Terry Pinkard reconstructs the arguments of [[1807 The Phenomenology of Spirit]] by [[1831 Georg Hegel]]. **Hegelian preliminaries** p. 3 The kind of knowledge-claims (our ideas, our propositions, our sentences ) that we make can be said to match up with the objects that they purport to be about. p. 4 Two forms of skepticism follow: (1) generalized skepticism: whether knowledge claims can or do match up with real things; (2) result of adopting such a view: these knowledge-claims become the intermediaries between the thinking subject and the world. From this arises the problem of self-certification (certainty, that is being certain, infallibility, that is being infallibly known, indefensability, that is being necessary). The theory of such a ground would be a science in the sense of "vetenskap". Comment: Another word for this is meta-fictives, such as the planet and networks, that are conditioned on being paradigmatically true. This is from The Global Empire by Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist. Another word for it would be master-signifier. p. 5 Since each side of these disputes already make assumptions in making knowledge-claims, each of these kinds of theories as Hegel puts it is only a appearance "utseende", a historical phenomenon. Comment: Another way to categorize these appearances is into the conditions for them, being instinct, drive, desire and transcedence. This is an argument that is outlined in Digital Libido by Alexander Bard and Jan Söderqvist and continued in Process and Event. p. 5 To look at accounts as appearances is to look at them as formations, gestalts, perspectives of consciousness. Comment: For example Ken Wilber speaks of forms being perspectives, Iain McGillcrist speaks of gestalts instead. When Ken Wilber speaks of worldspaces he means formations of consciousness in this sense, and argue that there are nested, yet Slavoj Zizek and Alexander Bard argues that the ground is actually from the point of view of a sociont. p. 6 For Hegel that ground is called essence or absolute essence of the formations of consciousness. Comment: In Kashmir Shaivism, this ground are called essence-nature, and in beginner training it is pointed out to the participant where that essence-nature is located.