Abstract

At some point, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit will beg the question: how does self-consciousness learn from experience? Or, to go beyond the de facto question: how does it learn to learn from its experience? Peter Simpson thinks the best explanation for both is an inferential model of induction, one far removed from the modern sort. That self-consciousness heaves toward scientific self-comprehension renders valid the character of the movement from self-consciousness “in-itself” to “for-itself” as essentially inductive. I will say more on this a bit later. First, I briefly sketch Simpson’s argument.