Philosophy Unbound: Schopenhauer vs. Steiner (Round One)

[Cleric K]

It may seem pretty straight-forward to you because you are not giving a phenomenology of this supposed "attaching" process.

I'm giving precisely the phenomenology - the immediate experience of thinking. The way you state it above sound to me like "When I think I don't experience any 'attaching process', thus this whole thing is a fantasy." OK, then what do you experience, for example, when you examine a plant that you've never seen before and recognize the stem, the leaves, the flowers, the shape of the blossom, the number of petals, etc.? Isn't it precisely the inner effort to find meaning, to experience concepts in relation to everything that you see in the plant? Isn't it clear that without this inner effort the plant would be just a greenish blob imbued with the general meaning of 'plant'?

I'm still trying to understand what your perspective on this is. It seems to me that you're not content with the direct experience of thinking (as in the thoughtful observation of the plant) but seek some 'attaching mechanism' that explains the process, and protest that we don't perceive such a mechanism. It's like you want to see concept floating from one side, perception from another and thinking grasping them with tiny mental hands and plugging them into one another. Sorry if I'm projecting. I'm just trying to understand your position and the source of the 'problem'. Honestly, at this point I don't yet understand what the 'problem' is but I hope you'll help me understand. As said, it seems to me that you're not trying to livingly experience thinking but rather to experience a picture of thinking and its 'attaching mechanism'. Please note that in this latter case, the picture of thinking is not the thinking itself. The real thinking is the invisible but experienced one, projecting and contemplating the already external and past picture of itself.

If you're asking whether the recognition of the parts of the plant through thinking is the full picture - of course not. I can go in much deeper details that are revealed to higher cognition. But this doesn't change in the least the fact that even at the ordinary intellectual level, through inner thinking effort we strive to find the concepts which unite the disparate perceptions into meaningful unity.

[findingblanks]

Why did he say within itself?

[findingblanks]

No, just describe the attaching. Imagine you look over and see a duck. No big deal. Now describe each aspect that leads from there being no concept to the "search" (Steiner's term) to the 'selecting' and to the "attatching". Oh and describe how many concepts get sorted through before is picked.

I know how this conversation goes, yet I genuinely would appreciate a straight forward description.

[SanteriSatama]

OK, then what do you experience, for example, when you examine a plant that you've never seen before and recognize the stem, the leaves, the flowers, the shape of the blossom, the number of petals, etc.? Isn't it precisely the inner effort to find meaning, to experience concepts in relation to everything that you see in the plant? Isn't it clear that without this inner effort the plant would be just a greenish blob imbued with the general meaning of 'plant'?

You speak above of experiencing and thinking only in the transitive, externalizing aspect. Intransitive experiencig of e.g. forest does not require effort, the Forest is felt mostly at the base level of compassionate acceptance and well-being, feeling loved and spiritually nurtured. Attention and linguistic thinking can wander or focus on something, do as it does. Transitive attending can come and go, intransitive and transitive experiencing are not necessarily mutually exclusive but can co-occur and continue as intervowen levels.

Does feeling loved and nurtured require linguistic conceptualization of "Love"? No. Is feeling loved and nurtured thinking? Depends from the meaning and definition we give to the word-concept. In my language closest alliterative connotations of thinking (ajattelu) are time (aika) and intending (aikoa), therefore it's natural to think of thinking as a hunting weapon. When feeling hungry or other need, transitive timing and intending becomes necessary to satisfy a need. In the aspect of hunting weapon, thinking has been formidable. We have thought and hunted so well, that now we can go hunt in a supermarket with weaponized numbers aka "money". And in the process we have in some aspects also fallen prey to our own clever thinking. Mainly in spiritual aspects and meanings.

[Cleric K]

I think you need to disclose your position. I don't understand what you're struggling with. I see roughly two variants:
1) You understand and livingly experience the deep essence of spiritual activity (Thinking) as the union of phenomena and meaning, but you think that Steiner has done a lousy job of putting it into words.
2) You don't at all experience Thinking in the above way and as such you consider the whole foundation of PoF to be flawed.

I need to know which of the above positions (or if it is something not listed above, or combination of many) you assume because I'll elaborate in very different way depending on the context.

Why did he say within itself?

I'll be able to answer in more detail when we clear the above question. At this point I can only speculate of why you have problem with the wording. One possibility (I'm only guessing) is that you're simply affected by the spatiality, in relation to which the word 'within' is normally used. If this is the case, your own words can be of use: "As you know, Steiner could not have been clearer that by perception he meant any inner or outer perception." In other words, if we are misled by the spatiality of visual perceptions, the 'within' can be mistaken as if we naively expect to find something spatially additional within/inside the perception we're beholding. When we consider, for example, that feeling is also perception, it becomes a little easier to understand the withinness. But as said, I can go in different directions of clarification depending on the position from which you ask the question.

No, just describe the attaching. Imagine you look over and see a duck. No big deal. Now describe each aspect that leads from there being no concept to the "search" (Steiner's term) to the 'selecting' and to the "attatching". Oh and describe how many concepts get sorted through before is picked.

I know how this conversation goes, yet I genuinely would appreciate a straight forward description.

Once again, I don't know from what position you ask the above, so I apologize if I'm projecting. It seems to me that you're doing precisely what I mentioned in the previous post. You expect to see the perception, the bucket of concepts and how thinking browses inside, takes a concept, aligns it with the perception, and repeats until a match is found. But this only shows that the essential and given experiential nature of thinking is avoided, and instead we want to have a mental picture of what thinking is and what it does. It's pretty much what also the materialist does. He's little concerned with the immediate spiritual experience of thinking. He only uses thinking to build the mental picture of neurons and hopes to find there 'explanation' of the thinking process.

This is probably the number one reason why people fail to approach PoF. Based on the contemporary habits of mind, readers approach the text while imagining that Steiner presents them with an intellectual model of spiritual activity. In reality, every sentence in PoF is practical guide leading us in a domain of immediate experience. In a similar sense, a book that describes gymnastic exercises could be understood in the most weird ways unless it's grasped that every word points at something that should become actual experience of the bodily will. So in this sense, when we hear 'thinking unites perceptions with meaning', we get only a caricature if we try to imagine some floating perceptions and concepts that plug into each other.

On your example with the duck. It's clear that thinking can be habitual. The majority of our everyday perceptions are so well trodden that, much like Pavlov's dogs, the mere entering of the perception into our consciousness is effortlessly accompanied by the corresponding meaning, as if by thinking reflex. Yet undoubtedly, there was a point in life, probably in very early childhood, when the concept of 'duck' was for the first time discovered and associated with the corresponding perceptions. That's why my example was for a plant that we've never seen before. This makes it easier to highlight the activity that we perform.

What we're speaking here is the most immediate and untainted spiritual experience that we can have. We're only describing what we find in the given. It's the simple fact that perceptions are complemented with meaning (concepts) through the spiritual process of thinking. If you disagree maybe you can tell me what role (if any) thinking plays in your view? What is it that makes the difference between a yellow blob and yellow blob complemented with the idea of 'duck'?

You speak above of experiencing and thinking only in the transitive, externalizing aspect. Intransitive experiencig of e.g. forest does not require effort, the Forest is felt mostly at the base level of compassionate acceptance and well-being, feeling loved and spiritually nurtured.

Indeed I speak of this elementary intellectual thinking about sensory perceptions. I do that because it's the easiest place to start. If we can't experience the union of perceptions and meaning through thinking at this ordinary level, how can we expect to recognize it in the more fluid modes of spiritual activity? The effortless experience of meaning in relation to perceptions I've addressed above. I hope you would agree that things will be different if you see forest for the first time in your life. You'll be confronted with unfamiliar perceptions of green and brown and you'll have to engage in thinking in order to integrate meaning into them. I agree also that you may never go on to exert thinking in this way, and stay at the base level of compassionate acceptance of green and brown as purely spiritual-color phenomena. Note that nothing requires that this meaning (ideas, concepts) should be some dry, abstract concepts. If you are spiritually developed, you would look at the forest (for the first time) and use your spiritual activity to open up and hear what the perceptions communicate to you. You're aware that the green and brown is only a shadow of something, there's something concealed, the colors are only symbols for something more. Where this 'more' comes from? It's obvious that it can't come from the apriori biological toolset that is common to us all. Otherwise there wouldn't be any argument about these things. The fact is that someone sees green and brown and stops there. Someone else sees the colors and thinks about trees, bark, cells, atoms. Yet someone else feels that the colors are impressions of the workings of spiritual beings - these that constitute our bodily and soul organization, those of light and those of the trees. So the biologically mediated color perception is more or less the same. What differs then? It's the atmosphere of meaning, of idea 'substance' that each individual has been able to integrate into the experience. How did this idea atmosphere come into the picture? How did it become integrated with the mere visual perceptions? Through our spiritual activity. And here I don't mean the activity only at moment of beholding the forest. We must take into consideration the whole gradual metamorphic process of tilling and ennobling our inner soil.

Does feeling loved and nurtured require linguistic conceptualization of "Love"? No.

Agreed.

Is feeling loved and nurtured thinking?

The perception of the feeling (if we could consider it in isolation) is not thinking but we need thinking (again, not as rigid conceptualization but as the union of perception and meaning) if we are to be conscious of the feeling. If we only have a floating feeling of love in spiritual space and nothing else, well... there would also be no knowing that the feeling of love is being experienced. It's this knowing, idea 'substance' that makes the difference between supposed existence of floating feelings and actual conscious experience of the feelings. Why do we need to differentiate between the feeling and knowing? Can't we assume that every perception comes together with its knowing? Superficially we can do that but we run into troubles when we experience thinking. Even if love is no longer felt we can still think about the feeling and remember it. Now we have the ideal, knowing substance, but without the feeling perception. So we are justified to make the distinction. It can also go the other way. We may have been told about love but we may have never experienced it for ourselves. Now we begin with the idea of love and try to approach its reality, even though the perception is not yet there. I'm not speaking of love between humans but love in the sense of nurturing of our Cosmic Mother. Not everyone has experienced this (most even consider it nonsense) but we can form an idea about this nonetheless. When it is about men and women, we have Karma in play whether we'll find someone to love and be loved. But when we speak about spiritual love, we have only inner obstacles, and as such it is in our power to reach this love. How do we do this? By employing our spiritual activity. We need to change something within ourselves, there's something blocking the way, we have conflicting or confused ideas about life, emotional paralyses. We need to work with our Thinking, Feeling and Willing for the meaningful transformation of our inner soil. But undoubtedly, the Thinking is the leader because it is what gives the direction of F and W. We have conceived a spiritual Idea, we're looking for Cosmic Love and as such, all our thoughts, feelings and actions should be aligned with that idea if we are to reach the actual perceptions.

[SanteriSatama]

Indeed I speak of this elementary intellectual thinking about sensory perceptions. I do that because it's the easiest place to start. If we can't experience the union of perceptions and meaning through thinking at this ordinary level, how can we expect to recognize it in the more fluid modes of spiritual activity? The effortless experience of meaning in relation to perceptions I've addressed above. I hope you would agree that things will be different if you see forest for the first time in your life. You'll be confronted with unfamiliar perceptions of green and brown and you'll have to engage in thinking in order to integrate meaning into them. I agree also that you may never go on to exert thinking in this way, and stay at the base level of compassionate acceptance of green and brown as purely spiritual-color phenomena. Note that nothing requires that this meaning (ideas, concepts) should be some dry, abstract concepts. If you are spiritually developed, you would look at the forest (for the first time) and use your spiritual activity to open up and hear what the perceptions communicate to you. You're aware that the green and brown is only a shadow of something, there's something concealed, the colors are only symbols for something more. Where this 'more' comes from? It's obvious that it can't come from the apriori biological toolset that is common to us all. Otherwise there wouldn't be any argument about these things. The fact is that someone sees green and brown and stops there. Someone else sees the colors and thinks about trees, bark, cells, atoms. Yet someone else feels that the colors are impressions of the workings of spiritual beings - these that constitute our bodily and soul organization, those of light and those of the trees. So the biologically mediated color perception is more or less the same. What differs then? It's the atmosphere of meaning, of idea 'substance' that each individual has been able to integrate into the experience. How did this idea atmosphere come into the picture? How did it become integrated with the mere visual perceptions? Through our spiritual activity. And here I don't mean the activity only at moment of beholding the forest. We must take into consideration the whole gradual metamorphic process of tilling and ennobling our inner soil.

The theory of sensory "perceptions" can certainly be easiest place to start, in terms of certain cultural conditioning, and as such by no means wrong place. But I don't consider the perception theory elementary in more general meaning, as the underlying assumption of "objective reality" is not philosophically and empirically valid. In that sense I prefer to avoid the word-concept "perception" alltogether.

The "beginners mind" line of questioning is interesting. "Unfamiliar" in that sense sounds relative to "familiar", which here sounds like fairly established conditioning and frame of interpretation, into which "unfamiliar" is being attached to.

If we turn the notch up a bit in the scale of "beginners mind", and don't even assume a rigid and firm frame of "familiar", to which "unfamiliar" is related, we don't enter the forest as a linguistic void. For beginners mind Forest becomes language, inseparability of sensual presence and participation in the language of the forest. Not in any way different from how a child learns a human language. What is more, relative to conceptual framework and attaching to that, is the whole body sensing which is more than just hands to grab and taste. Conceptualizing is handling. Latin 'cepere' in words 'perception' and 'conception' means "to grab". Finnish word for 'concept' is 'käsite', from the word 'käsi', which means hand.

Hands are so wonderful! Because of such linguistic function in human languages and our way of metabolism, conceptualizing hands themselves are among least ready to fully capitulate to conceptualizing familiarity. Writing this, in wonder of hands, they tingle and feel like field-like, extending way beyond the visual image of reflecting light.

[AshvinP]

No, just describe the attaching. Imagine you look over and see a duck. No big deal. Now describe each aspect that leads from there being no concept to the "search" (Steiner's term) to the 'selecting' and to the "attatching". Oh and describe how many concepts get sorted through before is picked.

I know how this conversation goes, yet I genuinely would appreciate a straight forward description.

Like I said before, it seems to me you are confusing experience in general with Steiner's use of the term "percept". You are saying, "there is no experience where meaning is not already inherent". That is true and a critical point in the philosophy of Thinking (one that philosophers of Will do not concede). You then see that Steiner also said Willing is fundamental to experience, and somehow, by way of some philosophical process Cleric and I have yet to figure out, you claim that means Steiner equated Thinking with Willing or did not have a sharp distinction between them (and you claim something similar for Schopenhauer). But your understanding of both are at odds with everyone else's and the plain meaning of what claims they made in the texts you have quoted. Against all odds, you have still managed to avoid stating your position with respect to these two philosophies, two philosophies which obviously exist in the real world and create a significant divide in idealist metaphysics (regardless of Schopenhauer and Steiner). And, since you said I am projecting "psychoanalysis" onto you, every single comment you have posted has contained such attempts, like the bolded phrase above. I hope you can honestly assess and see that happening in your comments. Cleric has literally tried to describe the process in a different way in each of his comments, so there is no way you can claim some sort of ideological commitment which keeps it at low resolution and therefore allows you to "know how this conversation goes".

[findingblanks]

This is exactly what always happens. You say it is very straight forward when Steiner says we must find the concept that corresponds to the percept we have encountered and THEN, says Steiner thinking "brings" and "attatches" the concept to the percept.

I say, great: describe thisb "attatching" process straightforwardly. I even hinted that you would pop away and get "intellectual" (nothing wrong with that, by the way).

But come back and give me a few straightforward descriptions of your experience of finding and then attatching concepts to percepts. Again, I predict you'll either refer to spiritual experiences of perceiving a process that is typically unconscious (this contradicts Steiner's claim that every sentence in PoF can be grasped by clear thinking about everyday experience, and it shows why I'm entertained when you tell me what Steiner said os straightforward) or you'll search for an example of when we can't tell what we are seeing and have to consciously take time to ponder and then keep looking. This also ignores what Steiner os clearly saying.

Or you'll surprise me and acknowledge that there is nothing straightforward about that claim.

My hunch, you'll find another way of claiming we need to say more and more before you can even begin to simply describe this supposed finding and attatching of concepts.

And who knows if you realize how profoundly interesting it is that in PoF says that the percept hides thinking within itself.

Maybe in some abstract way you'll agree that that is deeply clarifying.

[findingblanks]

Someday if you ever notice that you are looking at, say, a table and you want to describe your experience of encountering a bare percept and then searching through various concepts until you "find" (Steiner's word) the "corresponding concept" to then "attach" it to the percept you had experienced, please just come back and (rather than getting abstract and esoteric) describe your experience. You'll see that we have much to discuss then.

I can't do a better job (my limitations not yours) of saying why I don't accept the premises of this debate between Steiner and Schopenhauer. When you are dead and you look at the deeply profound overlap in their core insight, you'll remember how poorly I tried to show that it was actually possible you aren't even giving yourself a chance to begin exploring it. And again: if I was a much better writer, I'm sure you would have grasped my point. Some kind people have messaged me that I am being fairly clear to them. That isn't the point though because I'm sure many many people can't see why I think the entire set of presuppositions framing the conversation ensure either confusion or mere reinforcement of one's original opinion.

Most likely only a phenomenology of "attaching" a concept to a percept will help in this particular context. Thank you.

No, just describe the attaching. Imagine you look over and see a duck. No big deal. Now describe each aspect that leads from there being no concept to the "search" (Steiner's term) to the 'selecting' and to the "attatching". Oh and describe how many concepts get sorted through before is picked.

I know how this conversation goes, yet I genuinely would appreciate a straight forward description.

Like I said before, it seems to me you are confusing experience in general with Steiner's use of the term "percept". You are saying, "there is no experience where meaning is not already inherent". That is true and a critical point in the philosophy of Thinking (one that philosophers of Will do not concede). You then see that Steiner also said Willing is fundamental to experience, and somehow, by way of some philosophical process Cleric and I have yet to figure out, you claim that means Steiner equated Thinking with Willing or did not have a sharp distinction between them (and you claim something similar for Schopenhauer). But your understanding of both are at odds with everyone else's and the plain meaning of what claims they made in the texts you have quoted. Against all odds, you have still managed to avoid stating your position with respect to these two philosophies, two philosophies which obviously exist in the real world and create a significant divide in idealist metaphysics (regardless of Schopenhauer and Steiner). And, since you said I am projecting "psychoanalysis" onto you, every single comment you have posted has contained such attempts, like the bolded phrase above. I hope you can honestly assess and see that happening in your comments. Cleric has literally tried to describe the process in a different way in each of his comments, so there is no way you can claim some sort of ideological commitment which keeps it at low resolution and therefore allows you to "know how this conversation goes".

[AshvinP]

Someday if you ever notice that you are looking at, say, a table and you want to describe your experience of encountering a bare percept and then searching through various concepts until you "find" (Steiner's word) the "corresponding concept" to then "attach" it to the percept you had experienced, please just come back and (rather than getting abstract and esoteric) describe your experience. You'll see that we have much to discuss then.

I can't do a better job (my limitations not yours) of saying why I don't accept the premises of this debate between Steiner and Schopenhauer. When you are dead and you look at the deeply profound overlap in their core insight, you'll remember how poorly I tried to show that it was actually possible you aren't even giving yourself a chance to begin exploring it. And again: if I was a much better writer, I'm sure you would have grasped my point. Some kind people have messaged me that I am being fairly clear to them. That isn't the point though because I'm sure many many people can't see why I think the entire set of presuppositions framing the conversation ensure either confusion or mere reinforcement of one's original opinion.

Most likely only a phenomenology of "attaching" a concept to a percept will help in this particular context. Thank you.

No, just describe the attaching. Imagine you look over and see a duck. No big deal. Now describe each aspect that leads from there being no concept to the "search" (Steiner's term) to the 'selecting' and to the "attatching". Oh and describe how many concepts get sorted through before is picked.

I know how this conversation goes, yet I genuinely would appreciate a straight forward description.

Like I said before, it seems to me you are confusing experience in general with Steiner's use of the term "percept". You are saying, "there is no experience where meaning is not already inherent". That is true and a critical point in the philosophy of Thinking (one that philosophers of Will do not concede). You then see that Steiner also said Willing is fundamental to experience, and somehow, by way of some philosophical process Cleric and I have yet to figure out, you claim that means Steiner equated Thinking with Willing or did not have a sharp distinction between them (and you claim something similar for Schopenhauer). But your understanding of both are at odds with everyone else's and the plain meaning of what claims they made in the texts you have quoted. Against all odds, you have still managed to avoid stating your position with respect to these two philosophies, two philosophies which obviously exist in the real world and create a significant divide in idealist metaphysics (regardless of Schopenhauer and Steiner). And, since you said I am projecting "psychoanalysis" onto you, every single comment you have posted has contained such attempts, like the bolded phrase above. I hope you can honestly assess and see that happening in your comments. Cleric has literally tried to describe the process in a different way in each of his comments, so there is no way you can claim some sort of ideological commitment which keeps it at low resolution and therefore allows you to "know how this conversation goes".

Cleric already illustrated what is meant by "attaching" several different times better than I possibly could, so I am not going to waste time typing out the same thing. Maybe some day we will get a straight forward answer to our question about your position on the essential roles of Willing and Thinking in human experience? Seriously, forget about Schopenhauer and Steiner. Throw anything related to them out the window. Don't get "abstract or esoteric" and just state your view on these essential activities. Resist the urge to assume I am asking about anything other than the plain meaning of the words in my question. Previously you said we can use both words to refer to the "ontological primitive", but you also stated they are not the same activity, so what exactly is going on there?