Philosophical Speculations

Güney27 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2024 12:05 am I don’t really know much about his theory or biology in general. Could you explain to me, why his idea is so interesting or novel ?

If you want to really understand that, Güney, you’ve got to read posts number 1-2-3 in this thread, where Cleric made these ideas accessible and abundantly contextualized. This doesn’t require a scientific background. But I will attempt a rough summary, as soon as I have a chance.

Federica wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 8:53 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Wed Nov 06, 2024 12:09 am I understood it as BK referring to the contextual depth of 'organizing principles', which cannot be assumed to emerge from the 'micro'-scale 'laws of nature'. He mentions the level of organisms, the level of collectives, solar systems, etc. That aligns with the contextual depth of higher spiritual perspectives which modulate the World flow, of course. I don't know - this is the first time I remember hearing him refer to this depth, but he doesn't elaborate on it very much.

When he says it is impossible to discover the dynamics of these higher organizing principles, I think he is referring to with natural scientific research methods, which of course is valid. We can never understand those dynamics by combining our bodily experiences of 'chopping wood' in ever-more elaborate ways. But yes, on a philosophical level, BK wouldn't even consider that there is any way to extend natural science and its method into the domain of intuitive intents. He would never connect how what he seems to be intuiting has already been explored via esoteric science, as long as he erects the Kantian barrier to knowledge and allows its meaning to squish his imaginative activity from reaching into 'denied spacetime'.

Yes. I think the reason why he didn’t mention the organizing principles before it’s because this is not his theory. But he’s loving this “organicistic” approach to biology of Levin's. I guess BK's words would make a fitting illustration of this picture. This is what came to mind for me when I was listening:

I think this is what remains to be seen for Levin, as indicated in Cleric's post about the inner tension that lives within the heart-mind. His research ideas and insights continually point toward the irreducible nested scales of inner activity, yet he is continually tempted to imagine they ultimately all emerge from the low-level physical rules where atoms, molecules, cells, etc. are imbued with elementary cognition that somehow complexifies into greater scales of sentience. The low-level rules are, of course, the rules of our intellectual mental pictures and their transformations. By flattening it all to the intellectual plane like this, we hold out hope that the higher-order scales can be intellectually encompassed and calculated in some way. I understood BK's brief comment to be at odds with the latter view, but perhaps I'm wrong about that.

Yes. I would perhaps leave political egalitarianism out of the matter, but in essence I entirely agree. It’s actually borderline sinister. Levin repeats this word several times: the body in which we were "dumped" at birth, by meandering evolution. He is deeply angry at something. I still have to figure out what that is exactly. And he seems to live in an idea of algorithmic randomness, the scariest version of M@L. Evolution dumped us in an entirely random state, therefore we don’t need to have any allegiance to that state. We are born the way we are born for no reason, into random embodiment.
In this vision, as you say, the reality of karma and unbornness are hopelessly lost. In a strange way, he’s both excited about randomness, as creativity, and eager to revenge against it. In anycase, the “metaphysics” of all this is lime. Basically embodiment should be "freely" optimized for individual happiness on the one hand, and on the other hand he has decided that his lab will help humanity scale up on "the radius of compassion, concern and care" - on his preferred terms, as it seems. What a system! The radius of compassion... I wonder if he himself fully believes in this borderline totalitarian ‘mission statement’.

I would add that the dynamics of these farther questions and answers also confirm for me the allegiance, and I would even say submission, of BK to ML. He goes on reformulating Levin's answers, and even gracefully accepts to be outsmarted, without a flinch, for example in the question preceding the “freedom of embodiment” one. Interesting!

But there's not much to rejoyce about in all this...

Best quote: "My goal is to open up knowledge so that whatever we do or don't do isn't because we don't know how, but because we've decided to do it, or not do it. The reason that you live in the body that you have should not be because you have no other options."

It's interesting to contemplate how the impulses of our time are morphed, distorted, and often turned upside down. I'd say Levin is in many ways resonating with the evolutionary process and the Christ impulse, but due to lack of proper inner perspective, he is forced to pursue it in the opposite direction. 

We have certainly convoluted into meandering paths of evolution since the Fall i.e. complex karmic entanglements with other souls that have resulted in knotted-up elastic soul tensions. These indeed contribute the lion's share to our degenerating physical condition as well. For example:

GA 107 wrote:Now we come to those illnesses that have their spiritual origin mainly in irregularities of the astral body and that appear in certain disabilities of the nervous system in one or another direction. Now a large part of the common acute illnesses are connected with what we have just mentioned, in fact most of them. For it is sheer superstition to believe that when someone has a stomach or heart complaint or even a clearly perceptible irregularity somewhere, the right treatment is to deal directly with the symptom. The essential thing could be that the symptom is there because the nervous system is incapable of functioning. Thus the heart can be affected simply because the nervous system has become incapable of functioning in the area where it ought to support the movement of the heart. It is quite unnecessary to maltreat the heart or, as the case may be, the stomach, for they may, in principle, have nothing directly the matter with them, for it is only the nerves that provide for them which are incapable of carrying out their job. If in a case like this the stomach complaint is treated with hydrochloric acid, it would be a mistake comparable to tinkering with an engine that is always running late because you think something is the matter with it—yet it still runs late. For you would find, on closer examination, that the engine-driver always gets drunk before driving; so you would do better to deal with the engine-driver, for the train would be punctual otherwise. So it could well be that with stomach complaints we have to treat the nerves that provide for the stomach instead of the stomach itself. In the domain of materialistic medicine, too, you may perhaps hear various remarks to this effect. But it is not just a matter of saying that with stomach symptoms you have to deal with the nerves first. This achieves nothing.

You only achieve something when you know that the nerve is the expression of the astral body and seek for the causes in the irregularities to be found there. The question is, what is the main thing?

The first thing to consider in the treatment of this sort of complaint is diet and finding the right balance between what a person enjoys and what is good for him. What matters is his way of life, not with regard to externalities but regarding what has to be digested and worked through by him, and in this respect nobody can possibly know anything on the basis of purely materialistic science. We need to realise that everything around us in the wide world of the macrocosm has a relationship with our complicated inner world of the microcosm, and every kind of food there is has a definite connection with what is within our organism.

Without this deeper insight, however, we only confront the "complicated inner world of the microcosm" and feel that the meandering evolutionary pathways dumped us there. It is natural for us to feel pity and compassion for fellow souls in these circumstances and to also feel that we should freely play a part in restoring the balance. We should feel inspired to courageously take the complicated elastic threads of karmic destiny more and more within the sphere of our creative responsibility, to comb and straighten them out in some way.

But since he doesn't yet suspect the inner axis of spiritual activity along which these intuitions precipitate, he therefore feels forced to bring them to manifestation in a purely external technological manner. Luciferic excess which lacks intuitive clarity becomes the food for Ahriman, in that sense.

People like Levin, and surely many others with such impulses, are always only one living and symbolic thought away from revolutionizing their whole perspective and life purpose, redirecting their innate capacities to high spiritual goals. But the nature of our current evolutionary stage is, that which remains unconscious and goes unused naturally gravitates toward infernal aims. The higher one climbs with their intellectual and imaginative capacity, the further there is to fall when those capacities are not put into service of the Cosmic Will.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2024 4:18 pm
I think this is what remains to be seen for Levin, as indicated in Cleric's post about the inner tension that lives within the heart-mind. His research ideas and insights continually point toward the irreducible nested scales of inner activity, yet he is continually tempted to imagine they ultimately all emerge from the low-level physical rules where atoms, molecules, cells, etc. are imbued with elementary cognition that somehow complexifies into greater scales of sentience. The low-level rules are, of course, the rules of our intellectual mental pictures and their transformations. By flattening it all to the intellectual plane like this, we hold out hope that the higher-order scales can be intellectually encompassed and calculated in some way. I understood BK's brief comment to be at odds with the latter view, but perhaps I'm wrong about that.

I am not sure whether I am getting you wrong (and please reformulate if I am misunderstanding you) but the bold doesn't match with my understanding. Levin is never tempted to imagine that all emerge from low-level laws of physics and chemistry. If he were, there would be nothing novel in his research approach. Levin is never tempted to regress to reductionism. He is absolutely adamant that the reductionist paradigm is wrong. He has clearcut experimental results to continually confirm that. Reductionism is not his problem. The very essence of his model is the acknowledgement - and upcoming exploitation - of the fact that the higher spaces bend the potential of the lower ones. He is crystal clear about that. He has demonstrated, for example, that a skin cell behaves as a skin cell only when it is "bullied" (his words) into behaving as such from the top down. Not because its molecules obey their inherent physical and chemical laws. And actually, when he artificially puts it under the hierarchical radius of a different organ that is not skin - say, stomach - the cell learns to behave and cooperate like a... stomach cell, entirely reframing its goals and behavioral patterns to achieve those newly assigned goals. The novelty of his model is precisely to move past a purely bottom-up approach to life and cognition, in which the matter that makes up the cells, and related templates of transformation (physical laws), are the exclusive behavioral determinants.

Levin’s problem (our collective problem!) is another one. Namely that he believes that those vertical and reciprocal space-bending activities operating across layers - which he fully recognizes - are to be properly inquired and tested within the existing framework of the natural-scientific methodology as such. Materially, they can indeed be inquired about in this way. That's his full time job and he actually gets incredible results - hackable results. But the horrible side effect is that those spectacular results are obtained through external (material) and sequential projection, through the manipulation of their sense-based shadow, rather than directly, through inner experience, at the incredibly high price of violating the integrity of life processes. Because the life processes are not understood. They are merely patched up, bit by bit, by trial and error, and whatever randomly comes out, without being penetrated with direct cognition, is immediately hijacked for the benefit of arbitrary goals on the purely physical plane, like therapeutics for example. What he is doing is like slowly walking blindfolded on a minefield. Soon enough, it will blow up. Look at some of his detailed presentations, the films of the experiments he is conducting. I think you will sense the discomfort, the violation, in a way the profanation, of bringing those intents into fruition without really experiencing them and understading them from within. It is breathtaking to watch, in a silent, uncomfortable, and subtle way.

Ashvin wrote:It's interesting to contemplate how the impulses of our time are morphed, distorted, and often turned upside down. I'd say Levin is in many ways resonating with the evolutionary process and the Christ impulse, but due to lack of proper inner perspective, he is forced to pursue it in the opposite direction. 

We have certainly convoluted into meandering paths of evolution since the Fall i.e. complex karmic entanglements with other souls that have resulted in knotted-up elastic soul tensions. These indeed contribute the lion's share to our degenerating physical condition as well.

Can you please elaborate on the Christ impulse in Levin?

Ashvin wrote:Without this deeper insight, however, we only confront the "complicated inner world of the microcosm" and feel that the meandering evolutionary pathways dumped us there. It is natural for us to feel pity and compassion for fellow souls in these circumstances and to also feel that we should freely play a part in restoring the balance. We should feel inspired to courageously take the complicated elastic threads of karmic destiny more and more within the sphere of our creative responsibility, to comb and straighten them out in some way.

But since he doesn't yet suspect the inner axis of spiritual activity along which these intuitions precipitate, he therefore feels forced to bring them to manifestation in a purely external technological manner. Luciferic excess which lacks intuitive clarity becomes the food for Ahriman, in that sense.

People like Levin, and surely many others with such impulses, are always only one living and symbolic thought away from revolutionizing their whole perspective and life purpose, redirecting their innate capacities to high spiritual goals. But the nature of our current evolutionary stage is, that which remains unconscious and goes unused naturally gravitates toward infernal aims. The higher one climbs with their intellectual and imaginative capacity, the further there is to fall when those capacities are not put into service of the Cosmic Will.

Yes, exacly. But I'm less optimistic than you. I actually think that Levin's experimental activity operates like a sort of drug, that puts him under powerfull tension pulling him away from that "one revolutionizing thought". It would take a miracle, I think, for him to experience that one rewiring thought.

Federica wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2024 7:34 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2024 4:18 pm
I think this is what remains to be seen for Levin, as indicated in Cleric's post about the inner tension that lives within the heart-mind. His research ideas and insights continually point toward the irreducible nested scales of inner activity, yet he is continually tempted to imagine they ultimately all emerge from the low-level physical rules where atoms, molecules, cells, etc. are imbued with elementary cognition that somehow complexifies into greater scales of sentience. The low-level rules are, of course, the rules of our intellectual mental pictures and their transformations. By flattening it all to the intellectual plane like this, we hold out hope that the higher-order scales can be intellectually encompassed and calculated in some way. I understood BK's brief comment to be at odds with the latter view, but perhaps I'm wrong about that.

I am not sure whether I am getting you wrong (and please reformulate if I am misunderstanding you) but the bold doesn't match with my understanding. Levin is never tempted to imagine that all emerge from low-level laws of physics and chemistry. If he were, there would be nothing novel in his research approach. Levin is never tempted to regress to reductionism. He is absolutely adamant that the reductionist paradigm is wrong. He has clearcut experimental results to continually confirm that. Reductionism is not his problem. The very essence of his model is the acknowledgement - and upcoming exploitation - of the fact that the higher spaces bend the potential of the lower ones. He is crystal clear about that. He has demonstrated, for example, that a skin cell behaves as a skin cell only when it is "bullied" (his words) into behaving as such from the top down. Not because its molecules obey their inherent physical and chemical laws. And actually, when he artificially puts it under the hierarchical radius of a different organ that is not skin - say, stomach - the cell learns to behave and cooperate like a... stomach cell, entirely reframing its goals and behavioral patterns to achieve those newly assigned goals. The novelty of his model is precisely to move past a purely bottom-up approach to life and cognition, in which the matter that makes up the cells, and related templates of transformation (physical laws), is the exclusive behavioral determinants.

Levin’s problem (our collective problem!) is another one. Namely that he believes that those vertical and reciprocal space-bending activities operating across layers - which he fully recognizes - are to be properly inquired and tested within the existing framework of the natural-scientific methodology as such. Materially, they can indeed be inquired about in this way. That's his full time job and he actually gets incredible results - hackable results. But the horrible side effect is that those spectacular results are obtained through external (material) and sequential projection, through the manipulation of their sense-based shadow, rather than directly, through inner experience, at the incredibly high price of violating the integrity of life processes. Because the life processes are not understood. They are merely patched up, bit by bit, by trial and error, and whatever randomly comes out, without being penetrated with direct cognition, is immediately hijacked for the benefit of arbitrary goals on the purely physical plane, like therapeutics for example. What he is doing is like slowly walking blindfolded on a minefield. Soon enough, it will blow up. Look at some of his detailed presentations, the films of the experiments he is conducting. I think you will sense the discomfort, the violation, in a way the profanation, of bringing those intents into fruition without really experiencing them and understading them from within. It is breathtaking to watch, in a silent, uncomfortable, and subtle way.

I understand what you are saying here because it is exactly what I assumed to be the case before this post by Cleric. Perhaps he can elaborate, but from my perspective, after reading that post I realized I had simply assumed that ML was taking the non-reductionist perspective based on the original post on this thread. Cleric had used ML's insightful framework as a symbol for the non-reductionist esoteric scientific perspective, and perhaps ML also has flashes of such intuitions, but it seems he had not necessarily committed himself to a non-reductionist perspective yet (which, if taken seriously, would naturally lead to contemplating the first-person experience of higher-order cognitive perspectives that will the phenomenal transformations at more integrated 'spacetime' scales). And the longer he holds out from taking the intuitive implications of his research seriously, the more tempting it is submerge back into the flow of the reductionist thinking habit. After all, it is that habit which supports the illusory promise that the higher-order scales can be healthily manipulated by tweaking the elemental spectrum of the 'basic rules'.

Cleric wrote:I think it was a talk on Curt Jaimungal's TOE channel where I heard for the first time ML use that CGOL analogy. CJ tried to push more in that direction but ML was quite vague. It struck me that here things didn't reach the crux of the matter either, even though at one time BK mentioned weak and strong emergence. Both on CJ's show and here, ML speaks as if indeed at the lowest level we have only the basic rules of the cellular automata. In true CA (as CGOL), the rules don't 'know' or 'care' whether their cells are in the shape of random noise, a glider, or a Turing Machine. Here I completely agree with BK, that in this particular case, the higher-order shapes in CGOL have significance and meaning only for our own cognition. ML tried to point out that for the structures it makes a difference whether they see themselves at a higher level of abstraction or not, yet he agrees that in the end the fundamental rules are all the same and at the lowest level. This is the point that really hurts me and which it seems ML consistently overlooks.

It is so easy to get this point straight, and it really saddens me that neither CJ, nor BK led the conversation to the crux of the matter. ML simply needs to come clean about the fact whether a higher-order perspective can will its transformations in novel ways informed precisely from this higher-order view of the World flow. If this higher-order perspective is nothing but a passive view of the CA World flow, where everything is still propagated on the lowest level by the basic rules, then the whole thing about higher-order structures is irrelevant. If I have God-level consciousness of the World flow but this flow is fully determined by a handful of rules at the lowest level, what difference does it make? We can speak of passive consciousness in this case but no real agency that originates at that level. Any perceived agency would be only the playback of an illusion resulting from the fundamental rules (this is the basic reductionist attack on free will). It would make a difference only if my higher-order view also gives me a correspondingly novel leverage point through which I can will the transformations of the flow in a different way. In other words, the perspective of the higher-order minds has factual significance only if they can bend the World flow in ways that can never be accomplished from the basic rules alone.

Ashvin wrote:It's interesting to contemplate how the impulses of our time are morphed, distorted, and often turned upside down. I'd say Levin is in many ways resonating with the evolutionary process and the Christ impulse, but due to lack of proper inner perspective, he is forced to pursue it in the opposite direction. 

We have certainly convoluted into meandering paths of evolution since the Fall i.e. complex karmic entanglements with other souls that have resulted in knotted-up elastic soul tensions. These indeed contribute the lion's share to our degenerating physical condition as well.

Can you please elaborate on the Christ impulse in Levin?

I can return to this more later. In short, we can sense how, on the intuitive thinking path, we could say the exactly same things that Levin said. We could talk about how no one should be forced to flow along with etched psycho-physical curvatures simply because they don't have the option to do otherwise, i.e. they are ignorant of those curvatures and the inner possibilities for modulating them. We could likewise talk about how the meandering pathways of natural (post-Fall) evolution brought us to the point where we need to take the evolutionary process in hand, to begin consciously working out our karmic compensation so that more abundant light and life can flow into the World. We can speak about the goal of spiritual freedom.

Levin longs for all these things as well but, the big difference is, he isn't aware of the inner axis of spiritual activity along which these evolutionary goals can be accomplished. Thus the 'option to do otherwise' is conceived as a purely physical option of end-user technology created by others rather than the spiritual option of growing intuitive knowledge from within ourselves. The meandering path of natural evolution is conceived as a random process of unintentional adaptations that we owe no allegiance to (although perhaps not as mindless, random, and flattened as standard neo-Darwinism). The goal is conceived as 'freedom of embodiment' instead of spiritual freedom which, in the long run, would indeed lead to the former in a much more harmonious and healthy way, through our own creative and moral inner activity.

The way I see it is that ML would reject reductionism if asked directly. But the irony is that as long as one implicitly accepts the intellectual plane as the only possible form of cognition, it is not felt that we still flatten everything on that plane. In other words, even though our theory may model many causally independent layers (and thus we see ourselves as non-reductionists), we remain blind to the fact that by trying to understand reality through this multilayered model, we still reduce it to the plane of intellectual gestures. This turns out to be very difficult to point out (and is what I tried to highlight on his site).

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2024 8:25 pm I understand what you are saying here because it is exactly what I assumed to be the case before this post by Cleric. Perhaps he can elaborate, but from my perspective, after reading that post I realized I had simply assumed that ML was taking the non-reductionist perspective based on the original post on this thread. Cleric had used ML's insightful framework as a symbol for the non-reductionist esoteric scientific perspective, and perhaps ML also has flashes of such intuitions, but it seems he had not necessarily committed himself to a non-reductionist perspective yet (which, if taken seriously, would naturally lead to contemplating the first-person experience of higher-order cognitive perspectives that will the phenomenal transformations at more integrated 'spacetime' scales). And the longer he holds out from taking the intuitive implications of his research seriously, the more tempting it is submerge back into the flow of the reductionist thinking habit. After all, it is that habit which supports the illusory promise that the higher-order scales can be healthily manipulated by tweaking the elemental spectrum of the 'basic rules'.

I am only a third way through the CJ TOE video and will come back on that, however Cleric's clarification just above is exactly the same thing expressed at the beginning of this thread. One could specify what exactly is meant by "reductionism", but regardless, I would insist that Levin not even for a second is tempted to imagine that all emerges from low-level laws of physics and chemistry, regardless of how we call such an attitude. It's not something that I am assuming, but just plain evident from all he presents and proposes.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2024 8:25 pm

Can you please elaborate on the Christ impulse in Levin?

I can return to this more later. In short, we can sense how, on the intuitive thinking path, we could say the exactly same things that Levin said. We could talk about how no one should be forced to flow along with etched psycho-physical curvatures simply because they don't have the option to do otherwise, i.e. they are ignorant of those curvatures and the inner possibilities for modulating them. We could likewise talk about how the meandering pathways of natural (post-Fall) evolution brought us to the point where we need to take the evolutionary process in hand, to begin consciously working out our karmic compensation so that more abundant light and life can flow into the World. We can speak about the goal of spiritual freedom.

Levin longs for all these things as well but, the big difference is, he isn't aware of the inner axis of spiritual activity along which these evolutionary goals can be accomplished. Thus the 'option to do otherwise' is conceived as a purely physical option of end-user technology created by others rather than the spiritual option of growing intuitive knowledge from within ourselves. The meandering path of natural evolution is conceived as a random process of unintentional adaptations that we owe no allegiance to (although perhaps not as mindless, random, and flattened as standard neo-Darwinism). The goal is conceived as 'freedom of embodiment' instead of spiritual freedom which, in the long run, would indeed lead to the former in a much more harmonious and healthy way, through our own creative and moral inner activity.

But the bold is not at all what Levin says. When he only speaks of having a choice of embodiment (which includes brain), not of psychic curvatures, that makes an enormous difference from spiritual freedom. The psychic curvatures for him remain in the background, and so they are free to wish undisturbed for whatever physical augmentation they may fancy, be it to restore an amputated limb, and also to purely "augment" human capabilities. It's interesting how he carefully avoids the word "transhumanism".
Yes, I would like you to return to this. At this point, I think it is very dubious to bring his purposes close to the Christ impulse. At this rate, we can bring everything and its opposite to the Christ impulse. The materialist also, while we are at it. The perpetrator of immoral acts, is also on a quest to self knowledge, he "can't do otherwise", and so on. Just because Levin is a brilliant scientist, who speaks very well, presents very well, seems very reasonable and considerate and kind and smart, doesn't mean one necessarily has to fall for his charm/authority/status/title, and forgive the radical arbitrariness and danger in his pursuits.

By the way, I am reminded now that Cleric called Levin's pursuits infernal, so... as much as we may keep in mind the concept of coincidentia oppositorum, it is not helpful, I think, to call such pursuits resonant with both evil and Christ. This is again your committment to highlighting smooth continuity in everything, even if this requires that you bring together Christ and Evil...

Cleric wrote: It's still far from the understanding that these levels are only abstract conceptualizations of real inner spiritual activity that has to be integrated within the human being. Without such understanding, quite infernal goals will utilize this possibility to manipulate the formative forces of Nature.

Federica wrote: ↑Fri Nov 08, 2024 6:21 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2024 8:25 pm I understand what you are saying here because it is exactly what I assumed to be the case before this post by Cleric. Perhaps he can elaborate, but from my perspective, after reading that post I realized I had simply assumed that ML was taking the non-reductionist perspective based on the original post on this thread. Cleric had used ML's insightful framework as a symbol for the non-reductionist esoteric scientific perspective, and perhaps ML also has flashes of such intuitions, but it seems he had not necessarily committed himself to a non-reductionist perspective yet (which, if taken seriously, would naturally lead to contemplating the first-person experience of higher-order cognitive perspectives that will the phenomenal transformations at more integrated 'spacetime' scales). And the longer he holds out from taking the intuitive implications of his research seriously, the more tempting it is submerge back into the flow of the reductionist thinking habit. After all, it is that habit which supports the illusory promise that the higher-order scales can be healthily manipulated by tweaking the elemental spectrum of the 'basic rules'.

I am only a third way through the CJ TOE video and will come back on that, however Cleric's clarification just above is exactly the same thing expressed at the beginning of this thread. One could specify what exactly is meant by "reductionism", but regardless, I would insist that Levin not even for a second is tempted to imagine that all emerges from low-level laws of physics and chemistry, regardless of how we call such an attitude. It's not something that I am assuming, but just plain evident from all he presents and proposes.

I will need to think about this more, because it's not clear to me how Levin could simultaneously feel the higher-order spaces are associated with cognitive perspectives exhibiting unique lawfulness (not reducible to elementary rules), and also feel that there is no overarching intention guiding evolution (and thus our current psycho-physical state) but rather we were dumped where we are by meandering, semi-random processes that we owe no allegiance to. Right now, it seems to me that Levin may intellectual think of himself as "non-reductionist" and call himself a "non-reductionist" when asked explicitly, but the feelings guiding his thoughts and future research are quite reductionist for the reason Cleric mentioned - he doesn't suspect cognition can be active with its gestures beyond the intellectual plane.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2024 8:25 pm

Can you please elaborate on the Christ impulse in Levin?

I can return to this more later. In short, we can sense how, on the intuitive thinking path, we could say the exactly same things that Levin said. We could talk about how no one should be forced to flow along with etched psycho-physical curvatures simply because they don't have the option to do otherwise, i.e. they are ignorant of those curvatures and the inner possibilities for modulating them. We could likewise talk about how the meandering pathways of natural (post-Fall) evolution brought us to the point where we need to take the evolutionary process in hand, to begin consciously working out our karmic compensation so that more abundant light and life can flow into the World. We can speak about the goal of spiritual freedom.

Levin longs for all these things as well but, the big difference is, he isn't aware of the inner axis of spiritual activity along which these evolutionary goals can be accomplished. Thus the 'option to do otherwise' is conceived as a purely physical option of end-user technology created by others rather than the spiritual option of growing intuitive knowledge from within ourselves. The meandering path of natural evolution is conceived as a random process of unintentional adaptations that we owe no allegiance to (although perhaps not as mindless, random, and flattened as standard neo-Darwinism). The goal is conceived as 'freedom of embodiment' instead of spiritual freedom which, in the long run, would indeed lead to the former in a much more harmonious and healthy way, through our own creative and moral inner activity.

But the bold is not at all what Levin says. When he only speaks of having a choice of embodiment (which includes brain), not of psychic curvatures, that makes an enormous difference from spiritual freedom. The psychic curvatures for him remain in the background, and so they are free to wish undisturbed for whatever physical augmentation they may fancy, be it to restore an amputated limb, and also to purely "augment" human capabilities. It's interesting how he carefully avoids the word "transhumanism".
Yes, I would like you to return to this. At this point, I think it is very dubious to bring his purposes close to the Christ impulse. At this rate, we can bring everything and its opposite to the Christ impulse. The materialist also, while we are at it. The perpetrator of immoral acts, is also on a quest to self knowledge, he "can't do otherwise", and so on. Just because Levin is a brilliant scientist, who speaks very well, presents very well, seems very reasonable and considerate and kind and smart, doesn't mean one necessarily has to fall for his charm/authority/status/title, and forgive the radical arbitrariness and danger in his pursuits.

Clearly Levin would say that having a better bodily instrument will also modulate our psychic curvatures, i.e. make us more content, peaceful, satisfied, etc. And Steiner also points to how so much disharmonious feeling that lives in souls today is because they are working with a subpar bodily instrument (but that always points back at our own receded spiritual activity, rather than semi-random processes of natural evolution).

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA107/En ... 26p01.html

This instrument of our life of concepts and ideas is inherited externally through our line of heredity. Its delicate convolutions are formed in one way or another according to this line of heredity. The soul will always to some extent have the inner strength to overcome what does not suit it and bring its instrument into harmony with its own forces, but only to a certain extent. The stronger the soul is the better it can do this. And if circumstances are such that it becomes impossible for the soul forces to overcome the resistance in the composition of the brain, the brain cannot be used properly. And then there occurs what we call mental defectiveness, mental illness. A melancholic temperament arises too, because the soul forces are not strong enough to overcome certain things in the organism. In the middle of life—it is different at the beginning and at the end—the forces of our soul always encounter a certain unsuitability in their instrument. This is the secret that always lies hidden behind the inner conflict and disharmony in human nature. What men often imagine to be the reason for their discontent is usually just a mask. In reality the reasons for it are as we have described. Thus we see the relationship between what the soul takes with it from incarnation to incarnation and what it receives from the line of heredity.

As to the rest - yes, and in a certain sense, that is what Steiner continually does as well - he reveals how all the intellectual frameworks and soul tendencies that guide them can be understood as deviations from the central Christ impulse that is the overarching curvature which attracts humanity's evolution. This is not an attempt to smear everything out or to ignore dangerous pursuits, but a practically useful way for us to resonate with our fellow humans, with their underlying perspective, feelings, and thoughts. As long we focus only on the intellectual content people express, we keep them at arm's length and try to distance them from our own soul life. We focus on what separates us from them instead of what unites us in underlying soul-spiritual movements.

Frankly, this is the same thing we were discussing with BK, who also has the tendency to forget that he can only recognize evil or danger in another's approach because the same underlying soul movements live within him. When we watch a movie and feel either joy at the character's heroism or disgust at their depravity, it is self-evident that we can only recognize such qualities because we also have inner experience with them. The same thing applies to the philosophical and scientific characters we are discussing. It is really troubling when the discussion seems to veer more and more into judging and condemning, like we are taken aback that anyone could think this way, rather than resonating with the underlying soul curvatures that we all share.

When I said what Levin expressed was "disturbing", for example, my intent was not to express shock or put distance between us and hold myself above him, but precisely to explore how similar soul movements that revolve around the Christ impulse can be funneled in quite different directions without the proper inner perspective. It's not just the theistic fundamentalists, but also the mystics and materialists who distort this Impulse that lives within all of us and is trying to come to conceptual expression precisely in our times. Christ is the central axis of our cognitive (spiritual) life, so it only makes sense that our intuitions, imaginations, and concepts will all relate to his Impulse in some intimate way. By objectively and dispassionately seeking those ways, we begin to inwardly resonate with the Christ being himself.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Nov 08, 2024 7:28 pm I will need to think about this more, because it's not clear to me how Levin could simultaneously feel the higher-order spaces are associated with cognitive perspectives exhibiting unique lawfulness (not reducible to elementary rules), and also feel that there is no overarching intention guiding evolution (and thus our current psycho-physical state) but rather we were dumped where we are by meandering, semi-random processes that we owe no allegiance to. Right now, it seems to me that Levin may intellectual think of himself as "non-reductionist" and call himself a "non-reductionist" when asked explicitly, but the feelings guiding his thoughts and future research are quite reductionist for the reason Cleric mentioned - he doesn't suspect cognition can be active with its gestures beyond the intellectual plane.

Nonono: if his research were guided by reductionist feelings or thoughts, he would simply never have discovered the properties he has discovered. It is precisely the choice of leaving behind the reductionist approach that allows him to have such groundbreaking experimental results. The non-reductionst perspective guides him towards running certain specific experiments that a reductionist would never have conceived. I think it's like that:

1. ML is only sure about what experiments can show - and about his own arbitrary perspective, but I won’t digress now.

2. The experiments tell him that there is cognition at every tested level. As he says, this is a fact that remains veiled for the reductionist, just because reductionism doesn't lead to running the right experiments. Only when the experiments are informed by a non reductionist perspective, these cognitive properties can emerge, like for example the capability of a skin cell to adapt to a new artificially imposed goal (from a higher level) and learn how to become another kind of cell with new behaviors and new problem solving capacities. Cognition is a continuum of abilities to adapt, optimize and coordinate behaviors towards the pursuit of goals. These goals are not simply built in the physical-chemical properties characterizing the level in question but are pivoted into that level from above. For example, a cell, or a set of cells, doesn't just roll along under the bottom-up effect of its physical-chemical constitution, but has additional veiled cognitive capacities, that only emerge when a new goal is assigned, under new environmental conditions. If you don't test it for that, the cognitive properties remain invisible.

3. As far as I know, the levels ML is currently able to experiment with are limited to human level and below (animals, organs, cells, …, proteins, …, AI, algorithms, ...)

4. ML infers that the same principle - no privileged scale of causation - may be true at any level, including the higher levels above man as well: society, language, culture,..., universe, .... Still, he has no experimental results there, so he doesn't know at the moment, nor - I would add - is he super interested, since what he wants is primarily to "bully" the lower layers (man and below) into working towards his goals, rather than letting them "be bullied by meandering evolution". And the way to obtain that is of course to alter - augment - the embodiment of these cognitive agents, be them at human, animal, cell, or other level.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Nov 08, 2024 7:28 pm Clearly Levin would say that having a better bodily instrument will also modulate our psychic curvatures, i.e. make us more content, peaceful, satisfied, etc.

Of course he would say that. Yes. But does that make any difference at all on the fact that these effects on the psychic symptoms of discontent, restlessness, and dissatisfaction are obtained from without, whilst the real freedom of modulation of psychic curvatures can only be attained when these curvatures are inwardly experienced? Not an ounce of spiritual freedom is added to human agency by means of mere bodily augmentation. It’s like psychedelics, the very muscles that would need to be sensitized and developed are numbed. And I find it out of place to draw far-fetched Steiner parallels, when we know too well where his views point to, in terms of healing the body-soul-spirit.

AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Nov 08, 2024 7:28 pm As to the rest - yes, and in a certain sense, that is what Steiner continually does as well - he reveals how all the intellectual frameworks and soul tendencies that guide them can be understood as deviations from the central Christ impulse that is the overarching curvature which attracts humanity's evolution. This is not an attempt to smear everything out or to ignore dangerous pursuits, but a practically useful way for us to resonate with our fellow humans, with their underlying perspective, feelings, and thoughts. As long we focus only on the intellectual content people express, we keep them at arm's length and try to distance them from our own soul life. We focus on what separates us from them instead of what unites us in underlying soul-spiritual movements.

Frankly, this is the same thing we were discussing with BK, who also has the tendency to forget that he can only recognize evil or danger in another's approach because the same underlying soul movements live within him. When we watch a movie and feel either joy at the character's heroism or disgust at their depravity, it is self-evident that we can only recognize such qualities because we also have inner experience with them. The same thing applies to the philosophical and scientific characters we are discussing. It is really troubling when the discussion seems to veer more and more into judging and condemning, like we are taken aback that anyone could think this way, rather than resonating with the underlying soul curvatures that we all share.

When I said what Levin expressed was "disturbing", for example, my intent was not to express shock or put distance between us and hold myself above him, but precisely to explore how similar soul movements that revolve around the Christ impulse can be funneled in quite different directions without the proper inner perspective. It's not just the theistic fundamentalists, but also the mystics and materialists who distort this Impulse that lives within all of us and is trying to come to conceptual expression precisely in our times. Christ is the central axis of our cognitive (spiritual) life, so it only makes sense that our intuitions, imaginations, and concepts will all relate to his Impulse in some intimate way. By objectively and dispassionately seeking those ways, we begin to inwardly resonate with the Christ being himself.

I agree that those impulses are collective and shared, in a concrete way, and I try to keep that constantly in mind. Surely the way I have written the posts above may make me sound judgemental and distancing, I am aware of that. But in the exact same way that you rightly highlight the fact that we all partake in these evil impulses, and that we should not feel immune and above them, I highlight that my critique is only contingently directed to ML as an individual. It is first and foremost the impulse, the ideas themselves, and the feelings themselves, that needs to be called out, clarified, and made as conscious as possible, in all their conceptual surroundings as well.

I have certainly no hard feelings for the singular personas of ML, BK, and others. I rather deeply empathize with them, probably more than you can imagine. But I keep these things for myself. I don't see the usefulness of continually softening all the edges, continually trying to match what does not match. I think this attitude makes the understanding of the emotional and conceptual tensions, hence their recognition within ourselves, just way harder. The edges and the contrasts help characterize and recognize these key junctures. Like for example, that ML uses the words "bully" and "dump", repeatedly, has definite relevance. When I point that out, it helps understand the feeling-substrate from which his overall pursuits are steered. Now, when I use these same words on purpose, and for example say that ML wants to "bully" the cells to do this or that, it sounds judgmental and severe - I know.

I choose to do it, not as a sign of condemnation of an individual scientist, but because it is necessary to point out a peculiar state of mind which is very informative, and highly relatable, once noticed. Conversely, when the key lines of force are smeared out - the pinnacle being reached when it is considered equally relevant to call those goals infernal and also expression of the Christ impulse - the chances of gaining a vivid and relatable understanding are strongly diminished. Again, this doesn't mean that, just because I don't sing someone's praises in these posts, I also don't experience and nurture additional thoughts, and additional feelings, in relation to them. To insinuate that the impressions gathered from reading my posts are the exhaustive reflection of my entire attitude is insensitive, to say the least.

So I find your approach counterproductive. By continually attenuating vocabulary, concepts, and intents, and by continually suggesting-forcing Steiner into saying ambiguous things he didn't say - lest adding attenuated caveats between brackets - this approach blurs the possibilities of clear understanding. It erodes the chances to become keenly aware of those ideas and feelings that we need to distinguish, not blur, and become keenly aware of.