@Deckard,
Deckard;149121 wrote:Is perhaps "synthesis" misleading because it suggests a combining of the previous two stages which seems to be a process of ever expanding as opposed to negation of negation of negation... which seems to suggest the opposite.
For me, it's is graphically represented by a widening spiral. So synthesis is actually good at indicating an accumulation of determinate negations. For instance, as we pass through life we outgrow certain attitudes/perspectives but remember them and still possess their essence to the degree that we can smile ironically when we see a younger person making the same (for us) error.
This is how I understand "determinate negation." Not P is some valuable information at times.
On the other hand, and more in line without our suggestion, I think a tightening spiral exists simultaneously with the widening spiral. This would be Occam's razor, or the progress of abstraction in mathematics. Things become more and more clear, simple, etc., as confusions are negated.
I was fond of the term "nonism" not long ago for this very reason. In my opinion, to see that all essence is accidental (and I believe Wittgenstein as much as says this in the TLP), is to see that concepts like "man" or "self" or "universe" are all contingent. That the mind/matter distinction is a waste of breath when it comes to serious logic. For me, this is the most exciting part of how I take Hegel/Wittgenstein.
All contingent concepts, which are founded on negation (p= not not p) are themselves negated, as no finite thing can be the ground. And this includes the concept of the ground. Thus negative ontology. No concept or essence can be THE essence. Maybe it's like a series of errors that negate themselves into self-consciousness. When discourse becomes aware that the real is revealed by discourse, and that the real is not different than discourse. This would be a negation of negation. False dichotomies are tossed on a bonfire of vanities. It reminds me of the limit concept. Thought can't have infinity directly, but it can negate all the false infinities? It can finally see itself as tautology and contradiction. (Witt) or being and nothingness (Hegel, and all those existentialists that ripped him off...).
Heraclitus and his River are good stuff. We can step into the same river twice, because the river is the intelligible form of the water. And water is the intelligible form of the associated qualia. But I digress.