AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Sep 02, 2026 1:29 pm
I want to share some comments from a Substack discussion with JW (his stack is found
here). I believe it is also quite relevant to the discussion in the other thread. It seems that many diligent thinkers in our time, sooner or later, make their way to the bottleneck of cognitive life, as they realize there are important aspects of 'pre-articulate' experience that cannot be found contained within observable empirical outputs. Yet then the question arises: how to make further progress in investigating this domain of experience? It is always a question of whether we are stuck contemplating storyboard sequences of mental images about 'pre-articulate experience', which is ultimately the inner life of other beings (including other incarnate humans and animals aorund us), or whether we have direct access to the inner states of such other perspectives. How can we tell the difference between having more unusual and exotic images of 'other beings' and encountering the reality of perspectives "with a consistency that persists across contexts I didn't script", as Anthony phrased it? On this question rests the trajectory of human thinking (and, from there, feeling and willing), which
must eventually either merge closer and closer with a solipsistic view or be born into the concentric attention-span spheres of superimposed perspectives.
Guney, I am particularly interested in whether you have any thoughts on what JW says, since you are quite familiar with his philosophical standpoint, and how you would think about and address this bottleneck situation that every carefully reasoning individual eventually finds themselves in. I am sharing it now because, in my experience, the discussion doesn't go much further once we reach the point in my last comment, which is itself an interesting dynamic to contemplate. (but perhaps he will respond)
*** [discussion based on
this article]
JW: My position is therefore physicalist without being materialist and non-reductive without becoming dualist. Consciousness does not need to be rescued from the physical because consciousness never ceased to be physical. It is an organic, self-organizing energetic event. The disappearance of its organization at death is no more evidence that something nonphysical has departed than the disappearance of a whirlpool when the organization of the water that constituted it ceases. The constituent energy continues; that particular organization does not.
A: I completely agree with the critique of various metaphysical positions that all get trapped in the same error. They all populate the unknown depths of Be-ing with their preferred mental images.
Yet, phenomenologically speaking, it is critical to also recognize that our experience of 'energy' and its primordial dynamics only has meaning because we *intuitively experience* those dynamics within ourselves. We intuitively push our state toward the unknown and encounter resistance, we strive to overcome that resistance, we imaginatively integrate the feedback and transform our pushing along different vectors, and so on. All of that is experienced inwardly and that's why, when we encounter certain phenomenal transformations in nature, we can identify 'energy' as a primordial precondition. This energy is a transposition of what we deeply experience into the phenomenal transformations.
Thus, it is more accurate to say the polaric experience of intuitive pushing and imaginative integration of its consequences is the primordial dynamic. Indeed, it is the precondition for any possible coherent stream of experience in which energetic dynamics can be observed. We should also note that, if at this point we say, "but energy was there doing its thing long before there evolved conscious beings who intuitively push toward the unknown", we are sliding back into theoretical metaphysics, projecting the energetic flux into a domain of spacetime that is, by definition, inaccessible to any experiential perspective.
JW: I explicitly reject the idea that energy was there all along before there was consciousness. Energy is our first and purest articulation of the prearticulate through our given modes of space and time. It co-originated with life itself. My point was somewhat different. We perceive consciousness as energy as we do with everything else. With the falling away of the subject/object dichotomy, we are energetically connected with everything else. The important point is we perceive consciousness as a self-organization within this energy and much else that has no consciousness. We also see consciousness dissipate into free energy when the energy supply ceases.
A: When you say we “perceive” consciousness, I assume you mean that we indirectly measure it as a function of energy (for example, in brain neural/metabolic activity), and we can indirectly measure/infer that it dissipates into ‘free energy’ when life ends. In other words, you are not speaking of directly observing our inner conscious states without the mediation of the senses or their technological extensions. Is that correct? [JW: Correct]
In that case, would you acknowledge the possibility of directly observing consciousness? For example, let's say I decide to slowly count from 1 to 10.
As I progress from pronouncing "1" to "2" to "3", etc., I have a very clear intuitive sense of how my momentary verbalizations are structured through time. The auditory vibrations of my inner voice do not feel like mysterious sensations, such as the erratic movements of an insect, but rather like an orderly progression of inner counting states guided by my meaningful intent to count. If I am currently at "5", even though I haven’t yet reached ten, I have a good intuitive sense of where the process is going and what inner state will soon condense at my mental horizon. This intuitive sense also gives me orientation to how I have reached my present “5” state through the previously pronounced numbers. All the imaginative states experienced while counting feel like they precipitate and flow along the ‘curvature’ of my intuitive intent.
That is example of directly and intuitively observing consciousness without mediation of the senses, and without needing to make indirect measurements or inferences about ‘what my consciousness is’. I know what it is simply by actively attending to the experience of its temporal unfoldment, by feeling how it lawfully transforms within certain constraints (in this case, mathematical). I could associate this experience with ‘energy’, and correlate it with measurable neural activity, but that would only be a symbol for what I directly experience as intuitive pushing through counting states.
Does that make sense?
JW: Yes, but the only consciousness we can observe is our own, and only very partially and with distortion.
A: But that is an assumption, which has often been elevated into a metaphysical conclusion. It does not necessarily follow from our phenomenological experience. In the latter, there is little warrant to treat our consciousness as an object bounded by spatial (or temporal) limits.
For example, as I unfold the counting intent, I intuitively sense, not only the previous and anticipated numerical states, but the context in which it occurs. I may have decided to unfold it as part of an exercise to directly observe my conscious states, which, in turn, unfolds in the context of a discussion with someone else like you. Something of your conscious states are also present within the background intuitive context of my intent, in that sense. Or perhaps I get distracted while counting by the emotional reverberations of an argument I had with someone yesterday. Then their consciousness is also implicated in the context and trajectory of my intent.
It is only an assumption, based on our default spatial conditioning, that these implicit conscious states of other perspectives, that surely ‘push and pull’ my conscious states in various ways, are somehow ‘walled off’ from my capacity for intuitive observation. It is an aspect of ordinary physical-spatial experience that gets projected into our inner life and then elevated into a rigid metaphysical conclusion about ‘what it is possible to observe and know’.
This is perhaps the biggest obstacle to theoretical metaphysics naturally transforming into spiritual science. It functions to preserve the former long past its expiration date, convincing us we can only continue making speculative inferences about the inner states of other beings (or become solipsists).
JW: I don’t think spatial separation is involved in my position at all. I am not imagining consciousnesses as little interiors “walled off” from one another. That would simply reintroduce the subject/object metaphysics I reject.
But I think your example establishes considerably less than you suggest. If yesterday’s conversation with another person affects your counting today, then that person is certainly implicated in your present experience. Their words, your memory of them, your emotional response, and the continuing effects of the encounter may all participate in what you presently experience. But none of that means you are experiencing their consciousness as they experience it. You are experiencing the continuing articulation of that encounter within your own consciousness.
That distinction does not require a spatial boundary. Communion, influence and participation need not entail identity or direct access to another’s experience.
More importantly, I would apply your own demand for phenomenological warrant in both directions. You call my restraint an “assumption,” yet you then suggest that the conscious states of other perspectives may be available to your intuitive observation. What experience establishes that? Your example establishes that another person can be present within and formative of your experience. I readily agree. It does not establish that their experiencing is thereby directly available to you.
This is precisely where I stop. I don’t turn the inability to establish an absolute boundary between consciousnesses into evidence that the boundary does not exist. Nor do I turn the inability to establish their separateness into evidence of some larger shared consciousness. Both moves determine more than the experience gives us.
A: Right, what I have drawn attention to so far does not entail direct access to the inner states of other perspectives, and neither is that possibility precluded by anything in the direct observation of experience. Many people would begin pointing to various 'psy phenomena' or perhaps religious/mystical traditions as anecdotal evidence of the possibility, but that isn't the move I would make, either.
Instead, I would simply point out that the perceptual capacities which the ordinary course of life develop in us need not be considered the absolute limit of that development. And we have good reasons to suspect that such possibilities cannot be 'proven' to exist beforehand, as our philosophical thinking habits usually demand. Just as we cannot teach a baby to speak or think by explaining to it what to do (which would presuppose that verbal thinking is already mastered), so we can only gradually awaken to the unsuspected inner possibilities through active experimentation in unfamiliar directions. We have to take the needed time and effort to concentrate within our intuitive process and observe where it leads.
Through such a concentrated state, it may so happen that the reverberating effects of the encounters still influencing our conscious states come into focus as a kind of superposition of inner perspectives, an entanglement and interference of perspectives. In a sense, the encounter feels to be still with us in a very immanent way, not as shadowy memory but as if it is still happening in real time. Then we realize that we have always been sharing the same inner space with other perspectives, only the lucid experience of that holistic and communal space has been decohered into imaginative shards that unfold sequentially, obscuring it and make it feel as if we all occupy our private bubbles of conscious experiences separated from others by space and time. That is simply the alienated feeling that results when the shared space is squeezed through the rigid formatting of the neurosensory organization, so to speak.
I am not speaking of a new philosophical or religious outlook, of course, but concrete experiences which feel as real or more real than anything we experience in bodily-sensory life. These inner methods are freely available for anyone to pursue and experiment with, provided we can assume a childlike posture of wonder and reverence toward the unknown (or, more accurately, long forgotten) space of superimposed inner potential, as if we are infants just learning to walk, speak, and think in that space.
Hi Ashvin.
Thank you for your contribution.
Over the years, I have had the pleasure of corresponding with JW multiple times. There were points of criticism in our debates where, to this day, I do not see that he has answered them at all. His statements about ATP etc. are to be interpreted somewhat differently than by standard materialists. I think he is arguing that quantum physics must be taken seriously philosophically because it shows that everything including our conscious experience consists of stabilizations or articulations of relational processes. Whatever lies prior to articulation is impossible to think, know, or name; it remains a mystery. Thinking, consciousness, and so on are phenomena that constitute relational events, but they are not a foundation. He rejects the very idea of a stable foundation because quantum mechanics and philosophy (Heidegger is a major source for him, though I find his interpretation questionable at certain points) have rendered it obsolete. He also rejects phenomenology as a method because it reintroduces the subject/object structure and a horizon that serves as a foundation. Together with quantum physics, he transcends this idea, thinking in terms of events rather than foundations. He views articulation either as reductionist/freezing (science, systemic thinking, most philosophical analyses) or as non-reductive and non-confining within poetic and musical articulations (this is a motif in late Heidegger, who distinguishes between meditative thinking and calculative thinking; in JW's case, music is added to Heidegger’s focus on poetry).
I am not deeply versed in physics, but I know he is influenced by Carlo Rovelli as a striking number of people are and that he values Nagarjuna. The mystery of the unarticulated prior to the collapse seems crucial and central to his thought.So much for his perspective.What I find philosophically problematic is that while he explains that everything consists of relational events and that subject and object are merely articulations, he never addresses the question regarding the conditions of philosophizing itself. He explains thinking and consciousness as an event, and he would likely reject this question about the conditions of philosophizing because, in his view, it would reintroduce a subject as a foundation—which he rejects. Yet, even this methodical rejection is a philosophical judgment. For Kant and Fichte, the subject is not a foundation, a thing, or anything you can objectify in your imagination; rather, it is a transcendental condition for the very act of philosophizing, for judging itself. Furthermore, the subject does not face an object standing opposite to it; rather, subject and object coincide within transcendental philosophy. For Kant and Fichte, the condition of the possibility of judging is precisely identity through time something without which experience would be impossible. (For Kant, in contrast to mere perception, experience is objectified perception, meaning the multiplicity of sensibility synthesized through the categories to form a coherent whole). For Kant, it is impossible to explain through empirical experience how identity (transcendental subjectivity, not empirical subjectivity) arises; conversely, it is the prerequisite for empirical experience and science. Quantum physics is purely empirical. According to Kant, it is only possible in the first place due to transcendental conditions, and it provides no information about reality in itself. (For Kant, the "thing-in-itself" is a limiting concept, not a world behind appearances; Fichte abolishes this concept entirely because it cannot be derived from the act of the Self, making it a dogmatic concept that has no place in criticism this difference between Kant and Fichte is a highly fascinating topic). Therefore, JW must reject the separation between the transcendental and the empirical, along with the dichotomy itself. However, this separation must not be thought of as two separate worlds or levels.
I am no Kantian myself, but Kant noticed that in everyday life we think while asleep, believing the world to be an object we passively observe; we are completely absorbed in experiencing objects and forget that we are not passive, but active and productive (a point Fichte enormously radicalizes).JW himself states that without consciousness, our universe would not exist. If we strip away consciousness, the universe known to us completely vanishes the universe that physics studies, which brings forth life, bodies, nature, stars, thoughts, and feelings that we study and reflect upon. Even thoughts on quantum physics, his own philosophical perspective, his non-reductive form of articulation, etc., would fall away. He explains consciousness as tied to biological life, as a complex relational event that becomes visible at least only in biological bodies, yet simultaneously states that this entire universe collapses once consciousness is gone. He would probably say that he sticks to experience and does not surrender scientific or poetic/aesthetic experience; that consciousness beyond living biological organisms ceases, and that this experience shows consciousness is extinguished as soon as the energy supply stops. He sticks to articulated experience instead of going beyond it. In doing so, he takes scientific insights that possess a model-like character and uses them to make ontological statements. He is sawing off the branch he is sitting on.
Furthermore, he is not truly interested in the activity of philosophizing, but only in the content of his thoughts. In our conversations, I see several subtle problems that he has never really answered. Science and discursive thinking produce reductionist articulations, whereas art produces articulations that are open, allowing things to unfold rather than reducing them. Yet, any insight he articulates to establish this distinction between both forms of articulation or to recognize them as such in the first place is based solely on the first form of articulation.What kind of insights does the second form of articulation yield? A continuous experience of unity, an experience of participation beyond the everyday subject-object boundary? But this experience itself must be interpreted to become intelligible and fit for philosophy and debate. The second form would not even be conceivable without the first. And does the second form truly yield insights? If so, which ones and how? What form do they take? Are they anything more than an experience he has at a specific moment in time; do they teach us something specific? These are all questions he has so far never answered or profoundly formulated.I don’t think debating with people on the internet achieves anything. I have never had good experiences with it. In the end, it mostly came down to intellectual combat or doubt. However, it depends entirely on the intention. I don't think any philosophy can lead someone to suddenly read Steiner and become an anthroposophist. Neither Cleric's essays nor yours can do that. Nowadays, I believe much more that these are deeply personal matters related to interests, needs, and desires that are not purely intellectual. In the end, you don't convince anyone who isn't already close to you anyway if one even attempts to do so.
I think Tomberg is right: when it comes to spiritual or religious topics, it is about personal certainty, not universal certainty, and this happens primarily through the heart. Reflecting on the past five years, it wasn't just Steiner's philosophical work that kept me engaged with these topics, but interests, needs, hopes, etc. The science of spiritual breathing is inherently different from physical science or philosophy. Perhaps it is even wrong to debate; at the very least, I have noticed within myself how corrupting it can feel to do so.Perhaps I am wrong, I do not know. But I believe it primarily concerns the heart, not primarily thought. If one lacks the aspiration to strive for religious or spiritual questions, one can always adopt the perspective of saying: "It may be that this knowledge exists, but as long as it cannot be intellectually proven to me with absolute clarity that this knowledge is more than personal experience, more than ecstasy, I will not pursue it." Doesn't that somehow reminiscent of the people who wanted Jesus to come down from the cross so they could believe in him? But i cant give your an answer yet.
