ChatGPT answers metaphysical questions :)

[AshvinP]

Sorry if you felt like I was avoiding your detailed thoughts here. I probably could have put some more effort into addressing them. Now I think Cleric's post has covered the main issue that runs throughout the recent posts, but I will add a couple thoughts. I sincerely hope they aren't automatically tuned out or subjected to a 'voice filter'.

This story already includes what we are doing with language here and now. As I said a few posts above, I absolutely include myself in this contemporary use of language I have described. And I include this conversation, and our forum discussions as well. That we have serious difficulties using language for the purpose of knowing our own soul (if you hadn’t cut what I wrote immediately before those words, it would be easier to get this meaning from my assertions) is true here and now, including for you and me, and despite our striving. It does not only apply to the general thinker who fails to orient to their inner life. What better proof of that could there be, than what is happening here and now, in the facts of this conversation as they unfold? Even your simple gesture of cutting that paragraph in half, quoting the cut, and highlighting the first words in the cut as if they came out of nothing, thus resetting the compass for the orientation they originally had, speaks of this difficulty - here and now. What could better demonstrate that we are not immune from the modern linguistic disorientation I tried to convey? Don't you see the shared failure here? We too, despite our striving, are largely going by some abstract books, by some semi-automatic verbal sequences, largely unaware of the quality of feeling included in the sounds we use, and the harmony, or disharmony, of our voice, tone, rhythm, composition. We have lost the felt resonance of breathing sounds, vowels, consonants, and their manifold combinations. We may not even think about these features when dealing with text. Nonetheless these are the crucial elements of language. Don’t you see that our lack of reciprocal understanding is the living demonstration of the difficulties we face when we try to bring our thoughts down to Earth (literally, through language) within our individual sphere with the repeatedly failed purpose of reconnection to meaning? We are hitting the check valve. Don't you see it?

This is not what I meant by "here and now", but it nevertheless points to the same issue. You are building a metaphysical rule system about "linguistic disorientation" that your thinking can easily rest on, but this comes at the expense of understanding the dynamic interplay that can only be properly experienced if we focus on how we continually cast ideas into language to form new intuitions that wouldn't otherwise be available, as Cleric indicated. This is the real-time thinking experience, not our opinions of how no one can understand each other in some particular conversation. Every person who has come on this forum and left without understanding what we were speaking of could use that same opinion to determine the whole spiritual scientific project is flawed - how can you have a science when no one can communicate the results of research into higher realities to others in a precise, replicable, and verifiable way? Again, this science is not simply optional for spiritual evolution or a dry commentary on pre-existing strata of spiritual existence, but itself feeds back into what higher experiences can be reached and how they can be experienced.

The bolded words are just my cursory highlighting of linguistic concepts drawn from bodily experience, and of course I could have bolded much more. The point is that these bodily experiences that have wiggled out into the imaginative life of word-perceptions, in the context of your post, serve a symbolic function that helps us orient to our dreamy linguistic thinking, to feel our way into its implicit structure. The explicit content of "vessel", "overarching", "vantage point", "steering", etc. is no different than someone using it to describe purely physical experiences, but that same content becomes something much different in the context of your post. As Paracelsus said, sola dosis facit venenum, or as we know the Greek word pharmakon can mean both poison and remedy. Such is the nature of our linguistic thinking - if it is administered in the proper 'dose', it can heal the split that it also creates.

That words are drawn from bodily experience is obvious. That¨s not the point. This fact doesn’t even scratch the surface of the question at stake. Sure, our entire language is Earthly, thus connected in one way or another to our worldly life. You should have bolded the entire quote. From this note you make, I conclude that I have not been able to properly communicate the main point of my post. You are actually not seeing what my critique to JP is about. Again, you are merging concept with word! What counts is not that the inventory tells you to use the word “vessel” when you intend to evoke the mental image of a certain sensory experience of containance, and that "vessel" works for certain material objects as well as for figurative use. (what has that to do with feeling?) The question is why, for containance, we use “vessel”, and not “baobab”. Could we hypothetically decide by international convention that from now on what we have always meant to evoke with the tag “vessel”, we will designate from now on with the tag “baobab” instead? If the answer is “yes as long as we are all on the same page”, it means we don’t know what language is. If the answer is no, but at the same time we can’t explain why exactly baobab is inappropriate to designate containment, we also don’t know what language is, and are indeed unable to know ourselves through language.

There is a crucial distinction to be made between concept and words, the latter are not simply placeholders or portals, for the former. The difference is the feeling character of words, which is absent from the concept. This character of language belongs to an individual, and/or to groups of individuals, whilst the concept belongs to the universe. Probably, I realize, this is the reason why you keep speaking of linguistic thinking: that you have not paid attention to this difference. That "vessel" can mean a ship or anything abstract with a containing property, is irrelevant in this discussion. It only confirms what we already know: that language is a feature of our Earthly life, and only of this Earthly life of ours. Once we say that, we have still not scratched the surface of the origin, nature, function and potential of language.

My point was that the words, even if carrying the exact same perceptual content (audial and visual, tactile for physical gestures), can function differently depending on how we have attuned our thinking to deeper strata of soul-spiritual existence. There is no need to complexify this too much, it is very simple. The more we are able to penetrate to the universal through the portal of perceptual content (linguistic or otherwise), the more archetypal feeling is experienced. The concept is only dry and devoid of feeling when our thinking is chained to myopic interests, and as we should know, the intuitive path leads us into inner scales of activity where concepts are once again imbued with the life and feeling that we normally only dimly experience in their reflections in speech, music, flowers, sunsets and sunrises, etc.

We should be clear that this is not an optional part of spiritual evolution - it is only through the spiritualization of language (and therefore culture) that any other domains of experience can be spiritualized as well, of course not only for lone seekers, but for broader and broader spheres of humanity as a whole. So when we employ our linguistic thinking, not to continue fossilizing and dissecting living inner gestures (the feeling imbued aspect of meaningful communication), but precisely as symbolic portals to live into those inner gestures with presence and concentration, then the exact same word-content can serve an entirely different spiritual function. Then our linguistic output most certainly works back into the intuitive meaning we are steering through (instead of only being a dry commentary on it), as I hope is evident from our real-time interaction with the many posts and essays on this forum.

Yes, Ashvin, we should definitely be clear that the spiritualization of language is not an option, provided that one builds up a fitting idea of what the spiritualization of language is, not to confuse words for mere symbolic portals - placeholders - for living concepts. It seems to me that you are only seeing the awakening to living thinking. What you are not yet seeing is that language is more than a means to reach living thinking. It’s more than a system of “symbolic portals to live into those inner gestures with presence and concentration”. Do you realize you are only focusing on concepts? It would be useful if you could articulate more what you consider to be the feeling character of language, maybe.

This has been articulated now. When you say "language is more than a means to reach living thinking", aside from the strictly utilitarian uses of language, what do you have in mind? "Living thinking" should not be confused with some dry intellectual activity, but is thinking imbued with archetypal feeling and oriented toward the highest ideals of human existence.

It is the same principle as it is with meditation on verses and images. One person can repeat "Wisdom lives in the Light" over and over in a mechanical way and get nothing from the experience, while another person can meditate on the same word-content as a symbolic anchor for temporally expanded intuition of existence. As Cleric put it, the words can become both the symbolic anchor of that intuition and the continual playback of the intuition, spiraling together what normally remains in a bistable condition as you described in the post above. This is an absolutely necessary starting point for our higher spiritual efforts. It reveals that the language as such is not deprived of its deep feeling content, only the latter is obscured by our approach to it when we are only interested in its utilitarian aspect. It is based on our interest and intention that the language either sucks our living attention into mineralized forms that we click together on a plane parallel to our intuitive context, or propels that living attention into the depths of the intuitive context, which can then be artistically described with linguistic forms. As Steiner pointed out, those depths must be rendered in language for us to gain a lasting orientation to the underlying experiences.

We need only be prepared to think the thing out, and feel it through and through. It is this recognition by healthy human understanding, of what is given out of the spiritual world — it is not the clairvoyance, but the activity of knowledge — which provides us with spiritual eyes after death. The clairvoyant has to acquire this spiritual eye just the same as other men. For what we gain by Imaginative Cognition, what we perceive in seership, falls away and vanishes after a few days. It only does not do so if we bring it down to the standpoint of ordinary understanding, and in that case we are obliged to understand it in the very same way in which it is understood by those to whom we communicate it.

Again and again, you are only seeing the concepts. This Steiner quote means that spiritual scientific research requires to be expressed in clear concepts, apprehensible for the intellect, and shareable with others. That is not a quote about language! It's a quote on concepts and intellect - standard cognition - as a necessary outlet for higher cognition the spiritual scientist has to find....

The way that you are dividing intellect/concepts and 'standard cognition' from "language" is very odd. How does one share the concepts of spiritual scientific research without language? How does one think through those concepts without language? I am honestly confused about how this could possibly look from your perspective.

[Federica]

Sorry if you felt like I was avoiding your detailed thoughts here. I probably could have put some more effort into addressing them. Now I think Cleric's post has covered the main issue that runs throughout the recent posts, but I will add a couple thoughts. I sincerely hope they aren't automatically tuned out or subjected to a 'voice filter'.

Well, Ashvin, I normally let them slip by - your usual formulations, like here. But since the topic is supposed to be language, let’s take a closer look, for once. Maybe a miracle will happen and you will awaken to your own standard voice. Let’s see what your typical language really entails:


“Sorry that
Sorry if….”
No real sorrow, I only put forth an abstract formulation, as a hypothetical

--------------------

“Sorry if I
Sorry if you….”
--> You are creating problems for yourself, but I am generous and I offer free sympathy

----------------

“....if you felt like I was avoiding….”
--> It’s not true, but for some twisted reason, you felt like

-----------------

“I probably could have put some more effort”
--> Yeaaah…. I did say I was “personally enthusiastic for the opportunity to explore” and so on. But really, I’m enthusiastic to roll out my stuff. The rest is… well, as I’m saying, an effort. There is probability that I could have put some more effort and, yeah, the odds sometimes just fail you

-----------------------

“Cleric's post has covered the main issue”
--> Hey it’s already serviced. You are wrong and Cleric fixed it.

----------------------------

“But I will add a couple of thoughts”
--> But take that. There are 4. Easy. I always overdeliver btw, it’s just me

--------------------------

“I sincerely hope they aren't automatically tuned out or subjected to a 'voice filter'”
--> Throwing in my canonical warning (when scared it’s best to scare off first) with a hope flavor this time, because why not

------------------------

Do you know anyone in need of a dialogue like this? Me neither.

[AshvinP]

Sorry if you felt like I was avoiding your detailed thoughts here. I probably could have put some more effort into addressing them. Now I think Cleric's post has covered the main issue that runs throughout the recent posts, but I will add a couple thoughts. I sincerely hope they aren't automatically tuned out or subjected to a 'voice filter'.

Well, Ashvin, I normally let them slip by - your usual formulations, like here. But since the topic is supposed to be language, let’s take a closer look, for once. Maybe a miracle will happen and you will awaken to your own standard voice. Let’s see what your typical language really entails:

So we see writing can be theatrical

You see, maybe your linguistic rule system - "language can only do this", "language can't do that", "language means X", "language can't mean Y", etc. - isn't as rigid as you imagine it to be. Maybe paying more attention to what you are doing in real-time through language will help you escape the confines of rigid rule-based thinking. Use the algorithm as a mirror!

That you let anything I write "normally slip by" is, well...

“Cleric's post has covered the main issue”
--> Hey it’s already serviced. You are wrong and Cleric fixed it.

I couldn't care less if you are "wrong", only if you are at all interested in understanding what we have pointed out to you in many different ways on many different threads, Cleric's post only being the most recent.

Do you understand the issue or not? Are you going to let these petty forum grievances block your own spiritual orientation indefinitely?

[Federica]

So we see writing can be theatrical

This flags a flat understanding of language - LLM style: it's a coding system. This is at the core of your misconception.

You see, maybe your linguistic rule system - "language can only do this", "language can't do that", "language means X", "language can't mean Y", etc. - isn't as rigid as you imagine it to be. Maybe paying more attention to what you are doing in real-time through language will help you escape the confines of rigid rule-based thinking. Use the algorithm as a mirror!

That you let anything I write "normally slip by" is, well...

There is no linguistic rule system, it's pretty much the opposite. And what I normally let slip by are your formulations, not "anything you write". You are not so good at resisting the temptation to picture me like I'm nut (while you know it can't be that).

I couldn't care less if you are "wrong", only if you are at all interested in understanding what we have pointed out to you in many different ways on many different threads, Cleric's post only being the most recent.

Do you understand the issue or not? Are you going to let these petty forum grievances block your own spiritual orientation indefinitely?

I don't have grievances, Ashvin. I know this is hard for you to get. I have rather put a linguistic mirror in front of your usual formulations. Otherwise, yes of course, I am determined to keep pushing on my own limitations. Each and everyone has their own challenges, and you should for example become mindful of your habit to suddenly go in we-mode, to try and impose more (that has zero chances to work with me, by the way). It's clear to me that your conception of language and Clerics are distinct, and there is nothing unitary "we have pointed out to you".

[AshvinP]

It's clear to me that your conception of language and Clerics are distinct, and there is nothing unitary "we have pointed out to you".

Great, if it's so clear, then you should have no problem articulating the difference. Simply calling things flat or confusing words and concepts, is not an articulation without further reasoning or examples. And if your articulation happens to reveal weak spots in your orientation to spititual activity, then you should be open to that. What is the clear difference?

[Federica]

I believe it is important to observe the dynamic interplay of our flow. When we do some calculation that is not trivial, why do we write the whole process down? Mainly because our focus of attention is quite volatile and we can hardly support the whole temporal context of the thinking stream. So one reason is that by writing down symbols representing our thinking gestures, we gradually build a schematic picture of the whole process and we can use that picture as a kind of a map that anchors and stabilizes our thinking. We can move back and forth, and so on. The thing to note is that when we start the calculation, our future stream of thoughts is different from what it could have been if we tried to calculate without writing it down. So in a sense, our decision to etch our thinking process into the full spectrum of the metamorphosing World state alters the riverbed in such a way, that different thoughts can now condense against that kernel.

Let’s think of the Mandelbrot set. It’s a fairly simple calculation that we can in principle do in our mind, however, we need to do it for every point in the complex plane and mark the result (whether the iterated value stays bounded or flies to infinity). The first picture of the set looked something like this:


Mandelbrot wrote a program that calculated a rough grid of points and used the printer (which was practically an automated typewriter) to type a symbol or space depending on the result. In a sense, it’s a map of what our thinking streams could have been were we to calculate each point in our mind. Now the moment his eyes saw that image, different thoughts began condensing against the newly modified World-kernel.

Now I don’t want this to be taken in the wrong way. I don’t imply that we need to formalize and map out our thinking process if there should be further progress. I only wanted to note that we shouldn’t forget about this continuous interplay – how our spiritual activity transforms the kernel and how consequently, possibly novel, ideal movements can incarnate from the limitless potential of being. To draw upon this limitless potential we indeed need the living and felt orientation, and this means to grow into a higher-order ideal flow that can recognize its reflection in the newly modified kernel.

So there’s certainly a polarity here – the thoughts that condense from on high, as if striving to awaken to the higher-order flow that secretly correlates them, and the etched grooves where spiritual activity can bounce horizontally, so to speak. This is clear and there’s no doubt that the first kind of inner activity is what we should be striving for. However, we should also rightly understand the place of the metamorphosing kernel. Otherwise, we may feel like an artist who continuously produces art forms and immediately casts them down into a stratum of being that is of no great significance. However, what we cast down is the next frame of the World kernel and that is what accommodates the next artistic inspiration. The difference may seem subtle, but it is tangible when we begin to feel this continuous feedback of existence. Even when we think in the living and heartfelt way, we still etch the consequences of that thinking into the next instance of the World kernel, on which the accommodation of our future inspirations depends. So in one instance, it is like we are underground and digging a tunnel toward the light, throwing shovelfuls of dirt behind our back. We are interested in greater and greater liberation that we achieve with each scoop (the flying dirt is like our artistic thought content). In other words, we imagine that everything of significance is above us, in the direction that we push, while the cast-off dirt has only momentary significance and then sinks into the past. We can contrast this with the picture where we use each shovel to carefully craft the next staircase step on which we hop and reach further toward the light – in other words, each thought actively shapes the ground for our next possibilities.

A note to Federica: I don’t write this as if I imply that you don’t recognize all this but I thought that it can be useful to have it explicitly laid down.

If, as I believe, the calculation metaphor and the shoveling metaphor - in which the thinking flow can be etched or not etched in steps within the riverbed - are meant to point to the fact that language similarly etches the thinking flow into verbal thoughts, thereby influencing the flow, then I wonder why you thought it was useful to lay that down explicitly, at this point of the thread, because I don’t see how what I wrote disregards that - on the contrary.

I have been trying to describe what I've called a materialism of feeling, by which the shovelful of dirt becomes everything, heavily attracting the next condensing thoughts, on the basis of a dreamy process that has lost contact with the light, with the pictorial flow above. Therefore, I am describing a flow where the particles of dirt - the etched condensations - become the strongest catalyzer. This is opposite to the shovelful of dirt being casted off. This materialism of feeling, commonly expressed in linguistic flow, is what Steiner laments as “thinking in words”. Here the words are the etched steps. They definitely influence, strongly influence, the next frame. In the same way that materialism of thought (what we normally mean by materialism) makes the flow captive to the dirt particles, seeking progression in more and more powerful magnifying glasses pointed at dirt details of the same stair - thereby blocking spiritual upward progression - similarly does materialism of feeling make the point of attention captive to the attracting power of a special type of dirt particles (the words and the dream word-world).

Beyond that, the important point is that in all cases - in the highest, most inspired poetry as well as in the semi-automatic, dreamy linguistic habits of our times, which I call materialism of feeling - words surely etch the ideal flow into the Earthly spectrum - the sensory spectrum - influencing its vector through continuous recalculations. Absolutely. What I am saying is that in the preponderant language habits of today, the direction of the flow tends to collapse, tends to remain stuck in the material details of the language-particles themselves (the flat features of language, such that an LLM can mimic). This is one tendency. Another way to call it could be language reductionism. Language is reduced to a system of placeholders.

However, as I tried to express, language is much more than that. In the same way that, when one liberates oneself from a 19th century materialistic conception, one sees that the sensory spectrum is much more than an external reality to mimic with thought-out models, one can also discover that, when one liberates oneself from materialism of feeling, then language (as a subset of the sensory spectrum) becomes much more than a system of cues, portals or symbols, mappable by LLMs. So, even when one starts awakening to a new understanding of the linguistic forms, within the Earthly experiential spectrum (I’m not going now into how this new understanding should come about, though I tried a little in my last posts) it's still not a question of casting away the shovelful of dirt. That's not what I imagine. Yes, it’s a polarity. It’s the same polarity as in the hysteresis process.

Just because I spoke of a materialism of feeling (a materialism practiced in the linguistic subset of the sensory spectrum) I am not advocating for, or imagining, an opposite pole, a sort of mysticism of feeling and language, where words can simply be bypassed and/or don't contribute anything of value to the flow. I never suggested that, I hope. I suggested a spiritualization of language that reconnects feeling with its linguistic sensory expression (sound). Cleric, please let me know if this makes sense, and in any case, what part of what I wrote made you think it was useful to remind that shovelfuls of dirt can’t just be casted off. If you can share what paragraph(s), or passage(s), it would be very useful to me.

[Federica]

This is not what I meant by "here and now", but it nevertheless points to the same issue. You are building a metaphysical rule system about "linguistic disorientation" that your thinking can easily rest on, but this comes at the expense of understanding the dynamic interplay that can only be properly experienced if we focus on how we continually cast ideas into language to form new intuitions that wouldn't otherwise be available, as Cleric indicated. This is the real-time thinking experience, not our opinions of how no one can understand each other in some particular conversation. Every person who has come on this forum and left without understanding what we were speaking of could use that same opinion to determine the whole spiritual scientific project is flawed - how can you have a science when no one can communicate the results of research into higher realities to others in a precise, replicable, and verifiable way? Again, this science is not simply optional for spiritual evolution or a dry commentary on pre-existing strata of spiritual existence, but itself feeds back into what higher experiences can be reached and how they can be experienced.

Not at all, you are grossly misunderstanding. I am suggesting no metaphysical system of language. You are simply basking in your prejudices about me, reading what is not there. And, more importantly, we can and should have a science - Steiners spiritual science - without precise, replicable and univocal ways of communicating the higher experiences. It is for the same reason that we have argued many times with Lorenzo that definitions are not a thing to cling to, hoping to find clarity in them. Are you now saying that you want definitions? Of course we can only have a SS if we break free from definitions - from precise, replicable and verifiable ways to communicate it, in your language. There are many places in which Steiner says that.

Spiritual science is a science not because of the "precise, replicable and verifiable ways of communicating it". It is a science because the spirit knows itself in full and awake consciosuness, through a willed direction of inquiry, knowing precisely what it's doing, owning the what, the why, and the how of the endeavor. In this sense it is a science. And in this sense it will re-federate all sciences. Not in the sense that its communications should be replicable and precise and verifiable (whatever verifiable may mean in your view). All these things - defintions, compendiums, precise sketches - do not characterize spiritual science.

You must actually live with the spiritual science you are striving for, live with it as much as you can. That is the point. That is why spiritual science is not given in compendiums or short sketches, but we are trying to make spiritual science a force of life in which we can live, and from which we can constantly draw stimulating impulses.

[AshvinP]

This is not what I meant by "here and now", but it nevertheless points to the same issue. You are building a metaphysical rule system about "linguistic disorientation" that your thinking can easily rest on, but this comes at the expense of understanding the dynamic interplay that can only be properly experienced if we focus on how we continually cast ideas into language to form new intuitions that wouldn't otherwise be available, as Cleric indicated. This is the real-time thinking experience, not our opinions of how no one can understand each other in some particular conversation. Every person who has come on this forum and left without understanding what we were speaking of could use that same opinion to determine the whole spiritual scientific project is flawed - how can you have a science when no one can communicate the results of research into higher realities to others in a precise, replicable, and verifiable way? Again, this science is not simply optional for spiritual evolution or a dry commentary on pre-existing strata of spiritual existence, but itself feeds back into what higher experiences can be reached and how they can be experienced.

Not at all, you are grossly misunderstanding. I am suggesting no metaphysical system of language. You are simply basking in your prejudices about me, reading what is not there. And, more importantly, we can and should have a science - Steiners spiritual science - without precise, replicable and univocal ways of communicating the higher experiences. It is for the same reason that we have argued many times with Lorenzo that definitions are not a thing to cling to, hoping to find clarity in them. Are you now saying that you want definitions? Of course we can only have a SS if we break free from definitions - from precise, replicable and verifiable ways to communicate it, in your language. There are many places in which Steiner says that.

Spiritual science is a science not because of the "precise, replicable and verifiable ways of communicating it". It is a science because the spirit knows itself in full and awake consciosuness, through a willed direction of inquiry, knowing precisely what it's doing, owning the what, the why, and the how of the endeavor. In this sense it is a science. And in this sense it will re-federate all sciences. Not in the sense that its communications should be replicable and precise and verifiable (whatever verifiable may mean in your view). All these things - defintions, compendiums, precise sketches - do not characterize spiritual science.

You must actually live with the spiritual science you are striving for, live with it as much as you can. That is the point. That is why spiritual science is not given in compendiums or short sketches, but we are trying to make spiritual science a force of life in which we can live, and from which we can constantly draw stimulating impulses.

I was not speaking about creating rigid definitions, as should also be obvious from practically every post/essay I write. The essays have been centered around using our concepts in less definitional, more fluid and symbolic ways, as rock climbing grips, imaginative portals, etc. Reified concepts i.e. definitions have never been what makes science precise and verifiable, but rather lucid symbolic concepts that allow people to recreate 'experimental' conditions (outer or inner) and triangulate similar domains of intuitive meaning through these conceptual portals. Or put another way, the definitions and schematics have always been unconscious anchors (in the sense of Cleric's illustration) for deeper intuitions that help steer future research. That intuitive meaning should also be conducted back through the bodily will and its technological extensions.

"It is a science because the spirit knows itself in full and awake consciosuness, through a willed direction of inquiry, knowing precisely what it's doing, owning the what, the why, and the how of the endeavor.

This is fine at an abstract level and for our personal spiritual seeking, at least in the short term, but then we need to contemplate how this intuitively clear spiritual knowledge will work back into existing cultural institutions and the imploded kernel as it is given to us, transforming it from the inside-out. Only in this way can our personal spiritual development be harmonized with that of humanity as a whole. Full and awake consciousness does not by itself establish science.

This requires spiritual seekers to delve deeply into the methods, concepts, and research results of modern science across all domains of inquiry, including AI, cybernetics, VR, etc. It takes extensive cooperation and dialogue between researchers across these fields. Scientific minds in these fields have not fallen off the gradient of spiritual activity. There is nothing in the research results as such that demands they become rigid definitions, reductive, or anything similar. In fact everything they investigate and 'map out' is anchoring intuition of our higher existence - it coudn't be otherwise - they just haven't awaken to this fact yet.

The people who can do this deep dive and relate the resulting insights to the spiritual foundations of human existence, the adoption of creative responsibility and the creation of meaning, are contributing greatly to the spiritualization of our collective Earthly spectrum, which is synonymous with the Christ impulse. Someome like JP is not doing it to the same extent as explicit spiritual scientists, of course, but he is clearly oriented in that direction and is at the forefront among intellectual thinkers today. He is explicitly bringing natural scientific results into dialogue with the moral foundations of Biblical narratives i.e. Inspired wisdom.

Aside from the whole tenor of spiritual science, which quite obviously seeks to understand natural scientific methods and results in the most rigorous, precise, and detailed way, Steiner speaks very clearly about it in various places, for example:

However, it is precisely from the realization of the difficulties that arise for Theosophy that every Theosophist should feel the need for the greatest possible accuracy and precision in the presentation of the Theosophical truths. Those who, out of a realization of the corresponding connections, have to represent these things are well aware of this, but despite all that has been emphasized in public lectures, they inevitably come into conflict with those who stand on the ground of today's science. Therefore, as strange as it may seem, Theosophy requires, on the one hand, the most exact and precise logical formulation for clothing the truths brought down from the higher worlds, and on the other hand, no less for the mere ordinary reasonableness
...
Now, in lectures such as this series on “Occult Physiology”, Theosophy is needed everywhere to penetrate directly into our actual world with what it has to give as supersensible contents of consciousness. If I may speak in trivial terms, I would like to say: Theosophy is not as fortunate as today's philosophy, which dwells in abstract regions and which would not be very inclined to include in its considerations such concepts as, let us say, blood or liver or spleen, that is, contents of the actual. It would shrink from making the transition from its abstract concepts to the concrete events and things that directly and actually approach us. Theosophy is more daring in this respect and can therefore very easily be regarded as a spiritual activity that boldly and unjustifiably builds a bridge from the most spiritual to the most factual.
...
Theosophy, however, must arrive at its concepts in a completely different way; it must ascend to supersensible knowledge and bring its concepts down from the supersensible. But it must also delve into the realm of reality and must govern the philosophical concepts gained from observation of the sensual world. If we want to visualize this schematically, then on the one hand we have concepts in philosophy that are gained through external perception, and on the other hand we have concepts that are gained from the supersensible through spiritual perception. And if we think of the field of concepts through which we communicate, we have to say: If theosophy is to be considered justified, then our concepts must be taken from both sides, on the one hand from sensory perception, on the other hand from spiritual perception, and these two sides must meet in the field of our concepts.

[Cleric]

Just because I spoke of a materialism of feeling (a materialism practiced in the linguistic subset of the sensory spectrum) I am not advocating for, or imagining, an opposite pole, a sort of mysticism of feeling and language, where words can simply be bypassed and/or don't contribute anything of value to the flow. I never suggested that, I hope. I suggested a spiritualization of language that reconnects feeling with its linguistic sensory expression (sound). Cleric, please let me know if this makes sense, and in any case, what part of what I wrote made you think it was useful to remind that shovelfuls of dirt can’t just be casted off. If you can share what paragraph(s), or passage(s), it would be very useful to me.

I think the core can be located here:

Precisely. He thinks that we can meaningfully use LLMs outputs as such to statistically analyse the textual output of human beings, and - here comes the crucial part - he thinks we can recover some extract of the nature of meaning from such an analysis. This is wildly different from what Cleric does. JP best reveals his conception when he gives the witch example, in the other video. There, it's clear how he thinks that the statistical summary provided by GPT has something to teach us about what the meaning of witch is, how it comes about, which is a common but clear misunderstanding of what "semantics" and language are. To make it very concrete, coming back to this video above, he says:


“...the degree Chat GPT is intelligent is because of the intelligence that's encoded only in language, and if the linguistic corpus of the body of text that we've all produced is biased and warped in some way that'll be built into the chat GPT system and along with whatever biases the programmers might have purposely or inadvertently put into the system.”


Again, the same problem: there is no meaning “encoded only in language”. The only reason language makes sense to us, if it does, is because we already hold real meaning. Meaning can go down from reality into language, but it cannot go back up from language into reality. This JP doesn’t realize. We have seen this misunderstanding now multiple times in different contexts. There is no two-way connection between reality and its linguistic outpression. There’s a check valve in between. Nothing standalone is “encoded” in language. There can only be a recognition in language. This can happen only IF the intelligence is already somehow else acquainted with meaning. If this is not the case, language alone leads nowhere, it’s a huis clos. There are openings, but one can only open them from the outside in, not from the inside out.

Put another way, language only holds half of the code, or rather a feel for the code. So all those statistical interrelations that JP wonders about don’t allow to build back anything of the quality of real meaning, but rather semi-conscious associations, operated, we could say, while "lost in translation”, lost in the linguistic layer. It’s a sort of dream world of its own, the dream of language. This layer can easily be experienced pretty much exclusively horizontally, in isolation from meaning. Then language is perfectly useless for the purpose of moving vertically, beyond the level of that dream, and up towards some recovery of living meaning.

Now, this life of dreaming in language is the vast majority of contemporary language use. However, even if GPT was trained only on the very best texts - let’s imagine a PoF Bot - no meaning will be contained in those outputs either. Because, if we really want to break it down pedantically, there are two problems. The first: there is that check valve. Just because one reads PoF doesn’t mean one gets it: one has to first overcome one’s own personal linguistic dreaming habits. And the same would be true with the PoF bot, of course, so no use. On top of that, the second problem is added to the first one, when GPT is trained on immense amounts of texted material: the regularities then discovered are only a measure of the average linguistic bubble our usual consciousness dreams up around symbols. So there’s an additional step away from relevant meaning.

JP doesn’t see all that. He’s rather captive of the wow narrative, the Alice in Wonderland narrative around these models, and really believes there is meaningful potential in the outputs that summarize human linguistic daydreaming. He really thinks this summary will bring light to what the real meaning of "witch" is. And to conclude his train of thought, it’s enough to put AI and images together, in this fascinating futuristic narrative, for the first example to come to mind to be sexual, of course. A GPT sexual partner and a fake video looking like a real speech by the real DT, are the two examples he brings, when asked about the future of AI, and the pros and cons of this technology for humanity. I'll leave the punchline to your imagination.

My math notation example intended to show that sometimes we may need to symbolically map out our thoughts and then by thinking over the mapped symbols we may have an insight into deeper ideal relation between the thoughts that have been individually mapped. This doesn't mean that the meaning of this ideal connection is somehow 'contained' in the written-down symbols, but the reading of the symbols can help us get there.

I think that JP means something similar when saying that LLMs have mapped out the symbolic world. The output presents some of the learned weightings but one must still read them and reach any potential insight (meaning) in the way any book that we find illuminating is read.

I now realize that I could have missed your main motivational point. Do you argue that JP in particular, seeks meaning as somehow emerging from the LLM output? Or you mean that no meaning in principle can be read from such output?

[Federica]

This is not what I meant by "here and now", but it nevertheless points to the same issue. You are building a metaphysical rule system about "linguistic disorientation" that your thinking can easily rest on, but this comes at the expense of understanding the dynamic interplay that can only be properly experienced if we focus on how we continually cast ideas into language to form new intuitions that wouldn't otherwise be available, as Cleric indicated. This is the real-time thinking experience, not our opinions of how no one can understand each other in some particular conversation. Every person who has come on this forum and left without understanding what we were speaking of could use that same opinion to determine the whole spiritual scientific project is flawed - how can you have a science when no one can communicate the results of research into higher realities to others in a precise, replicable, and verifiable way? Again, this science is not simply optional for spiritual evolution or a dry commentary on pre-existing strata of spiritual existence, but itself feeds back into what higher experiences can be reached and how they can be experienced.

Not at all, you are grossly misunderstanding. I am suggesting no metaphysical system of language. You are simply basking in your prejudices about me, reading what is not there. And, more importantly, we can and should have a science - Steiners spiritual science - without precise, replicable and univocal ways of communicating the higher experiences. It is for the same reason that we have argued many times with Lorenzo that definitions are not a thing to cling to, hoping to find clarity in them. Are you now saying that you want definitions? Of course we can only have a SS if we break free from definitions - from precise, replicable and verifiable ways to communicate it, in your language. There are many places in which Steiner says that.

Spiritual science is a science not because of the "precise, replicable and verifiable ways of communicating it". It is a science because the spirit knows itself in full and awake consciosuness, through a willed direction of inquiry, knowing precisely what it's doing, owning the what, the why, and the how of the endeavor. In this sense it is a science. And in this sense it will re-federate all sciences. Not in the sense that its communications should be replicable and precise and verifiable (whatever verifiable may mean in your view). All these things - defintions, compendiums, precise sketches - do not characterize spiritual science.

You must actually live with the spiritual science you are striving for, live with it as much as you can. That is the point. That is why spiritual science is not given in compendiums or short sketches, but we are trying to make spiritual science a force of life in which we can live, and from which we can constantly draw stimulating impulses.

I was not speaking about creating rigid definitions, as should also be obvious from practically every post/essay I write. The essays have been centered around using our concepts in less definitional, more fluid and symbolic ways, as rock climbing grips, imaginative portals, etc. Reified concepts i.e. definitions have never been what makes science precise and verifiable, but rather lucid symbolic concepts that allow people to recreate 'experimental' conditions (outer or inner) and triangulate similar domains of intuitive meaning through these conceptual portals. Or put another way, the definitions and schematics have always been unconscious anchors (in the sense of Cleric's illustration) for deeper intuitions that help steer future research. That intuitive meaning should also be conducted back through the bodily will and its technological extensions.

It seems to me that you are now clinging to this amalgam of word and concept that you have come from (I suspect JP to be responsible), and into this discussion. You speak of “symbolic concepts” and of “conceptual portals”, and that spiritual science has to rely on “precise, replicable and verifiable ways to communicate the results of research into higher realities”, but this precise communications are not exact linguistic communications, you say - not definitions - but precisely these “symbolic concepts” and “conceptual portals”, which to me are just impossible oxymorons, impossible attempts to unite earthly communication (symbols, portals) with concepts. These to me are more and more blurred formulations - notice how they are also quite new in your own language. I think they mark this impossible new striving towards what I have called spiritual impressionism. You want precise communications for spiritual science, but you also want to stay away from precise worded communications, and so you resort to the amalgam of “symbolic concepts”, an element supposed to be not word-precise, but still precisely communicable and symbolic, and not fully ideal but still fluid and conceptual. Can we do a reset?

What is a “symbolic concept”? How can a concept be symbolic? I’ll make an attempt to word this issue. A concept is a dynamic concentrate. The concept of birch tree is a resting ideal point with a medium level of dynamism, as it has to balance out the entire spectrum of birch-ness, in one meaningful gesture (not a symbol). The concept of a singular birch has a lower level of dynamism, as it only spans around more limited manifestations of birch-ness anchored to shorter waves of becoming. The concept of tree invites us into a high level of dynamism, as it requires us to concentrate a more meaningful quality of being within one ideal ‘device’ which is just as point-like as the concept of a single birch tree. However, the word “tree” or any other symbolic representation of tree aren’t any of these concepts. A symbol is only a freeze frame out of the dynamism of concept. And the reason why we pick a certain freeze frame rather than another, among the million possible, to symbolize our existence in etched Earthly symbols, is specific to an individual or group, that is, it has a feeling character. It qualifies the concept feeling-wise. It pins it down in a personalized way. In this sense, Steiner says:

Let us take an example from the German language. In German something is described that rests quietly on our body, is round and has eyes and nose in front. It is called in German Kopf, in Italian testa. We take a dictionary and find that the translation of Kopf is testa. But that is purely external and superficial. It is not even true. The following is true. Out of a feeling for the vowels and consonants contained in the word Kopf, for instance, I experience the o quite definitely as a form which I could draw: it is, as eurythmists know, the rounded form which in front is developed into nose and mouth. We find in this combination of sounds, if we will only let ourselves experience it, everything that is given in the form of the head. So, if we wish to express this form, we make use of larynx and lungs and pronounce the sounds approximating to K-o-pf. But now we can say: In the head there is something which enables one person to speak to another. There is a means of communication. We can impart to another person the content of something which we wish to make known—a will or testament for instance.—If you want to describe the head, not in relation to its round form, but as that which imparts information, which defines clearly what one wishes to communicate, then language out of its own nature gives you the means of doing so. Then you say testa. You give a name to that which imparts something when you say testa; you give a name to the rounded form when you say Kopf. If the Italian wanted to describe roundness, he too would say Kopf; and likewise, if the German wanted to express communication, he would say testa. But both the Italian and the German have become accustomed to expressing in language something different, for it is not possible to express totally different things in a single word. Therefore we do not say exactly the same thing when we speak the word testa or Kopf. The languages are different because their words express different things.

The human head concept is, I would say, a concept with a medium-high level of dynamism. We can feel it more anchored to its rounded form, or more anchored to the activity springing from it. But please tell me, what would its “symbolic concept” be? I can’t follow what your thoughts are doing when you speak of symbolic concepts.

Sorry I have to go - I will continue later.