On Attaining Spiritual Sight (Part I)

[Federica]

Last year in this thread we had a long discussion on Steiner's views on heart function, and sensory and motor nerves. I feel that an important element was not mentioned then, which I believe brings something fundamental to what Steiner meant with his famous contention that motor nerves don't exist. I am not trying to reopen that discussion, I simply want to add this element for future reference. I think it makes an important difference.

As we said, Steiner meant that the physical correlate of soul activity is the entire physical body (no domino effects), however just as soul activity is differentiated in TFW, so its physical correlate is respectively differentiated in nerve function (T) rhythmic function of breathing and blood flow (F) and metabolism (W). Now, what we did not pointed to previously is that these three physical correlates are not to be conceived simplistically - respectively located in the upper, median, and lower body; working in parallel. Rather, they all extend to the entire body and they are continually intermingled, in all organs and systems. So we shouldn't think: "nervous activity=nerves".

In particular, the nerves are the locus of nervous activity 'proper', but also of metabolic and rhythmic activity (the physical correlates of will and feeling). And, Steiner considers that nervous activity proper (the correlate of ideation/representation) "cannot possibly be an object of physiologically empirical observation". This is because the only perceivable thing in representation is the reflection, the receding images, thus the activity that causes them to recede can't be observed empirically. Therefore, whatever can be natural-scientifically observed inside the nerves is not what Steiner means with 'nervous activity'. Those observations are rather metabolic and/or rhythmical activity taking place within the nerves.

Anatomy and Physiology must bring themselves to recognize that neural function can be located only by a method of exclusion. The activity of the nerves is precisely that in them which is not perceptible by the senses, though the fact that it must be there can be inferred from what is so perceptible, and so can the specific nature of their activity. The only way of representing neural function to ourselves is to see in it those material events, by means of which the purely psycho-spiritual reality of the living content of ideation is subdued and devitalized to the lifeless representations and ideas we recognize as our ordinary consciousness. Unless this concept finds its way somehow into physiology, physiology can have no hope of explicating neural activity.

Ch VII of Riddles of the Soul / The case for Anthroposophy

https://rsarchive.org

Moreover, motion as "effusion of the will" is not really a phenomenon of the organism, but of the interrelation of the organism with its environment. The only physical correlate of the will within the organism is not physical movement, which goes beyond it, but the will's metabolic correlate, including what experiments capture as measurable activity located within the nerves. The metabolic process in the nerve can be measured, the nervous function proper cannot.

Exerting volition, the life of the psyche overreaches the domain of the organism and combines its action with a happening in the outer world. — The study of the whole matter has been greatly confused by the separation of the nerves into sensory and motor. Securely anchored as this distinction appears to be in contemporary physiological ideas, it is not supported by unbiased observation. The findings of physiology based on neural sections, or on the pathological elimination of certain nerves, do not prove what the experiment or the case-history is said to show. They prove something quite different. They prove that the supposed distinction between sensory and motor nerves does not exist. On the contrary, both kinds of nerve are essentially alike. The so called motor nerve does not implement movement in the manner that the theory of two kinds of nerve assumes. What happens is that the nerve as carrier of the neural function implements an inner perception of the particular metabolic process that underlies the will—in exactly the same way that the sensory nerve implements perception of what is coming to pass within the sense-organ. Unless and until neurological theory begins to operate in this domain with clear concepts, no satisfactory co-ordination of psychic and somatic life can come about.

Ch VII of Riddles of the Soul / The case for Anthroposophy

https://rsarchive.org/

PS: Also interesting to read Owen Barfield's note nr 3 to the quoted chapter VII of Riddles of the Soul, which he translated. Indeed, in neuroscience the foundation of the common theory, accepted to this day, is the so-called "neuron doctrine" developed in the late 1800s.

[AshvinP]

Exerting volition, the life of the psyche overreaches the domain of the organism and combines its action with a happening in the outer world. — The study of the whole matter has been greatly confused by the separation of the nerves into sensory and motor. Securely anchored as this distinction appears to be in contemporary physiological ideas, it is not supported by unbiased observation. The findings of physiology based on neural sections, or on the pathological elimination of certain nerves, do not prove what the experiment or the case-history is said to show. They prove something quite different. They prove that the supposed distinction between sensory and motor nerves does not exist. On the contrary, both kinds of nerve are essentially alike. The so called motor nerve does not implement movement in the manner that the theory of two kinds of nerve assumes. What happens is that the nerve as carrier of the neural function implements an inner perception of the particular metabolic process that underlies the will—in exactly the same way that the sensory nerve implements perception of what is coming to pass within the sense-organ. Unless and until neurological theory begins to operate in this domain with clear concepts, no satisfactory co-ordination of psychic and somatic life can come about.

Federica,

I know you didn't share this with the intention of restarting the discussion, but there is still something I want to comment on that grabs my attention now, just as it did before in a different lecture context.

I think it is helpful to consider what the phrase "unbiased observation" might imply here. Most readers would probably take that to mean something like: if we carefully study the receding images within the focal plane, without adding theoretical assumptions, preferences, prejudices, and so on, it will eventually become evident to the reasoning mind that the distinction between sensory and motor nerves does not exist. We will arrive at the "clear concepts" that he refers to. All the findings based on neural sections, the pathological elimination of certain nerves, and so on, will be shown to prove the opposite of what the physiologists and anatomists imagine. The 'secure anchoring' of the distinction in contemporary physiological ideas will then evaporate.

Yet is that what Steiner is truly implying here? Can we ever observe and assemble our receding mental images within the focal plane in such a way that verifies the "nerve as the carrier of the neural function that implements an inner perception of the particular metabolic process that underlies the will?" What exactly is the "inner perception of a particular metabolic process" in the context of ordinary empirical observation? As Steiner commented previously in the lecture, the neural function at issue is something that can never be perceived within the focal plane, i.e., with our ordinary consciousness. He states later that the metabolic process is one we remain completely asleep to, without higher cognition. And as he stated at the beginning, he aims to "place on record the results of a systematic spiritual investigation extending over a period of thirty years."

We can take a simple phenomenological example, such as looking at a uniformly white wall with our eyes and moving our gaze across it. It is clearly the case that we experience a distinction between receiving the impressions of the white color pixels and corresponding mental images, on the one hand, and intending to move our gaze across the wall and activating our eyeballs, on the other. At the same time, these two are closely related, since as we move our gaze across the wall, the color pixels subtly change, even if we don't notice it because of the uniform color. And if our gaze happens to cross a surprising patch of green as we progress our vision across the wall, we will probably move our eyes back toward it. In that sense, the movement of our eyeballs (or any limbs) is tightly linked with the process of perception and vice versa.

All of what Steiner is speaking about here makes more sense, from my perspective, if he is saying that this tight link points to a more unified experience of active perception at the Imaginative scale of steering. In other words, the process of perceiving living imaginations is, at the same time, an act of will that finds its physical correlate in metabolic processes of our eyes and limbs. That is also the case when we perceive our deadened perceptions and ideas, but because the relationship is so out-of-phase, we experience it much more distinctly. It feels like many impressions impinge upon our consciousness while we remain completely passive. We are completely insensitive to the fact that our eyes are constantly moving and the color pixels are correspondingly changing. That experiential distinction also finds its physical reflection in the differentiation of motor and sensory nerves within the eyeballs, which apparently serve different functions.

So why does Steiner keep insisting that this differentiation does not exist? That makes great sense if the primary concern is that the materialistic ideas attached to this differentiation serve to reinforce the habitual thinking that strives to understand the physiological relations by exclusively observing within the focal plane, as if it were a self-contained spectrum where all the relevant 'causal mechanisms' can be found. When understanding of the phenomenal facts is pursued in that way, it will naturally lead to erecting the entire psychic life on the foundations of the body, as the latter can be encompassed and observed within the focal plane. Then there can be absolutely no "unbiased observation", "clear concepts", or "satisfactory co-ordination of psychic and somatic life". All those things can only come about by expanding cognitive life through the focal plane into the volumetric dome of spiritual relations.