The Epistemic Prison (1)

[AshvinP]

Ok I see what you mean and your right. There is something very unique in Steiners philosophy that none other has. That’s the thing that is clear. But the approach goes at least in the right direction in a couple of „new“ philosophers. Heidegger approached many similar things as in Clerics essay „FOTHC“. But nevertheless in heideggers case it has not the same clarity and depth.

I have a collection of essays which are published by gadamer into a huge book format, where philologist and philosopher explain the context of words from the Greeks. It’s very astonishing that the meaning and understanding of words has changed so dramatically. I somehow find these sort of books more fascinating and helpful than philosophical texts. In Heidegger there is a good of both, he often tries to elucidate the old understanding of words, which are now abstract and which philosophers trough around like toys. I don’t can extract much value from philosophy and often start reading books and then leaving them aside. In Steiners case it different, sometimes it gets really hard (GA 3 for example) and I take a break, but then I’m back because his writings are highly practical.

Is there an English version of that Gadamer collection?

Today I read Bergson for a couple hours (MaM) and can’t say anything definitive about him. He starts with framing the hard problem and the problem of idealism. He describes that the material world is nothing more than a picture at the end, and we isolate a part of it (brain) and make it responsible for the whole of the picture. He goes in detail about these topic and tries to Modell of a new theory, that overcomes the hard problem and the idealistic problems. It’s very sophisticated and deep thought. I will read more to comment more about it but in the end it’s he tries to explain perception in the form of a (I must say that he really has interesting insights so that’s no critique or something like that, I only try to understand the limitations of his approach) theory. One problem is that he states that the world/universe a picture, which I think is true, but he forgets the cognitive aspect that makes it possible to state this fact, and which makes possible to live our lives in our current condition.


In a sense we then still navigate trough a Cartesian arena. We feel like subjects watching trough our eyes what is there outside and independent. I came across one in the library of the local university, where is a professor has written a almost thousand page critique of Steiners philosophy. I will read it when I have read the books I’m reading now. His name is Hartmut Traub. It seems like a criticism that tries to show that steiners philosophy is nothing original but a copy of various elements of German idealists. But I’ll see.

Yeah, that is a notoriously problematic topic, especially when one begins polarizing too much to the mystical end of the spectrum (which I don't think was the case for Bergson, but generally everyone who explores intuitive realities without higher cognition tends to start leaning that way). They start to lean toward 'the World is my mental picture' (Schopenhauer). We saw that clearly in the discussion with Felipe as well. As we know, a truly phenomenological approach recognizes that, in the givens of experience, there are differentiated aspects of our immanent experiential flow and some aspects feel to be relatively independent of our momentary intents, imagination, thoughts, feelings, etc. It is simply a mystical fiction that all of these aspects can be flattened into a single category of "my representations" or "my subjectivity". (again, I don't think this was what Bergson was doing)

For example, if I imagine a red color over a white wall, the red color feels to be directly caused by my imaginative intent but the sensory color still feels to 'outweigh' it, to be more consistent and stable than my imagined red color. This applies not only to sensory experience, but also our emotional life. If I get in a heated argument with a friend and am swamped in frustration and anger, no matter how much I repeat to myself "stop being angry, it makes no sense!", it is unlikely that will override the feeling of anger. So there are clearly aspects of our immanent and first-person experiential flow that exist along a gradient of *resistance* to our intentional and imaginative activity. And the furthest end of this gradient, we approach what we experience as the physical world.

On the other hand, we have to distinguish between living experience of the physical world and the mathematized picture that modern science has formed of it. Bergson's critique certainly applies to the latter, because these are indeed the flattened mental pictures of philosopher-scientists which have been isolated from the living sensory flow (which embeds contextual depth, as discussed) and are then imagined to be the foundation for that flow. But as you also imply, we have to be careful of feeling like these mental pictures have no relation to the intuitive depth of reality. It is only that we will never discover the relation if we only focus on their contents (the 'what') without also spiraling together the what with the how/why they have arrived in our conscious state, i.e. through the convolutions of the contextual depth.

[Cleric]

Ps. I wanted to add a quote from cleric since you mentioned the focusing of the formless: „We must insert ourselves as creative spiritual activity between these two poles and experience how we participate in the transduction of meaning into the symbol.“

Guney, I must say that now your writings sound much more mature than some time ago. Great work! I really hope you keep the flame ablaze. It's not easy, temptations and doubts inevitably assail us, but by starting from such a young age, you have the great opportunity to develop healthy cognitive habits that can lead much further and add something to the development of humanity. On the contrary, having realizations later in life demands that much more energy is wasted fighting the cognitive habits with which one has lived for so long.

I was thinking about this quote and the idea came up that this is the new way of philosophy, when philosophers became conscious (or interested) in studying thinking, instead of speculating about it.

Yes, at its core, things are simple. It boils down to having the courage to realize that in the lived concentrated condensation process, we have the prime instance of the real World process.

It is very interesting because on one the hand this is every scientist's dream (even if not fully conscious) - to know the reality of the World process. What prevents them from entering this reality is the premonition that in the process they'll have to find first and foremost the reality of their own character (which is like the unknown context of all their intellectual strivings). This intimate knowledge is much more different than simply having a theory of consciousness. It's very easy to say "Yeah, I get angry because there's a surplus of this and that hormone, and my neurons fire thus and thus." It's quite another thing to awaken within the flow of anger. Mostly, because at the same time we discover that we possess previously unsuspected degrees of freedom of our soul being, through which we can possibly resist and bend that flow. This is the scary part - to face the fact that such soul tendencies do not live at a comfortable distance from our intellectual tokens, and forever remain beneath the horizon of consciousness, but that they constitute the inner fabric of our being and it is up to our conscious responsibility to differentiate, bend and navigate that flow, necessarily fundamentally changing the way think of what we are and what reality is.

[Güney27]

Ok I see what you mean and your right. There is something very unique in Steiners philosophy that none other has. That’s the thing that is clear. But the approach goes at least in the right direction in a couple of „new“ philosophers. Heidegger approached many similar things as in Clerics essay „FOTHC“. But nevertheless in heideggers case it has not the same clarity and depth.

I have a collection of essays which are published by gadamer into a huge book format, where philologist and philosopher explain the context of words from the Greeks. It’s very astonishing that the meaning and understanding of words has changed so dramatically. I somehow find these sort of books more fascinating and helpful than philosophical texts. In Heidegger there is a good of both, he often tries to elucidate the old understanding of words, which are now abstract and which philosophers trough around like toys. I don’t can extract much value from philosophy and often start reading books and then leaving them aside. In Steiners case it different, sometimes it gets really hard (GA 3 for example) and I take a break, but then I’m back because his writings are highly practical.

Is there an English version of that Gadamer collection?

Today I read Bergson for a couple hours (MaM) and can’t say anything definitive about him. He starts with framing the hard problem and the problem of idealism. He describes that the material world is nothing more than a picture at the end, and we isolate a part of it (brain) and make it responsible for the whole of the picture. He goes in detail about these topic and tries to Modell of a new theory, that overcomes the hard problem and the idealistic problems. It’s very sophisticated and deep thought. I will read more to comment more about it but in the end it’s he tries to explain perception in the form of a (I must say that he really has interesting insights so that’s no critique or something like that, I only try to understand the limitations of his approach) theory. One problem is that he states that the world/universe a picture, which I think is true, but he forgets the cognitive aspect that makes it possible to state this fact, and which makes possible to live our lives in our current condition.


In a sense we then still navigate trough a Cartesian arena. We feel like subjects watching trough our eyes what is there outside and independent. I came across one in the library of the local university, where is a professor has written a almost thousand page critique of Steiners philosophy. I will read it when I have read the books I’m reading now. His name is Hartmut Traub. It seems like a criticism that tries to show that steiners philosophy is nothing original but a copy of various elements of German idealists. But I’ll see.

Yeah, that is a notoriously problematic topic, especially when one begins polarizing too much to the mystical end of the spectrum (which I don't think was the case for Bergson, but generally everyone who explores intuitive realities without higher cognition tends to start leaning that way). They start to lean toward 'the World is my mental picture' (Schopenhauer). We saw that clearly in the discussion with Felipe as well. As we know, a truly phenomenological approach recognizes that, in the givens of experience, there are differentiated aspects of our immanent experiential flow and some aspects feel to be relatively independent of our momentary intents, imagination, thoughts, feelings, etc. It is simply a mystical fiction that all of these aspects can be flattened into a single category of "my representations" or "my subjectivity". (again, I don't think this was what Bergson was doing)

For example, if I imagine a red color over a white wall, the red color feels to be directly caused by my imaginative intent but the sensory color still feels to 'outweigh' it, to be more consistent and stable than my imagined red color. This applies not only to sensory experience, but also our emotional life. If I get in a heated argument with a friend and am swamped in frustration and anger, no matter how much I repeat to myself "stop being angry, it makes no sense!", it is unlikely that will override the feeling of anger. So there are clearly aspects of our immanent and first-person experiential flow that exist along a gradient of *resistance* to our intentional and imaginative activity. And the furthest end of this gradient, we approach what we experience as the physical world.

On the other hand, we have to distinguish between living experience of the physical world and the mathematized picture that modern science has formed of it. Bergson's critique certainly applies to the latter, because these are indeed the flattened mental pictures of philosopher-scientists which have been isolated from the living sensory flow (which embeds contextual depth, as discussed) and are then imagined to be the foundation for that flow. But as you also imply, we have to be careful of feeling like these mental pictures have no relation to the intuitive depth of reality. It is only that we will never discover the relation if we only focus on their contents (the 'what') without also spiraling together the what with the how/why they have arrived in our conscious state, i.e. through the convolutions of the contextual depth.

Felipe’s thoughts are somehow more important than I thought. It seems in everyday life that we perceive a independent world. But if we analyze the limits of our reason (intellectual thinking) we necessarily came to the conclusion that we can’t really verify this assumption. We perceive the „world“ always trough our own first person perspective in a metamorphic fashion. I can reliably tell that when I’m looking up, the colors and forms I perceive change lawfully; I perceive the clouds and the sun. This lawfulness is than explained by the fact of a independent nature we just perceive trough our eyes. But we can’t really know if that is true. It’s a dogmatic belief. What is there when nobody looks? We can never really now, so we shouldn’t make assumptions we can’t verify. Nietzsche said something like this in „human, all to human“.

The more interesting thing is that our perception feels altered when we contemplate our assumptions about the phenomenal. But here we can again forget that we only can perceive a world trough thinking (in relation to precepts). The precepts are there without our conscious „production“. Thinking is our activity or we can take responsibility of it. But we don’t determine the concepts (meaning) of thinking; the precepts are intelligible because they are understandable trough the meaning they evoke in us. Heidegger came at the same conclusion, but without mentioning thinking activity. To have language (concepts in form of language) presupposes that we understand the world before we can speak. If we couldn’t understand the world until we have language, we couldn’t learn to speak our grasp language. So a little kid somehow has to grasp the precepts trough interaction with them.

Gadamers collection is called “um die begriffswelt der Vorsokratiker”. He there collects major works of philologist and philosopher. There are chapters on the understanding of Spirit and Nous about 200 pages. It’s very explicit and serious work; they go in every detail and explain the changes of understanding (of the words). I think there is an English version of “der Anfang der Philosophie” called “the beginning of philosophy” where he discusses early Greek philosophy and their context of thinking. I couldn’t find the other book. I don’t know if they translated it but it seems unlikely. Gadamer makes interesting points in stating that the Greeks hadn’t concepts about a subjective agency inside a body. Their terms a used in a more universal name. But I need to read more to tell you more details. It is very beneficial for me to study the changes in understanding, I’m very joyful in this study because it elucidate so much about our history. Are you interested in such books?

[AshvinP]

Felipe’s thoughts are somehow more important than I thought. It seems in everyday life that we perceive a independent world. But if we analyze the limits of our reason (intellectual thinking) we necessarily came to the conclusion that we can’t really verify this assumption. We perceive the „world“ always trough our own first person perspective in a metamorphic fashion. I can reliably tell that when I’m looking up, the colors and forms I perceive change lawfully; I perceive the clouds and the sun. This lawfulness is than explained by the fact of a independent nature we just perceive trough our eyes. But we can’t really know if that is true. It’s a dogmatic belief. What is there when nobody looks? We can never really now, so we shouldn’t make assumptions we can’t verify. Nietzsche said something like this in „human, all to human“.

The more interesting thing is that our perception feels altered when we contemplate our assumptions about the phenomenal. But here we can again forget that we only can perceive a world trough thinking (in relation to precepts). The precepts are there without our conscious „production“. Thinking is our activity or we can take responsibility of it. But we don’t determine the concepts (meaning) of thinking; the precepts are intelligible because they are understandable trough the meaning they evoke in us. Heidegger came at the same conclusion, but without mentioning thinking activity. To have language (concepts in form of language) presupposes that we understand the world before we can speak. If we couldn’t understand the world until we have language, we couldn’t learn to speak our grasp language. So a little kid somehow has to grasp the precepts trough interaction with them.

Gadamers collection is called “um die begriffswelt der Vorsokratiker”. He there collects major works of philologist and philosopher. There are chapters on the understanding of Spirit and Nous about 200 pages. It’s very explicit and serious work; they go in every detail and explain the changes of understanding (of the words). I think there is an English version of “der Anfang der Philosophie” called “the beginning of philosophy” where he discusses early Greek philosophy and their context of thinking. I couldn’t find the other book. I don’t know if they translated it but it seems unlikely. Gadamer makes interesting points in stating that the Greeks hadn’t concepts about a subjective agency inside a body. Their terms a used in a more universal name. But I need to read more to tell you more details. It is very beneficial for me to study the changes in understanding, I’m very joyful in this study because it elucidate so much about our history. Are you interested in such books?

Yeah, it all depends on discerning the proper relation of thinking to our meaningful experience, as an inner faculty that perceives the meaningful dimension evoked by soul (perceptual) content. That is what Felipe (and the Humians and Kantians, generally) were missing, that the meaningful relations of sensory phenomena are given to us just as much as the sensory content, even though our cognition must certainly be active in bringing them forth. Missing that leads to imagining that our intellectual "I" actually produces the meaningful relations out of itself. It is imagined these meaningful relations disappear into a void of non-existence when no one is looking, which if taken to its logical conclusion, would also mean our "I" disappears into a void every night and then emerges again. 

Yet, if we are phenomenologically accurate, we see it is only an assumption that meaningful objects cease to exist when we stop perceiving them. We only need to consider our stream of integrating memory pictures. At any given moment, we don't feel like we have appeared into existence out of a void, In that case, our life would be a series of fragmented 'frames' with no connection, we would not feel like they are happening to "me", that "I" am living through them. Instead, we always have dim temporal intuition of our continuity of existence, i.e. that we have gone through some lawful development to arrive at our present state and will continue to go through some lawful development. We don't need to be actively perceiving all of our memory pictures to have this temporal intuitive orientation. If I went through some traumatic event a year ago, I don't need to be actively contemplating the memory pictures of that event for it to continue shaping my ideas, feelings, expectations, etc.

The key thing here is to distinguish between the mental pictures and the invisible meaning that is reflected in those pictures, and which is perceived by thinking. The mental pictures may fade as soon we turn attention away from them, or as they recede into memory intuition, but the meaning persists and that alone allows for the sense of continuity of existence.

Thanks for the info on Gadamer, I am definitely interested in checking out his work on the transformations of language and philosophy. I too find a lot of value in contemplating those transformations, which is why I enjoy Barfield's essays so much. Did you read the Barfield collection, The Riddle of the Sphinx? That is a great collection to work with.

[AshvinP]

...

Guney, I received this in my email in case you are interested. I'm not sure if I can shell out for the course now, but perhaps in the near future, I will watch the recordings.

[Güney27]

...

Guney, I received this in my email in case you are interested. I'm not sure if I can shell out for the course now, but perhaps in the near future, I will watch the recordings.

Thanks for mentioning Ashvin. I don’t want to spent so much money on his explanation and interpretations of Heidegger. I already payed too much money for books(:

If you are interested in Heidegger I can really emphasize Hubert Dreyfus or Thomas Sheehans books, which are academic introductions into his work. Both are Heidegger scholars and teach Heideggers philosophy. Sheehans book is about 55$ or so. The one from Dreyfus which focuses more on Sein und Zeit( BaT) called being-in-the-world and is focused on heideggers early thoughts. Charles Taylor is good too but doesn’t introduce Heidegger; he is influenced by his thought. I can mention good lectures by Heidegger which are free on the internet if you interested. Dreyfus book is free on the internet too.


I started to read your essays you posted in the last time and you are very close to Heideggers thought. I noticed the same in Clerics essays often, especially in the new ones.

I didn’t read Barfields essay but I’ll check it out in the next time.

[Güney27]

Ps. I wanted to add a quote from cleric since you mentioned the focusing of the formless: „We must insert ourselves as creative spiritual activity between these two poles and experience how we participate in the transduction of meaning into the symbol.“

Guney, I must say that now your writings sound much more mature than some time ago. Great work! I really hope you keep the flame ablaze. It's not easy, temptations and doubts inevitably assail us, but by starting from such a young age, you have the great opportunity to develop healthy cognitive habits that can lead much further and add something to the development of humanity. On the contrary, having realizations later in life demands that much more energy is wasted fighting the cognitive habits with which one has lived for so long.

I was thinking about this quote and the idea came up that this is the new way of philosophy, when philosophers became conscious (or interested) in studying thinking, instead of speculating about it.

Yes, at its core, things are simple. It boils down to having the courage to realize that in the lived concentrated condensation process, we have the prime instance of the real World process.

It is very interesting because on one the hand this is every scientist's dream (even if not fully conscious) - to know the reality of the World process. What prevents them from entering this reality is the premonition that in the process they'll have to find first and foremost the reality of their own character (which is like the unknown context of all their intellectual strivings). This intimate knowledge is much more different than simply having a theory of consciousness. It's very easy to say "Yeah, I get angry because there's a surplus of this and that hormone, and my neurons fire thus and thus." It's quite another thing to awaken within the flow of anger. Mostly, because at the same time we discover that we possess previously unsuspected degrees of freedom of our soul being, through which we can possibly resist and bend that flow. This is the scary part - to face the fact that such soul tendencies do not live at a comfortable distance from our intellectual tokens, and forever remain beneath the horizon of consciousness, but that they constitute the inner fabric of our being and it is up to our conscious responsibility to differentiate, bend and navigate that flow, necessarily fundamentally changing the way think of what we are and what reality is.

Thank you Cleric. I hope it will turn out to be this way.
I found it really helpful to study other philosophers, it somehow makes things more clear to me, even if they seem disconnected. Hopefully we all will continually learn more and can use the knowledge to help.

What is your opinion on Heidegger? Did you read him or books about him? I find many similarities to Heidegger in your essays and sometimes it seems like you have read something of his work.

[AshvinP]

I can mention good lectures by Heidegger which are free on the internet if you interested. Dreyfus book is free on the internet too.

Sure, thanks for the recommendations. When it comes to commentaries on philosophers, I try to seek out ones by people familiar with esoteric science, since they will cut more directly to the core of what is being expressed. With such a deeper perspective, we can even mine ideas from Heidegger's intuitions that Heidegger himself was unaware of. That's why I am interested in JDE's presentation once it is available, maybe he will make one or two free as a way to sample them first.

[Güney27]

I can mention good lectures by Heidegger which are free on the internet if you interested. Dreyfus book is free on the internet too.

Sure, thanks for the recommendations. When it comes to commentaries on philosophers, I try to seek out ones by people familiar with esoteric science, since they will cut more directly to the core of what is being expressed. With such a deeper perspective, we can even mine ideas from Heidegger's intuitions that Heidegger himself was unaware of. That's why I am interested in JDE's presentation once it is available, maybe he will make one or two free as a way to sample them first.

What did you read of him?

JDE has good videos. But it seems to me that he tries to construct an intellectual framework out of esoteric science. Nevertheless he is a very intelligent person capable of teaching complex stuff in a more or less simple way. I liked his lectures on occult science.

[AshvinP]

I can mention good lectures by Heidegger which are free on the internet if you interested. Dreyfus book is free on the internet too.

Sure, thanks for the recommendations. When it comes to commentaries on philosophers, I try to seek out ones by people familiar with esoteric science, since they will cut more directly to the core of what is being expressed. With such a deeper perspective, we can even mine ideas from Heidegger's intuitions that Heidegger himself was unaware of. That's why I am interested in JDE's presentation once it is available, maybe he will make one or two free as a way to sample them first.

What did you read of him?

JDE has good videos. But it seems to me that he tries to construct an intellectual framework out of esoteric science. Nevertheless he is a very intelligent person capable of teaching complex stuff in a more or less simple way. I liked his lectures on occult science.

Only the lectures on 'What is Called Thinking'? I would be interested in your recommendations of lectures that explore the experience of thinking.