Criticism

[Dave casarino]

"value" as an ontology? What does THAT even mean? That implies measurement and exchange of some sorts to be the source of all things, I mean that could define universal machinations as forces trade charges or whatever, but that would be somethings activity not what something is. Oh and Eugene what is SS?

[JeffreyW]

I am indeed. It isn’t I who is refusing to look at those arguments. That was my starting point decades ago. I outgrew them.

If that were true, then you would be able to summarize their arguments and/or provide counter-arguments. Instead, when I brought up the arguments here, you responded as if you have never heard of them before, and you don't provide any serious counter-arguments. For ex, Goethe's epistemology:

Without the influence of that dualism, we can perceive how what we bring to the outer appearances from within in the form of concepts belongs to those appearances as much as their color, shape, size, etc., which we call sense-perceptions ("percepts").

3. I vaguely see your point, but of course completely disagree. I should clarify that I resolutely do not see representations as totally created in the mind, but conditioned by the energy impeding our senses, with its own character. We perceive blue, for example, only in response to a narrow band of of the electro-magnetic spectrum, although this blue does not exist outside our subjective sensation. There is a formal and mathematical correspondence between our conceived objects and what they represent. But these remain superficial and reductive for their intended practical purpose

.

If you had ever considered Goethe's philosophical-scientific writings carefully and remembered them, or Schiller's for that matter (On the Aesthetic Education of Man) you would not only "vaguely" see my point. And this is the most important point of all the points... the one which prevents you from seriously considering Reason as a means to explore Being. It is what leads you to speculate about "energy impeding our senses" as some fixed feature of Reality, which is a hyper-abstract concept, and also to posit "in the mind", which is already dualism. Steiner predicted your sentiment about "blue" in 1916:

At present the physicists only talk about there being nothing outside us but vibrations, and that it is these that, for example, bring about red in us. What the physicists dream of today will come true. At present they only dream of it, but it will then be true. People will... "know" that all those things are caused by their own organism. They will consider it a superstition that there are colors outside that tint objects. The outer world will be grey in grey and human beings will be conscious of the fact that they themselves put the colors into the world... People who then see only the outer reality will say to the others who still see colors in their full freshness, “Oh, you dreamers! Do you really believe there are colors outside in nature? You do not know that you are only dreaming inside yourself that nature has these colors.” Outer nature will become more and more a matter of mathematics and geometry. ... People in the future will not believe that the capacity to see colors in the outer world has any objective significance; they will ascribe it purely to subjectivity.
- Rudolf Steiner, Necessity and Freedom (1916)

I was hoping you were serious in one of your initial comments about not being beholden to the influences which keep BK from reconsidering his life's work (or even a small portion of his life's work), but I suppose that was really naive of me.

Very few have ever considered me unserious. In the quote above I was addressing a mischaracterization of my thinking, not going into Goethe or Schiller. Yes, I have read both extensively and in the original German, although not since my undergraduate years. Neither really interested me. But if you want to have a discussion on them, I’ll be here for it.

[Martin_]

"value" as an ontology? What does THAT even mean? That implies measurement and exchange of some sorts to be the source of all things, I mean that could define universal machinations as forces trade charges or whatever, but that would be somethings activity not what something is. Oh and Eugene what is SS?

Well, in terms of Pirsig, a very rudimentary description is "Value as in Good or Bad" (so, it's Qualitative, not Quantitative)

We wrote a whole book about the Prime (which he calls Quality, not Value, but he interchanges them a lot): "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"

And a 2nd book about the extended metaphysics from it: "Lila: an inquiry into Morals"

[AshvinP]

Very few have ever considered me unserious. In the quote above I was addressing a mischaracterization of my thinking, not going into Goethe or Schiller. Yes, I have read both extensively and in the original German, although not since my undergraduate years. Neither really interested me. But if you want to have a discussion on them, I’ll be here for it.

Sure... I would like to know your precise reason(s) for disagreeing with their epistemology as you indicated below, and perhaps your own view of how sense-reality comes to be represented, with as much detail as possible (specfically I am interested in the meaning of this phrase, "not totally created in the mind"). Thanks.

Without the influence of that dualism, we can perceive how what we bring to the outer appearances from within in the form of concepts belongs to those appearances as much as their color, shape, size, etc., which we call sense-perceptions ("percepts").

3. I vaguely see your point, but of course completely disagree. I should clarify that I resolutely do not see representations as totally created in the mind, but conditioned by the energy impeding our senses, with its own character.

[Eugene I]

Reality may, and most likely will turn out to be much more rich and deep than these views tend to believe.

I agree. But I'd add: we tend to adopt a worldview that naturally resonates with us. I don't think we can just reason our way to a different worldview, because reason is not our primary motivator. Cultural trends inhabit our minds, rise up and emerge at the appropriate time of our archetypal story. There are bound to be many "dead-end" beliefs, which, however sensible, will never be selected as the main cultural narrative.

That is definitely true and I'm doing the same - I adopt worldviews that I resonate with for deeper reasons that have nothing to do with philosophy. Yet, I do not want to fool myself into believing that such view is true just because I resonate with it, because the reasons I resonate might be only my personal biases, fears and preferences and have nothing to do with the Reality/Truth. I want to be honest with myself and I don't want my worldview to be based entirely on my wishful thinking. This is why I want to understand exactly what are the assumptions that my worldview is based on, how and why they might be wrong, and why exactly am I resonating and adopting these views. I want to make my process of adopting a worldview to be an informed and conscious decision contingent on clearly understood assumptions, and not a blind belief based only on my personal resonances and biases.

[Eugene I]

Oh and Eugene what is SS?

Spiritual Science per R. Steiner Philosophy of Freedom

[Cleric K]

That is definitely true and I'm doing the same - I adopt worldviews that I resonate with for deeper reasons that have nothing to do with philosophy. Yet, I do not want to fool myself into believing that such view is true just because I resonate with it, because the reasons I resonate might be only my personal biases, fears and preferences and have nothing to do with the Reality/Truth. I want to be honest with myself and I don't want my worldview to be based entirely on my wishful thinking. This is why I want to understand exactly what are the assumptions that my worldview is based on, how and why they might be wrong, and why exactly am I resonating and adopting these views. I want to make my process of adopting a worldview to be an informed and conscious decision contingent on clearly understood assumptions, and not a blind belief based only on my personal resonances and biases.

And this is really the issue and the reason for the back and forths between you and Ashvin.

Do you consider as a possibility that cognition can ever be anything more than an intellectual worldview? I'm not even asking if you think that SS might be offering such a path of development. I'm asking in principle.

This is the real question. It's very simple. If the Cosmos is non-dual, if consciousness is a Mobius strip, if meaning is intrinsic aspect of reality, then the natural consequence of all this is that there should be such perspectives (clearly of higher order beings) from which the Cosmos looks like an act of spiritual activity, which reflects meaning, similarly to the way we, on our microcosmic scale, reflect meaning into thought-perceptions.

So the question is do you admit the above as a possibility. If not - we have Kantian divide because ultimately there are processes in the Cosmos for which no conscious perspective can account. They will forever remain an enigmatic behavior of the world-in-itself, both for men and gods.

If you do admit, it should be logical that the only way we can approach higher states of consciousness would be through transfiguration of thinking. Thinking is the only place where we find a microcosmic image of the creative principle of the Divine, where meaning becomes phenomena. If we don't seek the higher states by starting from that point where we already have some overlap with the creative principle, where do you expect to find it?

If you admit that within thinking we have this overlap, why do you envision that we can never know anything more than a intellectual worldview of the thing-in-itself? Of what essence is the boundary which strictly separates the human thinking word from the Divine Word? It's clear that as long as thinking remains purely intellectual discipline, it can only make frameworks of abstract concepts, and thus only asymptotically approach the facts but never know the thing-in-itself from its creative perspective. The question is why should it be impossible to liberate the higher forces concealed in ordinary thinking and through them experience the higher order spiritual activity of the beings which support the Cosmos?

[Eugene I]

This is the real question. It's very simple. If the Cosmos is non-dual, if consciousness is a Mobius strip, if meaning is intrinsic aspect of reality, then the natural consequence of all this is that there should be such perspectives (clearly of higher order beings) from which the Cosmos looks like an act of spiritual activity, which reflects meaning, similarly to the way we, on our microcosmic scale, reflect meaning into thought-perceptions.

I exactly agree with you. IF these assumptions are correct, then yes, we arrive at these natural consequences. And there are actually more of those IFs that you did not list.

So the question is do you admit the above as a possibility. If not - we have Kantian divide because ultimately there are processes in the Cosmos for which no conscious perspective can account. They will forever remain an enigmatic behavior of the world-in-itself, both for men and gods.

I actually do admit them, but only contingently on all of these above IFs. I admit them contingently and pragmatically with a principal possibility that all those IFs may be wrong. So, to me, this approach is a pragmatic spiritual practice and spiritual science. Basically, I pragmatically and contingently assume that "there are no processes in the Cosmos for which no conscious perspective can account" until I come to encountering certain facts proving that "there are processes in the Cosmos for which no conscious perspective can account" (and so I remain open to such possibility in principle). This assumption is my pragmatic working hypothesis, not a religious belief.

If you do admit, it should be logical that the only way we can approach higher states of consciousness would be through transfiguration of thinking. Thinking is the only place where we find a microcosmic image of the creative principle of the Divine, where meaning becomes phenomena. If we don't seek the higher states by starting from that point where we already have some overlap with the creative principle, where do you expect to find it?

If you admit that within thinking we have this overlap, why do you envision that we can never know anything more than a intellectual worldview of the thing-in-itself? Of what essence is the boundary which strictly separates the human thinking word from the Divine Word? It's clear that as long as thinking remains purely intellectual discipline, it can only make frameworks of abstract concepts, and thus only asymptotically approach the facts but never know the thing-in-itself from its creative perspective. The question is why should it be impossible to liberate the higher forces concealed in ordinary thinking and through them experience the higher order spiritual activity of the beings which support the Cosmos?

I agree with all of the above, but again as I said, only contingently. For me this is a pragmatic spiritual practice and a spiritual science, not a religion. Science does not rely on any views religiously, but only contingently adopt them with openness to adapt to different views if the current views turn out to be not accurate.

What I'm saying that in between the narrow-viewed and reductionist intellectual science and a religious worldview based on a locked set of beliefs there is a third possibility of a living and evolving pragmatic knowledge-practice that goes beyond limitations of reductionism and intellectualism, as well as beyond limitations of locked sets of religious beliefs.

This is a pragmatic position that I adopted from my life-long engineering and spiritual practice. In engineering we are not so much concerned with what scientific of philosophical theory is true, we are concerned with what practically works and what theory helps us to make things that practically work. Mechanical engineers still use Newtonian mechanics even though everyone knows that it is inaccurate and wrong on the quantum level. For them Newtonian mechanics is not a religion to believe, but simply a set of pragmatic recipes.

[Martin_]

I'm not Eugene, but I feel like answering as well.

That is definitely true and I'm doing the same - I adopt worldviews that I resonate with for deeper reasons that have nothing to do with philosophy. Yet, I do not want to fool myself into believing that such view is true just because I resonate with it, because the reasons I resonate might be only my personal biases, fears and preferences and have nothing to do with the Reality/Truth. I want to be honest with myself and I don't want my worldview to be based entirely on my wishful thinking. This is why I want to understand exactly what are the assumptions that my worldview is based on, how and why they might be wrong, and why exactly am I resonating and adopting these views. I want to make my process of adopting a worldview to be an informed and conscious decision contingent on clearly understood assumptions, and not a blind belief based only on my personal resonances and biases.

And this is really the issue and the reason for the back and forths between you and Ashvin.

Do you consider as a possibility that cognition can ever be anything more than an intellectual worldview? I'm not even asking if you think that SS might be offering such a path of development. I'm asking in principle.

Yes

This is the real question. It's very simple. If the Cosmos is non-dual, if consciousness is a Mobius strip, if meaning is intrinsic aspect of reality, then the natural consequence of all this is that there should be such perspectives (clearly of higher order beings) from which the Cosmos looks like an act of spiritual activity, which reflects meaning, similarly to the way we, on our microcosmic scale, reflect meaning into thought-perceptions.

Sure. (YES)

So the question is do you admit the above as a possibility. If not - we have Kantian divide because ultimately there are processes in the Cosmos for which no conscious perspective can account. They will forever remain an enigmatic behavior of the world-in-itself, both for men and gods.

Yes. I admit the above possibility. (It's also my working theory atm, but that's beside the point)

If you do admit, it should be logical that the only way we can approach higher states of consciousness would be through transfiguration of thinking. Thinking is the only place where we find a microcosmic image of the creative principle of the Divine, where meaning becomes phenomena. If we don't seek the higher states by starting from that point where we already have some overlap with the creative principle, where do you expect to find it?
[...] The question is why should it be impossible to liberate the higher forces concealed in ordinary thinking and through them experience the higher order spiritual activity of the beings which support the Cosmos?

I admit (generally) to the above. Assuming/given that the original possiblitiy is True. If the original possibility is False, there is no such thing as the Divine, (and others) to speak of, or to know. (i hope i'm getting my point through.)

[AshvinP]

I admit (generally) to the above. Assuming/given that the original possiblitiy is True. If the original possibility is False, there is no such thing as the Divine, (and others) to speak of, or to know. (i hope i'm getting my point through.)

Not to me... the original "possibility" is metaphysical idealism. There is a lot of talk about "honesty" lately, so it would be nice if peope who feel these worldviews are opinions like one's favorite sports team, then they should admit it, and maybe use a footnote like Eugene used to have, and should resurrect, saying "everything written above should be taken like a commentary on my favorite sports team and has nothing to so with what can be objectively known". Then you will hear nothing more from me in response, because I will assume no logical argument can be made challenging someone's favorite sports team.