The Extended Mind Rehabilitates The Metaphysical Hegel

Abstract

The nonmetaphysical interpretation of Hegel's philosophy asserts that the metaphysical reading is not credible and so his philosophy must be rationally reconstructed so as to elide its metaphysical aspects. This article shows that the thesis of the extended mind approaches the metaphysical reading, thereby undermining denials of its credibility and providing the resources to articulate and defend the metaphysical reading of Hegel's philosophy. This fully rehabilitates the metaphysical Hegel. The article does not argue for the truth of the metaphysical Hegel's claims. Rather, it defends the correctness of reading his philosophy as metaphysical."The saddest thing," she said, "is that their mother and father didn't live to see how things have changed for us."Her voice was soft and dreamlike, as though she were speaking of some immemorially distant epoch. I was not surprised; I knew that if some of my own memories had not been preserved in such artefacts as notes and diaries, the past would have had no purchase in my mind either. (Ghosh 1994, 320) In this article, we argue that the thesis of the extended mind provides the resources to articulate and defend the metaphysical reading of Hegel's philosophy. We first discuss the metaphysical reading advanced by Charles Taylor. Next, we explain the nonmetaphysical alternative proposed by Klaus Hartmann, Robert B. Pippin, Terry Pinkard, and Robert B. Brandom. We then defend their alternative in the spirit of determinate negation from Simon Lumsden's criticisms. In the fourth section, we discuss the thesis of the extended mind as articulated in the writings of David J. Chalmers, Andy Clark, and Mark Rowlands. In the fifth, we suggest that the Systems Reply to John Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment and Ned Block's antifunctionalism Chinese bs_bs_banner

Hegel’s metaphilosophy of idealism

“…Mentalistic idealism is the most accurate interpretation of Hegel's writings, more respectable the other candidates. There is a substantial body of literature (see footnote 3 above) situating this idealism into the most respectable theaters of contemporary analytic philosophy (see Fritzman and Parvizian 2012). 16 Stern argued that the British idealists recognized problems with the identity thesis and addressed them.…”