Philosophy Unbound: Schopenhauer vs. Steiner (Round One)

[AshvinP]

I'm just utterly amazed that this thread, which started out as a bit of a lark, and which I thought might fizzle out after I posted the Monty Python 'world cup' skit on page 4 (btw, GO ENGLAND!! ... except in tennis that is), has now reached 44 pages, smashing all previous records, even forcing Eugene to retire from the fray. Come guys, my poor scrolling finger is wearing out! Oh well, carry on ... what is the score now, 34-33 in the 5th set?

I just realized we have barely scratched the surface of FB's other argument - Schopenhauer's philosophy of Will is not at all what BK thinks it to be (although I am sure his new audiobook begs to differ).

What do you say, Dana? Should I start another thread to get an international match going between Schopenhauer-BK and FB? (I am not going to even ask FB his nationality because that would take another 5-10 pages to figure out). Or is that just sadomasochistic at this point?

[SanteriSatama]

This is the whole spirit of PoF. And if people are not willing to take that leap, that's just a thought's distance wide, and verify things for themselves, it's OK! No one forces them. But to speak about those who do take that leap and simply report their inner experiences, as being deluded and monopolizing their interpretations, is just arrogance. This is what always baffles me the most in conversations like these. I would understand if I was claiming the existence of small green men on Mars and trying to force everybody to accept my interpretation. But when I simply and calmly describe inner experiences, and not only that, but describe also the simple steps that anyone can take to test them against their own experience, and this makes me a cultist, blinded arrogant colonist, etc. - this simply makes no sense to me.

First, I'm of the opinion that sharing experiences is good, also in the hope that voices of experience might help the next guy to have it little easier, and avoid some mistakes that have been made. While also admitting that it's important for each to do their own mistakes as we stumble and fall in our unique ways.

You say that it is 1st person "I" describing inner experiences. I wish it was that it was that simple, as what is interpreting and describing experiencing is also very much a language. And as languages are also spiritual living beings, they can carry also their psychological histories and trauma. A deeply traumatized language does not necessarily always think very well. A language which speaks through a living body is not identical with the the living body it is using to speak. Both aspects can be true, living body using a language, and language using a living body, in various mixtures, and the relation is very delicate and the more fantastic the deeper the resolution of the inquiry gets. I'm not the first or last to suggest that generic European language is deeply traumatized and in need of healing - Brouwer, Heidegger, Korzybski, Bohm, Buckminster Fuller etc. etc. have in their various ways contributed to therapeutic philosophy of language trying to heal itself and learning to think better. Small steps, yes, but as you say, in their ways even small steps can be very significant.

Oh, and the wonder of learning different languages, learning to think in different languages and to compare how different languages think! To think on the level where we suddenly observe not only thoughts, but whole thinking processes of whole languages!

I could be even so bold, that after first sudden observation of a thought, trying to interprete and express a thought in language becames inevitably a process where a living body is participating in the self-healing process of a language. And that such therapeutic participation and friction truly deserves to be called Thinking with capital T.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Or is that just sadomasochistic at this point?

I think it's gone beyond that point and is now more like BDSM

[findingblanks]

Santeri, I am deeply in love with your analogies and metaphors!

[findingblanks]

"I think it's gone beyond that point and is now more like BDSM..."

Quote of the month.

[SanteriSatama]

absolute starting point

The Archimedean point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedean_point

[findingblanks]

Yeah, Steiner set up his starting point in a manner which he demanded was the only way to really grasp his epistemology. In each of his core books he says that it is impossible to understand him if you don't first imagine the 'first form of reality' that we meet, the form that is just pure chaos. And THEN we can see that 'standing against that' is thinking.

I disagree. Obviously.

In fact, for as much as I don't share Cleric's core notions, it is obvious to me that Cleric could teach PoF to people and never demand they conceptualize a 'realm' of pure chaos.

[AshvinP]

Yeah, Steiner set up his starting point in a manner which he demanded was the only way to really grasp his epistemology. In each of his core books he says that it is impossible to understand him if you don't first imagine the 'first form of reality' that we meet, the form that is just pure chaos. And THEN we can see that 'standing against that' is thinking.

I disagree. Obviously.

In fact, for as much as I don't share Cleric's core notions, it is obvious to me that Cleric could teach PoF to people and never demand they conceptualize a 'realm' of pure chaos.

And he can also teach why there is absolutely no problem with Steiner starting in that way, and actually it is probably the best way to start. We know that because Cleric already did teach that:

Nevertheless, for me personally, the idea behind the above quote, ever since I stumbled upon it in Truth and Knowledge, was one of the most profound and eye-opening thought experiments. As I said, everything can be understood completely right as long as we're looking for the holistic message, and not focus on the various ways things can be misunderstood when the holistic context is absent.

So what is the pure content of perception? It is what we can attain to as far as we recognize and separate every concept that lies on top of the elementary perception. For example, experience of red is an elementary perception together with its elementary meaning of 'redness'. If that red happens to belong to the sensory perception of a rose, then the above thought experiment allows to see how the implicit concepts that I experience together with the red of the rose, make it different from pure red. One of the implicit concepts is that I'm seeing an external plant in the physical world. How do we recognize pure red filling my consciousness from red belonging to a rose, or red belonging to a rose that I see in a dream? In its essence the quality of red is everywhere the same. It's the ideal context which makes the experience different.

This is my understanding of 'pure perception' and I must say that I don't have any problem with it. Let me put it this way: I can call a perception pure when I have removed so much of the ideal content that I arrive at the perception+elementary concept which I can no longer separate. For example, I can disregard whether I'm dreaming or awake, whether I'm seeing a rose or not, but when I reach the elementary experience of 'red' I can no longer doubt the ideal content I experience. Whether it's a hallucination, dream, visual input, the fact remains that I experience 'redness'. This is as far as I can go. If I go on and imagine, like the materialist, that the experience of redness is nothing but the firing of neurons, I'm not in the least going any deeper in direct experience. On the contrary - I begin again to put layers of concepts that only cover the perception with imagined explanations.

We don't commit epistemological crime when we recognize pure perceptions (and their elementary concepts) in this way. As said, for me this was one of the most important mental exercises ever, and continues to be to this day. Every time I'm in doubt about something I simply step back and ask "What is the raw contents of experience and what is it that I add through thinking?" (by adding I mean primarily mental habits, which can be largely unconscious). This is especially useful when reading scientific articles. The media, especially, presents scientific experimental results in horrible way, only looking to make sensations. When we're presented, for example, with results from the LHC experiments, what is it really that belongs to the pure perception and what is layered on top with thinking? When it's spoken about Higgs bosons and so on, do we really see them? Not really. The pure perception is the indications of the instruments after particles collide. This is the raw data. It's invaluable to be able to make that distinction and recognize what really lives on top of the instruments' readings as concepts added by scientific thinking.

re: intuition - I wonder what you think about Bergson's approach posted in a separate thread. Can you honestly read the excerpt I provided and say it does not remind you of Steiner's approach in PoF? Or maybe you think Bergson committed an "epistemological crime" too?

[AshvinP]

"When you call it "place", cognition and language are shaping an interpretation. I very much prefer the interpretation that before and after was and will be time."

Hi. Yeah, I agree. I called it a place for a specific reason. Steiner says:

"If a theory of knowledge is really to explain the whole sphere of knowledge, then it must start from something still quite untouched by the activity of thinking, and what is more, from something which lends to this activity its first impulse. This starting point must lie outside the act of cognition, it must not itself be knowledge. But it must be sought immediately prior to cognition, so that the very next step man takes beyond it is the activity of cognition. This absolute starting point must be determined in such a way that it admits nothing already derived from cognition."

So you can see he is using lots of spacial metaphors. That's not his fault, but it does tend to suggest that he wants us to distinguish an actual experience of this 'point' from an actual experience of thinking.

His next sentences can definitely be taken by many people to suggest an actual experience of this spot/point:

"Only our directly given world-picture can offer such a starting point, i.e. that picture of the world which presents itself to man before he has subjected it to the processes of knowledge in any way, before he has asserted or decided anything at all about it by means of thinking. This “directly given” picture is what flits past us, disconnected, but still undifferentiated."

You can see why some of Steiner's students actually treat the starting point as if it is an experience they are supposed to grasp. Even after Steiner reminds us that this 'point' is not an experience at all but merely an 'article concept', he goes on to distinguish it from thinking itself.

As an artificial concept it is the product of thinking, but we are supposed to treat it as a 'field' that thinking must approach.

Anyway, that's why I used the word 'space.' I'm happy that you noticed it was somewhat problematic.

This may have already been mentioned in the last 45 pages, but if not then it should definitely clear up the confusion in your above comment and, in fact, it should speak to the entire basis of your objection and how Steiner actually anticipates it in ToK (which is also shown from various quotes Cleric provided, but this one is especially on target). As always, it must be approached in good will if it is to be understood.

Reason does not presuppose any particular unity but rather the empty form of unification; reason is the ability to bring harmony to light when harmony lies within the object itself. Within reason, the concepts themselves combine into ideas. Reason brings into view the higher unity of the intellect's concepts, a unity that the intellect certainly has in its configurations but is unable to see. The fact that this is overlooked is the basis of many misunderstandings about the application of reason in the sciences.

To a small degree every science, even at its starting point — yes, even our everyday thinking — needs reason. If, in the judgment that every body has weight, we join the subject-concept with the predicate-concept, there already lies in this a uniting of two concepts and therefore the simplest activity of reason.

The unity that reason takes as its object is certain before all thinking, before any use of reason; but it is hidden, is present only as potential, does not manifest as a fact in its own right. Then the human spirit brings about separation, in order, by uniting the separate parts through reason, to see fully into reality.

Whoever does not presuppose this must either regard all connecting of thoughts as an arbitrary activity of the subjective spirit, or he must assume that the unity stands behind the world experienced by us and compels us in some way unknown to us to lead the manifoldness back to a unity. In that case we join thoughts without insight into the true basis of the connection that we bring about; then the truth is not known by us, but rather is forced upon us from outside. Let us call all science taking its start from this presupposition dogmatic.

I hope you can read the above without prejudice and see the logic of what Steiner is saying. Your view is reflected in the bolded statements. Steiner understood that, without the "actual experience" of the "departure point" you speak of in your comment, we end up in those bolded statements. Ending up in the bolded statements prevents us from ending up in the underlined statements. And that defeats the entire purpose of engaging in the phenomenology of Thinking as spiritual activity. Cleric also pointed this out in his recent comment: "You gain nothing if you just admit that what I say here might be right. As long as you don't approach these experiences, it's all the same if you believe they are real or not." Steiner is not looking for adherents of dogma, even if the dogma also points towards a World Unity that is correct. He is neither looking for Kant's dogma of "connecting of thoughts as an arbitrary activity of the subjective spirit", NOR for Schopenhauer's dogma of universal Will that "compels us in some way unknown to us to lead the manifoldness back to a unity." Rather he wants us to gain "insight into the true basis of the connection that we bring about" so that we can "see fully into reality".

This simple truth is made even more clear if we go with the title, "The Philosophy of Freedom". Followers of dogma, even low-resolution correct dogma, are not free. It is easier to follow dogma which promises us the Unity - much less hard work is required and we seem, on the surface, to end up with the same result. Steiner's amazing insight, which is also echoed by Bergson 50 years later - "an intuition, which claims to project itself with one bound into the eternal, limits itself to the intellectual... but this explanation will be vague and hypothetical, this unity will be artificial, and this philosophy would apply equally well to a very different world from our own" - is that there is a world which insists that we approach it in the high resolution of spiritual freedom. I truly hope you can see now why the above is not some random apologetic Cleric or I cooked up to paper over Steiner's errors - it is at the very heart of PoF and all of Steiner's writings, including those prior to PoF.

[findingblanks]

"And he can also teach why there is absolutely no problem with Steiner starting in that way...

Oh, yes, of course he could! And that's what makes Cleric different. He could show that, yes, we can still find the entire point by doing that, but, most importantly, Cleric would be able to explain why Steiner thought there was no other way.

It is when we grasp why Steiner didn't see any other way to begin that we start to have a nifty little intuition about my point here.