Saving the materialists

[Federica]

Ok well, after his last response, I simply gave up

Yes - at first, I didn’t realize how extreme his philosophical outlook actually wants to be. Yesterday I saw he recently opened a YT channel, and asked him about the question of the self: “Within the context of "mind cannot transcend its sphere of inner representations" how do you know that such solipsistic mind is "you"? What does "my mind" even mean in this context, without any certainty about the existence of any other minds?”

He replied: “There actually is a reply to your question already in the above video itself: namely, in the “Obiter dictum” section where reference is made to “one’s attaining the express awareness that one’s identity is not essentially some empirical entity (e.g., a man, a butterfly, etc.) but that one essentially is a mind that happens to be representing (or, for lack of a better term, “dreaming”) itself in this or that empirical situation”; subject-object identity, that is. Thank you for sharing a comment."

I may follow up with other questions, but here I would like to seize the opportunity to remark something about your approach in the discussion with Felipe, in these last exchanges specifically. Please, Ashvin, take this with an open mind, please refrain from trying to guess what motives may move me to write this - which would likely lead you to see evil, revenge, or similar motives, as it has often happened, thereby allowing you to avoid serious consideration of what I am pointing to. Instead, please consider that there may be something truthful, and well meant, in the following.
You tell Felipe that you are being gentle with him, that you are trying to help him see the problem in his reasoning:

I already understand what you are saying, Felipe, but I am trying to gently direct your attention, through these questions, to the inner contradiction that occurs in your line of reasoning. … I hope you don't take personal offense to that comparison. I know this is very difficult for you to notice, so I am trying to help you see it. Please understand that I have come across this many times before - 'transcendent solipsism' is not original, as I'm sure you would also admit - and thus I can tell exactly where the error in reasoning resides. The only question is how to make this error more apparent…

I don’t know if you can easily notice it, but someone has to tell you: this treatment - although of course you are 100% right on the ground philosophical discussion - this treatment has ZERO chances to work. Not only that, but it has the sure effect of nullifying any future possibility of him being open to realizing your philosophical critiques. You said that one reason you were asking here for suggestions in order to talk to him was to prevent destructive downturns that solipsism may cause:

one reason I am interested to find helpful ways of responding in this situation is because, in the case of Elk, he ended up expressing suicidal plans and followed through with it, and I am sure this seemingly impenentrable fortress of logic, this solipsistic 'end game', helped seal the deal for him. Felipe shows no such signs right now, but it's easy to see how such a view can reinforce an already lurking desire to end the corporeal journey.

Now, I don’t think you see that, of course it's not done on purpose, but your last interactions with him directly defy your own purposes to help him strengthen himself.

Please see that in your last comments, you are pretty harshly, and repeatedly, belittling him. Your words sound as if, once you noticed the chances to make him engage with your questions were getting too meager, “you just gave up” as you say. But you didn’t only give up. You also reversed the ‘strategy’ and went something like: “since you are making it impossible to bring you to reason, then, let me lay my cards on the table. I will now reveal my superiority to you, since there seems to be no way that you come to discover it by yourself. So let me crush you now, I give up on you”.

Indeed, going to the depth of what you have written and making its meaning explicit, that’s what appears. Now, the only reason I am saying that is that I think you are able to recognize that and change it. Because it is true. My reason is not antipathy, or revenge, or similar. I can affirm without fear or hesitation that I don't nurture these feelings. Notice, something similar to your treatment of Felipe you usually do with me as well - regardless of how solid the philosophical arguments may or may not be, that’s not the point here. As it happens, a point is often reached in the discussion, when you “give up” on being kind, and gentle, and focused on helping the other person, and you rather abruptly shift to ‘crushing them’, by revealing your superiority, and how it had been shining from the background all along. This clear shift often involves telling the other person how they themselves must feel in their inside, as you did with me in each of the statements I quoted in this post (you are feeling insulted, you are feeling revengeful, you are feeling…). It is important for you to demonstrate that you have a grasp, that you possess somehow the inside of the other person. That’s what you did with Felipe as well: "In conclusion, the reason you feel this way, is precisely because...."

I hope this makes some sense to you Ashvin. With all this said - and this is more important - I don’t think this is such an enormously major issue as it may seem, since you are fundamentally well intentioned. I rather think you can absolutely notice the issue and correct it. As you will surely agree, we can see that Cleric systematically refrains from that, and I am sure you can do the same.

[AshvinP]

I hope this makes some sense to you Ashvin. With all this said - and this is more important - I don’t think this is such an enormously major issue as it may seem, since you are fundamentally well intentioned. I rather think you can absolutely notice the issue and correct it. As you will surely agree, we can see that Cleric systematically refrains from that, and I am sure you can do the same.

Yes, it makes sense, and I agree the last response could have been stated better or simply avoided. I will indeed work on resisting the impulse to respond in those situations, and in these situations, where you are clearly switching tracks from a productive discussion on 'saving the materialists' to baiting an argument with me, as you have used every single thread and discussion as an opportunity for in recent months. I hope we will both work on resisting such things and belittling other people in our comments (perhaps even causing people to stop discussing on the forum, like Anthony). I will start that work now! I can only hope you will too.

[AshvinP]

Here are some more comments. I will give credit to Felipe that he remains dispassionate and thoroughly logical within the confines of his transcendental philosophy. It seems he has perfected the art of such philosophizing (and I think perhaps he is or aims to be a professional philosopher). But of course the problem is he isn't at all willing to use that high intellectual acumen to stretch toward and probe unfamiliar and mysterious elements of immanent experience. (by the way, I hope it's clear that posting these comments is not only meant to highlight Felipe's flawed reasoning, but to help us probe the common subtle traps of our own thinking and also its degrees of freedom for addressing and avoiding those traps - Felipe's posts act as an excellent steel man, in that sense)

***

Unfortunately, Ashvin, you are continuing to engage in the same mistake as hitherto—viz., you are continuing to think in terms of the transcendental realist criterion of truth, and eo ipso interpreting everything I say according to that transcendental realist criterion. Additionally, there is a straw man fallacy involved in your suggestion that I invoke a transcendental reality “negatively”: the fact is that hitherto I have been very clear about the problematic status of metaphysical solipsism, which implies that I also grant a problematic status to transcendental reality. If you refer to my analysis of transcendental solipsism, you will note that the key difference between metaphysical and transcendental solipsism is that the former denies whereas the latter only doubts a transcendental reality—viz., I do not take a negative stance relative to transcendental reality because I uphold transcendental rather than metaphysical solipsism.

To reiterate, as I have said before, I alluded to the transcendental realist criterion of truth not to endorse it but only to highlight my express departure from it.

Transcendental solipsism—at least my own variation of it—involves taking neither a positive nor negative stance toward transcendental reality, but rather involves maintaining philosophical precision about what can and cannot be legitimately claimed. The key thing to remember here is that transcendental solipsism is critical solipsism, meaning that it is not in the business of affirming or denying transcendental reality; rather its aim is more modest, viz., the undertaking of a critical analysis of consciousness.

I previously referred to Kant’s reply to the Göttingen review, which review falsely interpreted his critical approach as another system of metaphysics; I referenced the Göttingen review only to emphasize how the authors of that review were guilty of precisely what you have hitherto been guilty of here, namely, falsely interpreting a critical/transcendental stance for a metaphysical one.

Summa summarum: hitherto you have failed to actually engage with transcendental solipsism on its own terms because you have failed to grasp that transcendental solipsism is inherently a critical enterprise (viz., not dogmatic metaphysics which pronounces either positively or negatively concerning transcendental reality); and you’ve hitherto failed to grasp that, in the context of transcendental solipsism, objectivity is grounded in the empirical realist criterion of truth (viz., not the transcendental realist criterion which hitherto you’ve tacitly presupposed in everything you’ve shared here).


exactly, Felipe, and by holding it open as a doubtful possibility and invoking it as a concept with problematic status, you are using it in the exact same way as the dogmatic metaphysician, only you haven't realized this yet. I only recognize it in your patterns of reasoning because I have also passed through this stage of thinking, as most intellectuals in the modern age. Just like we can only become acutely aware of an ocean current once we swim against it, we only become aware of these subtle thinking habits once we resist them and then we gain the basis to truthfully see their influences in our mental life. The intellect swings between polar extremes of mental content, between dogmatic metaphysics and transcendental solipsism, like a pendulum and imagines it is approaching true knowledge in that way, but it only discovers the latter once it finds its point of balance within the ongoing flow of mental *activity* itself. Its mental representations are only the dead husks of that living activity, like the dead skin shed from a snake. You will discover this living activity when you turn attention away from the philosophical content of your representations and toward the experience of producing that content. Then you will feel as if becoming clear and lucid from within a dream state.


You are once again repeating the same straw-man fallacy as previously, Ashvin, when you suggest that the transcendental/critical solipsist interprets transcendental reality “in the exact same way as the dogmatic metaphysician”—this is specifically not the case because the transcendental solipsist, unlike the dogmatic metaphysician, deliberately abstains from pronouncing (whether positively or negatively) concerning any transcendental reality (hence, the “problematic” status). What the dogmatic metaphysician takes a stance on, whether positively or negatively, the transcendental/critical solipsist regards only as problematic; viz., he expressly takes no stance, whether positive or negative.

Think about it this way: imagine that you are dreaming and you have attained a “lucid dreaming” state. If you were a dogmatic metaphysician, in this case, you’d pronounce (whether positively or negatively) concerning what there is beyond the limits of the dream activity itself; if you were a transcendental/critical solipsist, however, you’d not concern yourself at all with what (if anything) there is independent of the dream activity and, instead, you’d analyze critically the dream activity itself.

When you suggest, Ashvin, that both transcendental solipsism and dogmatic metaphysics use the concept of transcendental reality “in the exact same way”, you fail to recognize that treating something as problematic fundamentally differs from making either positive or negative claims about it: the transcendental solipsist’s refusal to pronounce on transcendental reality represents not another kind of metaphysical stance but rather a methodological commitment to immanent critical analysis (emphasis on “immanent”).


What they both do is confuse the content of their mental representations, about a transcendent reality or its doubtful status, for the immanent (yet invisible) activity they are representing, which originally generated and continually generates all such representations. They both externalize that activity into mental pictures imbued with the meaning of "transcendental reality", to claim certain knowledge of reality. That certainty is either derived from the TR or from the doubtful status of the TR, where everything becomes "my" representation (instead of "MAL" representation). One attributes the structure of experience to his mental representation of "God", which is but a mirror of his own thoughts, the other to his mental representation of himself as "God". If anything, one could say the solipsist is slightly more honest about what he is doing, while the metaphysician doesn't realize his pride yet. They are polar opposite extremes of intellectual philosophy which, however, lead to the exact same place - epistemic nihilism, the abandonment of striving for true self-knowledge (one cannot strive for what one imagines one has already attained).


You are once again failing to distinguish between a dogmatic metaphysics and a critical approach, Ashvin, when you suggest that both “claim certain knowledge of reality”—this is specifically not the case because, whereas the dogmatic metaphysician pronounces (whether positively or negatively) concerning a transcendental reality, the critical solipsist deliberately abstains from such pronouncement and goes no further than attributing “problematic” status to any transcendental reality whatsoever (meaning that he is specifically not claiming “certain knowledge”). The distinction between the significance of “problematic”, “assertoric”, and “apodeictic” respectively is crucial here.

Furthermore, you continue to take for granted the transcendental realist criterion of truth which is repudiated by the critical solipsist—hence you are continuing to beg the question against the critical solipsist—when you refer to “epistemic nihilism, the abandonment of striving for true self-knowledge”; namely, you are taking for granted that objectivity is based either on the transcendental realist criterion of truth or is based on nothing at all, whereas it is specifically this which the critical solipsist calls into question. The critical solipsist upholds the empirical realist criterion of truth, not the transcendental realist criterion—such that your continued tacit endorsement of the transcendental realist criterion in your reference to “epistemic nihilism, the abandonment of striving for true self-knowledge” amounts only to begging the question against the critical solipsist and ignoratio elechi too (you are missing the point that the critical solipsist avoids nihilism by basing objectivity on empirical realism).

Ashvin, your characterization of critical solipsism as leading to “epistemic nihilism” actually reflects your own inability to conceive of knowledge outside the framework of transcendental realism—hence, why hitherto you have continued to fail to actually engage with critical solipsism on its own terms; you have yet to actually make contact with what you’ve hitherto been attempting to critique.


But the critical solipsist arbitrarily limits "empirical realism" to the content of his current mental representations about "the structure of experience" and the "categories of understanding", and further says any questions about possible mental representations that can be reached are already known and addressed simply by ascribing to the critical solipsist position. That is specifically what you stated. Therefore it is self-evidently epistemic nihilism and a claim to certainty of knowledge, namely the certain knowledge of one's own structure of experience, now and forever. The critical solipsist only repeats the same few phrases over and over because he feels so confident in this "certain" knowledge that it is considered an answer to every possible question that can be asked.


It is actually not true that “the critical solipsist arbitrarily limits ‘empirical realism’ to the content of his current mental representations”—there is nothing arbitrary here, Ashvin, because a critical analysis of consciousness reveals the apodeictic status of transcendental solipsism; it involves a contradiction in terms to suggest that the self can relate to what it cannot and does not relate to, and the self (the unity of apperception) necessarily relates only to its corresponding representations (not arbitrarily, Ashvin, but necessarily, inescapably, and apodeictically).

It is not that the limitation to representations is arbitrary; rather, critical analysis of what consciousness is reveals it to be apodeictic, viz., necessary.
But this limitation to representations is not a defect but the very insight of critical solipsism; the discovery of one’s limitation to representations is a genuine discovery (philosophical progress) rather than an obstacle (of course, the transcendental realist will not take too kindly to such discovery only because it reveals the idleness of his pretentions). “From all this it follows that it is not in keeping with the nature of philosophy, especially in the field of pure reason, to take pride in a dogmatic procedure, and to deck itself out with the title and insignia of mathematics, to whose ranks it does not belong, though it has every ground to hope for a sisterly union with it. Such pretensions are idle claims which can never be satisfied, and indeed must divert philosophy from its true purpose, namely, to expose the illusions of a reason that forgets its limits, and by sufficiently clarifying our concepts to recall it from its presumptuous speculative pursuits to modest but thorough self-knowledge” (Kant, KrV, A 735); what might appear as restrictions actually protect against unfounded metaphysical speculation, leading to more genuine self-knowledge rather than less.


No, Felipe, the critical analysis of consciousness leaves out the most immanent aspect of consciousness, which is the self's ("I") *activity* in producing its correpsonding representations. It leaves this out because it cannot be seen like other representations, but is nevertheless immanent and known intuitively. Kant discovered the pretensions of dogmatic procedure but failed to notice his own pretensions in the process, as you are still failing to do. Hence, under tyranny of this unnoticed pretension, through which all attention is sucked into the finished content of mental representations, critical idealism inevitably lapses into critical solipsism which is but another form of dogmatic metaphysics, wearing a different mask.


Actually, it is not the case that “critical analysis of consciousness leaves out the most immanent aspect of consciousness, which is the self’s activity in producing its correpsonding representations”—even Kant himself dedicated great effort to explicitly discussing such activity in his Critique of Pure Reason. Concerning such activity, Kant meticulously refers to the synthesis of apprehension in intuition, to the synthesis of reproduction in imagination, and to the synthesis of recognition in a concept (KrV, A 98-104). Furthermore, Kant explains that “This enquiry, which is somewhat deeply grounded, has two sides. The one refers to the objects of pure understanding, and is intended to expound and render intelligible the objective validity of its a priori concepts. It is therefore essential to my purposes. The other seeks to investigate the pure understanding itself, its possibility and the cognitive faculties upon which it rests; and so deals with it in its subjective aspect” (KrV, A xvii).

The very aspects of consciousness you accuse critical philosophy of missing—the activity of the “I” in producing representations—turn out to necessarily be central concerns of critical investigation (this necessity follows from critical philosophy’s commitment to comprehending not just what we know but how we know).


But the discussion of "activity" in a philosophical treatise is not the *real-time* activity, it is a *mental representation* of the activity, a dream picture. This has already been established in your original post. This immanent and present "I" activity can never be ‘seen’ in the same manner as we see the mental representations - rocks, rivers, trees, squirrels, etc., or memory pictures and thought-images that we have called forth like mathematical symbols. If we were to ‘see’ our spiritual activity in this way, we would once again be resting on mental representations and our real-time activity would still elude us, merged into the background of our perspective and constraining its content. It is akin to if we are drawing a picture of a hand and we aim to catch our real-time drawing activity by drawing our hand drawing a picture of a hand, drawing a picture of a hand, etc. That is what modern philosophy amounts to, including critical philosophy. This is why self-knowledge eludes critical philosophy, although it can be easily redeemed if it is taken as merely a starting point for a phenomenology of spiritual activity.

[Cleric]

Here are some more comments. I will give credit to Felipe that he remains dispassionate and thoroughly logical within the confines of his transcendental philosophy. It seems he has perfected the art of such philosophizing (and I think perhaps he is or aims to be a professional philosopher). But of course the problem is he isn't at all willing to use that high intellectual acumen to stretch toward and probe unfamiliar and mysterious elements of immanent experience. (by the way, I hope it's clear that posting these comments is not only meant to highlight Felipe's flawed reasoning, but to help us probe the common subtle traps of our own thinking and also its degrees of freedom for addressing and avoiding those traps - Felipe's posts act as an excellent steel man, in that sense)

It is interesting why he uses the term 'representations'. The word in itself suggests that there's something 'else' that inner phenomena represent. Yet his whole philosophy, as far as I grasp it, strives to declare complete undecidability on that 'else', to the extent that even posing the question about it already crosses the line. But in that case wouldn't it have been more appropriate to use a more neutral term like simply 'phenomena'?

[AshvinP]

Here are some more comments. I will give credit to Felipe that he remains dispassionate and thoroughly logical within the confines of his transcendental philosophy. It seems he has perfected the art of such philosophizing (and I think perhaps he is or aims to be a professional philosopher). But of course the problem is he isn't at all willing to use that high intellectual acumen to stretch toward and probe unfamiliar and mysterious elements of immanent experience. (by the way, I hope it's clear that posting these comments is not only meant to highlight Felipe's flawed reasoning, but to help us probe the common subtle traps of our own thinking and also its degrees of freedom for addressing and avoiding those traps - Felipe's posts act as an excellent steel man, in that sense)

It is interesting why he uses the term 'representations'. The word in itself suggests that there's something 'else' that inner phenomena represent. Yet his whole philosophy, as far as I grasp it, strives to declare complete undecidability on that 'else', to the extent that even posing the question about it already crosses the line. But in that case wouldn't it have been more appropriate to use a more neutral term like simply 'phenomena'?

I imagine he would respond with something like the following:

Of course, just because the transcendental reality of a mind at large or other minds cannot possibly be sufficiently substantiated a priori or a posteriori, it does not follow that one cannot uphold the regulative validity of the idea of other minds on the basis of practical reason—while the pre-critical dogmatist like Kastrup may get caught up in what Kant called “transcendental illusion” and illegitimately confuse what can only ever be regulative ideas for constitutive, the mature critical philosopher will be aware that knowledge is limited to experience and that the ideas of reason (including the Kastrupian idea of a mind at large) function as regulative principles that guide our inquiry but cannot provide constitutive knowledge. As Kant noted in his third Kritik, teleological judgments about ends have regulative validity only, such that although one may think of apparent living beings acting volitionally for ends it does not necessarily follow that they therefore really do so. The distinction between regulative and constitutive principles is precisely what distinguishes critical from pre-critical philosophy, and Kastrup’s failure to grasp this distinction places him squarely in the pre-critical camp.

In other words, the idea of something else that the inner phenomena represent is only 'regulative' and it can help guide our inquiry. I suppose one must uphold this in order to justify the search for knowledge and account for the self-evident fact that we don't feel completely satisfied with inner phenomena as immediately given (even if the critical philosopher himself has practically stopped the search for knowledge). Thus we reason our way to ideas that can inform our actions in sensory life, in science, tech, civil society, and so on, but can never provide "constitutive knowledge" of underlying objective realities that shape and steer our inner phenomena, or even knowledge of whether the latter exist. Those realities remain in 'problematic status' to serve consciously as practical guides for directing our reasoning within the tissue of inner phenomena (for ex. moral ideas-ideals), and, as we know, unconsciously as the boogey man that perpetually justifies remaining in solipsistic mode and shooting down any attempts to speak concretely about these higher realities.

[Federica]

I hope this makes some sense to you Ashvin. With all this said - and this is more important - I don’t think this is such an enormously major issue as it may seem, since you are fundamentally well intentioned. I rather think you can absolutely notice the issue and correct it. As you will surely agree, we can see that Cleric systematically refrains from that, and I am sure you can do the same.

Yes, it makes sense, and I agree the last response could have been stated better or simply avoided. I will indeed work on resisting the impulse to respond in those situations, and in these situations, where you are clearly switching tracks from a productive discussion on 'saving the materialists' to baiting an argument with me, as you have used every single thread and discussion as an opportunity for in recent months. I hope we will both work on resisting such things and belittling other people in our comments (perhaps even causing people to stop discussing on the forum, like Anthony). I will start that work now! I can only hope you will too.

Thanks for being open to that, Ashvin. I definitely want to work on myself as well, including in our discussions. But I am not aware to having belittled anyone here, or elsewhere. Have I overlooked anything? Please be more precise.

[AshvinP]

I hope this makes some sense to you Ashvin. With all this said - and this is more important - I don’t think this is such an enormously major issue as it may seem, since you are fundamentally well intentioned. I rather think you can absolutely notice the issue and correct it. As you will surely agree, we can see that Cleric systematically refrains from that, and I am sure you can do the same.

Yes, it makes sense, and I agree the last response could have been stated better or simply avoided. I will indeed work on resisting the impulse to respond in those situations, and in these situations, where you are clearly switching tracks from a productive discussion on 'saving the materialists' to baiting an argument with me, as you have used every single thread and discussion as an opportunity for in recent months. I hope we will both work on resisting such things and belittling other people in our comments (perhaps even causing people to stop discussing on the forum, like Anthony). I will start that work now! I can only hope you will too.

Thanks for being open to that, Ashvin. I definitely want to work on myself as well, including in our discussions. But I am not aware to having belittled anyone here, or elsewhere. Have I overlooked anything? Please be more precise.

I don't see any need for rehashing that, Federica. As I often mention, I do reviews through old threads/posts to develop my intuitive orientation, and such aspects of your comments are inescapable. I think you will see them too if you review with an open mind to that possibility.

(the specific example I was thinking about was this comment to Cleric and myself about Anthony/Lorenzo, which solicited the insulting comment from Anthony)

PS - I couldn't be any less interested in entering an argument about whether your comments have been belittling, insulting, or whatever. If you don't see it, then I'm not going to spend any more time on this topic.

[Federica]

Yes, it makes sense, and I agree the last response could have been stated better or simply avoided. I will indeed work on resisting the impulse to respond in those situations, and in these situations, where you are clearly switching tracks from a productive discussion on 'saving the materialists' to baiting an argument with me, as you have used every single thread and discussion as an opportunity for in recent months. I hope we will both work on resisting such things and belittling other people in our comments (perhaps even causing people to stop discussing on the forum, like Anthony). I will start that work now! I can only hope you will too.

Thanks for being open to that, Ashvin. I definitely want to work on myself as well, including in our discussions. But I am not aware to having belittled anyone here, or elsewhere. Have I overlooked anything? Please be more precise.

I don't see any need for rehashing that, Federica. As I often mention, I do reviews through old threads/posts to develop my intuitive orientation, and such aspects of your comments are inescapable. I think you will see them too if you review with an open mind to that possibility.

(the specific example I was thinking about was this comment to Cleric and myself about Anthony/Lorenzo, which solicited the insulting comment from Anthony)

PS - I couldn't be any less interested in entering an argument about whether your comments have been belittling, insulting, or whatever. If you don't see it, then I'm not going to spend any more time on this topic.

I understand why you say you are not interested, but there's a behavioral problem when you, on the one hand, deem it appropriate to insinuate something, and on the other hand, decline to substantiate the insinuation (by the way, as you should remember, and as a matter of fact, Anthony continued to discuss with you and post, after the episode you refer to).
For my part I have tried to be precise and fair. But you have fallen again for your habitual "perhaps + insinuation" formula.
I agree, there's no reason to spend any more words here.

[Federica]

Federica, I guess we have a different focus on what 'thinking in mere words' means. What I mean is thinking that indeed lives in a completely abstracted-away token plane. It's like doing pure mathematics but in ways that can be quite chaotic and inconsistent. I don't see the examples you give as resulting from some linguistic entrapment. As a matter of fact, if you ask any of these woke people about it, they'll say it's all about feelings. It's how I feel about myself, how I feel dissatisfied with my biological organization, how I want to express myself in ways that are suppressed by society, and so on. And the doctor thinks it is 'awesome' because these people really feel they are on a mission. They think that the rigid outdated society, living in millennia-old norms and dogmas, is preventing human beings from living to their full potential, being what they want to be, being free to express the way they feel, and so on. From a spiritual scientific perspective, it is all very clear - at least in the most general lines. This is all a submission of the "I" to the disorganized astral nature, instead of drawing upon higher ideal forces that can direct and organize that nature. In this view, the greatest blasphemy is to question how one feels. If I'm a biological man but I feel like I want to feel feminine, to walk like a woman, to dress like one, etc, then this is simply taken for what my true essence is. This is particularly problematic in today's trend of letting small children 'choose' their gender depending on how they feel, what clothes they like, etc. All this rests upon the tragic mistake of assuming that the way these children feel somehow emerges from the pure truth of their innermost being. Any attempt to explain that the human being goes through continuous development and at this early age it is especially important for the child to be open toward a healthy authority and be guided, is taken as the greatest example of indoctrination and crime against expression of true self. It is extremely difficult to converse with such people because not only everything is emotionally charged to the extreme (which makes any rationality practically impossible) but also the very position that is assumed sees everything in the inverse. For example, if I say that the child needs developmental guidance by wise and loving adults, it will be immediately responded: "But this is precisely what we are so vehemently fighting against! How do you know that it is not precisely through this 'guidance' that you instill artificial masks over the child's true being, and force it for its whole life to play a role of something that it is not? That's why we strive from the earliest moment to encourage the child in expressing its true being, free from any dogmatic constraints." The problem with this, of course, is that the thus 'liberated' child simply becomes a feast table for A and L spirits, who find there their own freedom for expression.

Anyway, this is a whole painful topic. My point was only to give an example of how thinking in words in itself is not the culprit of the problem. Indeed, if we focus on fighting language, we'll simply miss the deeper chaotic surges of the astral nature. Not only that, but we can easily conceive how this condition can grow into a form of spirituality that lives much more pictorially in the images of its feeling life. Even language can be refined and become the poetic expression of this feeling life. In fact, not too few of the most eloquent poets, lyrics writers, and so on, are people with... let's call it 'complicated' sexuality. These people may speak not too differently from how you said about drawing the words from ourselves. If you ask them, their true essence (and in fact, many of these people consider themselves spiritual) flows out into the words. This alone should make us aware that the degenerate matrix flow is something far deeper and we only lose focus if we decide that some particular aspect (like language) is the main supporting lattice of that flow. I think you'll agree that 'fixing' language won't in itself prevent people from wanting to express in non-traditional ways. It's a similar mistake that Eugene makes when saying that many of the problems can be eliminated if the word "I" is eliminated from language. This word, he assumes, only fuels the sense of self and separateness. Little thought is given that one can be just as egoistic, even without having the "I" word (like it could be in the case of animals). It all stems from our desire to feel lifted above the causes of evil and be able to put our finger on them. This, of course, only leaves the true dynamics in the blind spot.

It is true that everything is interconnected and things go hand in hand most of the time. Language degenerates as it mirrors the degenerate astral flow. It is also true, of course, that being irradiated with such language from early on, similarly resonantly brings us closer to that flow. But the point remains that none of this can be attributed primarily to thinking in words. Try telling one such person that their gender dysphoria is simply a word game in their mind. They'll rip you apart. It's all about how they feel, how they want to express, and so on. It becomes a word game when such people begin to spin theories out of thin air, trying to show gender is acquired not born with, and so on. Thinking in these verbal patterns really traverses abstract space that can hardly be consolidated with full reality, but it resonates with how these people feel. It seems to them that the words justify and validate the way they feel, and this is what counts for them since these feelings are their most precious asset, the thing that makes them who they are.

Leaving aside the question of gender dysphoria (on which I agree with you) I thought I will try again to stress that I don’t suggest “fighting language”. As said, language is a divine prerogative. Nonetheless, I think that today language is, through the LLM technologies in particular, a key domain of evil attack on humanity, in particular written language - its most indirect form. Even before the advent of LLMs, we were prone to speak or write mindlessly, to associate, to babble, to lose meaning and still keep uttering or writing word sequences. But today this tendency is becoming much worse, under the effects of this technology, primarily through the written symbols. This technology's effect on the brain is to make us captive of words in themselves - that is of their associative, thoughtless quality, which is anchored by their perceptible side (mere strokes).This is the same exact quality we find in worded LLM outputs.

I think there is no argument that this is happening: the human ability to use language thoughtfully is rapidly decreasing. And so, putting this into perspective, language has been first stripped of its feeling quality, and now it’s being stripped of its meaningful content. There is no thought content in the LLM output - obviously - but our linguistic output is also losing its thought content. As I said, more and more often we don’t have enough fuel to sustain the thought process with enough strength to properly form and express an articulated reasoning. Artificial support is more and more required. What Steiner blamed as the lazy habit of thinking in mere words is now being institutionalized in our brain, through the LLMs. We are continually encouraged to externalize reasoning, and so our intellectual muscles atrophy.

What I am saying is, since language is under attack, we should: revive language by rediscovering its sound quality (I'll not develop on this now) and we should also, not fight verbal thinking or language, but fight its progressive separation from meaning, by strengthening pictorial thinking and direct connection with meaning. I realize that “thinking in words in itself is not the culprit of the problem”, still, we are more and more thinking in mere words, in disconnection from meaning, because of LLMs, not only because of astral nature, and this is a serious problem. At this rate, we will soon be mere outlets of what an LLM has instructed us to say, with less and less control and internalization of what it actually means, even on a mere intellectual plane.

Not to blame the original nature of language, as I tried to say many times. But language is being colonized and served back to us in a deceiving manner. I don’t deny the effect of the astral nature on thought, and the necessity to purify the astral nature, in order to purify thought. But I am highlighting something additional. Something that acts already at the basic intellectual level, and needs to be taken into account also by someone who is not called to develop higher cognition and work on their astral nature. And I believe that someone who is interested in developing their sense-free thinking is also subject to this threat, to the extent that one is generally exposed to the technological world. I believe that, once pictorial, living meaning is strengthened (as you have illustrated in various posts! for ordinary and less ordinary people this strengthening may correspond to different experiences) the ordinary person and the awakening soul alike will express themselves with better purposefulness and a more solid connection between the underlying meaning and the verbal rendering, be this in form of the inner voice or communications of some kind.

Please believe me, I don’t dream of an inner world where verbal thinking is eliminated or policed I am not crazy. I realize that “language degenerates as it mirrors the degenerate astral flow”. But I would add that language also degenerates because written language is being severed from meaning in our head as an effect of the LLM intrusion in our linguistic processes. And if we don’t actively counter that, it’s going to work on us (excluding the Initiates), even regardless of how critical of LLMs one may be, or how much one is actively using them as external thought aid/replacement.

I believe that the sense of abstractness, mannerism, separateness from meaning that I personally receive from words, not in everyday life or when writing here, but when I try to imbue them with as much meaning and feeling as possible, depends partly of this epochal ‘LLM mood’ but perhaps more on the feeling numbness typical of normal modern language. With respect to both problems, I feel it’s helpful for me to meditate on an image rather than on a string of words, to accompany prayer with visualization, and sometimes to avoid familiar words, or words alltogether, to instill a prayerful mood in an extended sound for example. With this said, I don’t deny or minimize that there are other and deeper astral causes that also affect these activities.

In fact, in a 2023 writing on LLMs, Max Leyf already proposed the idea that LLMs are degenerating our verbal language, depriving it of meaning:

In respect to the increasing approximation of AI to human faculties, the situation has almost exclusively been conceptualised according the the human as an inertial reference frame, but this model this risks obfuscating the fact that, even as the robots are becoming more human, so Man may becoming less so. This is clearly possible—cannibals are less-human than people who don’t consume their own kind. If it seems, nevertheless, improbable that humans could be come less so, I invite readers to reflect on the last time, either in their own persons or in observation of another, they listened to a person employing the dictation speech-to-text feature on a smartphone. Note the conspicuous lack of affect and prosody, and the perfectly robotic quality that he or she found it needful to assume in this exercise. The Robots exact a tribute—a certain tithe of our humanity—to do commerce with them. Just as artificial intelligence appears to approximate its model, so actual intelligence may be simultaneously remodelling itself after its image. As Narcissus’ own image ultimately transformed him into its likeness by divesting him of his existence, is humanity’s own reflection in the pool of technology slowly extracting from us our true being?

Was he also missing that it's the astral nature, and not thinking in LLM-assisted words, that degenerates language?

His Angel, leads him to physical existence on Earth. His Angel can make him into a man who is in a position to act freely, out of the depths of his soul-and-spirit, if all the conditions described have been fulfilled by the achievements of a former earthly life. But, the Angel is not able to lead a man to a truly free life, if he has had to be united automatically with his language and his race. In such a case the individual life also becomes unfree. This lack of freedom shows itself in the following way. if we do not grasp concepts freely, but instead inwardly merely think words, then although we will still develop an inner consciousness, we will do so only superficially, and as a result we'll be made unfree, because our whole thinking resolves into words. This is in fact a fundamental experience of people today, that their thinking becomes immersed in words.

https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA209/En ... 27p01.html

[AshvinP]

Was he also missing that it's the astral nature, and not thinking in LLM-assisted words, that degenerates language

He wasn't missing that, because he wouldn't see any reason to divide them into separate categories, which I think is made pretty explicit in the article.

In allowing us to displace the task of writing onto our slaves, we increasingly divest ourselves of the capacity to write. Because composition is difficult, naïve people try to avoid it. Here, AI steps in and offers an expedient solution: sidestep the process but enjoy the product. Why bother with the arduous task of writing something when a computer can do it for you? Prescinding from questions of legitimacy and plagiarism, the answer remains that writing is not only doing something to words, but it is also doing something to ourselves; something that is only achieved through effort and not in spite of it. “A writer is someone for whom writing is harder.”9 It could be conceived as an exercise in “soul-making,” which consolidates the inner powers and fortifies them against precisely the most imminent threat that they presently face. In defaulting to a computer to deliver us from this difficulty, we are, in fact, depriving ourselves of one of the primary stimuli to intellectual and mental development available to us. When people bemoan the deterioration of intelligent discourse and the subsequent collapse of political process, they should not act surprised.

They shouldn't act surprised because it is something we bring onto ourselves precisely through the astral nature - it is that nature which naively tries to avoid difficult tasks, to spare itself the effort, and so on. That has little to do with whether LLM assists them in composing word-sequences or in composing wordless pictorial and video sequences (which it will soon be doing). People do not become indolent because LLM exists, rather LLM acts as one of many instruments for their indolence rooted in the astral nature to be expressed. Those astral currents attract these technologies into their gravity wells. What is the way forward, according to Max?

The freight train has, as it were, left the station, and no amount of agitation against the Leviathan of technology seems capable of diverting it from its inexorable course. If anyone happens to want my prescription, therefore, it is something like this: every advance in the non-human must be met with a correlative development and elevation of our humanity. Humanity, Man, or humankind are abstract nouns and hence do not “develop” except in respect to the concrete humans that comprise them. Hence, the task befalls me to develop my soul to the point that I am no longer inclined to entertain the superstition that computers can think, to the point that I am capable of passing the Turing test and its reverse in respect to robots, to myself, and to other humans, to the point that I no longer find appeal in the temptation of expediency but rather assume the mantle of my station in the cosmos—as a collaborator in the economy of Creation—and don’t shy away from this work as though I had something better to do. As it has been said that the fire of God’s love is a blessing to saints and a scourge to sinners—that Heaven and Hell are one place experienced in two modes—so the Promethean fire, coupled with the right intention, is also the Pentecostal one. Let me not miss the mark12 with my intention.

That is an brilliantly poetic expression of astral/soul purification. Indeed the images of Hell as an inferno are rooted precisely in the spiritual sight of purgatory or kamaloca, the curvature of soul purification we all experience after death. For those who begin orienting themselves to this reality in full consciousness while on Earth, however, it is experienced as the greatest blessing (the Pentecostal fire), the opportunity to be cleansed and refined by the infinitely Wise judgments of the Divine hierarchies, to straighten out the chaotic surges that continually make our soul movements into dissonant notes within the Cosmic harmony, to intimately experience how our deeds have reverberated in the lives of others and develop the impulses/intentions to make things right.

When, therefore, whilst living his life backwards in Kamaloca after death, a man encounters some harm he did to a fellow man in his twentieth year, he experiences this harm just as much as the joy and good he brought to others. Only now it is in his own astral body that he experiences the harm he did to someone else. Supposing he hit someone when he was twenty, so that it really hurt. In his reverse journey through life he feels it in his own astral body in exactly the same way the other person did when it happened. You experience objectively in the spiritual world everything you yourself did in the external world, and in the process you acquire the strength and the inclination to compensate for the pain in one of your future incarnations. Your own astral body tells you what it felt like, and you realise you have laid an obstacle in the way of your further development. This has to be cleared away, otherwise you cannot get beyond it. This is the moment you form the intention of getting rid of the obstacle. So when you have lived through the Kamaloca period, you arrive back in your childhood filled with the intention of getting rid of all the hindrances you created in life. You are full of intentions, and it is the force of these intentions that brings about the special character of your future lives on earth.

The process of spiritualizing Earthly culture is nothing else but bringing more and more of this kamaloca stage into our Earthly consciousness, such that we can experience the soul purification before crossing the threshold of death. (likewise spiritualizing the natural kingdoms will be bringing the stages of Devachan more into Earthly consciousness). This is how we develop our souls to the point we are no longer inclined to rest our thinking in mere chains of words or pictures, abstractly combining them with one another (like critical philosophers), while failing to seek the living realities which they symbolize and from which they crystallized.