James Kreines's Reason in the World (Reference Kreines2015) gives an account of Hegel's metaphysical ambitions in the Science of Logic Footnote 1 whilst also contextualizing his arguments within the history of philosophy, especially in Hegel's relation to Kant. Kreines's account has the virtue of bringing Hegel's, oftentimes obscure, work in the Logic into conversation with contemporary philosophy. That said, it has gone unnoticed in the literatureFootnote 2 that there are three fundamental misinterpretations in Kreines's account of the chapter of ‘Mechanism’Footnote 3 in the Logic. Briefly, they are: 1) that the Concept is not immanent to section ‘A. The Mechanical Object’, 2) that ‘indifference’ is used only to express a lack of explanatory power, and 3) that the Concept only becomes immanent in section ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’.
In the introduction to his book, Kreines outlines what he takes Hegel to be doing in the Logic. Kreines reads the Logic as giving a ‘metaphysics of reasons’: ‘Philosophical inquiry into explanatory reasons, or reason in the world, and ultimately into their completeness’ (2015: 9). Kreines understands Hegel to want to claim that the world is rational in-itself and that its rationality is comprehensible. This amounts to claiming that things are explained by appealing to their immanent concepts: what Kreines identifies as Hegel's ‘Concept thesis’ (2015: 22). Kreines is also sensitive to the ‘method’ of the Logic. He states that the Logic proceeds dialectically and by means of this dialectic displays the productive nature of contradictions, which lead to a systematic unity of knowledge and ‘which turn[s] out to be independent of experience in a specific respect’ (2015: 5). Finally, he also states that this development is a necessary one and connects the necessity of the development with the claim that the conclusions of the Logic can be independent of experience (2015: 26).
I agree with much of Kreines's understanding of the Logic. Hegel does claim that the world is rational and, therefore, comprehensible, and that the ‘method’ by which we come to learn about the reason in the world is the dialectical method of revealing contradictions to be productive rather than limiting and that, ultimately, the aim is to reach a systematic unity of knowledge. And, whilst I would prefer to identify Hegel's project as an ontology rather than as giving ‘explanatory reasons [for] why things do what they do, or are as they are’ (Kreines Reference Kreines2015: 3), I do not think that our readings are fundamentally at odds with one another. The Logic does explain the being of things and, therefore, gives an account of ‘why things do what they do, or are as they are’ (Kreines Reference Kreines2015: 3). Where we might differ, however, is in how we present Hegel's arguments. Kreines presents the development of ‘Mechanism’ as proceeding according to philosophical problems (more of which in Section I). I, however, choose to present the arguments of the Logic differently. I prefer to present the Logic as the immanent self-development of the absolute idea. This amounts to saying that Hegel's Logic proceeds by the immanent development of one determination of thought and being to another determination of thought and being. This development is necessary because the reasons for why one determination develops into another is immanent to that determination. Thus, what the Logic shows us is that determinations are related to each other through their very constitution. The reason why I think that it can be fruitful to present the Logic in this way is because the justification for why a determination is ‘such and such’ is given in the necessary development from one determination to another—and it is this necessary development that is at the core of Hegel's innovative project.Footnote 4 In the course of this development, Hegel's position regarding numerous philosophical problems becomes apparent, and it is in this way that an exposition of the Logic that proceeds by philosophical problems can be fruitful. However, Kreines focuses entirely on the presentation of the Logic as responding to philosophical problems and does not give sufficient space to the necessary development of the determinations of ‘Mechanism’. This is not to criticize Kreines's choice to present the chapter in the way that he does but, rather, to criticize the fact that he does not pay sufficient attention to the immanent development of ‘Mechanism’. My approach to showing the shortcomings of Kreines's exposition will be to provide an account of the immanent development of ‘Mechanism’.Footnote 5
The paper is divided into five sections. The first section sets out Kreines's interpretation of ‘Mechanism’ and provides a brief overview of my criticisms of his account. The second section deals with the first misinterpretation: Kreines's interpretation of ‘Mechanism’ as presenting the ‘conceptless mechanism’ hypothesis. I then provide my account of ‘A. The Mechanical Object’ to show that the Concept is, in fact, immanent to the mechanical object. The third section deals with the second misinterpretation: Kreines's reading of ‘indifference’ as opposed to the immanence of the Concept and as denoting explanatory irrelevance. By going through the rest of ‘A. The Mechanical Object’, I show that indifference is not opposed to the immanence of the Concept, and that it does confer explanatory relevance. The fourth section addresses Kreines's point that it is only in ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’ that the Concept becomes immanent and indifference disappears: the third point of misinterpretation. I give an analysis of the centre and the law to show that the significance of ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’ is not that the Concept finally becomes immanent but that the Concept becomes the self-determining Concept, and that indifference confers explanatory power even in this section. Finally, I conclude this paper with some reflections on the implications of my interpretation of ‘Mechanism’ as a feature of the world that has the Concept immanent to it and ‘indifference’ as a central aspect of what it is for something to be mechanical.
I. Kreines's interpretation of ‘Mechanism’
Kreines's exposition of ‘Mechanism’ proceeds by way of philosophical problems. Whilst this is not the way that Hegel sets out the development of ‘Mechanism’ in the Logic, Kreines's approach has the advantage of making Hegel's arguments intelligible in contemporary terms. If, as Kreines suggests, the core of Hegel's argument in the Logic is the claim that there are immanent concepts in the world that explain why it is that things do what they do, Hegel's ‘Concept thesis’ (2015: 22), then a mechanistic philosophy that does not appeal to such concepts to explain why things do what they do would be a threat to Hegel's project. The threat of a mechanistic philosophy finds its form, according to Kreines, in the beginning of ‘Mechanism’, ‘A. The Mechanical Object’, where Hegel shows that ‘conceptless mechanism’ fails to meet the standards that it sets for itself (2015: 40). The failure of ‘conceptless mechanism’, Kreines goes on to argue, shows that an immanent concept is required to explain why some objects do what they do. The most primitive form of such an immanent concept within the sphere of mechanistic relations is expressed in ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’, what Kreines calls ‘reasonable mechanism’. Thus, the Concept is not immanent to ‘A. The Mechanical Object’ which means that the reasons for why objects do what they do cannot be explained. It is not until ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’ that the Concept becomes immanent to ‘Mechanism’ and we are able to explain why some objects do what they do (Kreines Reference Kreines2015: 36).
This picture of ‘Mechanism’, however, does not stand up to scrutiny when it is compared to what Hegel writes in the Logic. The fundamental issue is that Kreines's presentation of ‘Mechanism’, as beginning with the ‘conceptless mechanism’ hypothesis, ignores the fact that according to Hegel there is no such thing as non-conceptual mechanism. This is my first point, that the Concept is actually immanent to the mechanical object from the beginning of ‘Mechanism’. If Hegel is right, it is not simply the case that there are some mechanistic explanations of the world that fail because they do not appeal to immanent concepts to explain why things do what they do, rather it is that explanations of the world that do not appeal to immanent concepts are not properly mechanical. Because what it is for something to be mechanical or to be explained mechanistically is for it to have a concept immanent to it. Hegel's point, then, is that we should eschew the non-conceptual mechanistic versus conceptual mechanistic dichotomy because the former is not an actual feature of the world.
Let us look at an example that Kreines uses to illustrate this opposition: Sagittarius, the constellation, does not affect my mood because there is no concept ‘Sagittarius affects my mood’, despite the correlation that might appear between the presence of Sagittarius and my poor mood. There is no immanent concept of the kind ‘Sagittarius affects my mood’ because Sagittarius is indifferent to my mood (2015: 51). An immanent concept, then, is something that would explain why something happens—why is my mood unaffected by Sagittarius? Because there is no immanent concept of the kind that could explain that. How does my reading of Hegel affect this example? Put simply: if it is the case that there is no immanent concept of the kind ‘Sagittarius affects my mood’, then, it is not just because the object does not have a concept immanent to it but because it is not mechanistic. The lack of the immanence of a concept does not bear on the kinds of mechanistic explanations available but on whether something is mechanical in the first place.
Related to Kreines's reading of the beginning of ‘Mechanism’ as being conceptless is his reading of indifference (Gleichgültigkeit) as being opposed to the immanence of the Concept and as being explanatorily irrelevant. Above, Kreines writes that the reason why Sagittarius does not affect my mood is because it is indifferent to it. According to Kreines, ‘indifference’ in ‘Mechanism’ is a by-word for explanatory irrelevance: ‘In what cases are there immanent concepts for things? The answer is simple: in those cases where things fall under a concept, or belong to a kind, toward which what they do is not indifferent’ (2015: 50). Sagittarius is indifferent to my mood because what it is for Sagittarius to be is conceptually indifferent to what my mood is.
Indeed, there is some textual support for Kreines's view. The mechanical object is indifferent to other objects and so the determination of one object is indifferent to the determination of another object. It is because of this that Kreines writes that ‘indifference’ expresses explanatory irrelevance. However, this is too negative an interpretation of ‘indifference’. ‘Indifference’ does not just express explanatory irrelevance but it tells us why certain mechanical objects are the way that they are. This is my second point, that ‘indifference’ does not merely describe explanatory irrelevance but is crucial to explaining why some objects do what they do. ‘Indifference’ is explanatorily relevant because it tells us why a thing is the way that it is.
Kreines's further point regarding ‘indifference’ and the immanence of the Concept is that the Concept only becomes immanent in ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’, what Kreines labels ‘reasonable mechanism’. According to Kreines, ‘reasonable mechanism’ is the section of ‘Mechanism’ in which Hegel presents us with an image of mechanistic explanations that have the Concept immanent to them:
This is a mechanistic phenomenon in the reasonable sense: it can be explained in terms of all the matter composing that system, insofar as this means that the reason it rotates is the immanent concept of matter, and the power or force inherent in that concept. (2015: 36)
The appearance of the immanence of the Concept is accompanied by the disappearance of ‘indifference’. Thus, according to Kreines, ‘reasonable mechanism’ can only obtain when the Concept is immanent to the objects involved and when they are no longer indifferent to each other.
This understanding of ‘indifference’ and ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’, however, is at odds with the text. This is my third point. Having already argued against the idea that the immanence of the Concept is opposed to ‘indifference’, I further argue that it is not the case that the Concept merely becomes immanent in ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’. What is new in this section is that the Concept is now self-determining. If we want to preserve Kreines's point about the novelty of ‘reasonable mechanism’, then, what distinguishes ‘reasonable mechanism’ from previous forms of mechanism is not the immanence of the Concept but the fact that the Concept is now self-determining.
This concludes my summary of Kreines's interpretation of ‘Mechanism’. In what follows I aim to show: (a) that the Concept is immanent to the beginning of ‘Mechanism’; (b) that ‘indifference’ is not opposed to the immanence of the Concept and that it is not just a by-word for explanatory irrelevance; and (c) that ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’ deals with the self-determining Concept and not the immanent Concept.
II. The immanence of the Concept in ‘Mechanism’
I begin by outlining Kreines's reading of the role of the Concept in ‘Mechanism’ before going on to give my reading of the section. According to Kreines, mechanistic explanations of the world pose the greatest threat to Hegel's ‘Concept thesis’ because they do not ‘appeal to anything like a form or quality and its action, but rather purely [to] the movement of the parts ‘alone’ (2015: 37). Since all explanations of why a thing does what it does can be found in the parts of the thing alone, any appeal to the immanent concept of a thing is superfluous since it does not provide any further explanation. Kreines calls this position ‘pure mechanism’ or ‘conceptless mechanism’. Kreines opposes ‘conceptless mechanism’ to Hegel's ‘Concept thesis’, which holds that ‘the reasons that explain why things are as they are and do what they do are always found in immanent “concepts” (Begriffe), akin to immanent universals or kinds (Gattungen)’ (Reference Kreines2015: 22). Now, Kreines states that in ‘Mechanism’ Hegel considers ‘conceptless mechanism’ as a ‘hypothesis or thought experiment’ (2015: 38) and that the aim of the chapter is to investigate whether a conception of mechanism which does not refer to immanent concepts is coherent. It is true that Hegel writes about determinism or ‘conceptless mechanism’ in the third paragraph of subsection two of ‘A. The Mechanical Object’. However, this paragraph does not form part of the immanent, conceptual development of the mechanical object. Instead, it is the kind of external remark where Hegel is reflecting on the implications of the Logic's immanent development for philosophical positions that wrongly take a moment of the Concept's development to be absolute. Kreines, then, is right to identify a criticism of ‘conceptless mechanism’ in ‘Mechanism’. Crucially, however, Hegel's criticism of ‘conceptless mechanism’ does not form part of the immanent development of the Logic and is, therefore, not an actual feature of the world—‘Mechanism’ does not begin with the ‘conceptless mechanism’ hypothesis but begins with the Concept immanent to it. The development of ‘Mechanism’, then, is not the development from there being no Concept that is immanent to the mechanical object to an immanent Concept but from the immanent Concept to the self-determining Concept (this will become clearer in IV.i).
Having outlined Kreines's reading of the beginning of ‘Mechanism’, I will now present my reading of the immanent development of the first determination of ‘Mechanism’, the mechanical object. By doing this I hope to convincingly show that (a) ‘Mechanism’ does not begin with the ‘conceptless mechanism’ hypothesis, and that in fact (b) ‘Mechanism’ begins with the Concept already immanent to it.
II.i. ‘A. The Mechanical Object’, subsection 1
The first category of ‘Mechanism’ is the mechanical object. The mechanical object is first an immediate identity. It is immediate because it is the result of the ‘syllogism, whose mediation has been sublated [ausgeglichen]’ (SL: 711/410).Footnote 6 What this means is that the determinations of the Concept that comprise the mechanical object: universality, particularity, and individuality, do not develop into each other but are immediately each other. To understand the significance of their immediate identity we have to first recall the way the three determinations are shown to be both identical and mediated in relation to each other in the chapter of the ‘Concept’.
Consider the concept of a tree. A universal concept of a tree will hold the most essential determinations of a tree (an elongated trunk, the ability to support photosynthetic leaves or branches, etc.). In short, things that we will generally agree upon as giving ‘tree-ness’. Thus, it is the case that particular trees, oak trees, and willow trees, for example, will have ‘tree-ness’, i.e., they will have an elongated trunk and the ability to support photosynthetic leaves or branches. This is the sense in which universality and particularity are identical, the essential determinateness (to use the Hegelian terminology) of the universal concept of a tree is to be found in the particular instances of a tree. However, particular trees cannot just be understood in terms of the essential determinateness of their universal concept because that would ignore important aspects of their own being that the universal concept fails to capture. Thus, some species of trees are oak trees and others are willow trees. This is the sense in which particularity is different to universality. Finally, within the species of oak trees there are individual oak trees like the oak tree in my garden or that oak tree in the park. Each of these individual oak trees are identical to the universal conception (since they are trees) and the particular conception (since they are oak trees) but are also different to these conceptualizations since they do not include the specific determinations of the oak tree in my garden. Each determination of a tree is also mediated by the other determination: to think of the universal concept of a tree I must have seen particular and individual instances of trees and generalized across them to reach a universal concept. Similarly, to think of the particular instance of a tree I must have a universal concept of a tree under which to understand this particular instance of a tree as a tree; and so on and so forth.
In ‘Mechanism’, however, these differences are sublated, and the determinations of the Concept are identical with each other—in other words, all trees are taken to be the same regardless of any differences that might make them conceptually distinct. If each moment is identical there is no mediated move from one way of thinking of a tree to another. The mind moves from the universal to the individual without distinction, without mediation—my general concept of a tree is no different to my individual concept of the oak tree in my garden. We move immediately from one to the other as if we were not moving at all. This is what Hegel has in mind when he conceptualizes the mechanical object as a ‘universal that pervades the particularity and in it is immediate individuality’ (SL: 711/410). Not only is there no sign of ‘conceptless mechanism’ but, in fact, pace Kreines, what it is for something to be a mechanical object is for it to be the immediate identity of the Concept.
Now it logically follows from the immediate identity of the mechanical object that it is indeterminate. ‘Determinacy’ expresses the negative relation between two logical moments that are united through their identity but also held apart because of their differences, ‘indeterminacy’ expresses the absence of this relation. The mechanical object must be indeterminate since the equilibration (ausgleichen) of mediation into immediate identity means that there is no ‘determinate opposition’ (SL: 712/411) within it. If there is no opposition between the determinations of the Concept then the mechanical object must necessarily lack determinacy.
Thus, the mechanical object is the immediate identity of the determinations of the Concept and it lacks determinacy. However, the determinations of the Concept are not simply reduced to one another since there is still a minimal degree of determinacy between them. In fact, the determinations of the Concept are ‘essentially determinate’ (SL: 712/411), i.e., it is in their nature to be different to and opposed to one another. This ‘nature’ or ‘essence’ of theirs is not merely assumed but is the result of the chapter on the ‘Concept’: it is, thus, logically grounded by the Logic itself. Their essential determinacy was fundamental to the development of ‘Concept’, ‘Judgement’, and ‘Syllogism’ and is preserved as sublated in the mechanical object.
Now, however, we are in the sphere of ‘Mechanism’ where mediation has been sublated and they are an immediate identity. Therefore, the determinations of the Concept are no longer just essentially determinate but now also have the moment of indeterminacy as part of their logical structure: ‘In so far as the [Concept] is essentially determinate, the object possesses determinateness as a manifoldness which though complete is otherwise indeterminate’ (SL: 712/411). Their indeterminacy is at the fore since we are within the sphere of ‘Mechanism’, but their essential determinacy must not be forgotten and, indeed, is the reason for why the mechanical objects are united. Thus, the determinations of the Concept retain their essential determinacy but are also indeterminate because they are immediately identical when understood through the prism of ‘Mechanism’: ‘Because this indeterminate determinateness [diese unbestimmte Bestimmtheit] is essential to the object’ (SL: 712/411). Thus, not only is the Concept immanent to the mechanical object, but it is the essential determinacy of the Concept that acts as the side of the mechanical object that is a unity, a manifoldness.
This brings us to the end of subsection A.1 in ‘Mechanism’: I will briefly summarize the salient points of the development. First, we understood the mechanical object as an immediate identity because the mediation that has hitherto been a feature of the determinations of the Concept has been sublated. Second, because of their immediate identity they were indeterminate. Third, despite their immediate identity and indeterminacy the determinacy of the determinations of the Concept is an essential aspect of their being and so the mechanical object has determinacy. Fourth, since each determination of the Concept is an immediate identity, and the mechanical object is itself an immediate identity, it follows that each determination of the Concept is a mechanical object. Fifth, if each object is immediately identical to each other object, then, they can also be considered as one mechanical object. Sixth, the mechanical object is not simply the reduction of the other three objects since they are essentially determinate and so the mechanical object is also essentially determinate. Finally, since the mechanical object is essentially determinate it is a manifold or an aggregate because the individual objects are not reduced to a single identity, i.e., the mechanical object, but are each an object that make up the mechanical object.
Against the interpretation I have just put forward, Kreines quotes Hegel from §195 in the Encyclopaedia Logic to support his reading that the Concept is not immanent to the mechanical object: ‘The object, taken first in its immediacy, is (1) the concept only in itself, it has the concept at first as something subjective outside it, and every determinacy is posited as an external determinacy’ (EL: §195, 270). This sentence certainly seems to support Kreines's point: the Concept is outside of the object; consequently, the Concept only relates to the object as external to it and is not immanent to it.
However, §195 seems to give two opposed readings of the object (the object in the EL is the mechanical object in the SL. For the sake of clarity, I refer to the object when discussing the EL and the mechanical object when discussing the SL). On the one hand, it is the Concept in-itself, but on the other hand, the Concept is something that is outside of the object. The latter confirms Kreines's interpretation, that the Concept is not immanent to the object, whilst the former challenges his view by locating the Concept as being the object in a one-sided manner and, therefore, immanent to it. Clearly, both of these things cannot be true at the same time. The Concept cannot be outside of the object such as to not be immanent to it, and at the same time be immanent to the object as the Concept that is in-itself. I think that a very convincing case can be made for the idea that the Concept is in-itself the object. Before I continue, I should say a few words on what it means for the Concept to be in-itself the object.
Without wishing to give a broad definition of what ‘in-itself’ (an sich) means throughout the Logic, I restrict myself to its usage in ‘Mechanism’. I have already explained that the Concept that is properly itself is the Concept whose determinations are fully mediated. This means that each is the other in being itself as well as the negation of the other in being itself. The oak tree in my garden (the individual) is in a sense identical with the general concept of a tree (the universal) because it shares the essential features of being a tree. But in another sense, it is different to the general concept of a tree because what it is for it to be the oak tree in my garden goes beyond the universal determination of the tree. Thus, what it is for the oak tree in my garden to be is the mediation of its being between its universal conception as a tree and its individual conception as the oak tree in my garden (there is also the particular conception, which I have omitted for the sake of brevity). The Concept that is in-itself is the Concept in which the determinations of the Concept are not mediated with each other. This is what it means for the object to be the Concept that is in-itself.
Now, I argue that Hegel's talk of externality does not pertain to the immanence of the Concept within each object but to the relation of objects with each other. It is because the objects are external to each other, and because each object is the Concept in-itself that Hegel claims that the object has ‘the concept at first as something subjective outside it’ (EL: §195, 270). This is suggested in the sentence that follows: ‘As the unity of differences, it is thus something composite, an aggregate, and the effect on another remains an external relation’ (EL: §195, 270). And is explicitly stated in the previous paragraph:
It is in itself the totality and, at the same time, since this identity is the identity of the moments but an identity that only is in itself [ansichseiende], it is just as indifferent to its immediate unity. It breaks down into differentiated [moments], each of which is itself the totality. (EL: §194, 268)
The object is both a single totality as the immediate identity of the determinations of the Concept but is also merely an in-itself identity that ‘breaks down into differentiated [moments]’ (EL: §194, 268). Why does the in-itselfness of the identity lead to the differentiation? Because the lack of mediation between the determinations of the Concept, which are the moments of the object, means that they stand apart from each other. It is because they are external to each other and because each is an object in its own right that the Concept is said to be outside of the object. Thus, despite appearances, the EL confirms that the Concept is immanent to the mechanical object.
My analysis of ‘A. The Mechanical Object’ has shown that the Concept is immanent to the mechanical object. Thus, what ‘A. The Mechanical Object’ shows is not a thought experiment that investigates the coherence of a ‘conceptless mechanism’ but a moment of the development of the Logic that examines how the Logic proceeds from the immediate identity of the Concept in the sphere of ‘Objectivity’. This is a substantially different reading to what Kreines suggests is going on in ‘Mechanism’:
For Hegel's argument here is very different. Hegel's argument is stronger because pure mechanism itself sets the standard for what counts as explanatory, specifically by holding that the initial appeal to immanent concepts and the like is of no explanatory relevance because the real explanatory work is done by underlying mechanisms. (2015: 40)
Contrary to what Kreines says, there is no ‘conceptless mechanism’ hypothesis that is investigated in ‘Mechanism’. But more to the point, what ‘Mechanism’ shows us is Hegel's argument for why we should eschew the non-conceptual mechanistic versus conceptual mechanistic dichotomy. Such a distinction is not a real feature of the world and, if Hegel is right, all mechanistic explanations must refer to the immanent Concept to explain why things do what they do, or are the way that they are.
The second section of this paper will engage with the opposition between the immanence of the Concept and ‘indifference’ that is asserted to be a feature of ‘A. The Mechanical Object’ by Kreines.
III. ‘Indifference’ as explanatorily relevant
Section III of this paper is concerned with how Kreines understands the logical term of ‘indifference’ (Gleichgültigkeit) in ‘Mechanism’. As above, I will first present Kreines's reading of ‘indifference’, and then provide an exegetical account of the rest of ‘A. The Mechanical Object'' with the task of showing how ‘indifference’ is actually used.
According to Kreines, ‘indifference’ is Hegel's term for a ‘lack of explanatory relevance’ (2015: 38). In other words, ‘indifference’ is a term that plays a part in describing the inability of the ‘conceptless mechanism’ thesis to provide an explanation for why things do what they do by appealing to underlying properties of things. Kreines also equates Hegel's usage of ‘indifference’ with ‘externality’ in ‘Mechanism’Footnote 7: ‘any nature of any whole or connection is external, or explanatorily irrelevant, to what things do’ (2015: 38). Finally, Kreines opposes indifference, i.e., lacking explanatory relevance, to a thing being explained by appeal to immanent concepts: ‘In what cases are there immanent concepts for things? The answer is simple: in those cases where things fall under a concept, or belong to a kind, toward which what they do is not indifferent’ (2015: 50). Kreines calls these non-indifferent cases of mechanism ‘reasonable mechanism’: ‘[Hegel] argues that some things (not all) are explicable in mechanistic terms, but precisely in virtue of their immanent concepts, and most prominently the immanent concept of matter; I call this “reasonable mechanism”’ (2015: 35). According to Kreines, the archetypal example of ‘reasonable mechanism’ is the rotation of the solar system and he alludes to section ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’ as expressing the ontological examination of ‘reasonable mechanism’. It is in this section where the lack of ‘indifference’ and the immanence of concepts, according to Kreines, finally afford explanatory relevance to mechanistic explanations of things (which I investigate in section IV).
Now, I do not necessarily disagree that ‘indifference’ might refer to a lack of explanatory relevance in a relation. Indeed, Kreines quotes many passages from ‘Mechanism’ and elsewhere in the Hegelian corpus that support such a reading (2015: 38, 39, 46, 48, 49, 51, 54). One concern, however, is that interpreting ‘indifference’ as a lack of explanatory relevance ignores the fact that ‘indifference’ is not just that. Hegel uses ‘indifference’ to describe an aspect of the being of the mechanical object (and, indeed, of many more complex logical structures later in the Logic). ‘Indifference’ is an ontological description that expresses the lack of self-determination of a logical structure and understanding a logical structure as indifferent is explanatorily relevant since it explains why an object does what it does. I begin by giving an analysis of the rest of ‘A. The Mechanical Object’ to support my argument against the idea that ‘indifference’ should not be opposed to the immanence of the Concept and that it cannot be reduced to whether a relation is ‘explanatorily relevant’.
III.i. ‘A. The Mechanical Object’, subsections 2 & 3
What follows picks up the thread of the development of ‘Mechanism’ given above in II.i. In subsection 2 of ‘A. The Mechanical Object’ Hegel introduces ‘indifference’, which explains the logical consequence of the mechanical object being indeterminate and essentially determinate. If the mechanical object is indeterminate then it must be indifferent to determinateness. Let us pause for a moment and ask: Why is the next logical step that of ‘indifference’ instead of a moment that emphasizes the object's determinacy? Because we are in the sphere of ‘Mechanism’ where the determinations of the Concept are immediately identical and indeterminate. To emphasize their essential determinacy, their Concept-determinations, would be to pluck the mechanical object out of ‘Objectivity’ and to drop it back into ‘Concept’. Thus, the objects are indifferent to their essential determinacy because they are indeterminate and immediately identical.
The mechanical object, then, is a totality that has its determinateness reflected within itself. However, it is also indeterminate and, therefore, indifferent to the determinateness that is reflected within itself. The mechanical objects that comprise the mechanical object are also indeterminate and indifferent to the essential determinacy that is fundamental to each determination of the Concept: i.e., the moment of universality as a mechanical object is indifferent to the moment of particularity as a mechanical object or the moment of individuality as a mechanical object. Since they are indifferent to their essential determinacy, then, they are effectively external to it. External, in the sense that they do not relate to it as if it were part of their identity: ‘but the form that constitutes their difference and combines them into a unity is an external, indifferent one’ (SL: 713/412). In fact, it is this sentence that Kreines uses to make his point regarding ‘indifference’, he writes:
It is just that this feature [the determination that is indifferent] would be irrelevant to what the salt does, because what it does would always be determined independently of the features of any such whole—by the underlying components of the salt, for example. (2015: 38)
However, Kreines fails to take account of the fullness of this determination, that whilst the objects are indifferent to their determinateness, they are also essentially related to each other as indifferent. An example might help to elucidate the notion of ‘indifference’ and how it relates to the immanence of the Concept. Consider a teenager that rebels against his family by disregarding them. The teenager is being indifferent to his ‘essential determinacy’ since his family form an essential part of his identity. By being indifferent to them he behaves as if that part of his identity were no longer his. Nevertheless, despite his indifference he is still related to them, albeit externally, because the essential determinacy still forms a part of his identity. In much the same way, each mechanical object is indifferent to its essential determinacy and, therefore, externally related to each other object, yet it is nevertheless related to it. The mechanical object is, therefore, the tension between being a totality that has its determinateness reflected within itself and being indeterminate and indifferent to that essential determinateness.
What it is for a mechanical object to be is for it to be indifferent to its essential determinateness. This means, as we saw above, that it relates to its essential determinateness as something external to it. Thus, the tension between each object's essential determinacy and their indeterminacy is resolved by ‘moving’ their essential determinacy externally. Each mechanical object necessarily relates to each other mechanical object, because of their essential determinacy, but that relation is a merely external one.Footnote 8 To relate to one another is to determine one another, which effectively means to negate the determinateness of the other with one's own and in the process to receive the other's determinateness within oneself. Consider our angsty teenager. By negating his essential determinacy, he negates his connection to his family, but does not thereby become independent from them but instead relates to them in a purely negative sense: ‘part of what he is is that he does not want to be a member of his family’. Similarly, every mechanical object is externally determined by every other mechanical object in spite of their ‘indifference’ to each other. Moreover, the external determination of every mechanical object is guaranteed by the essential determinateness of every other mechanical object. What is crucial for Hegel is that the relation between mechanical objects is one of external, indifferent determination, and not self-determination. As Hegel writes: ‘there resides no self-determination [between mechanical objects]’ (SL: 714/413). If the mechanical objects were self-determining then there would be mediation between them and not ‘indifference’ in the face of their essential determinacy. Since, however, they are indifferent to and external to their essential determinacy they cannot determine themselves.
Looking now at the external determinateness between objects in subsection three of ‘A. The Mechanical Object’, it is immediately clear that it is an identical determinateness in two related senses. First, it is identical because it is always the relation between two mechanical objects that are immediately identical, indeterminate, and indifferent. In short, it is identical because each object is indifferent to its difference (their essential determinateness). Second, since their mode of relation is identical it follows that each object contains the same determinate content as every other object: ‘the determinateness is merely doubled, once in one object and again in the other, something utterly identical’ (SL: 714/413). The identity of their determinateness, however, manifests a contradiction. The mechanical objects are supposed to be indifferent to each other and yet they are identical. This contradiction, then, lies firmly at the core of the mechanical object since it is precisely through being what it is that it has generated its own contradiction. The reinstatement of each object's separate identity is because of its ‘indifference’ to every other object's external determinateness, whose very ‘indifference’ is the reason for the self-subsistence and externality to and from other objects.
The mechanical objects, thus, are in a negative unity. A ‘negative unity’ is one in which the moments of the unity negatively relate to each other because they both share an identity and are different to each other. Here, the objects are identical with each other and are in a unity or a totality. Now, however, this unity includes the negativity of difference between objects because of their separate identity: hence, they are in a negative unity. This negative unity of the identity of determinateness and ‘indifference’ to external determinateness is called the formal mechanical process.
Let us now reconsider Kreines's interpretation of ‘indifference’ based on the above analysis. Again, I do think that Kreines is partly right to interpret ‘indifference’ in ‘A. The Mechanical Object’ with a lack of explanatory relevance. Indeed, the fact that the essential determination of an object is not posited in its relation to another object seems to be a clear indicator that one cannot explain the reason for their relation through the content of its essential determination. That said, an aspect of the ontological examination of the category is lost if we just understand ‘indifference’ as the lack of explanatory relevance. For, as I have shown above, ‘indifference’ is a positive aspect of the mechanical object's being that does in fact explain why the mechanical object develops in the way that it does: it is because the object is indifferent to external determinateness that it enters into a negative unity with another mechanical object whose contradiction generates further determinations in ‘B. The Mechanical Process’. Moreover, ‘indifference’ is perfectly compatible with the Concept being immanent to the object. If we do not frame ‘A. The Mechanical Object’ as a thought experiment of the ‘conceptless mechanism’ thesis and instead understand it as the examination of the ontological structure of a mechanical object, then, knowing that it has ‘indifference’ explains rather a lot about what a mechanical object is.
Let us take as an example to explain how exactly my understanding of ‘indifference’ plays out differently to Kreines's by looking at the case of a pile rocks. Let us say that we see a pile of rocks, we might ask: why are they arranged in this way? A mechanistic explanation of this would refer to the underlying parts of the rocks and these, in turn would refer to their underlying parts. We would expect these underlying parts to mechanically explain why the pile is arranged in the way that it is. Hegel's point, however, is that because we are treating all of our terms identically, they are all equally objects, that there is no way for us to designate one object or the other as the explanation for why they are arranged into a pile. This is where I think Kreines is right to point out that indifference is a by-word for explanatory irrelevance: because the objects are indifferent to each other's determinateness (since they are taken as identical), none of the objects can be pointed out as the mechanism that explains their configuration.
However, this is not the only way to talk about ‘indifference’. If Hegel wants to critique determinism or the ‘conceptless mechanism’ hypothesis then it makes sense for him to target explicability since the virtue of mechanistic theories is supposed to be that they offer simpler explanations for why things do what they do. But Hegel is not just critiquing determinism (that forms only a small remark of the ‘A. The Mechanical Object’); the bulk of what Hegel is doing is to give an account of what mechanism is by showing the immanent development of the determination of mechanism. If we look at things this way, then it is clear that ‘indifference’, alongside other terms such as ‘immediate identity’ and ‘indeterminacy’, is a crucial element to our understanding of mechanical objects. If we see a pile of rocks and ask ourselves: why are they in the way that they are? Hegel provides us with a very strong answer: because what it is for a mechanical object to be is for its moments (the other rocks) to be immediately identical and indeterminate to each other such as to be arranged in an aggregate wherein each is indifferent to the other. This is why piles of rocks do not rotate around each other. Since each rock has the determination to be external and indifferent to each other rock then there is no way that they could affect each other. Getting clear on this prepares us nicely to understand the significance of the centre in ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’. The centre inaugurates self-determination in the Concept and paves the conceptual pathway for an understanding of mechanical objects that can affect each other through their own determination. I now turn to the fourth section of the paper.
IV. ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’: the rise of self-determination
I now examine ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’ to offer textual support for why I think that Kreines is mistaken to claim that ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’ is distinctive for inaugurating the immanence of the Concept. He claims this to support his idea that Hegel preserves ‘reasonable mechanism’ as a form of mechanical explanation that is acceptable (2015: 35). It is true that this section marks a decisive development in ‘Mechanism’ but what is decisive about this section is not the appearance of the immanent Concept in the object but the development of the object that has the self-determining Concept as its determination. I begin with the examination of the centre, the first section of ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’, where we will see that the centre is self-determining. This also runs counter to Kreines's interpretation of ‘reasonable mechanism’ as the domain in which there is no indifference. In section IV.ii I will look at the law in ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’, where we will see how the development of each object as self-determining leads to them no longer being indifferent.
IV.i. The Centre: self-determination and indifference
At the end of ‘B. The Mechanical Process’ the mechanical object becomes the product of the mechanical process, and it is this product that we must examine at the beginning of ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’. The first aspect of the product is its determination as the ‘posited totality of the [Concept]’ (SL: 721/422). This refers to the fully developed negative relations between the determinations of the Concept: they are no longer merely immediately identical but are mediated. Thus, the product has as its determinateness the negative mediation of the determinations of the Concept. Before, the mechanical objects determined each other purely externally, but now that the determinations of the Concept are posited and mediated the development is a self-development; universality is no longer immediately identical with individuality but developed, externally, into individuality. By developing into individuality, it has made explicit its mediation with individuality. This movement from universality to individuality as different moments is a self-determining moment.Footnote 9
It is not just self-determining, however, since it is still a mechanical object. As a mechanical object it is also indifferent to determinateness, even its own, and as such is still a manifold of mechanical objects. The development of these two determinations of the product takes us out of ‘B. Mechanical Process’ and into ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’ where, accordingly, the product becomes the centre.
The centre is self-determining, but also external and indifferent to determinateness: ‘in so far as the object as an immediate totality retains its indifference to determinateness, the latter is present in it also as unessential or as a mutual externality of many objects’ (SL: 722/423). Therefore, we have to hold these two fundamental determinations in mind when we begin to think about the centre. As self-determining it no longer is merely externally determined but has the source of its determinateness immanently within itself. At the same time, however, the centre is indifferent to its determinateness and, therefore, is still a manifold. It is not, however, a manifold of centres but a manifold of non-self-subsistent objects that have their essential determinacy in the centre.
The centre is the ‘pervading immanent essence of the objects’ (SL: 722/423) because it is identical to the non-self-subsistent objects and as identical is their essential determinateness. The centre, as self-determining, is ‘the essential determinateness […] by which they are united in and for themselves, and is their objective universality’ (SL: 722/423). It is through the determinateness of the centre that the non-self-subsistent objects are united with the centre. The determinateness of the non-self-subsistent objects, on the other hand, is that of mutual externality and is unessential to the unity of the objects with the centre.
First, let us consider the ways in which the non-self-subsistent objects relate to their centre. The centre is identical to the non-self-subsistent objects because it is their essential determinateness.Footnote 10 Their identity with the centre is their ‘being in their centre’ (SL: 722/423): another way of expressing the fact that their essential determinateness, their being, lies in the centre. It is crucial to recall at this point that their identity is not posited, so as to open up their difference, but is immanent to them both. Positing would ‘open up their difference’ because positing one side in a unity determines the other side and thus makes explicit the fact that there is a difference within the unity. The non-self-subsistent objects are immediately identical to the centre and in a unity which is their ‘absolute [Concept]’ (SL: 722/423).
Finally, we must reconcile the posited externality of the objects with each other with their immanent identity with the self-determining centre. This is accomplished by emphasizing the partial finitude of their relation to the centre because of their mutual externality. Thus, their unity with the centre is ‘merely an ought-to-be’ and ‘their consequent striving towards the centre is their absolute universality’ (SL: 722/423). Their being in their centre, therefore, is a striving towards that centre whence their essential determinateness arises, but only a striving since their determinateness also includes externality, i.e., their determinateness is external to the essential determinateness of the centre.
In this self-determining unity, then, it is misleading to continue to think of the centre as a ‘mere’ (SL: 722/424) mechanical object (bloßes Objekt) that has a manifold of indeterminate and indifferent mechanical objects. Despite their externality with each other, the non-self-subsistent objects have their essential determinateness in the self-determining activity of the centre. Thus, their unity is not a ‘mere order or arrangement and external connexion of parts [but] a genuine One’ (SL: 723/424). Now, the fact that the non-self-subsistent objects are identical with the centre leads to two reciprocal moments. First, the ‘non-self-subsistent […] are likewise by the regress of the [Concept] determined into individuals’ and the ‘identity of the central body with itself which is still a striving, is infected with externality’ (SL: 723/424). Since they are in fact identical, then it logically follows that the centre must have as its determinateness the externality of the non-self-subsistent objects and that the latter must be self-determining centres in their own right.
The non-self-subsistent objects, then, are determined as individual centres. However, they do not relate to each other as centres. To be a centre means being the essential determinateness of unessential non-self-subsistent objects. Therefore, every relative centre is also a non-self-subsistent object for other relative centres. Crucially, the unity of the relative centre with the non-self-subsistent objects is brought about by the original determinateness of the absolute centre. This is because the absolute centre is the essential determinateness of the non-self-subsistent objects, and it is only from that determinateness that they become relative centres.
Now, it has just been said that the determinateness of the relative centres is brought about by the absolute centre and that each relative centre has its own non-self-subsistent objects. Before, we saw that it was the determinateness of a non-self-subsistent object to strive for the centre because of its identity with it. The same is true for the relative centres and their non-self-subsistent objects: ‘the relative individual centres […] subsume[s] under [themselves] the non-self-subsistent objects whose superficial or formal individualisation [are] supported by it’ (SL: 723/425). This striving, however, is also a striving for the absolute centre since it is from the absolute centre that the relative centres receive their determinateness.Footnote 11 Thus, the non-self-subsistent objects have returned into the absolute centre through the mediation of the relative centres. This return, and the process whence it comes, is understood by Hegel as free mechanism. The process is a ‘free’ one because it has come about through the self-determining activity of the absolute centre, which determined the previously non-self-subsistent objects as centres as self-determining and no longer as merely external to the self-determination. What we now have to consider is the determinateness of the non-self-subsistent objects and relative centres. This is examined in the law.
Let us consider an example that might help to elucidate the significance of understanding the role of ‘indifference’ in the centre. Why is it that the planets rotate around the Sun? Simply put because the Sun is their essential determination as the self-determining centre. What makes a centre what it is is the fact that it is not externally posited but entirely self-determined as the centre. Now, the planet is entirely indifferent to this relation since it is not itself a self-determining object. This is an interesting case of indifference and self-determination going together. Crucially, it is not the case that the same object is both indifferent and self-determining. Rather, it is that the Sun is self-determining and is in a relation to indifferent planets. Specifically in relation to Kreines's point regarding indifference, it is the indifference of the planets that accounts for why they are planets. Because, if they were not indifferent, they would not be merely subsumed under the self-determining determinateness of the Sun but would be Suns, i.e., centres. Thus, it is because there is a moment of indifference that we can explain why there are planets that rotate around the Sun. Now, things change with the law. In the law the objects cease to be indifferent and become moments within a self-determining whole. To this we now turn.
IV.ii. The Law: how self-determination logically removes indifference
Free mechanism is the conclusion of the centre. The ‘freedom’ of the mechanistic relations is based on the fact that the objects, despite being different, have their determination in the objective universality of the centre. Thus, the centre is ‘a unity that sunders itself into the specific differences of the [Concept] and abides within its self-identical universality’ (SL: 724/426). It is only with the conclusion of the centre that the negativity of Concept, and by extension the negativity of its determinations (what I have, hitherto, called the ‘essential determinacy’), is made explicit. It has been made explicit because its essential determinacy, the negativity of its determinations, is now identical with itself as the lawful object. The point is not just that they are identical with each other, for they were identical from the beginning of ‘Mechanism’, but that they are identical through their difference to each other—they are mediated. The determination that has come about by their mediated relation is self-determination, and therefore, free. Therefore, what was hitherto a merely external relation between the various objects, what Hegel calls ‘order’, has now passed over into ‘the determination that is immanent and objective; this is law’ (SL: 724/426).
Now we have to consider the more precise determinations of the lawful objects. Firstly, a negative unity with the centre is formed once the relative centres returned into the absolute centre. Their return into the absolute centre after expressing their moments of difference or particularity as relative centres results in the centre that is ‘expanded within its pure ideality by difference’ (SL: 725/426). The ideality or essential determinateness of the centre has been expanded by the difference introduced to it by the particularization of the centre into relative centres. The ‘pure ideality’ of the centre refers to its determinateness as immanently pervasive: according to Hegel, a relation is ‘ideal’ when it is not merely posited but immanent. Though the determinations of the Concept have posited each other in order to reach this point of mediation, and immanence, it is the result of a mediated positing and not positing as such that results in the ideality of the lawful object. Positing is part of ideality in so far as it is the positing that has thoroughly made explicit the relations of the determinations of the Concept, by expressing their differences: only then does positing lead to immanence.
Second, this difference is no longer that of a striving towards the centre but of a ‘difference in its essential nature [that is] taken up into pure universality’ (SL: 725/426). The difference is now part of the essential determinateness of the absolute centre, the ‘pure universality’, and as such is immanently a part of the objects. Law, then, is not a mere ought, i.e., a mere striving towards unity, but is itself a unity that is universal through the ideal relation with different individuals.
Third, the ‘expanded’ determinateness of the centre is now a negative unity with the other objects because of their expressed difference, ‘which divides itself into subjective individuality and external objectivity, maintains the former in the latter and determines it in an ideal difference’ (SL: 725/427). The essential determinateness of the centre (‘subjective individuality’) is maintained within the objects (‘external objectivity’) through the ideality of their difference. Again, their difference is an ideal one because it is immanent to all of them and not merely posited.
The law, then, is the immanent determinateness that binds the centre with the external objects. Both have the same essential determinateness that now includes as its own the difference between them. Their difference is an ‘ideal’ one because the centre does not posit the objects, or vice versa, as different. Rather, their difference was immanently sublated within the essential determinateness of the centre. This means that any relation of the object to another object or of the object to the centre is a self-relation since they all have the same essential determinateness: the objects are, therefore, no longer indifferent to each other. This immanent self-relation is the self-determining, ‘imperishable source of self-kindling movement’ (SL: 725/427), that Hegel identifies as free mechanism. Their self-determining relation to each other is what guarantees their freedom. However, caution must be given to ascribing absolute freedom to this relation because it is nevertheless a relation between external objects. Thus, whilst Hegel calls this moment ‘free’ he does not mean that it is completely free, rather he means that it has ‘free necessity’(SL: 725/427). The kind of freedom involved is a ‘necessary’ one because it is between externally related objects and not the same object relating to itself, as was the case in the universal concept.
The above analysis of the law has shown two points. First, that the fundamental aspect of the law is the immanent self-determination between the objects and not merely the immanence of the Concept, as Kreines argues. Second, it is only in the law, where we have a thoroughly self-determining relation between the objects and the centre that the objects are no longer indifferent to each other. Unlike Kreines's notion of ‘reasonable mechanism’, then, it is not the presence of the immanent concept that dispels the ‘indifference’ of the objects, for that is already present from the start of ‘Mechanism’ and the centre, but their explicit self-determination that means that they are no longer ‘indifferent’.
Concluding Remarks
I will now make some concluding remarks about what I hope to have argued for in this paper. The objective of this paper was to show three misinterpretations of Kreines's account of ‘Mechanism’ in Reason in the World that have gone unnoticed in the literature.
First, I argued against Kreines's interpretation that ‘Mechanism’ begins with ‘conceptless mechanism’ as a hypothesis. I did this by giving an analysis of the first subsection of ‘A. The Mechanical Object’ which begins with the Concept immanent to the mechanical object.
Second, I argued against Kreines's conceptualization of ‘indifference’ as being opposed to the immanent Concept and as just expressing that a thing lacks explanatory relevance. Following the same strategy as above, I argued against this reading by giving an analysis of the appearance of ‘indifference’ in ‘Mechanism’ and showed how ‘indifference’ is, in fact, much richer in its conceptual significance than Kreines suggests and does, in fact, explain why it is that a mechanical object is the way that it is.
Third, Kreines further claims that what distinguishes ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’ from the rest of ‘Mechanism’ is the appearance of the immanent Concept. It is not the appearance of the immanent Concept, however, that is significant in ‘C. Absolute Mechanism’ but the appearance of the Concept that has self-determination. I began with an exposition of the centre where it was also shown that the non-self-subsistent objects were indifferent to each other and that their indifference was crucial to explaining why they are the way that they are. Finally, in the law we examined how the conferment of self-determination amongst all of the objects removed any indifference between them.
Most of the paper has focused on the Logic, though at times I have sought to tease out the concrete implications of my reading and how it differs from Kreines's so as to show more clearly what precisely is at stake in our competing readings of ‘Mechanism’. The most pertinent difference that my account has brought out is that there is no such thing as non-conceptual mechanism. All mechanistic explanations of the world must necessarily invoke an immanent concept to explain why it is that objects in mechanistic relations do what they do. An explanation of why things do what they do that does not appeal to immanent concepts, what Kreines calls ‘conceptless mechanism’, would be more appropriately located in ‘The Essential Relation’, where Hegel discusses the relation of the whole to its parts (SL: 513–17/166–71) and the relation of force to its expression (SL: 518–23/172–79)—not in ‘Mechanism’.
Hegel also has a strong answer for why certain objects are the way that they are. By situating the Concept as immanent to the mechanical object and showing that it is compatible with the indifference of the mechanical object, Hegel provides an ontological ground for why a pile of rocks, for example, is the way that it is. Why are the rocks in a pile and not simply independent objects that stand apart from each other? Briefly, because of their respective essential determinacy (their immanent Concept) as a pile of rocks—what it is for them to be a pile of rocks is the very fact that they are externally joined into a pile. Moreover, the reason for why they remain a pile of rocks and do not become anything else is because they are indifferent to each other. What it is for each rock to be is for it to be a rock that is indifferent to the external determinateness of the other rocks whilst being externally united with them in a pile.
This is why we do not see piles of rocks orbiting each other. There is no moment of self-determination in a pile of rocks. It is not until we have an object that acts as a centre, as a source of self-determination that is related to other, non-self-determining objects, that we get such a thing as a solar system. Moreover, it is because the centre is self-determining, and not merely immanent, that it is the centre of the non-self-subsistent objects, and it is because the other objects are indifferent to the determinateness of the centre that they remain the objects of the centre.
I have generally focused my examples on classically ‘mechanical’ examples but this need not be the case. Hegel is clear that ‘Mechanism’ is an ontological relation that manifests in all manner of different cases—such as the state.Footnote 12 However one wishes to investigate the ramifications of ‘Mechanism’, it is clear that the immanence of the Concept to objects, the indifference of objects to each other, the possibility of a self-determining object that relates to indifferent objects, or the lawful relation between self-determining objects, will all play a central role within any explanation.Footnote 13
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