Philosophy Unbound: Schopenhauer vs. Steiner (Round One)

[findingblanks]

Let's start at the top. Be honest.

"Objection! This is false dichotomy, because both Schopenhauer and Steiner say there is cognitive element in every experience."

This will be easy. Show me where ai said this at the beggining. If you cant, apologize. Or, even better, describe the shadow element in your cognition that made you characterize me this way. You didn't hurt my feelings, but this stuff matters. Thanks!

[AshvinP]

Let's start at the top. Be honest.

"Objection! This is false dichotomy, because both Schopenhauer and Steiner say there is cognitive element in every experience."

This will be easy. Show me where ai said this at the beggining. If you cant, apologize. Or, even better, describe the shadow element in your cognition that made you characterize me this way. You didn't hurt my feelings, but this stuff matters. Thanks!

You're right... you didn't explain your position at the beginning. It took many pages of your "deep shadow dancing" and us prodding you to plainly state your position before we finally got to the above. I just cut that out of the summary because it's irrelevant to any productive discussion going forward. So let's not start at the top, because I don't want to go another 15-20 pages of shadow dancing before you finally address the implications of Barfield's quote I provided and this discussion progresses towards the essence of the philosophies we are dealing with.

[findingblanks]

Cleric and I work better together. I like both of you and really do understand your point of view. But chemistry is chemistry. At least we share Barfield's basic understanding of an 'idol' and the core difference between original participation and final. That's not bad.

[AshvinP]

Cleric and I work better together. I like both of you and really do understand your point of view. But chemistry is chemistry. At least we share Barfield's basic understanding of an 'idol' and the core difference between original participation and final. That's not bad.

Fair enough. He definitely has a measure of patience and grace that I mostly lack now. I will just state my position on Barfield's quote and how it relates to the essence of this issue, and you can continue discussing with Cleric.

Barfield describes the "immemorial and inextricable interpenetration" of perceiving-thinking. I think we all agree that is true. There is no perception without some element of conceptual meaning, even if that meaning is "blooming buzzing confusion". Then he describes the variable relationship between them, as he has discerned from the study of language meanings over time (and from Steiner as well, but that is not mentioned in this book). He has concluded the "perceptual element" is relatively greater in language as a whole in its earlier stages and the "intellectual [conceptual] element" in its later stages. Therefore, we are "looking backward down a perspective which reveals more and more of perception and less and less of thought". He then asks, "if we allow our fancy to approach the kind of consciousness that would be all perception and no thought, what do we come to?".

Elsewhere in the book, and in StA, and many other articles, he answered that we come to "original participation" - which is only a state of "no thought" to the extent that there is no sense of personal self who is doing any thinking. Rather, it is a state of "ancient clairvoyance" as Steiner may put it. It is critical to understand that there has been this variable relationship and it has now metamorphosed into nearly all "conceptual element" and no perceptual element. Of course, we still perceive things in the world, but we are only perceiving idols. A world with many sense-perceptions but very little discernment of the spiritual forces who are responsible for any meaning we conceptualize. Has the spiritual essence of the world we live in fundamentally changed? No, say Steiner and Barfield, rather our human experience of the world has evolved into its current state.

There is still a spiritual realm in which we all exist, but it is shrouded by physicalist sense-perceptions with only dull and abstract meaning. That is the situation we are at now, and that is the place from which Steiner begins his phenomenology of Thinking in PoF. The abstract intellect is the aspect of our Being which was "put on last", so it is most easily accessible to us and it is where we still find a convergence of phenomenon-noumenon. Again, Steiner (like Barfield) speaks elsewhere at length about the variable process of perceiving-thinking, and how the relationship was much different in the past, but in PoF he is trying to do rigorous phenomenology from where we are now. In that context, it should be easier to understand why he writes about the role of Thinking in "attaching" concepts back to percepts so as to restore their meaningful unity, and to further imaginatively and intuitively explore idea-constellations.

By engaging deeply with the "exceptional state" of observing our own Thinking process as it constellates ever-expanding networks of ideas, we find the path from which we can bring forth higher cognition and evolve the "consciousness soul" from the "intellectual soul", revealing increasingly more of the essential spiritual realm from which all merely conceptual meaning emanates, as a shadow emanates from the effacing of light. Thinking is the key and common ingredient for everyone who wishes to travel on such a path. All individual capacities of willing and feeling should be put in service to these highest orders of Thinking for the spiritual traveler. A philosophy of Will or anything else simply does not do that - it never even occurs to do such a thing for the philosopher of Will, because it is believed the highest resolution of spiritual reality is attained in some form of "mystical union" with the Cosmos.

[findingblanks]

Another way in!

TOPIC OF CONTENTION - WILLING VS. THINKING (WHICH TRULY LINKS US TO SHARED CONSCIOUSNESS?)

First, I guess considering how the debate is framed, we can assume that Steiner is claiming that thinking (not will) 'truly connects us' to something intriguingly entitled 'shared consciousness'. Therefore, I guess we are to presume that Schopenhauer claims that we only get linked up to this 'shared consciousness' by willing....

Interesting. Is that formulation just the breezy, fun part where we shouldn't get overly serious? Or might it be fun and smart to notice any presuppositions that are interwoven there? We'd hate to make a misstep at the very beginning and get overly serious.

But then the creator of this debate made one thing very clear:

"we know exactly where each idea-fighter stands with respect to the other."

I even think Cleric would agree with me that that statement might introduce at least a few confusions.

But I'll go back to the fascinating claim that supposedly Steiner and Schopenhauer are talking about what 'links' us to 'shared consciousness'. Shared by and with whom? Is Steiner claiming that cognition links us to shared consciousness with God? Does Steiner claim that thinking creates a new kind of union or restores an eternal whole? Do we have any reason to think that the framing of their views misses core elements of each? Oh boy, what fun!

I bet it is enjoyable that we can focus on simple questions related to the original claim

[findingblanks]

"Barfield describes the "immemorial and inextricable interpenetration" of perceiving-thinking."

Yes, but not everybody recognizes that the above statement can be interpreted in two fundamentally different ways. One way presupposes that there really is a core distinction between perception and thinking, whereas the other realizes that while we must make distinctions in our exploration of this reality, we must not lose sight that we are speaking of a unified event/process. The latter can still speak of how this event will express itself polarically, but it won't even slightly imagine there is perception interwoven with cognition or visa versa. To imagine either one as something that exists even slightly outside the other is to miss the reality they express as polarities. .

"There is no perception without some element of conceptual meaning, even if that meaning is "blooming buzzing confusion".

And I think we must agree that there is no historical or ontological 'blooming buzzing confusion' that precedes the act of cognition, regardless of what we find Steiner saying, yeah?

"looking backward down a perspective which reveals more and more of perception and less and less of thought". He then asks, "if we allow our fancy to approach the kind of consciousness that would be all perception and no thought, what do we come to?".

Yes, but we must remember that when he says 'more and more perception' he is describing a cognitive perception. He is not describing a 'more and more perception' that should be understood to be 'more and more' of our current experience of perception. This is a perception alive with meaning, not because meaning is threaded into it but because the perception is the meaning.

So this 'more and more perception' is only a 'less and less thought' in the sense that it has nothing to do with our modern experience of having an outer world of perception set against an inner world of thought. Hopefully we agree on the 'more and more perception' aspect.

"and it has now metamorphosed into nearly all "conceptual element" and no perceptual element."

Again, we can say it this way as long as we realize that by 'all conceptual, no perceptual' we don't really mean that we have suddenly stepped outside of the polarity that his always metamorphosing. I'm okay using clunky language as long as we agree that 'no perception' simply means that we don't have the kind of meaning-inherent perception of original participation. I'll assume that is what you mean unless you state otherwise.

"That is the situation we are at now, and that is the place from which Steiner begins his phenomenology of Thinking in PoF."

I don't fully agree because I think Steiner started from a very early and forceful expression of final-participation. However, I don't think he had clearly differentiated his intuitions and insights regarding experiential starting point from those aspects of his experience that still were embedded in the idols. This is why when he was a young man he stressed over and over to the reader that it was an utter necessity to start by understanding the supposed nature of 'pure experience.' He doesn't just say this is a thought experiment that can be helpful. He goes out of his way to explain why he insists it is the only way to truly grasp his starting point. He varies this slightly in each of the core books. And this is why it is easy to find many of his students today who echo him and talk about a relationship between a realm of experience supposedly devoid of any thinking and a realm of experience that is pure thinking devoid of perception. Of course, Steiner utterly abandoned this exhortation later in life because he had much more accurate ways of indicating his starting point. Those ways however haven't been clearly taken up by his students or, almost worse, they are blended with the idea of 'pure experience.'

It has been interesting over the years when I've presented PoF students with Volkelt's 'excellent characterization' of pure experience but out of context. Just conversationally stating that the only way I notice the milkman is heading to my door is by first encountering a set of pure percepts and then attaching the correct concepts to them. Almost always, PoF students, in THAT context, quickly correct me and point out that it isn't the case that this two-step occurs in order for me to make that kind of observation. But when we are explicitly talking about Steiner's texts, that's when it goes in the kind of circles we've seen above.

"By engaging deeply with the "exceptional state" of observing our own Thinking process."

Just to be clear; you are not suggesting that the 'exceptional state' that Steiner defines early in PoF is the intuitive experience of thinking as activity, right?

[Cleric]

But I'll go back to the fascinating claim that supposedly Steiner and Schopenhauer are talking about what 'links' us to 'shared consciousness'. Shared by and with whom? Is Steiner claiming that cognition links us to shared consciousness with God? Does Steiner claim that thinking creates a new kind of union or restores an eternal whole? Do we have any reason to think that the framing of their views misses core elements of each? Oh boy, what fun!

I think Steiner put that quite explicitly:

Our thinking is not individual the way our experiencing and feeling are. It is universal. It receives an individual stamp in each single person only through the fact that it is related to his individual feeling and experiencing. Through these particular colorings of the universal thinking, individual people differ from one another. A triangle has only one single concept. For the content of this concept it is a matter of indifference whether the human bearer of consciousness who grasps it is A or B. But the content of this concept will be grasped in an individual way by each of the two bearers of consciousness.

This thought is opposed by a preconception people have which is difficult to overcome. This bias does not attain to the insight that the concept of the triangle which my head grasps is the same as the one comprehended by the head of my neighbor. The naive person considers himself to be the creator of his concepts. He believes, therefore, that each person has his own concepts. It is a fundamental requirement of philosophical thinking that it overcome this preconception. The oneness of the concept “triangle” does not become a plurality through the fact that it is thought by many. For the thinking of the many is itself a oneness.

In thinking we have given to us the element which fuses our particular individuality into one whole with the cosmos. Inasmuch as we experience and feel (and also perceive), we are separate beings; inasmuch as we think, we are the all-one being; which permeate all. This is the deeper basis of our twofold nature: we see an utterly absolute power come into existence within us, a power which is universal; but we learn to know it, not where it streams forth from the center of the world, but rather at a point on the periphery. If the first were the case, then the moment we came to consciousness, we would know the solution to the whole riddle of the world. Since we stand at a point on the periphery, however, and find our own existence enclosed within certain limits, we must learn to know the region which lies outside of our own being with the help of thinking, which projects into us out of the general world existence.

Through the fact that the thinking in us reaches out beyond our separate existence and relates itself to universal existence, there arises in us the drive for knowledge. Beings without thinking do not have this drive. When other things confront them, no questions are aroused thereby. These other things remain external to such beings. With thinking beings, when confronted by an outer thing, the concept wells up. The concept is what we receive from the thing, not from without, but rather from within. Knowledge is meant to yield the balance, the union of the two elements, the inner and the outer.

The underlined part is practically what Ashvin said in the previous post - we wake up at the periphery. This is also in a way illustrated in the Deep MAL picture from my essay.

Things are really very clear but the psychological inertia is immense. It's almost like a mental tic, continuously snapping back to what we're used to.

We know the will only within ourselves. Ordinary consciousness can postulate the World Will as the unifying medium only through thinking. In the way it is given to us, the will is a personal experience. It can become universal only if we add that idea through thinking. And note that this doesn't really make our will universal - it's a belief (it could be correct but still, in our philosophy of will it is ultimately a belief).

It is only through ideas, that we experience unity. When we understand each other we experience the same meaning/ideas, even though these ideas take personal colorings in each individual (we have personal mental pictures for the ideas). And note that this unity is not something that we must imagine artificially into the World Content. It's the pristine experience, that we experience the same ideas, when we communicate. As Steiner notes, this is incredibly difficult to accept. Modern man feels obliged to fantasize separate bubbles of consciousness and place within them local ideas. Now this (the idea of separate personal ideas) is what is really added to the World Content artificially. There's nothing in the given that suggests that concepts exist locally and as individual 'copies' in the personal consciousness. As the experiences in this forum have shown, people really have the greatest difficulty to differentiate between the actual idea/concept/meaning and our mental picture of it. The mental picture is local, the idea is only one. In Steiner's example, it simply makes no sense to imagine that there is more than one concept of a triangle.

It should be clear that we can support the conception of individual ideas, only through a hard Kantian divide, postulating completely independent consciousness bubbles. If we maintain for personal bubbles without this hard divide, when our consciousness transcends our own personal bubble (which should be possible since there's no hard divide), it would be possible to experience the billions concepts of triangle living in all human beings, which paradoxically would show us that there's indeed only one concept of a triangle. It is that one concept which allows us to experience within the shared space, that all individual concepts are united by the one we hold in the transcendental state. Without this one concept we would behold the billions concepts of triangle and there wouldn't be any way to know that they have something in common. Thus, if we want to ensure that ideas are completely local, we need to ensure that there's no way our personal bubble can unite with others. We do this by the hard divide and we can do it only through belief. It can never be the result of experience because that would immediately invalidate it.

[Cleric]

Just to be clear; you are not suggesting that the 'exceptional state' that Steiner defines early in PoF is the intuitive experience of thinking as activity, right?

I think it's time to lift the veil on this mystery too Already several times you mention about the exceptional state in a way suggesting that most people get it wrong. I'm interested in your way of viewing it.

I remind how Steiner outlines this state:

Whereas the observing of objects and occurrences, and the thinking about them, are the entirely commonplace state of affairs with which my going life is filled, the observation of thinking is a kind of exceptional state.

[SanteriSatama]

A triangle has only one single concept. For the content of this concept it is a matter of indifference whether the human bearer of consciousness who grasps it is A or B. But the content of this concept will be grasped in an individual way by each of the two bearers of consciousness.

In my view Steiner is simply wrong, in terms of mathematics. E.g. Euclid's definitions and proofs are not universal*, they are generalizing demonstrations in the context of Elementa. Can triangles exist in spherical etc. curvy context? If a flat triangle is partitioned so that it can form curvature of Geodesic dome, does it cease to be triangle?

Instead of "single concept", which cannot be proven either logically or empirically, we can talk of family resemblance.

*Universal in the sense: "necessarily true in all possible worlds". Gödel's theorem's don't allow a logical and formal completion of the notion "all possible worlds"

[findingblanks]

"Let us assume that a being with fully developed human intelligence originated out of nothing and confronted the world. All that it there perceived before its thought began to act would be the pure content of perception. The world so far would appear to this being as a mere chaotic aggregate of sense-data, colours, sounds, sensations of pressure, of warmth, of taste, of smell, and, lastly, feelings of pleasure and pain. This mass constitutes the world of pure unthinking perception. Over against it stands thought, ready to begin its activity as soon as it can find a point of attack. Experience shows that the opportunity is not long in coming. Thought is able to draw threads from one sense-datum to another. It brings definite concepts to bear on these data and thus establishes a relation between them. We have seen above how a noise which we hear is connected with another content by our identifying the first as the effect of the second."

What do we think Steiner means by a being with fully human intelligence?

Is this a being that has never been to Earth but that has had its own cognitive experiences elsewhere so that concepts such a 'cause' and 'effect' function within its perceptions? Would this be a being who has developed in such a way as to have the basic concepts that come from evolving with the context of care and love and community; so while it would never have experienced Earth customs, it's 'fully developed human intelligence' shares the basic archyptal ideas that were central to human evolution?

Also let's ponder what Steiner means by 'before' when he says:

"All that it there perceived before its thought began to act would be the pure content of perception."

It seems to me that Steiner is asking the reader to imagine being a being that has never experienced the particular environment you are facing right now but that you have a fully developed 'human' intelligence.

Wouldn't your thinking already have 'figured' your very first observation?

Or do we take him literally and suppose there is a 'before,' that there is a moment of experience that you have 'before' figuration?

"The world so far would appear to this being as a mere chaotic aggregate of sense-data, colours, sounds, sensations of pressure, of warmth, of taste, of smell, and, lastly, feelings of pleasure and pain."

Well, it seems to me he is not suggesting that your figuration would present some recognizable patterns to you. For instance, you wouldn't be standing there immediately going, "Wow, that looks like fish swimming through the air and they seem to be moving across an ocean that is above, but I have no idea what this strange furry black thing is doing running towards me with a pink aspect wagging out an opening in it face."

No, it seems Steiner is saying you would have a moment in which there is only chaos, no recognizable patterns.

"This mass constitutes the world of pure unthinking perception."

Is he still describing something that he doesn't want us to think has an ontological existence? Is this still a cognitive imagination by the reader? Or maybe is he wanting to reader to see that by imagining this it means it actually is a reality that the reader simply hasn't experienced for himself?

We have been talking about the fact that Barfield shows us that you only get an idolatrized environment of supposedly pure perception IF AND ONLY IF your perception is saturated by the believes that came with the rise of modern science. As Barfield so expertly shows us, it is an error to think of idolatrized perception as standing apart from your thinking. If you do think it is 'just there, free from my assumptions,' you are an excellent example of a person living within the idols of the study without realizing it. What does Steiner say about the perceptual mass of chaos?

"This mass constitutes the world of pure unthinking perception."

He also then says:

"Over against it stands thought..."

Remember, he is asking the reader to cognitively imagine a being that is encountering something 'before' thinking has had any effect on it. Barfield reminds us that humans did not confront a world of chaos and then slowly attach concepts to it. We no longer think of children as starting from chaos and attaching concepts.

But do we think there is any reason at all to suppose that adults first encounter a form of reality that is free from thinking? Above in this thread we quoted where Steiner emphatically says that we obviously encounter a 'first form' before we complete it (in each moment) and then experience it as meaningful.

" {Thought is} ready to begin its activity as soon as it can find a point of attack. Experience shows that the opportunity is not long in coming."

Steiner's use of 'experience' in the above sentence can not be referring to the thought experiment. He isn't saying that within our imagination of being this nearly-human being we 'experience' this state of pure chaos. He is saying that it is obvious that thinking must quickly fill the gap, so to speak. Maybe this is obvious to Steiner because if thinking didn't quickly fill the gap, we'd just be staring blankly into the chaos that he seems to be suggesting is ontologically prior to what thinking adds to it.

A careful reader can see the reason why careful reader's often shift from the imagination of the human-like, fully intelligent being to ontological notions of a chaos that actually confronts us before thinking begins weaving meaning into the chaos and presenting us with a non-chaotic world.

A careful reading can actually show the spots where it might not be obvious when Steiner shifts from the cognitive imagination to statements about what 'experience shows.' He certainly doesn't mean that only his experience shows this. Or that experience only shows this after some kind of initiation.

Steiner feels he has pointed to something that experience clearly shows.

I think he clearly pointed to what a certain kind of presumption about 'pure experience' clearly shows.

Or, we'd have to talk more about the pure chaos we encounter moment to moment.