picture. For here we cannot appeal to some expressively stronger metalanguage in which to stipulate or otherwise fix the meanings of our expressions in advance of using them. All there is fix those meanings our of them. And what we use them to do, the kind of doing that is is use their use, is making claims and inferences—in effect, making discursive commitments and rationally integrating them. For natural languages, and the thought conducted in them, that activity of rational integration must accordingly be able to be understood not only as consisting in the process of concepts by using expressions to make judgments, but also as the applying process that what concepts are expressed by those locutions: what fixes the determines determinate content and boundaries of those concepts. Carnap had followed Kant in seeing the prior determination of conceptual contents as a condition of the possibility of applying those concepts in judging—which, we have seen, is intelligible only as part of the activity of synthesizing a unity of apperception integrating such commitments into a rational whole. Hegel proposes a transformation of picture that Kant’s corresponds structurally to of two-phase picture with one that sees Quine’s replacement Carnap’s only two functions of or perspectives on a unified, ongoing discursive practice. In this respect, Hegel stands to Kant as Quine stands to Carnap. (Those who do not understand history are destined to repeat it.) 3. How could one understand the process of concepts in judgment, and their applying rational integration with one another by extracting consequences and extruding incompatibilities, as also being the process of the contents of those concepts, including their relations determining of material inferential consequence and incompatibility? Here again I think it is useful to think
picture. For here we cannot appeal to some expressively stronger metalanguage in which to stipulate or otherwise fix the meanings of our expressions in advance of using them. All there is fix those meanings is our use of them. And what we use them to do, the kind of doing that is their use, is making claims and inferences—in effect, making discursive commitments and rationally integrating them. For natural languages, and the thought conducted in them, that activity of rational integration must accordingly be able to be understood not only as consisting in the process of applying concepts by using expressions to make judgments, but also as the process that determines what concepts are expressed by those locutions: what fixes the determinate content and boundaries of those concepts. Carnap had followed Kant in seeing the prior determination of conceptual contents as a condition of the possibility of applying those concepts in judging—which, we have seen, is intelligible only as part of the activity of synthesizing a unity of apperception integrating such commitments into a rational whole. Hegel proposes a transformation of Kant’s picture that corresponds structurally to Quine’s replacement of Carnap’s two-phase picture with one that sees only two functions of or perspectives on a unified, ongoing discursive practice. In this respect, Hegel stands to Kant as Quine stands to Carnap. (Those who do not understand history are destined to repeat it.) 3. How could one understand the process of applying concepts in judgment, and their rational integration with one another by extracting consequences and extruding incompatibilities, as also being the process of determining the contents of those concepts, including their relations of material inferential consequence and incompatibility? Here again I think it is useful to think
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