Criticism

[Eugene I]

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.

The footnote was "but of course I may be wrong". Such position is has nothing to do with an "opinion on a favorite sport". It's the difference between philosophy-science-engineering (including spiritual ones), and religious fundamentalism. Religious fundamentalist mindset does not even assume a remote possibility of being wrong, and as a consequence, becomes a trap and a stagnation state for its followers. By far not all religious believers are fundamentalists, there are many who adopt their beliefs contingently and remain open to other possibilities.

I've been practicing in a few religious traditions before and was observing the phenomenon of fundamentalism rather closely, there are always fundamentalists in religious communities. Usually such people are driven by unconscious fears, a possibility of their beliefs to be wrong scares a hell out of them, and that is why they usually become so aggressive towards nonbelievers or when their beliefs are questioned even as a remote possibility.

[AshvinP]

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.

The footnote was "but of course I may be wrong". Such position is has nothing to do with an "opinion on a favorite sport". It's the difference between philosophy-science-engineering (including spiritual ones), and religious fundamentalism. Religious fundamentalist mindset does not even assume a remote possibility of being wrong, and as a consequence, becomes a trap and a stagnation state for its followers. By far not all religious believers are fundamentalists, there are many who adopt their beliefs contingently and remain open to other possibilities.

I've been practicing in a few religious traditions before and was observing the phenomenon of fundamentalism rather closely, there are always fundamentalists in religious communities. Usually such people are driven by unconscious fears, a possibility of their beliefs to be wrong scares a hell out of them, and that is why they usually become so aggressive towards nonbelievers or when their beliefs are questioned even as a remote possibility.

You're lying to yourself, Eugene. No one has mentioned any religion or religious doctrine even once on this thread. We have literally been trying to explain to you what "Thinking" is this entire time (and also the Kantian dualism), as in the activity you are engaged in right now when reading and writing comments. It is your presumption that you already know what Thinking is that also ensures you will never understand it. That's why you always "exactly agree" with Cleric when anyone thinking objectively can discern he is saying the exact opposite of your position. It's why you keep taking philosophical terms you have never looked into before and still don't understand, like "pragmatic" and "phenomenology", and appropriating them to yourself as if you have always held to those positions.

Ok, now I am really bowing out. Maybe Cleric will continue traversing the circumference of your entirely circular logic for a bit, but I see no point doing that with someone who calls himself a "scientist" and a "pragmatist" but denies the objective validity of logic.

[Eugene I]

You're lying to yourself, Eugene. No one has mentioned any religion or religious doctrine even once on this thread. We have literally been trying to explain to you what "Thinking" is this entire time (and also the Kantian dualism), as in the activity you are engaged in right now when reading and writing comments. It is your presumption that you already know what Thinking is that also ensures you will never understand it. That's why you always "exactly agree" with Cleric when anyone thinking objectively can discern he is saying the exact opposite of your position. It's why you keep taking philosophical terms you have never looked into before and still don't understand, like "pragmatic" and "phenomenology", and appropriating them to yourself as if you have always held to those positions.

You are turning idealism, which is a metaphysical philosophy on on side, and spiritual practice/science on another, into a religious doctrine without admitting that you do. Noone questions the existence of thinking. But the fact that thinking exists does not automatically mean that:
- There is thinking outside human and animal (and perhaps alien) life forms not associated with any physical living organisms
- There is nothing else in the world other than thinking or beyond thinking

These are two basic assumptions of idealism. There is nothing wrong with them, and it can be argued that idealism based on these assumptions is practically beneficial for the human development on individual and societal levels compared to other worldviews. This is why many of us are adopting idealism. But as soon as you refuse to admit that the above are only assumptions, and state that they are unquestionable truths, you turn idealism into a religion (even if you do not call it as such).

[AshvinP]

I just want to relay a bit of my personal perspective here.

Before I came across Cleric's great posts, Steiner and his philosophy of Thinking, I was already constellating some of the most basic ideas through other thinkers. Barfield, Gebser, Jung, William James, Heidegger, Nietzsche, a few others. I was trying to weave their thought-systems together and felt I was making real progress. When I first read Steiner seriously, there were 2 main reasons I could have utmost confidence in his arguments: 1) it shifted the perspective on my own immanent thinking experience in a profound way, and 2) it weaved together much better what I was already weaving together. It manifested my future in my present, which I now know is nothing other than manifesting the spiritual within the physical. That is how genuine knowledge accrues - it is not a bunch of random or fragmented states of knowledge, moving from one to the next horizontally, but a vertical integration of incomplete stages into ever-more complete and organic wholes. The varying stages of Western logic over the last 2500-3000 years was brought up previously, and, appropriately enough, the exact same logic applies to developments at this cultural scale as well.

The fragmented thinking-state will view these transformations as evidence of arbitrary changes which call all knowledge into question, but the slight shift in perspective reverses this conclusion entirely. So the perspective on immanent Thinking acivity shifts and that is a huge step, but still only the very beginning step. Trust me, if discussion here ever advances past trying to explain this beginning step, I will be the first to quiet down and listen to what Cleric or others may have to teach. That is how it works in every discpline of philosophy, law, science, etc. If a kid fresh out of college shows up with his abstract theories in the labratory, the scientist with years of practical experience will expect the former to have humility and understand there is much to learn that could not be conveyed in the textbooks. That is exactly the dynamic we have here with Cleric on matters of spiritual activity. No one likes to hear this, but that's just the way it is. There is great Wisdom in knowing what we don't yet know.

This dynamic appears as religious dogmatism to those who value their opportunity to showcase their current knowledge more than their ability to acquire more of it. They don't like the idea of someone else having something to teach them. But this is how all progress in knowledge has ever occurred in the history of knowledge and progress, and in our own immanent experience. We already know this is how it works, so I am not claiming some great insight here. The main insight I have gained is to see just how far the intellectual ego will go to forget what it already knows to preserve its own existence. Unfortunately, it seems we are always taking two steps back for every one forward here. The people most likely to voice their opinion are those who have fortified their thinking from any willingness to learn, and have motives, conscious or subconscious, which have little to do with the truth of the matter. Perhaps there are silent witnesses who are observing and absorbing the ideal content. The only reason I am writing this now is because I have been taught something which manifested my future in my present, so I desire to pay it forward regardless of the result.

[Cleric K]

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.

Let's look closely at the above thinking attitude. It would be quite on the mark if the question was "Is string theory right?". Then one could answer "Contingently and pragmatically, string theory works for me but I prefer not to accept it as religious dogma and remain open that at some point it might be proven wrong". Such an attitude is indeed the healthiest approach for intellect operating with the Kantian divide. It's the most logical thing to do. If the thing-in-itself is in principle to forever remain only asymptotically approached through mental models which approximate the dynamics of its appearances, then it's only a sign of sound thinking that we don't claim absolute truthiness for our model. Even if our model currently matches all known facts it could still turn out that thousand years from now, a new phenomenon can be discovered that doesn't fit the model. This is all fine and is indeed the healthy attitude towards the unknowable thing-in-itself (if we assume that it is indeed forever unknowable).

But let's consider something else. You already gave similar example. Let's take the statement "I experience thinking". If we approach this with the same attitude as the above, it will sound something like "My working hypothesis is that I do indeed experience thinking but that's only my pragmatic approach. I remain open to the possibility that I may not be experiencing thinking. I want to remain unbiased and accept that I can only asymptotically approach this fact but I can never be certain about it. If I claim certainty, it would immediately turn into religious dogma and this is simply bad science."

Now the denial of the above statement is not as absurd as it might sound to some. Actually it is even the norm in many philosophical views. This is really the symptom of the pathological state of thinking in our age. Thinking has been driven into a phantom layer of completely abstract thoughts which are so alien to reality that these thoughts can't even formulate a statement for their own existence. Indeed, in some schools it is even considered the pinnacle of wisdom if the thoughts formulate their own denial.

All talks here about Thinking with capital T, SS and so on are completely pointless if one can't comprehend the gravity of a statement like the above. If one feels that the truthiness of the statement may sound plausible but is ultimately a matter of belief and we become dangerously and dogmatically biased if we recognize its truth, then there's really no point to continue this discussion.

It should be completely transparent for those whose thinking capabilities have not been completely devastated by contemporary philosophical trends, that the denial of the statement can be seen as a possibility only if the thinking which pronounces this denial is deeply buried in the blind spot. Even the slightest awareness of the thinking which utters the words of the denial would immediately show that this denial simply doesn't relate to anything but its own abstractness. The words are just a shiny arrangement of sounds which have no relation to anything else. The "I" stares at the shiny arrangement of words and says "These are only words, they can never tell if there's thinking-in-itself responsible for them. They are locked into a phantom closed system of logic which is completely isolated from the reality-in-itself."

On the other hand, if we're aware of the thinking process that utters the words, it'll be seen that they are condensed symbols of the meaning inherent in the very act of thinking activity which produces them. It's mindboggling that it is necessary to explain such things but alas, these are the pathological times in which we live. Times in which black is called white and it is celebrated as the triumph of wisdom.

If the reader still feels that the statement can only be taken as dogmatic belief, which implies that at some point the facts may prove "I don't experience thinking", then there really isn't any point to speak of these things anymore. And I'm fine with this. But let at least the reader be perfectly aware of the infinitely deep chasm between the phantom layer of the intellect and the thing-in-itself. This is practically the definition for the Kantian divide.

So our topic here is of the exactly same nature as the above. It really boils down to the question: "Can thinking express anything certain about reality or it forever remains within the phantom layer of the intellect, where things can be only asymptotically approximated through mental models."

Now with this in mind it should be clear why what Eugene says above sounds really as paragraph 22. Let me put it into a bluntly simple example. We have a door and we stand on one side of it. There are two statements "The door can be gone through" and "The door can't be gone through". It's a fact that as long as we are on the same side of the door we can speak about possibilities. We say IF the door can be gone through. Now Eugene and Martin say that they are open for the possibility that the door can be gone through but they reserve the possibility that this may actually not be the case. Who knows, maybe some clever genius can prove the you-shall-not-pass theorem. But in any case, I hope it's clear that the openness for the possibility of going through the gate remains entirely in phantom layer of the intellect. It is as if by definition all that talk about the gate is bound to forever remain purely abstract speculation. It is completely forgotten that the statement refers to something that can indeed be verified. Not proven entirely within the bounds of the phantom layer but verified when phantom thinking steps outside pure abstraction.

Another example. I see a pencil on the desk in front of me. I can speculate: "It is either possible or impossible to lift that pencil with my hand". Eugene and Martin say "We're open that it might be possible to lift the pencil but we don't want to subscribe to religious dogma. We'll live our life as if the pencil can be lifted because it has beneficial pragmatic consequences but we stay on the sure side and remain open that this can be proven wrong at any point in time."

I apologize for using such childish examples but this is really how ridiculous the whole situation is.

What is not understood is that all those talks about Thinking and PoF are not supposed to remain empty phrases in the phantom layer. Instead they say "you don't need to believe dogmatically that the pencil can be lifted. Just stretch your arm and verify this once and for all."

I'm not saying that this verification is the easiest thing to do. It's actually very easy to do but tons of obstacles prevent this verification. These obstacles are not so much because of technical difficulties but of purely human nature - there's simply inner resistance, plain antipathy towards the verification of these things because of the felt consequences in case of the potential successful verification.

Saying that "Yes, I'm open for the possibility that the forces concealed in thinking are of the same essence as those that are responsible for the Cosmos at large (1), but I remain open for the possibility that this might also not be the case and it seems there's no way to ever be certain (2)" is of the same nature as saying "I'm open for the possibility that I can lift the pencil (1) but I also remain open that this might not be the case and it seems there's no way to ever be certain (2)".

What is not understood here is that part (1) actually speaks about a path of experience, not about empty speculations that are bound to remain phantom models of reality-in-itself. Yes, it might be that the path leads to a dead end but adding (2) simply shows that there's no intent whatsoever to verify (1).

I'm not sure I can make it more explicit than this. In summary, I'm perfectly fine with being open for possibilities but let at least be clear that the way (2) is used by Eugene and Martin, simply shows that they are not willing to lift the pencil. They prefer to remain in the eternal openness, the pencil staying at hand's distance and forever remaining as unverifiable mystery if it can be lifted or not. Really, what's the point of being open to the possibility of lifting the pencil if this possibility forever remains as arrangement of words in the phantom layer? What is being completely missed is that the arrangement of words actually points to something beyond the phantom layer where thinking can find its being too. If we lift the pencil we've gone beyond the phantom layer and now thinking confronts actual willing experience and sensory perceptions.

For the n-th time I say that it's not about convincing anyone that the possibility of lifting the pencil is the true possibility, without the person verifying it for himself. It's all about pointing out to the simple cognitive error that is being committed over and over again. The error is that thinking self-defeats itself. It declares openness for a possibility in (1) but in the second part of the sentence (2) it practically denies that very possibility. It's as simple as that. Really! In (1) we open up for the possibility to find the cognitive element in reality at large, in (2) we say "Yeah but we can never know if this is really true so it's better to remain honest and embrace agnosticism." Seriously. Is it really so difficult to see the glaring contradiction in this? What's the point of speaking about the possibility of cognitive element in reality in (1) when just an instant later (2) we declare that it is in principle impossible to know if this is true.

The reason is simple. When (2) is declared it simply means that one doesn't understand what (1) means. It is simply not realized that the cognitive element that we're allegedly open to find as intrinsic aspect of being is the same cognitive element which lives in the phantom layer and declares that it is in principle impossible to find itself outside the narrow bounds of the phantom layer. This is the dualism in thinking that Asvhin keeps trying to point out. As soon as the cognitive element within the phantom layer speaks of the cognitive element in reality at large, there's a tic-like split and now the former thinks about the latter in the same way one thinks about the Cosmic microwave background radiation - as something 'out there', part of the world-in-itself which will forever remain opaque to the phantom layer of cognition. One completely blinds himself about the fact that as by (1) the phantom thoughts are supposed to seek their own essence in the Cosmos at large. Instead, by the time thinking reaches the second part of the sentence, it has already forgotten why (1) was at all stated, and instead, the cognitive element in the Cosmos, for which (1) speaks, is now seen as completely foreign and abstract element, having nothing to do with the same cognitive element which expresses its doubt in (2). It's impossible to make sense of this if one refuses to observe the thinking process.

[Martin_]

Thank you Cleric.
I was going to say that "That set my thinking gears in motion" but I'm worried that I'd be called a dualist if i do, so i won't.

This is my reply.
I just has some inspiration so i want to post it before my self-criticism tells me it's hogwash.

How many sides does a Moeibus strip have?
One or Two?

I'd say that it has BOTH One and Two sides.

[Ben Iscatus]

I think I actually understand Cleric at last! But I don't 'think' the problem is at the level he puts it.

When I lift and hold the pencil and use it, I understand it up to a point (heh!). But how does thinking about it improve my understanding of it and bring me to the thing in itself? For example, I can't experience its internal structure, its woody origins, its design process or its manufacturing process.

[Cleric K]

How many sides does a Moeibus strip have?
One or Two?

I'd say that it has BOTH One and Two sides.

Thanks Martin.
I'd say your question makes a very good showcase of the way thinking shall be transformed.

Asking the question in this way makes it look like there's some definitive answer already preexisting. As if in the annals of the universe it is recorder that Mobius strip has such number of sides and the intellect is supposed to somehow gather the correct answer, as if we're placed on an exam. Actually this is quite the mood that today's educational system develops in children when they're doing tests. They see a, b, c d, they know that one of them is correct and circle it. In most cases all this process remains in the most superficial layers of thinking. It's just a question of match-making. The child is not stimulated to penetrate deeper but reality begins to resemble an abstract game where it's all a matter of playing your cards right, circling the correct answers according to the game's rules.

Things become quite different when we employ thinking in a living way. Thinking is always contextual. It's like perceptual organ for meaning. With the question of the Mobius strip there's no need to feel as we are on an exam and that we must circle the correct answer. Certainly, when we hold the Mobius strip in our hands we can place our fingers on both sides of a given spot. At the same time we can slide our finger along one side and we'll see that it alternatively goes through both sides of the former spot. So yes, we can say that BOTH are justified. But we must really feel this not as some abstract answer that we must circle in the test. It's OK to say "it depends on how we look at things". Thinking really should become something organic for us. Not some machine that prints out abstract answers. It's perfectly fine to feel at any point that thinking gives only a partial picture. We can touch only so many things with our thoughts at a given time. In the same way our vision gives only a partial picture of our environment at any given time. Just as what we see depends on our spatio-temporal context, so our thinking depends on the same context but in addition also the context of our spiritual being. It depends on the ideas we have developed, our feelings about things, our will. Even if we utter the same thought, with the same verbal content, at different times in our life, the whole sensory and spiritual context would be different. We need to get in the habit of feeling each thought as a symbol, as a holographic extract of our current life situation and our whole history. The words I'm writing here, even thought can be easily abstracted out as pure ASCII code, are nevertheless part of something living, organic. They wouldn't appear if Eugene didn't post his thoughts, if his thoughts didn't reverberate in me and stimulated me to write something back. It's not about exchanging abstract 'truths'. Every thought is a living action within the world organism which reverberates, sends its waves out, and can either wreak more havoc or bring elements of reality in musical relations.

As long as we see reality as an examination form and the role of the phantom intellect is to simply circle the correct answers, it is completely natural that one will always feel about thinking in the way Eugene expresses himself. Even if we were to circle that absolutely true answers, we would still be living within the layer of the phantom intellect, and the circled Truth will always remain external to us, something referring to the reality-in-itself, but only indirectly affecting our inner experience.

Instead, thinking can grow its feelers into reality. It's not about circling some preconceived answer - it's the cognitive experience of sliding our thinking-"fingers" along the curves of reality. Every shape that we trace is experienced as some kind of meaning, just as the phantom thoughts are shapes that carry some meaning. The answers come not by guessing the correct places of the circles, premeditated by whoever has prepared the examination form but by thoughtfully feeling the world content with our spiritual activity. Just as if we're blindfolded we can gain intuition of an object by touching it from all sides, so by infusing the world content with living thinking we experience the most varied shapes of meaning, which gradually begin to make higher sense - we begin to gain intuition of the meaningful geometry of reality, or in the GR metaphor - the curvature of meaning, along the geodesics of which all phenomena flow. At first, this geometry speaks more about our soul being. Our thinking touches the curvature of our ideas, beliefs, desires, hopes and fears. When we think we're practically saying "this is what this body, soul and spirit organism cognitively feels like". When we think, we're describing the meaningful curvatures of our spiritual being. We don't perceive this being with our bodily senses but we're fully within its context. As with the object that we feel with our fingers, so we begin to gain intuition of this being as we follow its meaningful curvature with thinking. Deeper understanding about outer nature comes later. We must first rectify the chaos within ourselves which throws thinking around.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Sorry to interrupt, but was anyone else recently having issues with the site not loading, and getting an error message?

[Cleric K]

I think I actually understand Cleric at last! But I don't 'think' the problem is at the level he puts it.

When I lift and hold the pencil and use it, I understand it up to a point (heh!). But how does thinking about it improve my understanding of it and bring me to the thing in itself? For example, I can't experience its internal structure, its woody origins, its design process or its manufacturing process.

Ben,
my post above speaks about what you ask. You ask "But how does thinking about it improve my understanding of it". Here it seems that you expect that thinking should immediately turn into something supernatural, that can give magical understanding of the pencil-in-itself. But we must start much more humbly. To understand the inner nature of the woody origins we need to gain consciousness of the spiritual activity which moves the life of plants. This activity is of much higher order than what we experience in ourselves as intellectual thoughts. The design and manufacturing processes we can understand with thinking because there are human thoughts behind them. It's quite unlikely that we'll learn about these processes by holding the pencil in our hand. We'll have to use the conventional means.

The important distinction is that every aspect of reality can be known through the appropriate shapes of cognition. As said, we can understand the design and manufacturing because it's much more closely related to the kind of thinking that we ourselves know. But even for this it might be needed to learn quite a lot about engineering design and the industrial processes. This is a very good example. We can only understand these things if we develop in ourselves the shapes of thinking which the engineers have used for the design and production. In certain sense, by learning about this engineering process we develop our organs of cognition which allow us to grasp the meaning of why the pencil exists as it is and how it comes to be.

Now in order to understand why the tree exists as it is and how it comes to be, we need to develop shapes of cognition which are not yet thought in schools. Before we even approach these shapes of cognition, which can grasp the processes of reality which work behind the plant world, we need to first understand at least how own inner life shapes the context within which we find our thoughts. If we can't orient ourselves within the forces that shape our soul and spiritual organism, our opinions, desires, temperament, etc., which are much more closely related to our humanness (and animal consciousness), there's simply no chance to understand the plant world, which lies even deeper than this. We must completely overcome the forces of desire if we're to approach the level of consciousness where the plant world can be understood. There are no desires in plants. They are added in the animal world. And the human world adds thoughts. So in our phantom intellect we're one degree distanced from the soul reality where desires weave. We're two degrees distanced from the forces which rule life (not soul life, but life of growth and reproduction, which is common to plants, animals and man). We're three degrees distanced from the forces responsible for the mineral realm (which are common to rocks, plants, animals and man).

When it's said that we're distanced, this doesn't mean physically distanced. We're distanced only in regards to the meaning that produces these spiritual forms and dynamics. Otherwise all these forces are completely interpenetrating, so to speak. We're clearly aware only at the level of our thoughts. The 'wavelengths' of meaning that we experience in our intellect is different from that of the soul processes, it's even more different from that life processes and vastly different from the spiritual activity which supports the space and time fabric of reality. Yet these worlds are not isolated, they form a gradient. And it's man's task to gain consciousness of the meaningful flow not only within the intellect but also in the other strata of reality.