua inner, which is the same as the concept of Dorce ua .oncept.: ''J 1his true essence of 1hings has now the character of not eing immediately for consciousness; on the contrary, consciousness has a mediated relation to the inner eing and, as the Onderstanding, looks through this mediating
'J% ''J

<='((@. Both phrases from <='(7@.

%&'(&%)*'7?

Brandom

play of *orces into the true background of Things. 1he middle term which unites the two extremes, the Onderstanding and the inner world, is the developed being of Dorce, which, for the Onderstanding itself is henceforth only a vanishing. 1his eing is therefore called appearance.''' 1he actual, o serva le manifestations of theoretical o "ects*the products of the play of forces*serve for the Onderstanding only as premises, from which to ma!e inferences a out the o "ects whose interactions they express. 1hese are o "ects individuated solely y the inferenceAsupporting laws they are su "ect to. 1he true essence of this first conception of the supersensi le world is ta!en consist in those laws2 the 6calm realm of laws:. $mmediacy vanishes for the Onderstanding in playing only this mediating role. But in what sense, is the supersensi le world*the world accessi le to thought through inference*ta!en to e the true world, -hat sort of invidious distinction is eing made etween the (mediated) immediate and the purely mediatedAandAmediating, when one is ta!en as mere appearance, and the other as reality,

$t is ecause of its priority in the order of e)planation. Appearance is to e understood, in the sense of explained y, an (in that explanatory sense) underlying reality. 1he notion of explanation explains what it is to take the theoretical to e real, yielding the appearances that we can o serve. Ene ta!es theoretical o "ects to e real and what is o serva le to e their appearance y see!ing to explain the latter in terms of the former, and not vice versa. 1he real is that in terms of which one offers accounts, and what one accounts for is how things appear.''7 1his sort of explanation reverses the direction of the inferences y means
<='(B@. Ene wants to o "ect to such a usage that oth ends of even an asymmetric explanatory relationship can e realities2 the presence of water vapor in the car uretor may explain the failure of my car to start. Ene is no less real than the other, even though one may e more o serva le. -e will see elow (in the discussion of the ontological status of the supersensi le world) that #egel is very much aware of this sort
''' ''7

%&'(&%)*'7C

Brandom

of which theoretical o "ects are revealed (appear) to us. 1o find out a out theoretical o "ects, we draw conclusions from o servational premises. 1o e)plain what we o serve we draw conclusions from theoretical premises. 1hus we !now there is current in the test wire ecause of the movement of the meter needle, and ta!e it that the meter needle moves because there is current in the test wire. $n the context of the experimental apparatus, the current shows itself in (appears as) the movement of the meter needle. 1he propriety of oth inferences is expressed in a law2 the statement of a necessary connection among distinct determinate concepts (current in the test wire and movement of the meter needle). But what the law expresses is a force, an actually efficacious ground of explanation, the current as making the meter needle move. $n 6the process called e)planation:2 A law is enunciated; from this, its implicitly universal element or ground is distinguished as *orce; ut it is said that this difference is no difference, rather that the ground is constituted exactly the same as the law. 1he single occurrence of lightning, e.g. is apprehended as a universal, and this universal is enunciated as the law of electricity; the explanation then condenses </usammenfat@ the law into *orce as the essence of the lawP *orce is constituted e)actly the same as lawPthe difference ua difference of contentPis withdrawn.''B 1he metaconception of understanding that #egel is considering in this part of his story does not have a sufficiently good grip on the structure of the .oncept to follow out this insight coherently. But in explanation for the first time the identity of content of thought

of case, and is concerned to ma!e room for it in his scheme, even though the way he uses real differently. ''B <='?(@.

%&'(&%)*'7H

Brandom

in its su "ective aspect (thin!ing) and o "ective aspect (what is thought a out) appears, al eit dar!ly. -hen things go well, there is an identity of content etween a statement, claim or "udgment and a fact, etween a propriety of inference and a law. $t is a criterion of ade5uacy for #egels metaconception of the infinite .oncept that it ma!e sense oth of this identity of content and of the difference of form etween the su "ective certainty that can attach to that content and the o "ective truth that can attach to it2 the difference etween what something is for consciousness, and what it is in itself. +xplicating this fundamental sort of identityAinAdifference, which is constitutive of consciousness as such, is the topic of our next chapter.

$t is a mista!e, however, to identify the appearance&reality distinction with the o serva le&theoretical distinction. 1he distinction etween o serva le and theoretical o "ects is not a distinction etween two different kinds of o "ects at all. $t is, as 0ellars will later put it, not an ontological distinction at all, ut only a methodological one.''( $t has to do with how we come to !now a out the o "ects, not with what !ind of thing they are. 1o say that something is a theoretical o "ect or state of affairs is to say that the only way we have of !nowing a out it is y means of inference. 1heoretical concepts are those that have only inferential circumstances of appropriate application, whereas o servational ones also have noninferential (immediate) circumstances of application. But this is a timeA relative designation. 1he line etween things to which we have only inferential cognitive access and the things to which we also have noninferential cognitive access can shift with time. 1hus when first postulated to explain pertur ations in the or it of Teptune, >luto was a purely theoretical o "ect; the only claims we could ma!e a out it were the
cf. L+mpiricism and the >hilosophy of =indL \\B%A((. 0ee also the commentary at pp. 'CBA'CC of the 0tudy 3uide <#arvard Oniversity >ress, '%%H@.
''(

%&'(&%)*'7)

Brandom

conclusions of inferences. But the development of more powerful telescopes eventually made it accessi le also to o servation, and so a su "ect of noninferential reports. >luto did not undergo an ontological change; all that changed was its cognitive relation to us.

1here seems to have een a permanent philosophical temptation to endorse the platonic principle, that a difference in our means of knowledge is the criterion of differences in the sorts of being that is !nown there y. 4escartes is a cardinal modern example. But this move is at least optional. And examples of theoretically postulated items*genes are another example*that ecome o serva le suggests that applied to the methodological distinction etween theoretical and o servational, it is a mista!e. 0ellars is concerned to argue against instrumentalists, who would treat theoretical o "ects as ontologically second class citi/ens ecause they are only inferentially accessi le, reserving the designation real for what is o serva le. #egel is here concerned to re"ect the converse mista!e, made y someone who, having appreciated the role of mediation in even immediate awareness, and so the genuineness the cognitive access afforded y thought. 0uch a one has accepted the reality of what is only inferentially accessi le (purely mediated and mediating), ut is then tempted to re"ect the reality of what provides only premises for pure thought. Dor the world of appearance is, on the contrary, not the world of senseA !nowledge and perception as a world that positively is, ut this world posited as superseded, or as in truth an inner world.''? A humdrum way into this mista!e is through +ddingtonNs story of two ta les. 1he ta le in front of me appears to e still, solid, and colored. >hysics, he says, tells us that it is really a nearly empty cloud of tiny, colorless particles vi rating at incredi ly high speeds.

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%&'(&%)*'7%

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Tothing is really still, solid, or colored. Get we irresisti ly elieve in the ta le of appearance, the one we are assured does not really exist. Tow we, who are following the phenomenological exposition, are not supposed to e ta!en in y this. But such antitheses of inner and outer, of appearance and the supersensi le, as of two different !inds of actuality, we no longer find here. 1he repelled differences are not shared afresh etween two su stances such as would support them and lend them a separate su sistence.''C 1hat is, the difference etween how things are in themselves and how they appear is not also not an ontological difference*at least not one that is happily thought of in terms of two sorts of thing (two worlds). $n the Phenomenology, an alternative to this way of thin!ing a out the relation etween appearance and reality, phenomena and noumena, how things are for consciousness and how they are in themselves, has already een s!etched in the $ntroduction. -e will discuss this view in the next chapter <<$T1MEM+>@@. $t turns on the notion of e)plaining error. En this account, though appearances can ta!e the form of o serva le states of affairs, they can e5ually ta!e the form of purely theoretical ones. $ts purely theoretical status in no way dis5ualifies a concept (say, phlogiston, or natural slave) from turning out to e a feature only of how things appear. >utting ourselves in a position to understand this roader conception of appearance (and so, the fourth distinction mentioned a ove, etween two ways of thin!ing a out the relation etween appearance and reality) re5uires loo!ing more closely at the relation etween the notion of e)planation, which is the asis for the distinction etween appearance and reality, and that of inference, which is the asis for the distinction etween o serva le and theoretical entities.
<='?%@. $n #egels telling of the story, this lesson is entwined with the lesson concerning the distinction etween inferential relations and inferential processes, in which the first inverted world (which is the second supersensi le world) is a way station.
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Brandom

*I

-e can egin with the distinction etween what might e called the e)ternal and the internal movements of thought, as these ear on the attempt to ma!e sense of the sort of identityAinAdifference characteristic of determinate thin!a les (the contents of thoughts). ''H -hat $m calling the external movement of thought appeared already in the discussion of Perception2 the attempt to grasp any particular selfAidentical content (at that point, paradigmatically a determinate property) re5uires considering a num er of different contents (e.g. properties), which stand to the original in relations of material incompati ility or inference. $n trying to thin! any one content, we are driven to consider others. 1hus a movement of thought is re5uired of us*a movement that ta!es us from the unity of one content to its relations to a diversity of others. And thin!ing of this diversity of contents, in their multifarious relations one to another, similarly drives us to thin! of the systematic unity that they constitute. (As we saw in the previous chapter <<0>1#$@@, the model we need for this sort of holistic system is one in which the unity of the particular elements and the unity of the universal systematically comprising them are two sides of one coin is that of the simultaneous synthesis of selfAconscious selves and their communities y mutual recognition.) 1his is deserves to e called an external movement of thought ecause it occurs outside the system of concepts or contents, in a mind that is trying to understand it.

''H

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%&'(&%)*'B'

Brandom

But there is also another sort of movement of thought. $t is what ta!es place when a system of conceptsAandA"udgments is transformed y the discovery within it of commitments that are discordant in the sense of eing incompati le. 1his is the 6process or movement <Bewegung@ called explanation: in the passage 5uoted a ove.'') $t is the process of accounting for or explaining the incompati ility, which will in general involve altering oth the doxastic commitments that show up in ones "udgments, and the inferential and incompati ility commitments that articulate ones concepts. 1hus, to use a simple example (which appears already in the previous chapter <<0>1#$@@), suppose we have a theoretical concept of an acid which has as inferentially sufficient circumstances of application that a li5uid taste sour, and as inferentially necessary conse5uences of application that the li5uid will turn Kitmus paper red. -e might then run across a li5uid that oth tastes sour and turns Kitmus paper lue. 1he commitments we find ourselves with immediately then are materially incompati le with those we ac5uire inferentially, as the product of a process of mediation. Dor we can infer that the li5uid will turn Kitmus paper red, and y our own lights, its eing red is materially incompati le with its eing lue. -e are then o liged, y our own commitments, to revise our concepts, so as to avoid commitment to such incompati ilities. 0upposing the sample in 5uestion is a cloudy li5uid, for instance, we might, for instance, we might revise the concept acid so that only clear li5uids that taste sour 5ualify, or alternatively so that only acids that are clear turn Kitmus paper red. $nferring*for instance, concluding that a li5uid will turn Kitmus paper red from the o servation that it tastes sour*is an activity that can o lige us to alter our commitments, oth doxastic and conceptual (inferential). 1his sort of doing should e

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%&'(&%)*'B7

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contrasted with simply tracing the inferential and incompati ility relations from the outside, in a way that cannot affect actual commitments.

1he distinction eing appealed to here is usefully thought of in terms due to #arman.''% #e points out that deductive or logical relations are one thing, the activity of inferring is another, and argues that logic as classically conceived runs these two together according to an implausi ly simplistic model of their relation. $nferring is an activity that ought to govern the modification of oneNs eliefs. $t is ased on inferential relations etween the contents of those eliefs, ut is not reduci le to, nor can it e read off from or treated as determined y those relations. Dor suppose that you elieve that p, and suppose further that p entails . -hat ought your eliefs to e, En the classical, inade5uate, picture one presuma ly ought also to elieve that . But this is not in general the case. >erhaps one ought to stop elieving p upon ecoming aware of the entailment. Dor one may have relatively strong evidence for something incompati le with , and only relatively wea! evidence for p. 1he inferential relations settle only that one ought not to elieve oth p and something incompati le with . 1hus they constrain what one ought to elieve in various circumstances. But they do not settle what one ought to conclude, that is, how one ought to modify oneNs eliefs. A wider sort of inferring is re5uired to pic! which of the many ways of satisfying the demands of compati ility is most appropriate. $t is this that #arman calls Linference to the est explanation.L

.onsciousness must eventually come to identify itself with this movement of something li!e inference to the est explanation in developing the Totion, as the implicit

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Brandom

incompati ilities that generate and constitute its component contents are gradually made e)plicit. As those incompati ilities are confronted, some eliefs must e discarded and others ac5uired. $n a holistic system, as ^uine urges in L1wo 4ogmasL, what inferential moves are appropriate depends on what contents one has endorsed, and so made availa le as auxiliary hypotheses (the 4uhem point). A parallel point o viously applies to incompati ilities. And since the identity and individuation of contents depends on these NmediationsN, any doxastic change, that is change of elief as a result of an activity of inference to the est explanation (triggered y the explicit expression of hitherto implicit incompati ilities), will involve also conceptual change. 1his is the movement of e)perience, as descri ed in the $ntroduction to the Phenomenology. $t is also what is eginning to e rought into view under the heading of explanation, in *orce and +nderstanding.

$n tal!ing a out the movement of an inference, #egel is explicitly ac!nowledging the distinction etween roadly inferential relations such as incompati ility, which exhi it the normative character pic!ed out y Fant and #egel under the ru ric of necessity, on the one hand, and the activity of altering our doxastic and so inferential commitments y actively inferring, which was mentioned a ove in connection with #arman, on the other. L1he connection of the Onderstanding with the inner world through the mediation is, however, its own movement through which the inner world will fill itself out for Onderstanding.L'7J 1he activity of drawing conse5uences from the commitments we find ourselves with*some of them as products of immediate, noninferential perceptual processes*confronting any materially incompati le commitments that result with each

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other, and then ad"usting the whole constellation of our commitments, doxastic and inferential, so as to resolve those incompati ilities, is conducted within a framewor! of roadly inferential relations, which it oth presupposes and transforms.

Ene might as! a out the relative conceptual or explanatory priority of the inferential relations and the inferential processes that are related in this intimate way in what #egel calls experience. A fundamental empiricist idea is that the immediate deliverances of sense are all one needs to loo! at, ultimately, in order to ma!e intelligi le the process and the imperatives that drive it. #egel has already considered this line, and while he ac!nowledges the crucial role played y immediacy in experience, he emphasi/es the role of processes of thought*that is, of inference and explanation*and so re"ects this sort of empiricism. A fundamental rationalist idea is that inferential relations are prior in the order of explanation to inferential processes. -hat ma!es an alteration of "udgments and concepts rational is "ust that it is governed y rational relations. A fundamental pragmatist idea is the converse one, that inferential relations (and so conceptual contents) should e understood as a stractions from roadly inferential processes2 from what !nowers and agents actually do, how they in fact ac5uire and alter their commitments. Drom #egels point of view, each of these approaches as sei/ed on a genuine aspect of experience, ut has illegitimately accorded it a privileged explanatory role that assumes its intelligi ility independently of its relations to the others. But in ta!ing as fundamental the process of experience*which involves all three elements2 immediacy, inferential relations, and inferential processes*he develops a !ind of higher pragmatism. $t is this sort of pragmatism that we see invo!ed against an illAconceived rationalism, in the discussion of

%&'(&%)*'B?

Brandom

the first 6inverted world: (which is the second conception of the supersensi le world considered).

*II

1he first conception of a supersensi le world as inverted is the result of misconstruing a genuine insight. 1he insight is Onderstandings discovery that the reality that is the truth of appearance is the .oncept, and that Lit is a law of appearance itself.L'7' 1hat law is a law regulating differences, changes in which Lthe content of the moments of change remains the same.L L1he differences are only such as are in reality no differences and which cancel themselves.L -e have seen how in the .oncept the contents consist in their differences, which differences oth there y cancel themselves in the sense of defining selfA same unities, and do not cancel themselves entirely, in that the movement of experience results. 1he idea of a calm realm of laws expressed in a changing realm of appearance is thus replaced y a conception of law as not only a unifying rule, ut as e5ually the differentiating relations in virtue of which that unifying rule has a determinate content. And thus we have a second law whose content is the opposite of what was previously called law, vi/.. difference which remains constantly selfsame; for this new law expresses rather that like ecomes unlike and unlike ecomes the like. 1hat is, the new form of law expresses the fact that the determinate conceptual contents that articulate any law must necessarily presuppose their relations to the incompati le contents they contrast with. 1al! of law here mar!s the normative character (the

'7'

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%&'(&%)*'BC

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necessity) of the material inferential and incompati ility relations that articulate determinate conceptual contents.

1he mista!e is to reify these essential, roadly inferential relations to construe them as constituting a separate world2 to thin! of the relation etween these laws and the appearance of which they are the law as a relation etween two different !inds of thing. 1he result of ma!ing that mista!e is a very odd conception of reality2 According...to the law of this inverted <ver!ehrte@ world, what is like in the first world is unlike to itself and what is unlike in the first world is e5ually unli!e to itself, or it ecomes li!e itself.'77 Koo!ed at superficially, this inverted world is the opposite of the first in the sense that it has the latter outside of it and repels that world from itself as an inverted actual world2 that the one is appearance, ut the other the inAitself; that the one is the world as it is for an other, whereas the other is the world as it is for itself.'7B 1he mista!e is to ma!e the distinction etween the world as it appears and the world as it is in itself, on this conception, into an ontological distinction. 1he misunderstanding that results if one Lshares the differencesL etween Lappearance and the supersensi leL among Lseparate su stancesL'7( and treats the supersensi le as another actual world somehow related to that of appearance results in a collapse in important respects ac! into the first way of understanding the supersensi le world. En this line, 1he one side, or su stance would e the world of perception again...and confronting it would e an inner world, just such a sense"world as the first, ut in the imagination <Iorstellung@; it could not e exhi ited <aufge/eigt, literally
'77 '7B '7(

<='?)@. <='?%@. 1his is the language of the passage from <='?%@ 5uoted in the previous section.

%&'(&%)*'BH

Brandom

Npointed outN; the word used for demonstratives in 0ense .ertainty@ as a sense world, could not e seen, heard, or tasted, and yet it would e thought of as such a senseAworld.'7? 1he actual sweetness in the thing is the determinate property that it is in part ecause of its incompati ility with sourness in the same thing. $ts identity consists in such determinate differences. 1he misunderstanding associated with the first version of the inverted world is what arises if one as!s2 L-here are these incompati le, excluded properties,L. 1hey are not here, in the actual world appearing to us. 1hey canNt e pointed out. But they are, many of them, ordinary o serva le properties "ust li!e the ones they contrast with (sweet, sour). 1hat is why the imagined other sort of actual world they are pro"ected into can e descri ed as Ljust such a sense"world as the first,L and Lthought of as a senseAworldL. $n this way an odd empiricist twist is given to the rationalism that loo!s first to roadly inferential relations (which are rehearsed in what $ called a ove external movements of thought), without regard to their role in inferential processes (internal movements of thought).'7C

1hat such an inverted world ehind the one that appears to us cannot e pointed out is not "ust ecause it is not here. $f that world contains all the property instantiations incompati le with each actual perceived instantiation*everything that determinately negates every property that appears to us*it will contain instantiations incompati le with each other. (Mecall that this is why properties have a stract negations, and o "ects donNt). 0ince properties do not "ust have one opposite <3egenteil@*is green the opposite of red,
<='?%@. $ ta!e it that there are historical reasons involving 0chelling for considering this particular constellation. But such considerations are irrelevant to the sort of enterprise of rational reconstruction $ am engaged in here.
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or is lue, And what is the opposite of seventeen mar les,*this conception is actually incoherent.

-hat is needed is to deAontologi/e (and desensuali/e) the conception of the relation etween what is immediately availa le to us through perception and the conceptual element in virtue of which it (or anything) is cognitively availa le to us at all. Drom the idea, then, of inversion, which constitutes the essential nature of one aspect of the supersensi le world, we must eliminate the sensuous idea of fixing the differences in a different sustaining element; and this a solute notion of the difference must e represented and understood purely as inner difference.'7H <'CJ@ 1he final picture of the inverted world returns this supersensi le eyond to its proper place within, as implicit in, the realm of appearance. $nversion is the way in which the second supersensi le world is in the world of appearance. $t is in it as the necessary connection of opposites in constituting the contents of possi le experience. -e have already seen (in the discussion of Perception) how these material incompati ilities underwrite inferential connections, and again how those inferential relations ta!e the form of laws. 1hese conceptually fundamental incompati le contents are not reali/ed somewhere else, nor are they nothing at all. 1hey are possi le contents of appearance that are implicit in actual appearance insofar as it has a determinate content. #ere we have one in part sensi le world whose contents are defined y their determinate negations of other contents that would e actuali/ed, if they were actuali/ed, in that same world. 1he second supersensi le world, properly understood, consists in the mediation of the contents according to which consciousness is aware of the sensi le world. $t does not re5uire or

'7H

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%&'(&%)*'B%

Brandom

support a contrast with appearance. $t is in appearance as what constitutes content y relating each fact to a cloud of surrounding incompati le contents of possi le facts, y contrast to which it is the fact that it is (has the content it does). Dor in the difference which is an inner difference, the opposite is not merely one of two*if it were it would simply be, without eing an opposite* ut it is the opposite of an opposite, or the other is itself immediately present in it. '7) 1he supersensi le world is the concrete mediated structure in virtue of which appearance has a content. 1hus the supersensi le world, which is the inverted world, has at the same time overarched the other world and has it within it; it is for itself the inverted world, i.e. the inversion of itself; it is itself and its opposite in one unity. Enly thus is it difference as inner difference, or difference in its own self, or the difference as infinity.'7%

1he ordinary world that appears to us, in perception and inferentially, L...has, in fact, the NotherN immediately present in it,L'BJ, and so -e have to thin! pure change, or thin! antithesis <+ntgegenset/ung, opposition@ within the antithesis itself, or contradiction <-iderspruch@.'B' #ere the material incompati ility or determinate negation of Nthic!N concepts is understood as the principle of Lpure changeL*what is responsi le for the explanatory movement of concepts and commitments, the roadly inferential process that is experience. Eur practices in fact commit us to applying incompati le sets of predicates in various actual
'7) '7% 'BJ 'B'

<='CJ@. <='CJ@. <='CJ@. <='CJ@.

%&'(&%)*'(J

Brandom

situations, and that is how our doxastic and inferential commitments alter and evolve. 1he concept of infinity, which is the same as that of the .oncept, is where the development ends. $t is the outcome not only of the movement of Onderstanding, ut of the whole movement of .onsciousness. $t is where ...all the moments of appearance are ta!en up into the inner world.'B7 -e see that in the inner world of appearance, the Onderstanding in truth comes to !now nothing else ut appearance.'BB 1he inner world is what ma!es it possi le for what is in itself to express itself y appearing, including immediate appearance.

1he first conception of a supersensi le world was a conception of a 6calm realm of laws.: 1hose laws are expressed y 5uantified, modally 5ualified conditionals. 1hey underwrite inferences from o serva le to theoretical states of affairs. And they were construed as for that reason also underwriting the explanations of percepti le appearance in terms of an underlying merely thin!a le reality, consisting of o "ects individuated solely y the roles they play with respect to those laws. Tow we are to see that this thought a out appearance and reality should not e understood merely as the converse of the thought a out o serva le and theoretical states of affairs. Being a theoretical o "ect*only accessi le inferentially*does not preclude eing an aspect of appearance rather than reality. And eing an o serva le o "ect*noninferentially accessi le through perception* does not preclude eing an aspect of reality rather than appearance. 1he essential inferential and so conceptual articulation of all awareness means that what is o serva le is as thin!a le as what is only inferra le. 1he fact that o serva le o "ects are not only
'B7 'BB

<='C'@. <='C?@.

%&'(&%)*'('

Brandom

inferra le ut perceiva le does not mar! an ontological difference etween them. And the laws according to which we ma!e inferences, which articulate the conceptual contents of oth, also do not constitute a distinct ontological realm. 1he 5uantified, modally 5ualified conditionals that express those laws do not describe a distinct !ind of state of affairs. $ndeed, they do not descri e anything. Mather they serve to make e)plicit the inferential articulation in virtue of which anything is thin!a le (and so, in some cases, perceiva le) at all.

1he asis of those inferential relations (mediations) is the material incompati ilities (relations of determinate negation) among the concepts. $ve suggested that the connection is that p as entails "ust in case everything materially incompati le with is

materially incompati le with p. $n this sense, eing a dog entails eing a mammal, ecause everything incompati le with eing a mammal is incompati le with eing a dog. 0o it is e5ually a mista!e to thin! of those incompati ilities in ontological terms of a distinct !ind of thing. 1he material incompati ilities that articulate the conceptual content of a state of affairs (whether percepti le or not) should e understood as implicit in it.

*III

Tow it is, to e sure, at this point y no means o vious "ust what it means to say this. 1his is a way of thin!ing a out the conceptual element in experience. <on to made&found, is the movement in us, loo!ing on at the things across a gulf, or is it in the things. 1he claim that explanation is selfAconsciousness is supposed to respond y overcoming this@ QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ <1wo ways of thin!ing a out appearance2 as thing, and as way in which the real appears, i.e. as aspects or forms the real can ta!e.

%&'(&%)*'(7

Brandom

1his is an issue of identity in difference2 what things are in themselves (implicitly) and what they are for consciousness (explicitly) are identical (in content) ut different (in form). +nding stuff on infinity wants us to use model of identity in difference in .oncept, <infinite, in having nothing outside it@ the way identity of one concept involves and consists in its contrasts with others, to understand consciousness, the way appearance (what things are for consciousness) and reality (what things are in themselves) are related. $n previous chapter <0>1#$@ $ have s!etched how this story goes in general. <cf. selfA consciousness@ -e have now assem led enough raw materials to put us in a position to consider it in more detail. 0o far, it should e admitted, tal! of <1wo closely related things left to explain a) model of expression, rather than that of representation, ) to understand the relation etween appearance and reality. -hat $ hope to have done in this chapter is to set up some of the criteria of ade5uacy for doing that, and to have assem led some of the conceptual raw materials that are needed for doing it.@ 1he essential inferential and so conceptual articulation of all awareness means that what appears is as thin!a le as what explains it. 1here are no differences of an ontological difference etween appearance and reality than QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ Q 1he concept is expounded in <'C'@ to <'C?@. 1he infinite Totion is that system within which content is constituted y the ma!ing of distinctions, e.g. etween space and time, that are then seen in fact to e moments of a unity ecause of their necessary relations as expressi le in laws. $t is such a Totion that appears in appearance. $t first appears as itself in the process of explanation, which depends precisely on the necessary connection of distinct items, that is, on identity in difference. Appearance, or the play of Dorces, already displays it, ut it is an e)planation that it first freely stands forth. <'CB@. -e are told what will e re5uired to ma!e explicit for ourselves the Totion that is there implicit2 1he OnderstandingNs NexplanationN is primarily only the description of what selfA consciousness is. <'CB@ <BB2 cf.2 the need to understand modality in terms of social normativity, i.e. of authority and responsi ility, which are unintelligi le apart from (though not consisting entirely in) the context of social attri ution and underta!ing of commitments.@ 1he point is put slightly more colorfully at the very end of the exposition of Onderstanding2 Maised a ove perception <understanding@ consciousness exhi its itself closed in a unity with the supersensi le world through the mediating term of appearance, through which it ga/es into this ac!ground.'B( But the position that is aimed for at that point is one where2

'B(

<='C?@.

%&'(&%)*'(B

Brandom

1he two extremes <of this syllogism@, the one, of the pure inner world, the other, that of the inner eing ga/ing into this pure inner world, have now coincided, and "ust as they, 5ua extremes, have vanished, so to the middle term as something other than these extremes has also vanished.'B? QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ <Text2 it is internal to the conceptsAandAclaims, in the sense that we can thin! of it as something that the contents of our commitments ( oth doxastic and conceptualA inferential) do. Dor it is they who normatively o lige us to ma!e alterations. 1hen2 5uote a out syllogism in <='(?@, as transition to discussion of (i) and (ii) elow, and Dirst 0upersensi le -orld (D00-), and $-' and $-7.@ 1he attempt to get the principle of movement into one world, instead of splitting it etween two2 a calm unified realm of laws, and its diverse sensuous expression, is what yields the first $-. -hen we desensuali/e it, we get the second $-, in which difference is implicit in the movement, is the relations that oth articulate its content and drive its development. 0o we have got three things going on in these $- passages, which must e disentangled2 i) ontologicalAmethodological shift in conception of supersensual world (9desensuali/ing), ii) as a result, thin!ing of how supersensual is implicit in o serva le in a new way, and iii) internal&external movement (contri uting to (ii)), which gives oth inversion, and relation etween identity and difference*or at least ends with the hint a out that (identity consists in development, in accord with and in context of relations to diverse other such unities) which will ta!e us to infinite .oncept. @ ) $nferential relations and the activity of inferring. 1he latter as 6inference to est explanation:. 1he selfA movement of the .oncept as finding explanations. 1he normativity of the latter expressing and expressed as the modality of the laws y which theoretical o "ects produce o servations.@ <a thin!a le, mediated reality@ XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX <( points2 still on side of truth, not certainty, in spite of tal! of concepts. no distinction of holistic sense from atomistic reference FantAKei ni/ containment tal! ma!es holism unintelligi le law is explanation (hence inference) congealed into a su stance appearance and reality (once what is inferentially downstream from immediacy is conceived as e)plaining it, we are ta!ing it to e the real). necessity and inference (5uantified, modally 5ualified conditionals2 laws as universal, necessary, explanatory). @ XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX <<Dor end of =$>(, on .oncept as infinite2 5ualitative, not 5uantitative infinity of the .oncept. $ts infinity means that it is unlimited, that there is nothing outside of it*neither the immediacy of experience, nor the immediacy of eing. 1his claim*that the .oncept is s infinites*is another idealist thesis of #egels.@@

'B?

<='C?@.

%&'(&%)*'((

Brandom

>erceiving consciousness admits only the existence of sense universals, and for this reason cannot understand what we understand. Dor its restriction to sense universals is expressed y its demand that the contents of perceivings e autonomous or independent (a conception that is pathognomic of alienation, as we shall learn), that is that they e graspa le apart from any grasp or consideration of any other contents or relations to anything that is not a content. 1his demand collides with the inescapa le conse5uences re5uired y the determinateness of the contents of perceivings. -hen this independence re5uirement is relin5uished, the transition is made to the level of understanding. #ere the apparent contradictions that arose y conceiving of contents as independent, contradictions unresolva le within the voca ulary and idiom characteristic of consciousness whose selfAconcept is that of perceiving consciousness, are resolved y postulating an independent reality ehind sensuous appearance, on which the whole of appearance is conceived as dependent. 1his move represents progress in several respects. $t is now allowed that the determinateness of universals re5uires their relation to and mediation y other universals that they exclude. 0o the conception of universals as independent has een relin5uished. Durther, and as a result, the immediacy of the universals, their having to e sense universals, that is, nonAinferentially reporta le, has een given up as well. Tow consciousness can conceive of itself as classifying particulars under universals to which its only access is inferential. 0o the picture of the relation etween consciousness and what appears to it is no longer that of immediate contact (Lru ing the nose of the mind in the mess of the worldL). 1his will eventually flower into the possi ility of conceiving thought as a means of access to how things are in themselves, rather than as inevita ly altering (as medium or instrument) and so perhaps radically falsifying what it presents. Again, the way is opened to conceiving of consciousness as consisting in other forms of "udgment esides the classificatory, for instance the inferenceA codifying conditionals and modally 5ualified lawli!e universal generali/ations that express incompati ility and entailment relations explicitly in propositional form. <-here #egel la ors unceasingly to show us how Ierstand loo!s from the standpoint of Iernunft, $m trying in effect also to reconstruct the image of Iernunft from the standpoint of Ierstand. $ thin! one can get further in this enterprise than #egel thought possi le.@

<#ere the text rea!s off into mere notes.@ XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 1he concept is expounded in <'C'@ to <'C?@. 1he infinite Totion is that system within which content is constituted y the ma!ing of distinctions, e.g. etween space and time, that are then seen in fact to e moments of a unity ecause of their necessary relations as expressi le in laws. $t is such a Totion that appears in appearance. $t first appears as itself in the process of explanation, which depends precisely on the necessary connection of distinct items, that is, on identity in difference. %&'(&%)*'(?

Brandom

Appearance, or the play of Dorces, already displays it, ut it is an e)planation that it first freely stands forth. <'CB@. -e are told what will e re5uired to ma!e explicit for ourselves the Totion that is there implicit2 1he OnderstandingNs NexplanationN is primarily only the description of what selfA consciousness is. <'CB@ <BB2 cf.2 the need to understand modality in terms of social normativity, i.e. of authority and responsi ility, which are unintelligi le apart from (though not consisting entirely in) the context of social attri ution and underta!ing of commitments.@ <( points2 still on side of truth, not certainty, in spite of tal! of concepts. no distinction of holistic sense from atomistic reference FantAKei ni/ containment tal! ma!es holism unintelligi le law is explanation (hence inference) congealed into a su stance appearance and reality (once what is inferentially downstream from immediacy is conceived as e)plaining it, we are ta!ing it to e the real). necessity and inference (5uantified, modally 5ualified conditionals2 laws as universal, necessary, explanatory). @ 3etting clearer a out this idea, ma!ing more explicit what is implicit in it, re5uires two sorts of conceptual advance. Dirst, a new way is needed of thin!ing a out concepts as nodes in a holistic inferential networ!*and so as having their identity consist (at least in part) in their relations to different concepts. 0econd, the relation etween the epistemic and the ontological dimensions of this holism must e clarified. 1hat is, various alternative ways of conceptuali/ing the relation etween features (e.g. holistic ones) of our inferential access to the o "ects of thought, on the one hand, and features of the essences or natures of those o "ects themselves, on the other, must e explored. 1hese two considerations occupy the rest of the discussion of *orce and +nderstanding. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX <epistemic side of inferential access vs. ontological side of essence of the things $t is trying to thin! through this relation that concern with law and necessity arises. $t is this concern that will culminate in the discussion of the $nverted -orld.@ inade5uacy of containment model for multimpremise inferences leads to expression model, ma!ing explicit what is otherwise implicit. <wont get to seeing immediacy as the appearance of an underlying theoretical reality until we add that its features are to e e)plained y appeal to what they reveal or manifest (i.e. what can e inferred from them).@ XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX <<Dor end of =$>(, on .oncept as infinite2 5ualitative, not 5uantitative infinity of the .oncept. $ts infinity means that it is unlimited, that there is nothing outside of it*neither the immediacy of experience, nor the immediacy of eing. 1his claim*that the .oncept is s infinites*is another idealist thesis of #egels.@@

%&'(&%)*'(C

Brandom

>erceiving consciousness admits only the existence of sense universals, and for this reason cannot understand what we understand. Dor its restriction to sense universals is expressed y its demand that the contents of perceivings e autonomous or independent (a conception that is pathognomic of alienation, as we shall learn), that is that they e graspa le apart from any grasp or consideration of any other contents or relations to anything that is not a content. 1his demand collides with the inescapa le conse5uences re5uired y the determinateness of the contents of perceivings. -hen this independence re5uirement is relin5uished, the transition is made to the level of understanding. #ere the apparent contradictions that arose y conceiving of contents as independent, contradictions unresolva le within the voca ulary and idiom characteristic of consciousness whose selfAconcept is that of perceiving consciousness, are resolved y postulating an independent reality ehind sensuous appearance, on which the whole of appearance is conceived as dependent. 1his move represents progress in several respects. $t is now allowed that the determinateness of universals re5uires their relation to and mediation y other universals that they exclude. 0o the conception of universals as independent has een relin5uished. Durther, and as a result, the immediacy of the universals, their having to e sense universals, that is, nonAinferentially reporta le, has een given up as well. Tow consciousness can conceive of itself as classifying particulars under universals to which its only access is inferential. 0o the picture of the relation etween consciousness and what appears to it is no longer that of immediate contact (Lru ing the nose of the mind in the mess of the worldL). 1his will eventually flower into the possi ility of conceiving thought as a means of access to how things are in themselves, rather than as inevita ly altering (as medium or instrument) and so perhaps radically falsifying what it presents. Again, the way is opened to conceiving of consciousness as consisting in other forms of "udgment esides the classificatory, for instance the inferenceA codifying conditionals and modally 5ualified lawli!e universal generali/ations that express incompati ility and entailment relations explicitly in propositional form. <-here #egel la ors unceasingly to show us how Ierstand loo!s from the standpoint of Iernunft, $m trying in effect also to reconstruct the image of Iernunft from the standpoint of Ierstand. $ thin! one can get further in this enterprise than #egel thought possi le.@

%&'(&%)*'(H