Philosophical Speculations

"What if we look at it from the opposite direction? What if DGWP is about imaginatively unwinding the contradictions, the 'married bachelors', that are already interwoven in ordinary experience through our assumptive conceptual habits? For example, it's hard to deny that ordinary experience presents itself as a sharp contrast between self and not-self, between what is "me" and what is "not me". Yet isn't this sharp contrast of ordinary experience also a 'married bachelor'?"

I love how you describe this unwinding, and I feel that much of my passion for the intellectual and phenomenological practices of philosophy are in discovering more and more methods of this process.

I am more than ready, in this context, to set aside Steiner's definition and justification of DGWP and to continue on in describing specific ways in which we can imagine ourself into very exact experience of holding/touching the mystery within each moment of experience.

Personally, for clarities sake, I'd rather not label the various methods and experiences as DGWP. But this is your house and as long as we are tracking the actual practices and experiences, I'm okay calling it anything you'd prefer. I just found myself thinking, 'the mysteriously given' (TMG). I like the ring of it and it somehow captures, for me, that nature of the experience I think we both value and understand as essential to our starting point.

I'm not grasping the performative contradiction in imagining that I encounter other subjects.

"But why does something "still quite untouched by the activity of thinking" need to be a "meaningless" state?"

Exactly. I would say that the further away we can get from presupposing a meaninglessness, the better.

"I think perhaps many readers are assuming that the DGWP must equate to "meaningless..."

Most fellow readers that I know tend to think of the state itself as profoundly meaningful exactly because they feel they are, for the first time, deeply encountering utter and pure meaninglessness; not only that, but that this profound experience/insight is the only way to begin (as Steiner says) to take the actual first step of his epistemology. So I don't find people equating it with meaningless but I do find them explaining its necessity and profundity as being grounded in the archetypal meaninglessness that it is exposing, which clears the path for the next/first real insights to be exact.

But whatever you choose to call the kinds of exercises and experiences we are pursuing (I vote for TMG), I'm ready to dive in. You said it well:

"Then the question arises, how would we go about unwinding those implicit assumptions of ordinary experience?"

A majority of the ways I've approached this have been creative combinations of the meditative/contemplative practices of Steiner, Kuhlewind, and Gendlin, crossing their essential insights and methods and experimenting over time. But those are just the core three; as you surely know, the best surprises often come from the most 'random' passages or verbal encounters. I'm excited to hear more.

Thanks

findingblanks wrote: ↑Tue Sep 17, 2024 2:38 pm "What if we look at it from the opposite direction? What if DGWP is about imaginatively unwinding the contradictions, the 'married bachelors', that are already interwoven in ordinary experience through our assumptive conceptual habits? For example, it's hard to deny that ordinary experience presents itself as a sharp contrast between self and not-self, between what is "me" and what is "not me". Yet isn't this sharp contrast of ordinary experience also a 'married bachelor'?"

I love how you describe this unwinding, and I feel that much of my passion for the intellectual and phenomenological practices of philosophy are in discovering more and more methods of this process.

I am more than ready, in this context, to set aside Steiner's definition and justification of DGWP and to continue on in describing specific ways in which we can imagine ourself into very exact experience of holding/touching the mystery within each moment of experience.

Personally, for clarities sake, I'd rather not label the various methods and experiences as DGWP. But this is your house and as long as we are tracking the actual practices and experiences, I'm okay calling it anything you'd prefer. I just found myself thinking, 'the mysteriously given' (TMG). I like the ring of it and it somehow captures, for me, that nature of the experience I think we both value and understand as essential to our starting point.

I'm not grasping the performative contradiction in imagining that I encounter other subjects.

"But why does something "still quite untouched by the activity of thinking" need to be a "meaningless" state?"

Exactly. I would say that the further away we can get from presupposing a meaninglessness, the better.

"I think perhaps many readers are assuming that the DGWP must equate to "meaningless..."

Most fellow readers that I know tend to think of the state itself as profoundly meaningful exactly because they feel they are, for the first time, deeply encountering utter and pure meaninglessness; not only that, but that this profound experience/insight is the only way to begin (as Steiner says) to take the actual first step of his epistemology. So I don't find people equating it with meaningless but I do find them explaining its necessity and profundity as being grounded in the archetypal meaninglessness that it is exposing, which clears the path for the next/first real insights to be exact.

But whatever you choose to call the kinds of exercises and experiences we are pursuing (I vote for TMG), I'm ready to dive in. You said it well:

"Then the question arises, how would we go about unwinding those implicit assumptions of ordinary experience?"

Thanks

Alright, we can continue then with TMG. Just to clarify, the performative contradiction is imagining that other subjects belong to some 'external' realm and impinge upon your subjective experience from 'without'. The act of imagining this 'other realm' (whether it is conceived as material, spiritual, etc. doesn't matter) is always done from within first-person experience that never comes into contact with something beyond itself. This is why either solipsism or epistemic nihilism (Kant) is necessitated when we start developing a theory of knowledge from this implicit assumption that is based on naive experience.

GA 3, V wrote:To permeate the world, as given, with concepts and ideas, is a thinking consideration of things. Therefore, thinking is the act which mediates knowledge. It is only when thinking arranges the world-picture by means of its own activity that knowledge can come about. Thinking itself is an activity which, in the moment of cognition, produces a content of its own. Therefore, insofar as the content that is cognized issues from thinking, it contains no problem for cognition. We have only to observe it; the very nature of what we observe is given us directly. A description of thinking is also at the same time the science of thinking. Logic, too, has always been a description of thought-forms, never a science that proves anything. Proof is only called for when the content of thought is synthesized with some other content of the world.

We can try to proceed with small steps here. I would offer the following exercise as a way of sensitizing ourselves to what is described above.

Imagine a triangle into existence. This triangle can stand as a symbol for TMG, insofar as we are approaching it before applying any habitual conceptual assumptions or distinctions. We simply will our inner activity such that the image of a triangle is observed (the image doesn't need to be very vivid). With this inwardly observed symbol for TMG, there is no question of whether there is something 'behind', 'within', 'beyond', etc. the image that should explain its existence. In the experience of observing this willed triangle image, we don't start wondering where it came from,how it came about, what it's 'essence' is, etc. We don't ask whether it "corresponds" to some other reality, only if it aligns with our willed intent. All of that is directly given in the experience of willing the image into existence. The image is a perfect reflection of our inner activity that weaves within the meaning of 'triangle'. Simply describing this experience is already a science of thinking content.

Are we still on the same page or how would you modify it?

To continue to play with The Mysteriously Given, just so that you have more material to riff on when you come back to point to our next steps:

Before a subject has the capacity to form curiosity, they are merged within an undifferentiated experience. They have no capacity to question, because they have no meta-conscious awareness. Or, we could say maybe that they have no meta-conscious awareness because they have not yet differentiated their field of experiencing into the first polarities of a thinking experience and a perceiving experience. I doubt (and I think the evidence backs this up) that the first subjects to begin to experience this polar differentiation immediately began scratching their chins while staring at pure visual patterns and wondering how they relate. They were taking orders from "The Gods" and I doubt that what we modern western folks think of as 'curiosity' was happening then. No doubt there was a very early version of what would later become our curiosity.

But that tiny little gap continued to grow. This wasn't a movement from experiencing chaos towards arranging it conceptually. This was an experience of an inherently meaningful cosmos slowly becoming abstracted. As this processes continued, so did a new form of becoming very interested in the nature of reality. We stopped simply taking dictation from the gods and began to live increasingly in states of unknowing. Not for long! And even those states were shaped by various other meanings and assumptions. In fact, all experiences of mystery are highly shaped by other implicit things we feel certain about. If one of those certainties changes in the backgrounds, the feel of the mystery (its 'shape') changes as well. We don't want to think of the mystery as a detached form that we stare at in awe. We participate its generation, mainly unconsciously but not necessarily.

The Mysteriously Given might be a new way that I can point to how in each and every moment of experience, we have the option of attending to something mysterious, something that we can feel a question about to form about... Before this attending becomes intellectual (which is fine and good in the right context, for the right duration), it is a visceral cogntive feeling. Before that feeling becomes meta-conscious, we do it naturaly without reflecting upon its very nature.

Rather than boxing The Mysteriously Given into a fixed form, we can treat it as a reminder that our experience is always holding aspects that, if treated in a specific way (turned towards with warmth and curiosity, a friendly welcoming) can reveal new questions and new aspects of themselves. And this practice of turning towards the mysteriously given need not be fixed as the only way to begin; but we can notice that it almost seems like anytime we are in a creative commune with the cosmos there is some form of this warm, curious, patient and welcoming attention to an emerging aspect of what we are now experiencing (inwardly or outwardly).

Even if the above moves too far away from where you are about to take us, it at least gives you a sense of my experiencing as I dialog with you and explore the pathway you are treading.

Oh, I see you responded to my first comment today. I'll respond to you and we can bookmark what I just wrote, only coming back to it if it is relevant to the earlier bits. Thanks.

Hi there,

I have too many responses and questions regarding the performative contradiction thread of this conversation. I doubt they are that relavant to where you are going, so I'll put those aside.

"Imagine a triangle into existence. This triangle can stand as a symbol for TMG, insofar as we are approaching it before applying any habitual conceptual assumptions or distinctions. We simply will our inner activity such that the image of a triangle is observed (the image doesn't need to be very vivid). With this inwardly observed symbol for TMG, there is no question of whether there is something 'behind', 'within', 'beyond', etc. the image that should explain its existence. In the experience of observing this willed triangle image, we don't start wondering where it came from,how it came about, what it's 'essence' is, etc. We don't ask whether it "corresponds" to some other reality, only if it aligns with our willed intent. All of that is directly given in the experience of willing the image into existence. The image is a perfect reflection of our inner activity that weaves within the meaning of 'triangle'. Simply describing this experience is already a science of thinking content."

It might be a good idea for you to read the post I made on TMG because that'll help explain why I am going to pause before simply taking up this exercise.

What I like about TMG is that we don't need to make a symbol for it because it is always directly available to be had. At any point, we can turn towards my ongoing experiencing with curiosity and notice what forms in the enclave generated by that warmly curious cogntive turning.

So, for me, rather than making the image of a triangle as a symbol of TMG, I am more inclined to make the image as an aspect of how TMG is being directly experienced in the practice. Does that make sense?

As I did the practice, one question arose: while I did not start intellectually wondering where the image came from, an implicit knowing was directly being experienced that I was in what Barfield might have called a 'creator-relation' to the triangle. I wasn't popping out and naming that as a category, but it was living within the very cognitive knowing of the activity itself.

Other than that, I found different aspects of my experience emerge while holding the image. Rather than turn towards those, I simply noted they were there but rested my attention back on the triangle itself. Because I had just read your instructions, certain concepts like "willed intent' and 'into existence' would flash up, and I treated them the same way, noting but then resting back on the image itself.

findingblanks wrote: ↑Tue Sep 17, 2024 4:29 pm Hi there,

I have too many responses and questions regarding the performative contradiction thread of this conversation. I doubt they are that relavant to where you are going, so I'll put those aside.

"Imagine a triangle into existence. This triangle can stand as a symbol for TMG, insofar as we are approaching it before applying any habitual conceptual assumptions or distinctions. We simply will our inner activity such that the image of a triangle is observed (the image doesn't need to be very vivid). With this inwardly observed symbol for TMG, there is no question of whether there is something 'behind', 'within', 'beyond', etc. the image that should explain its existence. In the experience of observing this willed triangle image, we don't start wondering where it came from,how it came about, what it's 'essence' is, etc. We don't ask whether it "corresponds" to some other reality, only if it aligns with our willed intent. All of that is directly given in the experience of willing the image into existence. The image is a perfect reflection of our inner activity that weaves within the meaning of 'triangle'. Simply describing this experience is already a science of thinking content."

It might be a good idea for you to read the post I made on TMG because that'll help explain why I am going to pause before simply taking up this exercise.

What I like about TMG is that we don't need to make a symbol for it because it is always directly available to be had. At any point, we can turn towards my ongoing experiencing with curiosity and notice what forms in the enclave generated by that warmly curious cogntive turning.

So, for me, rather than making the image of a triangle as a symbol of TMG, I am more inclined to make the image as an aspect of how TMG is being directly experienced in the practice. Does that make sense?

As I did the practice, one question arose: while I did not start intellectually wondering where the image came from, an implicit knowing was directly being experienced that I was in what Barfield might have called a 'creator-relation' to the triangle. I wasn't popping out and naming that as a category, but it was living within the very cognitive knowing of the activity itself.

Other than that, I found different aspects of my experience emerge while holding the image. Rather than turn towards those, I simply noted they were there but rested my attention back on the triangle itself. Because I had just read your instructions, certain concepts like "willed intent' and 'into existence' would flash up, and I treated them the same way, noting but then resting back on the image itself.

I will go back and consider your TMG post most carefully, but I'd like to explore this thread of reasoning for now. Yes, all the concepts like 'willed intent' should be pointing right back to how we are "living within the very cognitive knowing of the activity itself." I am only using them to describe the first-person experience of the inner activity that results in the perceptual image.

In that sense, would you say that you first lived in a certain invisible intuition of the meaning 'triangle' and then did something inwardly to focus that intuition into the triangle image? We often refer to these as 'thinking-gestures', or some other image that evokes the meaningful experience of making inner movements that focus intuition, as if focusing intuitive light through a prism.

Because I don't remember very much about the mathematical structures and definitions that make up a triangle, I simply stayed with the image that came up the moment I read your sentence. A bit like 'pencil' or any other noun that can pull up an instant image. If I needed to meditate on the meaning of triangle, I'd either be meditating on an attempt to remember information I once had, or I would do some basic research before the meditation.

findingblanks wrote: ↑Tue Sep 17, 2024 5:56 pm Because I don't remember very much about the mathematical structures and definitions that make up a triangle, I simply stayed with the image that came up the moment I read your sentence. A bit like 'pencil' or any other noun that can pull up an instant image. If I needed to meditate on the meaning of triangle, I'd either be meditating on an attempt to remember information I once had, or I would do some basic research before the meditation.

Let's start with something else. This following exercise may sound very trivial, even insultingly so, but I just want to make sure we are on the same page concerning the inner experience of cognitive activity before continuing.

We can forget the triangle image. Pick a random point, say, the corner of the table, and hold your attention still at it for a few seconds, then move to another point. It’s not important what the object is – it acts only as an anchor point. Try to feel the act of focusing your attention.

Then, after you get a good feel for this, try with eyes closed and focus your attention at random points. The eyes are closed only to avoid distractions, you are in the same room space. You can also think of it as, instead of closing your eyes, the lights simply go down. Then you focus your attention at the space where, for example, the chair should be, the table, and so on. But this is only for reference. In reality, you need not try to imagine anything at the points of focus. At the center of the experiment is the very act of pointing your ray of attention at various points in space. You can also try something more advanced like smoothly moving the focus of your attention in circular, spiral, rectangular, etc. paths.

Now after you do this experiment, I guess you would agree that what you experience is entirely your willed movement of the focused attentional activity within empty space. Is that an accurate characterization of the inner experience?

Yes, I experienced this willed movement of focused attentional activity. I use 'empty space' in a very specific way that probably doesn't correspond to this context, so I'd need to know more exactly what you mean by it. But if we are talking about my sense of 'space' in the room and how I was experiencing the shift of focus when I would intend my attention in various movements and upon various objects, yes, I experience that movement and that space.

findingblanks wrote: ↑Tue Sep 17, 2024 7:24 pm Yes, I experienced this willed movement of focused attentional activity. I use 'empty space' in a very specific way that probably doesn't correspond to this context, so I'd need to know more exactly what you mean by it. But if we are talking about my sense of 'space' in the room and how I was experiencing the shift of focus when I would intend my attention in various movements and upon various objects, yes, I experience that movement and that space.

Great, so I hope we agree that we have reached a kind of 'starting point' for a science of knowledge. In the experience of this willed movement of attentional activity, there is pure knowing of (mostly) undifferentiated content. If we closed our eyes and didn't focus on any particular object or image, but simply used the 'space' as anchor points for the experience, then we lived entirely in the movement of attentional activity and no questions arose about the meaning of this activity. In a sense, anything we could ask about the meaning of this experience would be immediately explained by the experience itself.

If we are pretty much on the same page with that, then we can gradually start to reintroduce perceptual content while steering clear of any habitual assumptions. (although I think what we are doing coincides with the core movements of Steiner's early work, we can leave those works aside for now and simply conduct an independent phenomenology/epistemology). As we move forward, we are trying to focus only on what we can experience of the relation between attentional activity and perceptual content while leaving aside all extraneous assumptions. In other words, the conclusions we reach about this experience should be invariant of any specific conception of 'what reality is', 'how it works', 'the relation between subject and object', etc. For example, if we experience certain colors or sounds, we can report on this fact and it remains true regardless of whether we are awake, dreaming, on a psychedelic trip, etc. We should try to apply that also to inner perceptual states of desires, feelings, thoughts, etc.

To become more sensitive to the domain of perceptual content on which our attentional activity works, we can observe the way we move our focus through the forms in our visual field. But we can also try to ‘zoom out’ from any particular form and try to expand our focus and include as much as possible of our peripheral vision as well, such that our whole visual field feels like a holistic picture. Now we can try to zoom even further out while trying to include all other senses in this perceptual panorama – hearing, touch, smell, taste, warmth, and so on. Then we can also include our emotional state and finally, we can include even the awareness that we’re doing this particular exercise.

Any questions or issues here? If not I'll continue tomorrow, or else we can address them.