Philosophy Unbound: Schopenhauer vs. Steiner (Round One)

[findingblanks]

"When someone sees a tree, his thinking reacts to his observation, an ideal element is added to the object, and he considers the object and the ideal counterpart as belonging together."

I understand that some people may think that Steiner is talking about a child here. I do not. I think it can be shown with certainty that he is not speaking of childhood conceptual-linguistic development in his examples in PoF.

But he does say that when we see a tree we 'add' something to the object.

Clearly we don't' experience 'the object' as a three and THEN go find the concept. We recognize it as a tree after we have gone through the process that Steiner describes.

Some people will end up saying that, "Oh, well, Steiner is describing a process that you can't confirm until you've transformed your thinking and perceiving through spiritual exercises." This is typically a response people have only after they have first stated that Steiner's claim that we 'add' or 'attach' concepts to percepts is 'straightforward' as two people in this group have claimed.

Such people might take the following as proof that Steiner is talking about how children must experience these first moments of learning about the world around them:

"Concepts cannot be gained through observation. This follows from the simple fact that the growing human being only slowly and gradually forms the concepts corresponding to the objects which surround him. Concepts are added to observation."

I think this error is based on deeper presuppositions that miss what Steiner is trying to say. But I even think you two in this group might see that Steiner is not suggesting the process is impossible to notice for adults or that it requires a spiritualization of perception and thinking.

"A closer analysis shows matters to stand very differently from the way described above. When I hear a noise, I first look for the concept which fits this observation. It is this concept which first leads me beyond the mere noise."


I just heard a car honk outside. I 'heard a noise' as Steiner describes it. Here, take a moment and notice some noises around you. Sure there are times were here things and don't know what they are. Do we have reason to believe that Rudolf Steiner is focusing on merely that kind of experience in PoF here? This would be a catastrophic error in reading the text. I understand why some students feel pressured to take this stance once they begin to carefully consider what it means to suggest that to hear the car horn I must first attach a concept to a percept. But can't we live in that tension for ten minutes a day? Or more...

"When I hear a noise, I first look for the concept which fits this observation."
1) It's okay to soak that in without popping away into rationalizations. Just notice it for what it is. It is straightforward, as you say.
2) It's okay to see if this can apply to say, "When I see an object, I first look for the concept which fits this observation.".

But it's likely that, instead, some will claim Steiner is insisting we notice only those moments when we are momentarily experiencing uncertainty. Steiner makes it clear why he can't be narrowing his focus to those less usual experiences. In fact, until pressured to be more clear, most of us grasp that Steiner thinks he is being clear about what must be necessary for every perception.

"But my reflecting makes it clear to me that I have to regard the noise as an effect."

So if you turn around because of the car horn to see if they want your attention, we might say it is because I 'reflected' upon a mere noise, found the corresponding concept, and attached it to the mere noise, thereby knowing that - because it is a car horn - there might be reason for me to attend. That sounds clunky and I know there are other ways to put it, but I just want to slow down on Steiner's 'reflecting' in the above sentence. Again, he doesn't think we'd hear a 'horn' unless we first encountered the noise and did the rest of the work.

Steiner even goes into more regarding the actual nature of this experience:

"Therefore not until I have connected the concept of effect with the perception of the noise, do I feel the need to go beyond the solitary observation and look for the cause."

So it makes sense that it isn't merely enough to go find the concept 'horn' and concept it to the percept. I need to at the very least also find the concept 'effect', select it, and attach it to the percept as well. That is the only way I can 'feel the need' to go 'look for the cause.'

If you haven't yet popped away to the "this is something only spiritualized perception/thinking can notice directly", you can still see why Steiner claims this is 'obvious' to the readers of his book. I guess you might try to argue that when he says 'a closer anaylis reveals' he is secretly nodding to the fact that he is about to describe spiritually transformed experience, but that requires we think he is dishonest every time he says that there is nothing in PoF that can't be observed by a careful reader, which explains why he thought his book would be more well received by some of his mentors and was clearly disappointed.

"And my next step is to look for the object which is being the cause, which I find in the shape of the partridge."

Is seeing a partridge fundamentally different than seeing a tree like Steiner mentions above or hearing a horn or a shaking in the bushes?

If we already agree that seeing the tree requires an encounter with a percept, a search, a finding, and an attaching, and if we already agree this happens when we hear the bushes shaking, why would we suddenly say that when we encounter the next percept we suddenly don't have to do this process because of our childhood?

My request for a description of this supposed 'straighforward' process isn't as naïve as it sounds to you. I'm not missing the points you think I am. But I'm certainly not making the points I wish to make about how clear Steiner is being. He is being very clear.

Many of us who love Steiner's work, are particularly pleased that he wrote early texts that he says purposefully did not make claims that came from spiritual research. Instead, he wanted to only take the reader, step-by-step through what is apparent to clear observation and thinking.

"Human consciousness is the stage upon which concept and observation meet and become linked to one another."

Is this our observations so far? Do we need to already have transformed to verify this. Steiner has said no, we don't. Do we need simply assume it is true because it fits logically with the premise that we first encounter percepts free from concepts. Well, if so we should be able to talk about this experience. Some of you have said that I'm asking the impossible. I think Steiner has my back on this.

If we insist Steiner is simply correct and there are no ambiguities at this point, we will keep popping away when necessary and popping back where we wish. Nothing will seem out place and it will all seem logical.

It can be very useful to go through parts of the text in this kind of section and ask if a claim being made has been shown via experience or if it merely makes sense logically because of OTHER experiences.

"We must next ask ourselves how that other element, which we have so far simply called the object of observation and which meets the thinking in our consciousness, comes into our consciousness at all."

Ah, so here, Steiner is clear again. Steiner says that the object 'meets' the thinking and he is asking how we become away of it at all.

Okay, so it's not crazy to think that we might meet the tree/honk/partridge in such a way.

I'll end at another point where most of us need to absolutely pop away and forget all the insights we are currently holding:

"In order to answer this question we must eliminate from our field of observation everything that has been imported by thinking. For at any moment the content of our consciousness will already be interwoven with concepts in the most varied ways."

Notice that Steiner is saying that the ONLY WAY to answer this question about the object is to imagine a thought experiment. He is certainly correct that our everyday experience is not that of meeting blurs, searching for concepts, selecting and then attaching them to blurs. So he says the only way to answer this question to conceptualize a scenario. This so-called 'necessity' should already be food for thought, but I assume you don't even see why? Not because you are dense, but because you've already popped away from the line of observations-thinking above.

"We must imagine that a being with fully developed human intelligence originates out of nothing and confronts the world."

And we must at least never forget that this is a highly intellectualized and cognitive task that makes various presuppositions.

"What it would be aware of, before it sets its thinking in motion, would be the pure content of observation."

Do we remember that we are still imagining via our cognitive activity? Good! Can we assume that Steiner's assumes there is ACTUALLY a moment in which this imagined being confronts a pure content of observation?

Steiner goes on to then imagine (and he wants us to imagine, don't forget that unless there is reason to claim you aren't imagining it) what this pure content is:

"The world would then appear to this being as nothing but a mere disconnected aggregate of objects of sensation: colors, sounds, sensations of pressure, of warmth, of taste and smell; also feelings of pleasure and pain. This aggregate is the content of pure, unthinking observation."

The first sentence makes clear we are still in a hypothetical that depends upon a set of assumptions. The last sentence may be where some slippage happens. Is that sentence for some reason popping away from the clear imagination that the reader is doing? In other words, are we suddenly to believe that we have left the land of imaginative assumptions and made an ontological discovery for ourselves? Is there where we would say, "Well, this is the point at which Steiner needs his reader to stop the imagination and actually transform their own consciousness in the ways he teachers later in his life. That is the only way to agree with his claim that 'this aggregate is the content of pure, unthinking observation."?

Some of his students read this to be part of the same imagination. Some say this must be an ontological fact that he has now demonstrated is true. I see massive problems with each, obviously. Hence my original question.

"Over against it stands thinking, ready to begin its activity as soon as a point of attack presents itself."

For many students, by this point in they are carefully reading, they have left the logical-hypothetical far behind and would say that the above quote is also an ontological discovery that Steiner is presenting and hoping the reader is still with him. Other students say that the above quote still fits within Steiner opening remarks that because we don't experience this in everyday experience we have to get to it with a logical imagination like we are doing.

But we can ask ourselves. Does Steiner think that the reader at this point should be able to affirm the above are ontological descriptions of experience.

"Experience shows at once that this does happen."

When I have tried to work with students on this part of the text, very often, after starting to realize the pressure of the real question I'm asking, they say that 'at once' only refers to what we experience after transforming our consciousness, that Steiner was not expecting his mentors at the time to simply agree with his claim that these are ontological descriptions*. He hoped they would take the time to transform their consciousness and then see that he was being exact. Other students I work with say that the above quotation is simply Steiner pointing out that everything he said in the previous sentences is obvious, that we at once see that there must be (in the hypothetical) a land of pure percept against which thinking stands ready to begin interacting with.

So, are we still in the hypothetical that we must imagine since we can't experience or by the end of the paragraph are we to see that now we have directly verified in experience ("Experience shows at once that this does happen.") that thinking stands apart from pure percepts?

Anyway. No doubt we can suddenly talk about unconscious processes or what it is like when we aren't sure what we are seeing in the distance or Steiner's hope that some readers would have the transformation while reading so that they could see why he went from a necessary hypothetical to a directly encounter.

Either way, it is very rare to hear conversations that go beyond these.

And when you said that it is very straightforward what Steiner means by the necessity of attaching a concept to percept, it is possible that my request for a description isn't merely naïve. And it might even be that if I am asking for the impossible, there might be a reason why that isn't about childhood or initiation experience via cognition.

* In letters written by young Steiner during the time of writing PoF and shortly after its publication indicate that he absolutely expected his mentors and other readers to fully grasp his starting point and recognize its solidity. He was surprised and very disappointed that they had objections and seemed to not agree with its clarity in key parts of the text.

[findingblanks]

"I'm saying that's impossible to experience them phenomenologically in the way you demand."

Oh, I can't wait to see what way I demanded they be experienced.

I demand that you experience 'finding' a concept like X, Y Z, and I DEMAND that you experience 'attaching it to the percept" like ABC.

This is what I mean by popping away. I retract my question! I am no longer curious why you find it straightforward to describe the process as 'attaching a concept to a percept!"

You're right. it's so straightforwad. Just pick up a pencil and do the concentration exercise and you'll see directly that you have to go find various concepts to attach to the pencil you are looking at. What could be more clear than that?

You had not attached 'chipped paint' until you encountered a pure percept, located a concept and then attached them. Isn't that clear?

Oh and don't ask about what the pure percept on the pencil is like before I go find the right concept. That's twisting things around.

Asking me to describe each pure percept I perceive while doing the exercise is an impossible demand. I obviously experience them as pure percepts before I go in search of the concept. If I experienced them with the concept at first, I would obviously not go in search of it! So you don't need to ask me about the encounter or experience of pure percept and certainly not a phenomenology of it when I'm doing the pencil exercise!

[findingblanks]

"I am sure everyone here has had an experience where they perceived a sound yet did not pursue it much further.."

I address this common example in my long post today with all the Steiner quotes. I understand why we eventually feel the pressure to say that he is always talking about this kind of experience where we are momentarily confused, but I give a few reasons to think that Steiner himself would strongly object to that is what he is doing. In fact, he says in several of the core texts that he describing a fundamental ontological process. He doesn't use those words, but he shows over and over why he thinks there is no other possibility for how we percieve everyday objects and react to them as we do. See his explanation regarding attaching the concept 'effect' to the percept as well as the concept of the percept itself. Steiner simply was not limiting his claims to the less usual moments in our day when we are trying to realize what we are looking at. And he certainly isn't saying that those slowed-down examples of what is usually happening superfast. That is a very mechanistic way to interpret him. Especially since he never says it only implies the opposite. I gave examples in the long post but they are strewn in each of his early texts.

[AshvinP]

FB,

I have never come across someone who could write so many words with so little meaning... it is basically a bunch of out-of-context quotes from Steiner followed by a series of rhetorical questions and unwarranted accusations directed at the reader in the manner of, "you didn't understand any of that, did you? well I did, I cracked the entire code... but I won't tell you what any of it means!"

Seriously, why is it so hard for you to just state what you think is happening phenomenologically when we confront perceptions in the world? Just write a few sentences or paragraphs as necessary to explain your position. Do not reference Steiner or PoF. If you are truly interested in a non-abstract and straightforward discussion, then you should have no problem doing what I am requesting. If, instead, you want to keep yourself as some enigmatic character who has figured out the riddle of philosophy that no one else is smart or attentive enough to see, then I suspect you will fail to meet the request again. Let's see what happens...

[findingblanks]

No, I agree.

I look at the pencil. I encounter pure percepts 'on' it. Then I go and find the concepts that must be attached to the pencil before I recognize them as such. What could be more clear. Just like the pencil exercise examples, each of those concepts was first experienced a pure percept.

We should not ask too much about that pure percept when doing the pencil exercise. The reason? Just do the exercise and see how obvious it is that you have to encounter them before you can go in search for a concept that can be selected and then attached to the pencil.

What else is there to do once you've done this exercise and noticed that the concepts don't just emerge from staring at a fuzzy blur of meaninglessness. It's a pencil. It's 'long'. It's 'yellow'. It was made before 2008.

If that is not attaching concepts to a percept, what is???

[SanteriSatama]

* In letters written by young Steiner during the time of writing PoF and shortly after its publication indicate that he absolutely expected his mentors and other readers to fully grasp his starting point and recognize its solidity. He was surprised and very disappointed that they had objections and seemed to not agree with its clarity in key parts of the text.

I was just walking with the dog, and had a thought of teachers teaching best when they realize that students fail to copy or grasp or recognize something they consider clarity and try to pass on. In the walk in the forest I remembered seeing that in Jiddu Krishnamurti, a moment of realization of failure in relation to an attempt. And somehow, dunno why exactly, thought that somehow, the failure and it's mutual recognition as failure was the true lesson.

[findingblanks]

My phenomenology of doing the exercise?

I pick up the pencil. I feel my intention to remain focused and I tell myself "Don't simply associate." When old, already used ideas spontaneously arisie, I notice myself intend them away and focus again on the pencil. A specific idea arises in unision with its observation, like, "the sharpness of this ridge", I then notice an intention arise to dwell on that observation as opposed to allowing more ideas to arise. After five seconds of attending solely to the sharpness of the ridge, I notice a slight relaxation in my attention, as I reassert my focus, the idea and perception of 'yellow' arise and I notice a desire to dwell and focus exclusively on this. I haven't selected any of these arisings that I mention. I notice them.

I dwell on the distinct yellow and then I notice that 'splotches' are being observed. I notice an uncertainty has arisen as to wether I should dwell on the splotches or continue focusing on the distinct nature of the yellow. For a split second I dwell on the undertainty and then I notice that my focus is on the splotches. I notices the idea arises that "I chose splotches instead of yellow" and I observe an intention simultaneously with the act of refocusing on the splotches. There not-quite-roundness suddenly emerges {{I did not go in search of it after encountering a pure percept, btw}}. Along with the not-quite-roundness, I notice a subtle delight in how intricate these differences are. A desire to focus on the distinctness as opposed to the delight arses and I observe a momentary toggling between the delight and the arising of the intention to focus. After about ten seconds of dwelling on the not-quite-round quality, the idea of function arises and I immediately see the pencil drawing. Immediately the intention to refocus arises and I notice the general length of the pencil. l.....and on and on. ....until I switch to exclusive focus on function itself.

My phenomenology isn't just different words. It's not just that I am not claiming to encounter a pure percept that then I must go in search of a corresponding concept that I then attach to the pencil in order to 'see' that perception now. My description isn't just about the fact that I can't describe it that way.

If my description is merely the same thing you think is being described in PoF when he talks about thinking standing apart from the pure percept and concepts that must be searched for, selected, and attached...okay, fine. But that difference (even if you say there isn't one; it's just words) is connected to why I think Steiner chose to update many of his core claims. Sure, we can say he just wanted to clarify and stop the conversation.

But I highly doubt you found my phenomenology useful. No I don't. I have a hunch it merely confirmed your conviction that it is a straightforward claim to say that we must first encounter the pure percept before we go find the concept "effect" and attach it to the percept to go in look for a cause. Or, wait, I think that must be a case in which you claim we are consciously not sure what we are hearing and THEN we go in search for a concept and find 'effect'.

[SanteriSatama]

FB,

I have never come across someone who could write so many words with so little meaning... it is basically a bunch of out-of-context quotes from Steiner followed by a series of rhetorical questions and unwarranted accusations directed at the reader in the manner of, "you didn't understand any of that, did you? well I did, I cracked the entire code... but I won't tell you what any of it means!"

I didn't read it like that. I was like: "umm, guy has read some Steiner and studied various interpretations and reactions to Steiner's text so that he can make a list of them. Which is interesting in it's own philological way. No idea where this is going if anywhere, but I'm intrigued."

(And selfishly: Oh I wish I could already blurt out my experience of the pencil meditation, because it was very fascinating to me and I'd like to share...)

[Cleric K]

I thought I was very clear that empirism of conceptualization based only on visual sense is a very narrow given, as we by some count have given of 5 expropective senses and and uncountably indefinite amount of introspective senses.

All I suggested was a more empirically inclusive and holistic experiment of thinking a concept. The experiment is very simple. With eyes closed, think the concept of pencil as multisensually etc. as you can, but also not trying to force the experiment in any specific direction, just letting thinking and experiencing happen as happens while focusing on the concept of pencil.

I remain very curious of what results others would get and could report from such experiment. Please?

When I simply let experience happen in whatever way it may, many things could happen. For example, now when I imagined the pencil with eyes closed and the let it go, flowers began to sprout from it and it grew to something like a rose bush. Then I thought about the graphite in the pencil it filled my imagination with its atomic lattice, such that my being was spread on it.

Through spiritual development one can have 'psychedelic' experiences on demand but they are actually not what we're after. It is precisely within the experience of willing the concept of the pencil (it's not even that important to have the visual counterpart vividly) that we begin to recognize ourselves as an active spiritual being. I've wrote about this in the Man, know thyself essay. Through sufficient concentration on this focused willing of the concept, we begin to Imaginatively experience it almost as if we project it from ourselves, as if it proceeds from us, at the end of a light cone. This light cone is not some independent floating picture. For example, when the pencil transformed into a rose bush this didn't happened through my conscious activity. Even though the perception happens on my inner screen, it confronted me in a way no different than experiencing a visual perception from a TV, that is, without my direct participation. This is different in the experience of the light cone of spiritual activity. We feel the substance as the expanded element of our thought itself, it is cognitive, it is the 'shape' of our actively willed spiritual activity. Within this 'shape' continuously impress other kinds of spiritual activity, such as those of the rose bush but now not simply as a ready-made picture but as actual spiritual forces. Through the counter-image that these forces impress in our cognitive volume, we understand something of the ideal nature of the image. For example, the rose bush reveals in Imagination also as formative force which may belong to another spiritual being that impresses in us, or it might be expression of feeling in our astral organism (which is still an elemental astral being).

[findingblanks]

Beautifully put!

I find there is a kind of failure-drama that hums underneath even the most clear line of thinking or observation. This hum can become something like what Steiner refers to as the 'knowledge-drama, if it is attended to... Young Steiner was so deeply hopeful that his book The Philosophy of Freedom would be understood by even some of his harshest critics. His youth and zeal and naivety (and brilliance, of course, yes) are on full display in many of those early letters, especially his joy at his friend Rosa reading his entire book

But the 'failure-shame' has a lot of 'ugly' stuff in it and requires we drop our most treasured notions.

Yet, what's more beautiful than seeing that even when flung into the deepest terrains of shame, we merely expand our sense of God's wide domain?

Said epistemologically, what I know gets in the way of my knowing.

In the context of this thread, it points to the deep shadow dancing that I provoked in myself and in others and tried to give some rhythm to. I did not do well. In fact, I doubt the dance partners here even think their shadows are guiding their thoughts at all. But it doesn't matter. Because I was never insincere in my desire to show how deeply connected Schopenhauer and Steiner are. And I knew that I couldn't possibly show it by saying read this sentence and you'll see that Steiner was actually..... or that Schopenhauer actually had grasped...

One of my partners opened the door by asking me to show exactly where we can see that Schopenhauer recognized that universal will was necessarily intuited. That was a tiny doorway into the knowledge-drama.

So, because I knew there was no hope of showing the right set of words, I mirrored it and asked to show me where {rephrased} Steiner claimed that the percept hides thinking within it. I knew that if my partners did not refer to the 1918 edition of PoF, they could still possibly show how Steiner's word's do in fact claim/show that thinking is within the percept already.

And if they could see that, despite using the opposite words, Rudolf Steiner still had clearly communicated that thinking and percept are never apart, they could then go and see that without using the words, Schopenhauer communicated the fundamental nature of cognition in his notion of the will.

It was a long shot! And the failure hurts. But seeds within myself and within my partners were planted. And nobody was really unkind to each other. Simply flummoxed and maybe a bit annoyed.

Sometimes when I notice the frustration in Krishnamurti's face, I understand both his joy and sadness a little bit better.

* In letters written by young Steiner during the time of writing PoF and shortly after its publication indicate that he absolutely expected his mentors and other readers to fully grasp his starting point and recognize its solidity. He was surprised and very disappointed that they had objections and seemed to not agree with its clarity in key parts of the text.

I was just walking with the dog, and had a thought of teachers teaching best when they realize that students fail to copy or grasp or recognize something they consider clarity and try to pass on. In the walk in the forest I remembered seeing that in Jiddu Krishnamurti, a moment of realization of failure in relation to an attempt. And somehow, dunno why exactly, thought that somehow, the failure and it's mutual recognition as failure was the true lesson.