On the Spiritual Essence of the Catch-22 (Part I)

[Federica]

Since he's been recently mentioned a few times, I have to say that the last 3 things JF has written in the FB Anthroposophy group are big nonsense in my view. The last one: to the question whether one can "claim to be an anthroposophist and not believe in god/jesus" he answered "Absolutely yes". That's why, among other reasons, we need to be "fighters for the spirit" - first and foremost within ourselves, but we also need to fight against detrimental and insidious speech, that I am seeing a ton of everywhere, for example logging into the Anthroposophy group today, as well as in many other places.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/anthroposophy

[AshvinP]

Since he's been recently mentioned a few times, I have to say that the last 3 things JF has written in the FB Anthroposophy group are big nonsense in my view. The last one: to the question whether one can "claim to be an anthroposophist and not believe in god/jesus" he answered "Absolutely yes". That's why, among other reasons, we need to be "fighters for the spirit" - first and foremost within ourselves, but we also need to fight against detrimental and insidious speech, that I am seeing a ton of everywhere, for example logging into the Anthroposophy group today, as well as in many other places.

Yes, whenever JF has posted on FB about PoF or Steiner's early works, especially, I have made sure to at least make a few comments that elucidate the continuity between them and spiritual science for the benefit of others who are reading. It is especially important because there could be many people relatively new to Anthroposophy perusing the posts and being misled by the seeming logical coherence of JF's views. I have tried to discuss this with him more directly but he is simply impossible to engage in a reasonably coherent discussion about these things, due to his 'shadow dancing' tendencies. He will selectively ignore quotes and reasoned points that challenge his view and just continue speaking about whatever it is that he wants to speak about, as if we are "in a pub" (that is the reason he usually invokes for why we can't have a disciplined and reasoned discussion which considers the whole context of isolated statements). I pointed out to him, though, that if a bunch of people were in a pub and one person continually ignored the others and redirected the conversation to whatever he wanted to speak about, he would soon be at the pub talking to himself

[AshvinP]

Ashvin,

I currently reading steiners dissertation and think about the written.

Steiner try’s to create a artificial given, a aggregate of colors, forms and other sensation, that have nothing in Common with another.
Even the notion of sensation is a product of cognitive activity.

By creating this given, isn’t Steiner doing something akin to Kant, when he speaks of the „thing itself“?
Because this given isn’t something which one can experience.

Steiner demonstrates how our thinking isn’t just a copy of a world outside, but that the world becomes only conscious trough the act of cognition.

This could be end up as an abstract model, but that should not lead us any further than other models of cognition.
How can we become conscious of this process?


Do we look at ideas or at objects (: ?

Guney, I highly recommend this essay by Seth Miller - https://www.academia.edu/545695/Thinkin ... an_Freedom

It is an excellent summary of PoF and Steiner's epistemology. Here is a quote relevant to your question:

Perhaps there is a way out. If an epistemology is to provide the foundation for the whole of knowledge, for an understanding of the nature of knowledge itself, it cannot itself be founded upon any facts already existing within that sphere. The starting point of an epistemology must
itself lie outside of the act of cognition – it must not presuppose it. Instead, the roots of cognition must be found in another soil, in what lies immediately before cognition, so that the very next step leads us to the act of cognition itself.

What is the soil which is not cognition itself but lies just beneath it? It cannot be the “I” or “Self”, as these already depend up on the capacity of cognition for their recognition. We cannot find cognition’s basis in the “I”, but rather can only discover the “I” through cognition. In fact our epistemology cannot rely upon any distinction whatsoever, as every distinction requires cognition. We see then that we must, in a very real sense, actually dismantle the act of cognition, trace it backwards, and by attempting to eliminate it, see where it leads. Admittedly, this can only be done as an act of cognition.

This puts us in an interesting situation: we are looking for what lies immediately before the act of cognition, but cannot rely upon the fruits of cognition – knowledge – to make this realm appear for us. The best we can do is bring into awareness, by taking out of our experience all that is mediated to us through our cognition, the necessity for this realm, which we can call the “given”, or the directly given world-picture. This given can only be pointed to, but not grasped, by cognition. Every picture formed of it, every thought we may have about it, is already of necessity mediated by the act of cognition, yet our goal is to show how this realm, which is free of all predicates and to which nothing can be ascribed is the substrate upon which cognition rests. It admits no distinctions whatsoever, no cause and effect, no substance or essence, no material or spiritual, no reality, knowledge, or self. In this sense, the given is similar to a Zen koan in that it brings us to the limits of our own cognition directly. It is only in the shape of the hole created in cognition, by this very act of cognition itself, that we can be directed towards what is “given”.
...
Imagine that a fully formed, intelligent human being was suddenly created out of nothing and was placed in the world. The very first impressions arising in her through her senses and her thinking would characterize the given. Of course this situation never actually occurs, not even in a new-born child – one never experiences the given itself without the act of cognition already at work. Those familiar with the alchemical tradition in the West may recognize the given in the “prima materia” – a formless substance out of which all forms arise. Similarly in the East we find the Unnamable Tao, which shares many aspects of what is here being described as the given. The point is simply that there is a world available to cognition, which has yet to be
cognized, and in this sense is prior to the activity of cognition, which then takes this world as its object through its own activity.

Ironically, Seth Miller was/is good friends with JF, but the latter simply cannot comprehend this function of exploring the 'given' in PoF. I will try to bring the paper to his attention. These are the sorts of critical realizations we need to make in the process of imaginatively moving through our cognitive-perceptual process to attain the perspective shift that alone carries the Hope of redeeming the abstract intellect so it can serve as the proper bridge between matter and spirit.

[Federica]

Since he's been recently mentioned a few times, I have to say that the last 3 things JF has written in the FB Anthroposophy group are big nonsense in my view. The last one: to the question whether one can "claim to be an anthroposophist and not believe in god/jesus" he answered "Absolutely yes". That's why, among other reasons, we need to be "fighters for the spirit" - first and foremost within ourselves, but we also need to fight against detrimental and insidious speech, that I am seeing a ton of everywhere, for example logging into the Anthroposophy group today, as well as in many other places.

Yes, whenever JF has posted on FB about PoF or Steiner's early works, especially, I have made sure to at least make a few comments that elucidate the continuity between them and spiritual science for the benefit of others who are reading. It is especially important because there could be many people relatively new to Anthroposophy perusing the posts and being misled by the seeming logical coherence of JF's views. I have tried to discuss this with him more directly but he is simply impossible to engage in a reasonably coherent discussion about these things, due to his 'shadow dancing' tendencies. He will selectively ignore quotes and reasoned points that challenge his view and just continue speaking about whatever it is that he wants to speak about, as if we are "in a pub" (that is the reason he usually invokes for why we can't have a disciplined and reasoned discussion which considers the whole context of isolated statements). I pointed out to him, though, that if a bunch of people were in a pub and one person continually ignored the others and redirected the conversation to whatever he wanted to speak about, he would soon be at the pub talking to himself

Haha yes, thank you
Hopefully you're right, but meanwhile he got more likes than any other of the 68 comments to that question.

[AshvinP]

This is also a highly interesting development - https://petersonacademy.com/

JP talks about it with Rogan starting here:



What would be more interesting is if a course could be offered on the phenomenology of spiritual activity. Maybe something that started with Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Pony, etc. and shows how their approaches are resolved and enhanced through Steiner.

At one point in the interview, JP even speaks of 'musical integration' along the depth axis of being. I have always felt that he would be one of the most receptive to esoteric science as the natural continuation of the 'meaningful path of adopting maximal responsibility', if it were somehow brought to his attention in a phenomenological and streamlined way.

[Federica]

Guney, I highly recommend this essay by Seth Miller - https://www.academia.edu/545695/Thinkin ... an_Freedom

It is an excellent summary of PoF and Steiner's epistemology. Here is a quote relevant to your question:

Perhaps there is a way out. If an epistemology is to provide the foundation for the whole of knowledge, for an understanding of the nature of knowledge itself, it cannot itself be founded upon any facts already existing within that sphere. The starting point of an epistemology must
itself lie outside of the act of cognition – it must not presuppose it. Instead, the roots of cognition must be found in another soil, in what lies immediately before cognition, so that the very next step leads us to the act of cognition itself.

What is the soil which is not cognition itself but lies just beneath it? It cannot be the “I” or “Self”, as these already depend up on the capacity of cognition for their recognition. We cannot find cognition’s basis in the “I”, but rather can only discover the “I” through cognition. In fact our epistemology cannot rely upon any distinction whatsoever, as every distinction requires cognition. We see then that we must, in a very real sense, actually dismantle the act of cognition, trace it backwards, and by attempting to eliminate it, see where it leads. Admittedly, this can only be done as an act of cognition.

This puts us in an interesting situation: we are looking for what lies immediately before the act of cognition, but cannot rely upon the fruits of cognition – knowledge – to make this realm appear for us. The best we can do is bring into awareness, by taking out of our experience all that is mediated to us through our cognition, the necessity for this realm, which we can call the “given”, or the directly given world-picture. This given can only be pointed to, but not grasped, by cognition. Every picture formed of it, every thought we may have about it, is already of necessity mediated by the act of cognition, yet our goal is to show how this realm, which is free of all predicates and to which nothing can be ascribed is the substrate upon which cognition rests. It admits no distinctions whatsoever, no cause and effect, no substance or essence, no material or spiritual, no reality, knowledge, or self. In this sense, the given is similar to a Zen koan in that it brings us to the limits of our own cognition directly. It is only in the shape of the hole created in cognition, by this very act of cognition itself, that we can be directed towards what is “given”.
...

Now, Ashvin, I have not read the whole article - only this quote. I trust you will tell me if reading the whole article would change anything in relation to the following (which I strongly doubt). I see a problem in this:

The starting point of an epistemology must itself lie outside of the act of cognition – it must not presuppose it. Instead, the roots of cognition must be found in another soil, in what lies immediately before cognition, so that the very next step leads us to the act of cognition itself.

Aiming to stay “beneath cognition” in order to understand cognition is an impossible, abstract-philosophical quest. In the same way in which we cannot stand outside thinking in order to grasp what we are doing with our activity, we cannot stand outside or beneath cognition to understand cognition. He seeks a vantage point - that can't be right. The given is not outside cognition, not “immediately before it”. In the same way that thinking is to be turned inside out and it’s hopeless and misled to look for a vantage point, so it is for “cognition”. We can only turn it inside out. The given, and all the reasoning around it, is a scaffolding. Very useful and necessary, but still a scaffolding. It’s misleading to confuse the scaffolding for something that should provide a final and absolute foundation. Once thinking activity has been turned inside out, the scaffolding is not necessary nor useful anymore.

If an epistemology is to provide the foundation for the whole of knowledge, for an understanding of the nature of knowledge itself, it cannot itself be founded upon any facts already existing within that sphere.

This is perhaps applicable to an epistemology. But Steiner does not epistemologize. That’s not what Anthroposophy does or is. Even titling an article "Steiner's Epistemology" is a stretch, a construct. Correspondingly, it's not a chance that Steiner in PoF not even once referred to his reflections in PoF as an epistemology.


PS. I have noticed that SM says “Admittedly, this can only be done as an act of cognition”. However this doesn’t do much good, since he continues: “The best we can do is bring into awareness, by taking out of our experience all that is mediated to us through our cognition, the necessity for this realm, which we can call the “given”, or the directly given world-picture”, and doesn't draw attention to the fractal nature of the question (if I can take the liberty to summarize my point in these terms).

[AshvinP]

Now, Ashvin, I have not read the whole article - only this quote. I trust you will tell me if reading the whole article would change anything in relation to the following (which I strongly doubt). I see a problem in this:

The starting point of an epistemology must itself lie outside of the act of cognition – it must not presuppose it. Instead, the roots of cognition must be found in another soil, in what lies immediately before cognition, so that the very next step leads us to the act of cognition itself.

Aiming to stay “beneath cognition” in order to understand cognition is an impossible, abstract-philosophical quest. In the same way in which we cannot stand outside thinking in order to grasp what we are doing with our activity, we cannot stand outside or beneath cognition to understand cognition. He seeks a vantage point - that can't be right. The given is not outside cognition, not “immediately before it”. In the same way that thinking is to be turned inside out and it’s hopeless and misled to look for a vantage point, so it is for “cognition”. We can only turn it inside out. The given, and all the reasoning around it, is a scaffolding. Very useful and necessary, but still a scaffolding. It’s misleading to confuse the scaffolding for something that should provide a final and absolute foundation. Once thinking activity has been turned inside out, the scaffolding is not necessary or useful anymore

If an epistemology is to provide the foundation for the whole of knowledge, for an understanding of the nature of knowledge itself, it cannot itself be founded upon any facts already existing within that sphere.

Thi is perhaps applicable to an epistemology. But Steiner does not epistemologize. That’s not what Anthroposophy does. Even titling an article "Steiner's Epistemology" is a stretch, a construct. Correspondingly, it's not a chance that Steiner in PoF not even once referred to his reflections in PoF as an epistemology.


PS. I have noticed that SM says “Admittedly, this can only be done as an act of cognition”. However this doesn’t do much good, since he continues: “The best we can do is bring into awareness, by taking out of our experience all that is mediated to us through our cognition, the necessity for this realm, which we can call the “given”, or the directly given world-picture”, and doesn't draw attention to the fractal nature of the question (if I can take the liberty to summarize my point in these terms).

Yes, I would encourage to read through the whole article for more context, and preferably without a strong doubt that your experience could be changed   I think it will become apparent that he is not proceeding in any abstract theoretical way or adopting a non-existent perspective and confusing conceptual scaffolding for realities. 

I think you are pointing to a key issue in the phenomenology of spiritual activity that is useful to explore further. It is often felt like we should stick with describing immediate states of cognitive experience, i.e. what is generally obvious to everyone. Yet we will never get beyond the Catch-22 in that way because insights into the process of knowing are not contained within anything we already know. Cleric also discusses this in FoHC:

When speaking of phenomenology this shouldn’t be mistaken for investigation of only what is obvious. There are many examples of experiential phenomena that can only be beheld after certain conditions are met. For example, pure mathematics can be considered a form of phenomenology. What we are investigating are the patterns of our own mathematical thinking. Yet for someone who has never attempted to approach such a kind of thinking, these cognitive phenomena will not at all be obvious. It would be similar with a person who lacks some sensory organ and doesn’t find the experience of phenomena that others talk about. So the reader shouldn’t immediately dismiss what we’ll be discussing here, just because it may not be immediately obvious. All care will be taken to provide descriptions of the steps needed to approach non-obvious phenomena but the reader will need to apply certain inner effort to follow these steps.

What SM is expressing is intimately related to the above and this article on the Catch-22, i.e. about using our imaginative activity (for ex. through analogical reasoning) to go beyond our personal sphere of experience and to know the very activity of knowing, to somehow become cognitively sensitive to the processes that structure cognition and thereby always transcend the latter. Miller isn't suggesting that we can literally 'get outside' of or 'beneath' cognition in any metaphysical way, but that some kind of imaginative effort must be made to become more sensitive to the subtle spiritual activity that is normally unperceived and unknown. We will never find the deeper intuitive movements hiding within the sphere of our past personal experience, knowledge, or worldview (the mind container).

The 'given' in Steiner's epistemology is essentially the highest Intuitive movements within the domain of potential from which all concrete paths of conceptual-perceptual experience are 'narrowed down' in the sense of the negative 20 questions metaphor. It is what we normally conceive as an 'objective reality' that stimulates our spiritual activity and with which our activity interacts (without assuming anything about the metaphysical nature of that objective reality). By imaginatively eliminating the cognitive structuring of this objective world, we arrive at the sensory counterpole of Intuition - a 'relationless aggregate' of sensory impressions that cannot be distinguished in any of the ways we are used to, i.e. inner and outer, matter and spirit, object and subject, cause and effect, etc.

As discussed through the electrolysis analogy, it is important to imaginatively delaminate these aspects of experience so we can grow more sensitive to the underlying spiritual gestures that are responsible for them. Another example of this is Cleric's alien dwelling illustration in FoHC - this alien dwelling does not exist anywhere in reality, we will never literally experience it as a physical structure, but rather is an imaginative exercise to become more sensitive to those intuitive knowing aspects of our current experience we take for granted, i.e. the merging together of sensory impressions with concepts and temporal intuition that elucidate the former's functions and meaningfully orient our stream of becoming. 

This imaginative approach is at the heart of Steiner's epistemological work which is simultaneously a phenomenology of knowing and also becomes ontology, since we imaginatively retrace into the creative knowing processes that structure all domains of experiential reality. Epistemology is simply the science (or phenomenology) of knowing, what it means 'to know'. Anthroposophy and spiritual science are what result when epistemology is freed from limiting assumptions and allowed to run its natural course through the inner life of spiritual activity. There we discover the true spiritual sources of our capacity to experientially know the World. 

We never do confront a sense world completely devoid of all thought-content. At most, in early childhood where there is as yet no trace of thinking, do we come close to pure sense perception. In ordinary life we have to do with an experience that is half-permeated by thinking, that already appears more or less lifted out of the darkness of perception into the bright clarity of spiritual comprehension. The sciences work toward the goal of fully overcoming this darkness and of leaving nothing in experience that has not been permeated with thought. Now what task has epistemology fulfilled with respect to the other sciences? It has made clear to us what the purpose and task of any science is. It has shown us what the significance is of the content of the individual sciences. Our epistemology is the science that characterizes all the other sciences. It has made clear to us that what is gained by the individual sciences is the objective ground of world existence. The sciences arrive at a series of concepts; epistemology teaches us about the actual task of these concepts. By arriving at this distinctive conclusion, our epistemology, which is in keeping with the sense of Goethe's way of thinking, diverges from all other epistemologies of the present day. Our epistemology does not merely want to establish a formal connection between thinking and real being; it does not want to solve the epistemological problem in a merely logical way; it wants to arrive at a positive result. It shows what the content of our thinking is; and it finds that this what is at the same time the objective content of the world. Thus epistemology becomes for us the most significant of the sciences for the human being. It gives man clarity about himself; it shows him his place in the world; it is thereby a source of satisfaction for him. It first tells him what he is called to be and to do. The human being feels himself uplifted in his possession of its truths; his scientific investigation gains a new illumination. Now he knows for the first time that he is most directly connected with the core of world existence, that he uncovers this core which remains hidden to all other beings, that in him the world spirit comes to manifestation, that the world spirit dwells within him. He sees himself as the one who completes the world process; he sees that he is called to accomplish what the other powers of the world are not able to do, that he has to set the crown upon creation. If religion teaches that God created man in His own image, then our epistemology teaches us that God has led His creation only to a certain point. There He let the human being arise, and the human being, by knowing himself and looking about him, sets himself the task of working on, of completing what the primal power began.

[Güney27]

Ashvin,

I currently reading steiners dissertation and think about the written.

Steiner try’s to create a artificial given, a aggregate of colors, forms and other sensation, that have nothing in Common with another.
Even the notion of sensation is a product of cognitive activity.

By creating this given, isn’t Steiner doing something akin to Kant, when he speaks of the „thing itself“?
Because this given isn’t something which one can experience.

Steiner demonstrates how our thinking isn’t just a copy of a world outside, but that the world becomes only conscious trough the act of cognition.

This could be end up as an abstract model, but that should not lead us any further than other models of cognition.
How can we become conscious of this process?


Do we look at ideas or at objects (: ?

Guney, I highly recommend this essay by Seth Miller - https://www.academia.edu/545695/Thinkin ... an_Freedom

It is an excellent summary of PoF and Steiner's epistemology. Here is a quote relevant to your question:

Perhaps there is a way out. If an epistemology is to provide the foundation for the whole of knowledge, for an understanding of the nature of knowledge itself, it cannot itself be founded upon any facts already existing within that sphere. The starting point of an epistemology must
itself lie outside of the act of cognition – it must not presuppose it. Instead, the roots of cognition must be found in another soil, in what lies immediately before cognition, so that the very next step leads us to the act of cognition itself.

What is the soil which is not cognition itself but lies just beneath it? It cannot be the “I” or “Self”, as these already depend up on the capacity of cognition for their recognition. We cannot find cognition’s basis in the “I”, but rather can only discover the “I” through cognition. In fact our epistemology cannot rely upon any distinction whatsoever, as every distinction requires cognition. We see then that we must, in a very real sense, actually dismantle the act of cognition, trace it backwards, and by attempting to eliminate it, see where it leads. Admittedly, this can only be done as an act of cognition.

This puts us in an interesting situation: we are looking for what lies immediately before the act of cognition, but cannot rely upon the fruits of cognition – knowledge – to make this realm appear for us. The best we can do is bring into awareness, by taking out of our experience all that is mediated to us through our cognition, the necessity for this realm, which we can call the “given”, or the directly given world-picture. This given can only be pointed to, but not grasped, by cognition. Every picture formed of it, every thought we may have about it, is already of necessity mediated by the act of cognition, yet our goal is to show how this realm, which is free of all predicates and to which nothing can be ascribed is the substrate upon which cognition rests. It admits no distinctions whatsoever, no cause and effect, no substance or essence, no material or spiritual, no reality, knowledge, or self. In this sense, the given is similar to a Zen koan in that it brings us to the limits of our own cognition directly. It is only in the shape of the hole created in cognition, by this very act of cognition itself, that we can be directed towards what is “given”.
...
Imagine that a fully formed, intelligent human being was suddenly created out of nothing and was placed in the world. The very first impressions arising in her through her senses and her thinking would characterize the given. Of course this situation never actually occurs, not even in a new-born child – one never experiences the given itself without the act of cognition already at work. Those familiar with the alchemical tradition in the West may recognize the given in the “prima materia” – a formless substance out of which all forms arise. Similarly in the East we find the Unnamable Tao, which shares many aspects of what is here being described as the given. The point is simply that there is a world available to cognition, which has yet to be
cognized, and in this sense is prior to the activity of cognition, which then takes this world as its object through its own activity.

Ironically, Seth Miller was/is good friends with JF, but the latter simply cannot comprehend this function of exploring the 'given' in PoF. I will try to bring the paper to his attention. These are the sorts of critical realizations we need to make in the process of imaginatively moving through our cognitive-perceptual process to attain the perspective shift that alone carries the Hope of redeeming the abstract intellect so it can serve as the proper bridge between matter and spirit.

Thanks for the recommendation.

I realized that I find clerics writing style the most accessible for myself.

In the case of Seth miller, Steiner and others there is always the danger of getting in the mind container mode.
When I read clerics post it helps me to get conscious of the context in which my thinking moves.

I find the series of essays you have written very hard to access to.

I read PoF but it wasn't as helpful as clerics texts on this forum.

I don’t get how cleric could come to this knowledge trough Steiner.
Of course there are many similarities, but differences too.

But I think it has to do with the background on has.
I don’t have a big knowledge in philosophy or in science.

For people with this background it is maybe easier to read Steiners epistemological books.

[Güney27]

For example this passage:

This gives us knowledge of the tree from the inside. To be more concrete and relate back to what was already said in the Central Topic, we can investigate how ideas, opinions, prejudices, sympathies and antipathies, hopes and fears, in fact constrain the palette of possible thoughts that we think. In the tree metaphor, all these things represent the inner geometry of the branches within which our thinking activity operates. The more we orient ourselves within these constraints, the more intuition we gain about the geometry and dynamics of our conscious experience. If we are to extend this metaphor even further, we can say that we can liberate our activity to such an extent that we become conscious even within the roots and thus of the ground. In this way we can find the inner reality of what we otherwise experience only indirectly as sensory world (where the leat-concepts touch the ground). This is mentioned only in passing, it's more 'advanced' and not strictly needed for the Central Topic.

[Federica]

Yes, I would encourage to read through the whole article for more context, and preferably without a strong doubt that your experience could be changed   I think it will become apparent that he is not proceeding in any abstract theoretical way or adopting a non-existent perspective and confusing conceptual scaffolding for realities. 

I think you are pointing to a key issue in the phenomenology of spiritual activity that is useful to explore further. It is often felt like we should stick with describing immediate states of cognitive experience, i.e. what is generally obvious to everyone. Yet we will never get beyond the Catch-22 in that way because insights into the process of knowing are not contained within anything we already know. Cleric also discusses this in FoHC:

When speaking of phenomenology this shouldn’t be mistaken for investigation of only what is obvious. There are many examples of experiential phenomena that can only be beheld after certain conditions are met. For example, pure mathematics can be considered a form of phenomenology. What we are investigating are the patterns of our own mathematical thinking. Yet for someone who has never attempted to approach such a kind of thinking, these cognitive phenomena will not at all be obvious. It would be similar with a person who lacks some sensory organ and doesn’t find the experience of phenomena that others talk about. So the reader shouldn’t immediately dismiss what we’ll be discussing here, just because it may not be immediately obvious. All care will be taken to provide descriptions of the steps needed to approach non-obvious phenomena but the reader will need to apply certain inner effort to follow these steps.

What SM is expressing is intimately related to the above and this article on the Catch-22, i.e. about using our imaginative activity (for ex. through analogical reasoning) to go beyond our personal sphere of experience and to know the very activity of knowing, to somehow become cognitively sensitive to the processes that structure cognition and thereby always transcend the latter. Miller isn't suggesting that we can literally 'get outside' of or 'beneath' cognition in any metaphysical way, but that some kind of imaginative effort must be made to become more sensitive to the subtle spiritual activity that is normally unperceived and unknown. We will never find the deeper intuitive movements hiding within the sphere of our past personal experience, knowledge, or worldview (the mind container).

The 'given' in Steiner's epistemology is essentially the highest Intuitive movements within the domain of potential from which all concrete paths of conceptual-perceptual experience are 'narrowed down' in the sense of the negative 20 questions metaphor. It is what we normally conceive as an 'objective reality' that stimulates our spiritual activity and with which our activity interacts (without assuming anything about the metaphysical nature of that objective reality). By imaginatively eliminating the cognitive structuring of this objective world, we arrive at the sensory counterpole of Intuition - a 'relationless aggregate' of sensory impressions that cannot be distinguished in any of the ways we are used to, i.e. inner and outer, matter and spirit, object and subject, cause and effect, etc.

As discussed through the electrolysis analogy, it is important to imaginatively delaminate these aspects of experience so we can grow more sensitive to the underlying spiritual gestures that are responsible for them. Another example of this is Cleric's alien dwelling illustration in FoHC - this alien dwelling does not exist anywhere in reality, we will never literally experience it as a physical structure, but rather is an imaginative exercise to become more sensitive to those intuitive knowing aspects of our current experience we take for granted, i.e. the merging together of sensory impressions with concepts and temporal intuition that elucidate the former's functions and meaningfully orient our stream of becoming. 

This imaginative approach is at the heart of Steiner's epistemological work which is simultaneously a phenomenology of knowing and also becomes ontology, since we imaginatively retrace into the creative knowing processes that structure all domains of experiential reality. Epistemology is simply the science (or phenomenology) of knowing, what it means 'to know'. Anthroposophy and spiritual science are what result when epistemology is freed from limiting assumptions and allowed to run its natural course through the inner life of spiritual activity. There we discover the true spiritual sources of our capacity to experientially know the World. 

You were right, Ashvin, reading the whole article has helped. I recognize that it no longer appears that SM is searching for any external vantage point, and there is more subtlety to the reasoning than it appears from the quote. (This is partly because your quote was not accurate. You patched together two separate paragraphs without notice, so that “This puts us in an interesting situation” points to one thing in the article, and to another one in the quote). Now my impression is, the article is compatible with an understanding of PoF. Nonetheless, I have multiple caveats.

First, since you reiterate the wording, let me say that the expression “Steiner’s epistemology”, for my sense of beauty, is slippery spiritual taste. In the simplest terms, this is because as soon as we utter the word, and think of “epistemology”, we are contemplating a theory. That’s what the -logy does to the reality of episteme. But because this contemplation is poured onto itself - knowledge itself - the conundrum of recursiveness shows up, which can only be appeased if we at the same time invite, not “the given” as a conceptual hero of the tale, coming to liberate human cognition from perpetual relativity, but the experienced consciousness of a process. As the hologrammatic encoding of such process, PoF is stripped of its dimensionality when reduced to an epistemology.

To be fair, SM expresses this point very well (but too late in the article, in my opinion) at page 11, when he brings in the hard problem of consciousness and criticizes the materialists' attempt to explain cognition with brain: “cognition is not a result, but rather is the living process out of which all the results fall”.

Unfortunately, in the next passage, the previous pieces are not clearly put into fruition, but rather the reasoning is troubled with the idea that one has to find “the beginning”: ““The brain” – as concept – does not declare itself, out of itself, the necessity for cognition. “The brain” is rather a passive element of the given, equivalent in this way to “a truck” or “the self” – none of these can provide a proper foundation for cognition, no matter how detailed and thorough the concept of “the brain” becomes. The whole point is to not begin in the middle, but at the beginning. In this respect the “brain” – which is only what it is because of how we approach it in and through our cognition – cannot be a proper foundation, as it is ‘in the middle’ as it were.”

Yes, the concept “brain” can’t be a foundation, but the same applies to “epistemology”. And this idea to strive to begin at the beginning seems misleading to me, to the extent that it suggests linearity and sequence, while the ingrained cognitive patterns of linearity should be made flexible, not borrowed as such, since they are right in the middle of our existential struggles. And so, in an effort to explain “Steiner’s epistemology” along these lines (literally, lines) he ends up making improbable statements such as: “The question is, rather, where within the given do we find something that is not passively given, but is given only to the extent that it is actively being produced in the act of cognition?”. Another one: “it is only through the act of cognition that our ideas and concepts arise and come to us as a part of the given.” Helpful to someone who is attempting to approach PoF?

The way Steiner puts it, in PoF Chapter V, avoids all such conceptual ruggedness and is more conducive to understanding, in my view, as in “if I want to assert anything whatever about it [the percept], I can do so only with the help of thinking. If I assert that the world is my mental picture, I have enunciated the result of an act of thinking. And if my thinking is not applicable to the world, then this result is false. Between a percept and every kind of assertion about it there intervenes thinking” and subsequent sentences, where the question is illustrated: “What right have you to declare the world to be complete without thinking?”

On the contrary, statements like SM’s run a big risk of putting whoever has not already reflected on, and worked through, “Steiner’s epistemology” in a state of frustrating confusion. In my view, the only idea of beginning that is meaningful in relation to “Steiner's epistemology” is the beginning of one’s conscious coexistence with these ideas: the moment one learns about and begins to approach a book such as PoF. Other than that, I don't think there is a useful way to break down what follows that beginning, in smarter cognitive sequences.

And, I would say, PoF is already an extreme summary. To pick an expression you often use, it’s an artistic conceptual expression of a holistic, omnipresent reality. Therefore, any attempt to make an ulterior summary of it (not saying SM had that as a goal) is misled and doomed to fail. One can discuss it, work with it, write *about* it (which is possibly what SM aimed to), further elaborate and/or illustrate related ideas dialogically, analogically, but summarizing it is preposterous. Would anyone ever attempt to summarize a temple, a poem, a concert?
For these reasons I doubt this article is a useful recommendation for someone who is struggling with PoF.



PS. I agree - obviously - with your last paragraph. I imagine you felt it was necessary to write it, since my comment on the expression "Steiner's epistemology" was given in passing, it was maybe unclear. I hope I have made it clear in this post. By the way, I don't think the imaginative approach you describe is obvious in the article. Probably it would be more evident if I read more of his writings (though it's not my priority) but I don't see it in these pages.