Schopenhauer's metaphysics: the problem

[Shaibei]

Following the above, I will quote from the words of philosopher Hugo Bergman:
...
It is interesting that Bergman, who was a friend of Rudolf Steiner and mentions his name in several articles, did not mention him in his book "Introduction to Epistemology ." Instead he devoted an entire chapter to the formulation of 13 points explaining the limitations of knowledge.

I had a hard time following what Berman was saying there... but it does sound in opposite to Steiner's epistemology. The latter is laid out pretty clearly in his Philosophy of Freedom. A key realization is that our human experience-perspective should not be divided from the 'objects' of our knowledge i.e. we should avoid dualism and Kantian epistemology, which is such a powerful force that many idealists (like Kant) will start their inquiries from the dualist perspective without even knowing. Maybe you can assess to what extent Bergman and Maimon align with the below perspective.

Are There Limits to Knowledge?

We have established that the elements for the explanation of reality are to be found in the two spheres: perceiving and thinking. It is due, as we have seen, to our organization that the full, complete reality, including our own selves as subjects, appears at first as a duality. The act of knowing overcomes this duality by fusing the two elements of reality, the percept and the concept gained by thinking, into the complete thing. Let us call the manner in which the world presents itself to us, before it has taken on its true nature through our knowing it, “the world of appearance,” in contrast to the unified whole composed of percept and concept. We can then say: The world is given to us as a duality, and knowledge transforms it into a unity. A philosophy which starts from this basic principle may be called a monistic philosophy, or monism. Opposed to this is the two-world theory, or dualism. The latter does not assume just that there are two sides of a single reality which are kept apart merely by our organization, but that there are two worlds absolutely distinct from one another. It then tries to find in one of these two worlds the principles for the explanation of the other.

Dualism rests on a false conception of what we call knowledge. It divides the whole of existence into two spheres, each of which has its own laws, and it leaves these two worlds standing apart and opposed... It is from a dualism such as this that there arises the distinction between the perceptual object and the thing-in-itself, which Kant introduced into philosophy, and which, to the present day, we have not succeeded in eradicating.
...
It follows from the concept of the act of knowing as we have defined it, that one cannot speak of limits to knowledge. Knowing is not a concern of the world in general, but an affair which man must settle for himself. Things demand no explanation. They exist and act on one another according to laws which can be discovered through thinking. They exist in indivisible unity with these laws. Our Egohood confronts them, grasping at first only that part of them we have called percepts. Within our Egohood, however, lies the power to discover the other part of the reality as well. Only when the Egohood has taken the two elements of reality which are indivisibly united in the world and has combined them also for itself, is our thirst for knowledge satisfied — the I has then arrived at the reality once more.

Thus the conditions necessary for an act of knowledge to take place are there through the I and for the I. The I sets itself the problems of knowledge; and moreover it takes them from an element that is absolutely clear and transparent in itself: the element of thinking. If we set ourselves questions which we cannot answer, it must be because the content of the questions is not in all respects clear and distinct. It is not the world which sets us the questions, but we ourselves.

I can imagine that it would be quite impossible for me to answer a question which I happened to find written down somewhere, without knowing the sphere from which the content of the question was taken.

In our knowledge we are concerned with questions which arise for us through the fact that a sphere of percepts, conditioned by place, time, and our subjective organization, is confronted by a sphere of concepts pointing to the totality of the universe. My task consists in reconciling these two spheres, with both of which I am well acquainted. Here one cannot speak of a limit to knowledge. It may be that, at any particular moment, this or that remains unexplained because, through our place in life, we are prevented from perceiving the things involved. What is not found today, however, may be found tomorrow. The limits due to these causes are only transitory, and can be overcome by the progress of perception and thinking.

First, a number of interpretations have been given to what Kant said, and I do not think the word dualism is accurate here.
Maimon's discussion is done in the context of Kant's critical idealism, ie he does not skip over Kant as Hegel did. If we proceed from the premise that science is right, Maimon says, to show its objectivity we will have to assume that there is an infinite mind for which our synthetic judgments are an analytical derivation. In other words, in potential we have the possibility of deriving reality in an analytical way, but not in practice, because in reality we are not aware of the process of creating objects.
Hence Maimon holds the infinite aspiration of science, to conquer the given from the outside under the concepts of the mind.
Maimon combines Spinoza with Kant. He does not hold on to Spinoza's rational dogmatism, and only shows the possible direction for solving Kant's problem. Along with that he is skeptical, and believes that there is no philosophical way to refute Hume.
Maimon builds a whole system to show how one can theoretically look at reality as if it were an analytical derivative of concepts just to express at the end his intellectual honesty and say, well that is just a possibility.
Bergman in his book lists a number of points that show the limitations of cognition. For example, Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Or for example, the assertion that science can formulate the rules of reality but not explain why they are such and not others. Or for example, even if science knew how to explain all the rules of reality it still did not know how to explain the self, because its method is objective in definition and ignores subjectivity.
Or for example, science assumes that the concepts it builds on nature are correct because we see that things work, but theoretically we could have built a different conceptual system that would also work.
I would expect a person like Steiner that argues that there are no limits to thinking a profe of what he says. But Steiner had scientific errors as well as errors in understanding the historical development of his time. Steiner showed again the human tendency to replace beliefs with ideas.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HQUI8J ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rbmVPL ... sp=sharing

[AshvinP]

First, a number of interpretations have been given to what Kant said, and I do not think the word dualism is accurate here.
Maimon's discussion is done in the context of Kant's critical idealism, ie he does not skip over Kant as Hegel did. If we proceed from the premise that science is right, Maimon says, to show its objectivity we will have to assume that there is an infinite mind for which our synthetic judgments are an analytical derivation. In other words, in potential we have the possibility of deriving reality in an analytical way, but not in practice, because in reality we are not aware of the process of creating objects.
Hence Maimon holds the infinite aspiration of science, to conquer the given from the outside under the concepts of the mind.
Maimon combines Spinoza with Kant. He does not hold on to Spinoza's rational dogmatism, and only shows the possible direction for solving Kant's problem. Along with that he is skeptical, and believes that there is no philosophical way to refute Hume.
Maimon builds a whole system to show how one can theoretically look at reality as if it were an analytical derivative of concepts just to express at the end his intellectual honesty and say, well that is just a possibility.

I believe dualism is appropriate for Kant because he accepts that there are two realms (that of the noumenon vs. phenomenon) which operate according to different 'laws'. That is a functional dualism even if not a strictly substance dualism. The bolded assertion is exactly what Steiner explores in his PoF by looking at our process of thinking. Through the process of thinking (and thinking about our thinking), we can become aware of how we create objects (thought-forms) and bring unity to phenomenal perceptions.

Bergman in his book lists a number of points that show the limitations of cognition. For example, Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Or for example, the assertion that science can formulate the rules of reality but not explain why they are such and not others. Or for example, even if science knew how to explain all the rules of reality it still did not know how to explain the self, because its method is objective in definition and ignores subjectivity.
Or for example, science assumes that the concepts it builds on nature are correct because we see that things work, but theoretically we could have built a different conceptual system that would also work.
I would expect a person like Steiner that argues that there are no limits to thinking a profe of what he says. But Steiner had scientific errors as well as errors in understanding the historical development of his time. Steiner showed again the human tendency to replace beliefs with ideas.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HQUI8J ... sp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rbmVPL ... sp=sharing

Here we are self-imposing problems which are not found in reality. Godel's incompleteness theorem seems to show that we cannot have 100% knowledge of Reality, but that still leaves a lot of percentage points on the table. When we ask about limitations to cognition we are asking about limitations relative to where we are now, not a hypothetical absolute knowledge. Similarly, we are not asking about hypothetical non-human or alternate universe perspectives on the realm of concepts-ideas, but concrete human perspectives in this Universe. Finally, the bolded statement is once again assuming dualism - it starts from a perspective in which there are subjects and objects operating according to different rules. We must start from a monist perspective which is prior to any subject-object distinctions. From that starting point, scientific inquiry is not limited to only one class of objects which lack subjectivity. I think 20th century fields such as depth psychology, cognitive science, AI research, etc. shows that it is very possible to do empirical and rigorous study of subjectivity.

[Shaibei]

First, a number of interpretations have been given to what Kant said, and I do not think the word dualism is accurate here.
Maimon's discussion is done in the context of Kant's critical idealism, ie he does not skip over Kant as Hegel did. If we proceed from the premise that science is right, Maimon says, to show its objectivity we will have to assume that there is an infinite mind for which our synthetic judgments are an analytical derivation. In other words, in potential we have the possibility of deriving reality in an analytical way, but not in practice, because in reality we are not aware of the process of creating objects.
Hence Maimon holds the infinite aspiration of science, to conquer the given from the outside under the concepts of the mind.
Maimon combines Spinoza with Kant. He does not hold on to Spinoza's rational dogmatism, and only shows the possible direction for solving Kant's problem. Along with that he is skeptical, and believes that there is no philosophical way to refute Hume.
Maimon builds a whole system to show how one can theoretically look at reality as if it were an analytical derivative of concepts just to express at the end his intellectual honesty and say, well that is just a possibility.

I believe dualism is appropriate for Kant because he accepts that there are two realms (that of the noumenon vs. phenomenon) which operate according to different 'laws'. That is a functional dualism even if not a strictly substance dualism. The bolded assertion is exactly what Steiner explores in his PoF by looking at our process of thinking. Through the process of thinking (and thinking about our thinking), we can become aware of how we create objects (thought-forms) and bring unity to phenomenal perceptions.

To assess Steiner's position, one must examine what has been said before. As can be understood from other threads to which I have commented I do not think Steiner in his book The Philosophy of Freedom has innovated far beyond what has been said before. I also do not think Steiner really answers Kant.
Reality as I experience it consists of thinking and perception (at least in the philosophical framework to which we refer here). It is impossible to skip the fact that we do not meet the laws behind reality a direct meeting. We use intuition and assume that the laws that science sets do indeed represent what is happening.
When a scientist observes a certain phenomenon and comes up with an idea that explains it, he does not say "thinking has no limit and therefore the idea faithfully represents the phenomenon." He conducts experiments that may prove or disprove his thesis. If the thesis seems to be correct in repeated observations he assumes by induction that he is right. Why should he use induction rather than deduction? After all, if we say that reality is thinking, he could have deduced the laws from his mind. But we know that we do not experience reality only through thinking, we experience it through thinking and perception. Thinking is prone to mistakes because thinking is limited, so induction is needed. Steiner on the other hand believes that thinking has no limits.
Steiner also speaks of supersensible worlds. In such a discussion there is no sense to talk about the lack of dichotomy between thinking and perception, because there is only Steiner's thoughts and we should accept it as "spiritual science", or in other words because Steiner said so. Well that's not how science works.

Bergman in his book lists a number of points that show the limitations of cognition. For example, Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Or for example, the assertion that science can formulate the rules of reality but not explain why they are such and not others. Or for example, even if science knew how to explain all the rules of reality it still did not know how to explain the self, because its method is objective in definition and ignores subjectivity.
Or for example, science assumes that the concepts it builds on nature are correct because we see that things work, but theoretically we could have built a different conceptual system that would also work.
I would expect a person like Steiner that argues that there are no limits to thinking a profe of what he says. But Steiner had scientific errors as well as errors in understanding the historical development of his time. Steiner showed again the human tendency to replace beliefs with ideas.

Here we are self-imposing problems which are not found in reality. Godel's incompleteness theorem seems to show that we cannot have 100% knowledge of Reality, but that still leaves a lot of percentage points on the table.

That is, here thinking sets limits for itself, and that's why Maimon talks about an asymptotic approach to truth.

When we ask about limitations to cognition we are asking about limitations relative to where we are now, not a hypothetical absolute knowledge. Similarly, we are not asking about hypothetical non-human or alternate universe perspectives on the realm of concepts-ideas, but concrete human perspectives in this Universe.

That is, we are only talking about introducing a new boundary to where our thinking stands and not claiming that "there are no boundaries to thinking". If thinking had no boundaries we would not have to wait for future generations to understand better than us.

Finally, the bolded statement is once again assuming dualism - it starts from a perspective in which there are subjects and objects operating according to different rules. We must start from a monist perspective which is prior to any subject-object distinctions. From that starting point, scientific inquiry is not limited to only one class of objects which lack subjectivity. I think 20th century fields such as depth psychology, cognitive science, AI research, etc. shows that it is very possible to do empirical and rigorous study of subjectivity.

The point with critical philosophy is to understand the limits of cognition. And this is what Maimon writes: Perception complements our thinking. If we were the "infinite mind" we could derive the physical rules from within without the need for sensory experience. But we do not experience reality in this way because our thinking is limited.

When I think of a particular subject S1, I can make a self-reflection on my very thinking of S1, call it S2. We can repeat this process again and reflect
with S3. We can repeat the process over and over again to infinity. Every time I reflect on the thinking subject. But once I have done that I have turned the subject into an object, I do not perceive the subject itself. It's Ad infinitum as in Godel's incompleteness theorem.
One of the philosophical problems is that we can not determine that what I call sweet is also what you call sweet. Our concepts can be arranged in such a way that we both seem to be talking about the same reality, but we cannot bridge that subjective reality because our thinking is limited. We therefore use intuition and do not claim that thinking is unlimited.
One of the difficulties in comparative research is the comparison between spiritual experiences.The fact that two people use the same words to describe a spiritual experience does not mean that they experienced the exact same experience. That is, we use words and concepts to enter the inter-subjective arena, but there always remains a subjective remnant that we cannot share.

[Cleric K]

To assess Steiner's position, one must examine what has been said before. As can be understood from other threads to which I have commented I do not think Steiner in his book The Philosophy of Freedom has innovated far beyond what has been said before. I also do not think Steiner really answers Kant.
Reality as I experience it consists of thinking and perception (at least in the philosophical framework to which we refer here). It is impossible to skip the fact that we do not meet the laws behind reality a direct meeting. We use intuition and assume that the laws that science sets do indeed represent what is happening.

As you say, we have thinking (ideas) and perceptions. The Kantian split is that we assume our thinking is experienced entirely 'on our side' of reality and perceptions indirectly inform us about the 'other side'.
Let's step back and consider what is really given in the riddle of existence. What is given is perceptions - colors, sounds, feelings, etc. Where is the 'real' world of which the perceptions are only representations? Where do we find it in the given? Simple - there's isn't such a thing. The idea the there should exist an inaccessible world behind the perceptions is something that we add through our thinking (quite unconsciously for most) on top of the given. This is something so simple and yet something so deep that people simply look at it and can't believe that it's a matter of deeply ingrained preconceived idea that completely shapes their feel for reality.

It is true that perceptions meet us as a mystery. We don't understand why and how they appear and disappear from the field of our consciousness. But does this require of itself that the explanations for the perceptions exist in some impenetrable world on the 'other side' of our consciousness? Not really. Such an idea can never be the result of something that we know directly from the given. Why? Because we by definition say that the 'other side' of reality can never be known directly from 'our side'. If we were to know the reality of the 'other side' through some perception this would mean that it is accessible from 'our side' and this defeats the whole purpose of the split. Actually the idea for the 'other side' of our consciousness is the most abstract idea we can conjure up. It's so abstract that it can never be confirmed through anything that we can ever perceive. It exists only as long as we support it by belief.

So the fact that we don't understand why perceptions act and move like they do doesn't require out of itself that the causes for these perceptions lie behind some impenetrable boundary (for example God's mind in contrast to our mind). The only certain thing in the given is that we experience perceptions. That's all. Any hypothesizing about the source of the perceptions is already added through thinking. In PoF we realize that there's at least one thing in the World Content where the ideal is united with the perceptual and that's thinking. Imagine what would it be if you experienced verbal thoughts only as auditory perception without any meaning. They would be the same as any other external auditory perception of unknown language. Thoughts are what they are only because we have their perceptions in unity with ideas. Thinking is where the world of perceptions is united with the world of ideas. This already gives the essential nature of what any quest for knowledge is (check Steiner's quote in Ashvin's post here). In other words, our thirst for knowledge is satisfied only when we reveal through our spiritual activity (whether thinking or higher forms of cognition) the missing ideal element that complements perceptions and reveals their complete reality. This is for example what Goethe did, admittedly still in an instinctive way, with his archetypal plant. When he contemplated the plant his soul was not satisfied only with the sensory perceptions and the most immediate patterns of growth recognizable by the intellect. He was looking at the plant only as a momentary form in the process of metamorphosis, by experiencing the whole process as the living and mobile idea of the archetypal plant. When we speak we use sentences. Every isolated word is understood properly only if it is taken as a part of the idea of the whole sentence. In a similar way Goethe experienced how the archetypal plant idea extending in time is responsible for the plant's metamorphosis, in the same way that our thinking ideas are responsible for the temporal sequence of verbal words of the sentence. Through this Goethe was already exploring in instinctive manner what today we call Imaginative consciousness.

We shouldn't confuse limitations of our perceptions and cognitive abilities with self-imposed hard boundaries to what can and can't be known. For example, in the moment I'm in my room. My perceptions are limited to the interior. But if I exercise my will and step outside, different perceptions will be presented to me. It's similar with cognition. If I look at text written in unknown to me language or if I'm staring at math problem that I can't solve, this speaks only for my own current limitations. But it'll be foolish (and quite arrogant) to declare that just because I don't understand the text or I can't solve the problem, or I'm too lazy to step outside, it follows that it is in principle impossible to do so.

[AshvinP]

First, a number of interpretations have been given to what Kant said, and I do not think the word dualism is accurate here.
Maimon's discussion is done in the context of Kant's critical idealism, ie he does not skip over Kant as Hegel did. If we proceed from the premise that science is right, Maimon says, to show its objectivity we will have to assume that there is an infinite mind for which our synthetic judgments are an analytical derivation. In other words, in potential we have the possibility of deriving reality in an analytical way, but not in practice, because in reality we are not aware of the process of creating objects.
Hence Maimon holds the infinite aspiration of science, to conquer the given from the outside under the concepts of the mind.
Maimon combines Spinoza with Kant. He does not hold on to Spinoza's rational dogmatism, and only shows the possible direction for solving Kant's problem. Along with that he is skeptical, and believes that there is no philosophical way to refute Hume.
Maimon builds a whole system to show how one can theoretically look at reality as if it were an analytical derivative of concepts just to express at the end his intellectual honesty and say, well that is just a possibility.

I believe dualism is appropriate for Kant because he accepts that there are two realms (that of the noumenon vs. phenomenon) which operate according to different 'laws'. That is a functional dualism even if not a strictly substance dualism. The bolded assertion is exactly what Steiner explores in his PoF by looking at our process of thinking. Through the process of thinking (and thinking about our thinking), we can become aware of how we create objects (thought-forms) and bring unity to phenomenal perceptions.

To assess Steiner's position, one must examine what has been said before. As can be understood from other threads to which I have commented I do not think Steiner in his book The Philosophy of Freedom has innovated far beyond what has been said before. I also do not think Steiner really answers Kant.
Reality as I experience it consists of thinking and perception (at least in the philosophical framework to which we refer here). It is impossible to skip the fact that we do not meet the laws behind reality a direct meeting. We use intuition and assume that the laws that science sets do indeed represent what is happening.
When a scientist observes a certain phenomenon and comes up with an idea that explains it, he does not say "thinking has no limit and therefore the idea faithfully represents the phenomenon." He conducts experiments that may prove or disprove his thesis. If the thesis seems to be correct in repeated observations he assumes by induction that he is right. Why should he use induction rather than deduction? After all, if we say that reality is thinking, he could have deduced the laws from his mind. But we know that we do not experience reality only through thinking, we experience it through thinking and perception. Thinking is prone to mistakes because thinking is limited, so induction is needed. Steiner on the other hand believes that thinking has no limits.
Steiner also speaks of supersensible worlds. In such a discussion there is no sense to talk about the lack of dichotomy between thinking and perception, because there is only Steiner's thoughts and we should accept it as "spiritual science", or in other words because Steiner said so. Well that's not how science works.

In the context of Cleric's response, in response to the above, I would also offer this from Owen Barfield:

Interesting attempts have been made to arrive at the relation between thinking and perceiving by imagining them actually divided from each other. You may remember Williams James's supposition of a confrontation between, on the one hand, the environment... and, on the other, a man who possessed all the organs of perception, but who had never done any thinking. He demonstrated that such a man would perceive nothing, or nothing but what James called "a blooming buzzing confusion". Well, he was only expressing in his own blunt way the conclusion which always is arrived at by all who make the same attempt, whether philosophers, psychologists, neurologists, or physicists. Unfortunately it is also a conclusion which is commonly forgotten by those same [people] almost as soon it has been arrived at; or certainly as soon as they turn their minds to other matters - such as history or evolution - but which I personally decline to forget. I mean the conclusion, the irrefragable consensus, that what we perceive is structurally inseparable from what we think.
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You will sometimes hear people say they have no metaphysics. Well, they are lying. Their metaphysics are implicit in what they take for granted about the world. Only they prefer to call it "common sense". What do we really mean when we use the expression "what we perceive?"... the answer is that we can only mean the very world itself. Or at all events the macroscopic world itself.
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All quality is subjective as well as objective, and the macroscopic world is compounded of qualities, as well as quantities. It is therefore what we perceive and, accordingly, is inseparable from what we think. It doesn't matter what you call it... as long as you remember that what we perceive is the actual world, and not a kind of shadow-show pretending to be the actual world... if anyone feels that I have merely been laboring the obvious at inordinate length, I can only refer him to George Orwell's observation that "we have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men".
...
We are not studying some so-called "inner" world, divided off, by a skin or a skull, from a so-called "outer" world; we are trying to study the world itself from its inner aspect. Consciousness is not a tiny bit of the world stuck on to the rest of it. It is the inside of the whole world.

-History, Guilt and Habit