Simon Adams wrote: ↑Fri Apr 23, 2021 2:44 pm
AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Apr 23, 2021 1:35 pm
A simple heuristic I try to follow - if a perspective is setting up a dichotomy of 'rules' or 'laws' for one set of phenomenon vs. another set, then we are entering philosophical dualist territory and need to reorient back to monism. In fact, the only reason a question about the "
nature of consciousness" arises in contrast to the
function-purpose of consciousness is because of the Cartesian and Kantian divides. They have made us obsessed with "essences" as some sort of abstract detached property of 'things' in a realm beyond experience, rather than the pragmatic and phenomenological approach which
only admits data from the human experience.
The kind of "objectivity" you are referring to may have been somewhat necessary to take us this far in science-technology (but, again, we do have outliers like Goethe), but now it's well past time to move forwards in the 'aperspectival' structure of consciousness (Gebser) where subject-object divisions are restored into Unity and it is very likely science will play a large role in such a restoration. I really believe Hoffman is just the first of many who will stop taking the divides for granted and dare to push the limits of what scientific inquiry can do, closing the gap between 'hard science' and spirituality. There is nothing fundamentally keeping them apart, like Goethe and Steiner show.
I think I get what you are saying, but it’s difficult to see how science would work in that case as a process ... which is essentially what science is. The model that Hoffman is working on is indeed describing something more like a spiritual reality than you typically expect from a scientific theory. Nonetheless Hoffman is very much planning to use the normal scientific process. In other words he will not rely purely on “data from the human experience” to justify his theory as valid.
We know that the contents of the mind are inherently unreliable, which is why the scientific process exists in the form it does. What is the way you would expect theories to be validated in this brave new world?
It's not a different method of doing science, but rather the recovery of method which is not bogged down by unnecessary materialist-dualist assumptions. It does not try to separate the study of 'matter' from consciousness. Hoffman references "psychophysics" often, which is the study of the relationship between percepts and subjective conscious experiences. No doubt that along with rigorous cognitive science and psychology can be brought to bear on various scientific inquiries. Ultimately science should always be about exploring how
we, as humans, relate to the phenomenal world through sound empirical analysis and testing of models. Again, Goethe is a great example of how this non-dualist method can be employed in various fields. I cannot recommend reading Steiner's book
Goethean Science enough. And, if we take possibilities of higher cognition seriously, we are only just beginning to explore the empirical data which can be studied. Another relevant excerpt may help:
Steiner wrote:True science, in the higher sense of the word, has to do only with ideal objects; it can only be idealism. For, it has its ultimate foundation in needs that stem from the human spirit. Nature awakens questions in us, problems that strive for solution. But nature cannot itself provide this solution. Through our capacity for knowledge a higher world confronts nature; and this fact creates higher demands. For a being who did not possess this higher nature, these problems would simply not arise. These questions can therefore also not receive an answer from any authority other than precisely this higher nature. Scientific questions are therefore essentially a matter that the human spirit has to settle with itself. They do not lead the human spirit out of its element. The realm, however, in which the human spirit lives and weaves as though within its primally own, is the idea, is the world of thoughts. To solve thought-questions with thought-answers is the scientific activity in the highest sense of the word. And all other scientific procedures are there, ultimately, only in order to serve this highest purpose. Take scientific observation, for example. It is supposed to lead us to knowledge of a law of nature. The law itself is purely ideal. The need to find a lawfulness holding sway behind the phenomena already stems from the human spirit. An unspiritual being would not have this need. Now let us proceed to the observation! What do we actually want to achieve by it? In response to the question created in our spirit, is something supposed to be provided from outside, by sense observation, that could be the answer to that question? Never. For why should we feel ourselves more satisfied by a second observation than by the first? If the human spirit were satisfied at all by an observed object, then it would have to be satisfied right away by the first. But the actual question is not at all one about any second observation, but rather about the ideal foundation of the observations. What does this observation admit as an ideal explanation; how must I think it so that it appears possible to me? Those are the questions that come to us with respect to the sense world. I must seek, out of the depths of my spirit itself, what I lack when confronted by the sense world. If I cannot create for myself the higher nature for which my spirit strives when confronted by sense-perceptible nature, then no power in the external world will create it for me. The results of science therefore can come only from the human spirit; thus they can only be ideas. No objections can be raised against this necessary reflection. The ideal character of all science, however, is established thereby.