Philosophical Speculations

Scott, thank you for addressing all of them! I would only insist on one point, if I may. I don’t understand how the idea that "a triangle has a reference to the ideational activity of higher beings" is esoteric for you. What if we call the beings "intelligences"? Is it not inevi...

Right, the change from outer experience to inner experience of thinking is definitely the most stark. If one considers it in terms of a change from the necessary obeyance of natural and cultural authorities for moral guidance to the possibility of following only one's increasingly lucid conscience,...

Leaving PoF in the background for a moment, can we go to your “Divine and Local Simplicity, and the Question of Will” (since the essay you linked above refers to it as background)? I've tried to follow your argument and noted my comments, but please take them as questions. I know you have carefully...

I think the changes are obvious for the 4th to the 5th, and within the 5th from modern to 'post-modern', even with ordinary reasoning, but it requires a deep dive into historical records, the changing understanding of science (Zajonc's book on the changing view of Light is a great resource), art, r...

Here's another thought on approaching moral intuition - if you are presenting evidence for the evolution of consciousness, then one could also notice the pattern of progression in which the birth of conscience is situated, which corresponds to the birth of the free-thinking individual who can relat...

If we are extending mathematical thinking to necessarily include higher cognition, then I suppose you are correct. I try to stay away from the term 'non-referential', because that can be misleading. Most mathematical thought doesn't refer to sensory (spatial) forms, but it does refer to spiritual (...

This lecture on Imaginative cognition should provide some additional clarity to this issue. In a certain sense, mathematical thinking only becomes 'concrete' when it raises out of the sensory spectrum, weaves thinking freely in its own sense-free element (and thereby deconditions from sensory stimu...

But maybe you meant it in a different way that I haven't understood? I think so, and I think I should apologize for trying to express things without also providing sufficient background for why I express things in the way I do. The following may help to provide that background: https://sites.google...

I am saying I don't know how to get to a lucid idea of moral intuition without an appeal to the esoteric, which is what I want to avoid in Part I. Which, one might say, is why PoF doesn't quite work as a supposedly non-esoteric work. That is, moral intuition is an esoteric idea. So I recognize it i...

I suppose that I'm not following what you intend for Part 1 when you say, " Now, as I have read some anthroposophy, I think I know what Steiner means by "purely spiritual experience with purely spiritual contents", but the only example I have for this is mathematical thinking. Which ...