Philosophical Speculations

"Concepts cannot be derived from perception. This is apparent from the fact that, as man grows up, he slowly and gradually builds up the concepts corresponding to the objects that surround him. Concepts are added to perception." (GA 4)

What would it take to verify the above? Would we need to investigate every single perceptual experience to figure out where the conceptual element came from? Or would one single instance of a perceptual experience in which the corresponding concepts arrive from an 'orthogonal direction', i.e. from within our intuitive activity, serve to validate this experiential principle?

Unless we believe that cognitive-perceptual experience is continually changing in its underlying lawfulness, sometimes allowing for concepts to arise from perceptions and sometimes allowing for concepts to incarnate through our intuitive activity, then we have to conclude a single instance is sufficient to heighten our attention to what is always happening for all perceptual experiences. The only question then becomes when/how it happened, i.e. as the result of 'past' intuitive activity or 'present' intuitive activity?

Our thinking has been habituated to feel, for example, that if we add the concept of ‘redness’ to another concept of ‘blueness’, we get the concept of ‘purpleness’. Yet careful attention to living experience reveals that is not the case – the concept of ‘purpleness’ only appears as a flash of insight from mysterious depths when we encounter the corresponding perceptions that anchor and kindle our intuitive activity. We only feel the perceptions already possess the concepts because this incarnational process already occurred during our instinctive development. Neither can the concept of ‘twofoldness’ be reduced to two concepts of ‘oneness’ that we add together, but must arise as a flash of intuitive insight concerning all things that come in pairs.

Likewise, we can imagine writing a letter on a sheet of paper with certain ideas and intimate feelings. Then we put the paper in an envelope and seal it. Now we can place this letter somewhere and anytime our gaze glances over it, it acts as a rich symbol that anchors everything that we have expressed there. We should really try to feel how practically none of that inner richness can be seen by just staring at the sealed letter, for example, if someone else were to look at it. The inner contents come from the opposite direction of the perceptual image of the letter, from within our memory intuition of steering our intuitive activity through meaning that we condensed into written form. Is there any reason to doubt that all of perceptual reality is of the Logos-nature of a letter?

What happens once we realize this experiential principle applies to all conceptual relations that we have woven into the ordinary perceptual world around us and within us through intuitive activity? Then we may feel the only way to become more sensitive to our intuitive activity that structures perceptual experience is to unwind these conceptual determinations through our imagination.

"As we have seen in the preceding chapters, an epistemological investigation must begin by rejecting existing knowledge. Knowledge is something brought into existence by man, something that has arisen through his activity. If a theory of knowledge is really to explain the whole sphere of knowledge, then it must start from something still quite untouched by the activity of thinking, and what is more, from something which lends to this activity its first impulse. This starting point must lie outside the act of cognition, it must not itself be knowledge. But it must be sought immediately prior to cognition, so that the very next step man takes beyond it is the activity of cognition. This absolute starting point must be determined in such a way that it admits nothing already derived from cognition....

Only our directly given world-picture can offer such a starting point, i.e. that picture of the world which presents itself to man before he has subjected it to the processes of knowledge in any way, before he has asserted or decided anything at all about it by means of thinking. This “directly given” picture is what flits past us, disconnected, but still undifferentiated." (GA 3)

Do we think Steiner is simply providing us a metaphysical assertion, an informational communication like he is describing a landscape to us over the phone, or rather is he prompting us to do something inwardly to 'reject existing knowledge' and experience the 'starting point' that leads into the activity of cognition? In other words, the above-quoted paragraph is analogous to the image right below. When we see the image, we won't assume it intends to give us third-person pictures of people doing asanas so we can memorize them, but rather it is giving us symbols that can anchor our first-person experience of going through the same physical motions. Likewise, Steiner is providing us with symbols of 'thought-asanas' to anchor our first-person experience of the same intuitive movements he went through. We only realize the value of these asanas if we effortfully move our intuitive activity through the various formations that are offered, without analytically dissecting them into third-person pictures about the 'nature of cognitive experience'.

Are we led in this way to some illusory reality, since we are trying to imaginatively eliminate the conceptual determinations that we actually find interwoven in our ordinary experience? Take a look at an object with a uniform white or black surface. Now use your imaginative activity to perceive another color overlaid on top of the surface, like red, blue, green, etc. Although we may have a dim sense of this imaginatively overlaid color, we must admit that the sensory color 'outweighs' it. Does this mean the imaginative overlay is an illusion, some state that doesn't correspond to reality? No, there is no reason to conclude that. Our imaginative state with the overlaid color is just as much an experienced reality as the conceptual state with only the sensory color. All that this experience indicates is that our imaginative state is unfolding within the context of a conceptual-sensory state that 'outweighs' it. Nevertheless, the imaginative state still serves a valid function in orienting us to reality, namely the reality of our own activity - the limitations and possibilities of that activity within the context of more 'heavy' constraints. We would never discover this inner reality if we didn't effortfully move our imaginative activity but simply remained passive and observed the sensory state as it is given to us.

When we unwind the conceptual determinations, what are we becoming more inwardly sensitive to? Philosophers from Aristotle to Kant arrived at the conclusion that there must be 'categories' that structure our cognitive perception in various interesting ways. For Aristotle, these were substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, doing, having, and being affected. For Kant, these took on a more refined conceptual form. Yet for all these philosophers it wasn't conceived that we can experience these categories more intimately, not just as abstract mental pictures that we imagine "structure our experience", but as real-time 'curvatures' along which we can experience our mental, emotional, and sensory states of being unfolding. In other words, can we experience the intuition of these categories in greater purity? The only way to become intimately aware of such constraints is to resist them. If we are entirely submerged in water and flowing along with the current passively, we will never become conscious of the water and our relation to it. Likewise, if we are free-falling within a vacuum.

Only when we begin resisting the current in some way do we create the conditions for becoming conscious of this medium through which our states unfold. It is the same principle for the inner life. We have to resist the conceptual determinations we habitually make out of the perceptual flow to become more conscious of our conceptually determining activity, the intuitive 'categorical' mediums through which our perceptual states unfold. As we can see, there is nothing very exotic or complex about the above. It may even seem trivial and boring at first, like it's putting an end to all our interpretive fun, so we look for more 'nuanced' ways of interacting with the text. Yet the real fun begins when we resist our habitual determinations and participate with Steiner in the thought-asanas. Then we learn about the 'nature of cognition' in an intuitively experiential way that is completely unsuspected from the perspective of standard intellectual philosophy and science.

"Concepts cannot be derived from perception. This is apparent from the fact that, as man grows up, he slowly and gradually builds up the concepts corresponding to the objects that surround him. Concepts are added to perception."

Hey there Ashvin,

So I simply don't have the time right now to do the full response that got wiped on Facebook the other day. But maybe that's for the best; rather than kick off with too much for you to respond to, we can just move through different chunks and aspects of this interesting post.

Starting with the quote:

"Concepts cannot be derived from perception. This is apparent from the fact that, as man grows up, he slowly and gradually builds up the concepts corresponding to the objects that surround him. Concepts are added to perception."

If there is a way for you to read whatever I'm about to say in the least 'debate bro' context and feel like two boys down at the creek thinking about jumping in the water, that'd be great. And maybe we each share those real places where we are open to multiple understandings, where we actually can't Teach because we are too curious and too in touch with how the mysery evadies us even when we are in concentrated and clear states of cognition...

Anyway, let's see.

When I read that, I remember how it made obvious sense to me back in my first phase of being an Anthroposophist. I THINK everything I would say about it, both the logic of it, and how it matches the first changes of consciousness once you've been doing the basic exerices for a while...that everything I would say would be the kind of basic agreement that nealry all hard working Anthroposophists nod their head about.

The quote seems very obvious in that sense. Obviously just staring at a horse won't get you to be learning about a horse. Actually, if we are going to talk more about the so-called 'directly given world picture', then we aren't talking about staring at a 'horse' because 'horse' is alreday a highly complex notion And we aren't really talking about 'animal' or even 'shape'. I'm not sure but I think if we are accurately enacting the directly given world picture, we could at best only speak of a nearly endless multiplicity of 'dots' of perception, shades (no, that is too conceptual), 'dots' of different visuals. We would be keeping in mind that this is an artifical and highly conceptual notion; but we would be agreeing that we MUST imagine these endless dots before we can then take the first step?

I think I'd rather start with the directly given world pictures because

1) Steiner - even though I think he makes really interesting changes in how he conceives it in the first three books - always says that we really can't take the next step until we realize why imagining these 'dots' is the only way to begin.

2) Based on the quote you began with (which is a wonderful opening question), in order for me to explore my thoughts about it without only taking it for granted, it seems that the directly given world picture allows us to explore it even more exactly.

Does that work?

findingblanks wrote: ↑Sun Sep 15, 2024 3:44 pm "Concepts cannot be derived from perception. This is apparent from the fact that, as man grows up, he slowly and gradually builds up the concepts corresponding to the objects that surround him. Concepts are added to perception."

Hey there Ashvin,

So I simply don't have the time right now to do the full response that got wiped on Facebook the other day. But maybe that's for the best; rather than kick off with too much for you to respond to, we can just move through different chunks and aspects of this interesting post.

Starting with the quote:

"Concepts cannot be derived from perception. This is apparent from the fact that, as man grows up, he slowly and gradually builds up the concepts corresponding to the objects that surround him. Concepts are added to perception."

If there is a way for you to read whatever I'm about to say in the least 'debate bro' context and feel like two boys down at the creek thinking about jumping in the water, that'd be great. And maybe we each share those real places where we are open to multiple understandings, where we actually can't Teach because we are too curious and too in touch with how the mysery evadies us even when we are in concentrated and clear states of cognition...

Anyway, let's see.

When I read that, I remember how it made obvious sense to me back in my first phase of being an Anthroposophist. I THINK everything I would say about it, both the logic of it, and how it matches the first changes of consciousness once you've been doing the basic exerices for a while...that everything I would say would be the kind of basic agreement that nealry all hard working Anthroposophists nod their head about.

The quote seems very obvious in that sense. Obviously just staring at a horse won't get you to be learning about a horse. Actually, if we are going to talk more about the so-called 'directly given world picture', then we aren't talking about staring at a 'horse' because 'horse' is alreday a highly complex notion And we aren't really talking about 'animal' or even 'shape'. I'm not sure but I think if we are accurately enacting the directly given world picture, we could at best only speak of a nearly endless multiplicity of 'dots' of perception, shades (no, that is too conceptual), 'dots' of different visuals. We would be keeping in mind that this is an artifical and highly conceptual notion; but we would be agreeing that we MUST imagine these endless dots before we can then take the first step?

I think I'd rather start with the directly given world pictures because

1) Steiner - even though I think he makes really interesting changes in how he conceives it in the first three books - always says that we really can't take the next step until we realize why imagining these 'dots' is the only way to begin.

2) Based on the quote you began with (which is a wonderful opening question), in order for me to explore my thoughts about it without only taking it for granted, it seems that the directly given world picture allows us to explore it even more exactly.

Does that work?

Hi Jeff,

Thank you for taking the time to reincarnate some of your thoughts here.

Yes, that works. And I agree with (1) and (2) that it is important for us to genuinely try and imagine the GWP, the undifferentiated amalgamation of sensory impressions. I would add that, just like we can't do an asana once and expect to master its movements, imagining the GWP is likewise not a one-time thing. It is something that we can practice over and over, anchored by phenomenological prompts, accustoming our inner organism to the movements that resist ordinary conceptual determinations.

If we think about it, the principle of imaginative concentration is similar. We start with an unfamiliar and enigmatic image (like the Rose Cross), not drawn from explicit memory experience, precisely so we have a unitary image relatively free of conceptual determinations. We may go through a process of building up the imagination beforehand to imbue it with some deeper ideal and feeling significance, but we don't analyze the image in terms of familiar conceptual categories. And when our habitual mechanisms of conceptual analysis kick in during the meditation, as they always do, we resist them as much as possible to remain intuitively concentrated and to become more sensitive to the inner movements we are participating with.

So that's the context in which I feel the GWP reveals its most significance for the epistemological path. I am providing this context because I don't want to argue too much about the particular elements. In a certain sense, analyzing the GWP and measuring it against our ordinary perceptual experience, trying to figure out the 'pixels' it is 'made of', negates the value of imagining it in the first place. Then we are flowing right along with the conceptually determining habits, decomposing the unitary image into its particular elements. It would be the same as analyzing the image we use for concentration.

Thus, I hope we can explore it even more exactly without resorting to such an analysis, but rather reasoning through its functions for inner orientation to the truthful flow of experience.

Hi Ashvin,

"In a certain sense, analyzing the GWP and measuring it against our ordinary perceptual experience, trying to figure out the 'pixels' it is 'made of', negates the value of imagining it in the first place."

Fyi, I don't think I have ever analyzed the DGWP to figure out what it is 'made of'. I don't think Steiner did either. Although, Steiner did spend much time describing it's 'pixels' and why we are not understanding it correctly if we can't characterize the concept accurately. I wish I had made this more clear to you, because now I see that when I am specifying the concept and trying to make sure we aren't lazily agreeing that we are sharing the same concept, you have been taking this as an attempt to make a metaphysical claim about the nature of the 'dots'. That's too bad. And I am glad to now it, because now I can adjust.

What I began to notice is that long time students of Steiner's epistemological works will all quickly agree about the importance of the DGWP, but when you ask them what it is, you get very different answers. I do not think that is what Steiner wanted. Some say it is the nature of how human's first experience reality before they bring concepts to it, the 'first form in which we experience the world.' Other's say it is a concept that we must philosophically and exactly cognize which is not the first form in which we experience the world nor is it a form in which we ever experience the world. And there are other variations of interpretating the DGWP, as I said, by very serious students who work with the text for decades. These are all people who would not disagree when they read Steiner saying that he mathematically formulated his ideas in these text in way that requires readers to grasp them exactly before they can really take the next step. Steiner doesn't not mean *merely* abstractly. Neither do I. I wish I could somehow convery this to you in a way that disabused you of the notion that when I am talking about and working with DGWP, I am not merely playing with dead concepts. For me, that would be the start of you and I in creating an actual bridge in this kind of conversation.

"Thus, I hope we can explore it even more exactly without resorting to such an analysis, but rather reasoning through its functions for inner orientation to the truthful flow of experience."

Of course. That's the only real reason to discuss anything. And I assume you agree that the 'it' of which you speak can easily be equivocated in ways that have people discussing 'it' despite 'it' not being the same thing for each person...?

I hope you see that in this response, I haven't pushed back against any of the content of your message. I'm excited to see if we can find a starting point, and I share your sense of the importance of working activity from there.

It is my responsibility to someday learn how to generate a same sort of empathic grasping when you read my comments. I can assure you, what I'm doing is nothing like just trying to arrange dead concepts in order.

By the way, you I make a big distinction (again, not for dead reasons but sourced in cognitive feeling and meditative exploration) between
the GWP and DGWP. I'm assuming you do, but I was confused about your use of GWP. When you said,

"So that's the context in which I feel the GWP reveals its most significance for the epistemological path. I am providing this context because I don't want to argue too much about the particular elements. In a certain sense, analyzing the GWP and measuring it against our ordinary perceptual experience, trying to figure out the 'pixels' it is 'made of', negates the value of imagining it in the first place."

I take the GWP to refer to how we experience the familiar world at any point in our development, in which the direct experience is a union of concept-percept, not in the sense of having brought them together from separated lands, but, in the Barfieldian sense, the way in which they are always already participating each other in various ways. So whereas the GWP is how we experience the world (regardless of what we intellectually say about it), the DGWP is a specific 'artificial concept' which Steiner carefully builds up as the pre-starting point, a concept that is not of experience but that is a tool that should help us more clearly recognize the nature of experience once we begin to explore it epistemologically. I figure, in the spirit of what I was saying before, I should try to make sure we are on the same page with there being an important difference between GWP and DGWP.

Please add to it, expand it, modify it, so that we can eventually be sure we are taking our first step together. I don't expect my words above to be ultimately satisfying, and I can only imagine we move forward enjoyable if we each recognize why we will need to keep clarifying certain notions.

Thanks!

findingblanks wrote: ↑Mon Sep 16, 2024 2:32 pm Hi Ashvin,

"In a certain sense, analyzing the GWP and measuring it against our ordinary perceptual experience, trying to figure out the 'pixels' it is 'made of', negates the value of imagining it in the first place."

Fyi, I don't think I have ever analyzed the DGWP to figure out what it is 'made of'. I don't think Steiner did either. Although, Steiner did spend much time describing it's 'pixels' and why we are not understanding it correctly if we can't characterize the concept accurately. I wish I had made this more clear to you, because now I see that when I am specifying the concept and trying to make sure we aren't lazily agreeing that we are sharing the same concept, you have been taking this as an attempt to make a metaphysical claim about the nature of the 'dots'. That's too bad. And I am glad to now it, because now I can adjust.

What I began to notice is that long time students of Steiner's epistemological works will all quickly agree about the importance of the DGWP, but when you ask them what it is, you get very different answers. I do not think that is what Steiner wanted. Some say it is the nature of how human's first experience reality before they bring concepts to it, the 'first form in which we experience the world.' Other's say it is a concept that we must philosophically and exactly cognize which is not the first form in which we experience the world nor is it a form in which we ever experience the world. And there are other variations of interpretating the DGWP, as I said, by very serious students who work with the text for decades. These are all people who would not disagree when they read Steiner saying that he mathematically formulated his ideas in these text in way that requires readers to grasp them exactly before they can really take the next step. Steiner doesn't not mean *merely* abstractly. Neither do I. I wish I could somehow convery this to you in a way that disabused you of the notion that when I am talking about and working with DGWP, I am not merely playing with dead concepts. For me, that would be the start of you and I in creating an actual bridge in this kind of conversation.

"Thus, I hope we can explore it even more exactly without resorting to such an analysis, but rather reasoning through its functions for inner orientation to the truthful flow of experience."

Of course. That's the only real reason to discuss anything. And I assume you agree that the 'it' of which you speak can easily be equivocated in ways that have people discussing 'it' despite 'it' not being the same thing for each person...?

I hope you see that in this response, I haven't pushed back against any of the content of your message. I'm excited to see if we can find a starting point, and I share your sense of the importance of working activity from there.

It is my responsibility to someday learn how to generate a same sort of empathic grasping when you read my comments. I can assure you, what I'm doing is nothing like just trying to arrange dead concepts in order.

I appreciate your efforts to see things from my perspective, Jeff, and thus work toward a shared starting point. It may not often seem this way, but I am feebly trying to do the same.

I agree with the bold, and to clarify my previous comment, and I think it's impossible to come up with a 'right' answer for what "it" is. I think people get stuck debating what "it" is and thus never make it to the shared starting point, which is more akin to the inner function of "it" regardless of whether "it" is the first experience as babies, a state that is always directly experienced 'flitting past', an imaginative concept that we need to grasp even though we never 'experience' it, etc. In other words, I believe we can only make progress toward the shared starting point if we renounce attempts to define "it" from the outset.

If this doesn't apply to anything you were saying, feel free to ignore it, but I am just speaking my intuitions out loud here in the hopes they are helpful in some way. It may seem counter-intuitive to say we can advance the discussion without even knowing how we are referring to "it" or if we agree on what "it" is, because that's usually true if we are discussing some topic in the natural sciences, analytic philosophy, history, etc., but in the domain of aesthetic epistemology I feel that the most fruitful way forward is to refrain from boxing our thinking into definitions and rather take a more fluid and open-ended approach.

By the way, I make a big distinction (again, not for dead reasons but sourced in cognitive feeling and meditative exploration) between
the GWP and DGWP. I'm assuming you do, but I was confused about your use of GWP. When you said,

"So that's the context in which I feel the GWP reveals its most significance for the epistemological path. I am providing this context because I don't want to argue too much about the particular elements. In a certain sense, analyzing the GWP and measuring it against our ordinary perceptual experience, trying to figure out the 'pixels' it is 'made of', negates the value of imagining it in the first place."

I take the GWP to refer to how we experience the familiar world at any point in our development, in which the direct experience is a union of concept-percept, not in the sense of having brought them together from separated lands, but, in the Barfieldian sense, the way in which they are always already participating each other in various ways. So whereas the GWP is how we experience the world (regardless of what we intellectually say about it), the DGWP is a specific 'artificial concept' which Steiner carefully builds up as the pre-starting point, a concept that is not of experience but that is a tool that should help us more clearly recognize the nature of experience once we begin to explore it epistemologically. I figure, in the spirit of what I was saying before, I should try to make sure we are on the same page with there being an important difference between GWP and DGWP.

Please add to it, expand it, modify it, so that we can eventually be sure we are taking our first step together. I don't expect my words above to be ultimately satisfying, and I can only imagine we move forward enjoyable if we each recognize why we will need to keep clarifying certain notions.

Thanks!

I was using GWP in the same way you are using DWGP, except I'm lazier and wanted to type one letter less

The modification I would make here is that we don't need to assume anything about our direct experience of the familiar world from the outset, except that it's mysterious and something we need to investigate further (in an imaginative and intuitive way). We don't start out knowing to what extent concepts are interwoven with percepts or how they got to be interwoven. By moving through many imaginative examples, we can surely refine our intuitive sense for what domains we awaken to percepts already interwoven with concepts, and what domains of percepts are quite lacking in their corresponding concepts. We can become more sensitive to the relationship between sensory, emotional, and mental percepts and the intuitive movements by which we unite them with concepts.

Other than that, I think the DWGP as "a tool that should help us more clearly recognize the nature of experience once we begin to explore it epistemologically" is a good starting point.

thanks.

I'll just go slow so that we can enjoy the moment of lift off

Thanks for clarifying why you used GWP. Steiner distinguishes between GWP and the DGWP and so I thought you might also share that distinction and how it relates to what we are talking about.

"The modification I would make here is that we don't need to assume anything about our direct experience of the familiar world from the outset..."

My understanding is that Steiner opens up by saying that it is because we do start with so many assumptions embedded both in our experience and in our thoughts about experience that we MUST first begin by creating an artifical concept that will allow us to avoid the assumptions baked into our direct experience; in other words, he is saying that what we call 'direct experience' is riddled with implicit and explicit assumptions, therefore we must conceptualize the directly given world picture, understand it as a tool, and only then can we begin with direct experience.

"I agree with the bold, and to clarify my previous comment, and I think it's impossible to come up with a 'right' answer for what "it" is. I think people get stuck debating what "it" is and thus never make it to the shared starting point..."

I guess this confuses me a little because Steiner begins each of the three books defining dgwp; not only defining it, but saying that we can't even begin if we don't understand it. It almost sounds like you would be surprised if I could show you some quotes from Steiner in the 80/90s in which he says it is abasolutely necessary for a reader to grasp this point exactly, in the same way that the idea of a triangle must be grasped exactly.

I won't belabor this, but I just want to put a flag down on the path here. I think there is a massive and important difference between a reader of Truth and Knowledge believing that the first form in which they experience the world is the dgwp and a reader who believes it isn't an experience at all. And I think both of these are importantly different than an interpretation which says Steiner is just trying to get us to have a 'partial' experience of dgwp. I'm not saying you hold that view.

So while I'm glad you liked my closing statement about using dgwp as a tool, I'm a bit confused how we proceed if we are using different tools and calling them the same thing.

That said, I am more interested in taking the next step with you if you feel it isn't necessary that we have the same idea of the starting point. Lead the way!

findingblanks wrote: ↑Mon Sep 16, 2024 3:40 pm thanks.

I'll just go slow so that we can enjoy the moment of lift off

Thanks for clarifying why you used GWP. Steiner distinguishes between GWP and the DGWP and so I thought you might also share that distinction and how it relates to what we are talking about.

"The modification I would make here is that we don't need to assume anything about our direct experience of the familiar world from the outset..."

My understanding is that Steiner opens up by saying that it is because we do start with so many assumptions embedded both in our experience and in our thoughts about experience that we MUST first begin by creating an artifical concept that will allow us to avoid the assumptions baked into our direct experience; in other words, he is saying that what we call 'direct experience' is riddled with implicit and explicit assumptions, therefore we must conceptualize the directly given world picture, understand it as a tool, and only then can we begin with direct experience.

Right, we awaken in our thinking with all sorts of inner factors (like assumptions) that contextualize our perceptive experience, and to begin with, we are completely merged with them like fish in water (the 'categorical mediums'). We won't gain any cognitive distance on these factors by adding more assumptions, but by resisting the assumption-forming habit and moving in the opposite direction, so to speak, which is the imaginative direction of the DGWP.

It reminds me of when Steiner describes the reverse review of sensory events. I think we can discern a similar principle at work in this epistemological inquiry.

In ordinary passive thinking we may be said to accept world events in an altogether slavish way. As I said yesterday: In our very thought-pictures we keep the earlier as the earlier, the later as the later; and when we are watching the course of a play on the stage the first act comes first, then the second, and so on to a possible fifth. But if we can accustom ourselves to picture it all by beginning at the end and going from the fifth act back through the fourth, third, second, to the first, then we break away from the ordinary sequence—we go backwards instead of forwards. But that is not how things happen in the world: we have to strain every nerve to call up from within the force to picture events in reverse. By so doing we free the inner activity of our soul from its customary leading-strings… When possible even the details should be conceived in a backward direction: if you have gone upstairs, picture yourself first on the top step, then on the step below it, and so on backwards down all the stairs. (GA 227, 2)

Great!

So earlier when you said:

"The modification I would make here is that we don't need to assume anything about our direct experience of the familiar world from the outset..."

You are agreeing with me that the first step is to recognize that our direct experience is filled with and shaped by assumptions, our second step is to build up a conceptual tool that will give us the most accurate starting point possible?

findingblanks wrote: ↑Mon Sep 16, 2024 4:16 pm Great!

So earlier when you said:

"The modification I would make here is that we don't need to assume anything about our direct experience of the familiar world from the outset..."

You are agreeing with me that the first step is to recognize that our direct experience is filled with and shaped by assumptions, our second step is to build up a conceptual tool that will give us the most accurate starting point possible?

Yeah, we can simply recognize that there are assumptions without assuming we know exactly what the assumptions are (because we don't). In other words, we have interwoven concepts into our perceptual experience but we don't know to what extent, how, why (for what purposes), or anything similar. The imaginative tool will help us answer these questions by making us more sensitive to the real-time inner movements by which we interweave concepts with percepts. We could say that it brings us into closer resonance with the inner 'wavelengths' that added the prior assumptions.

I also want to be sure that, by "most accurate", we don't mean the tool will give us a conceptual state that we can say "corresponds" to some objective and independent reality. I hope you agree that the only reality there is the one in which we are using the DGWP tool to investigate our inner states and movements, and that act of inwardly investigating and sensitizing is the 'accurate starting point'. In that sense, a 'theory of knowledge' becomes something quite different than the way the word "theory" is normally used (in modern times, rather than in ancient times when theoria was still a more participatory activity).