Falsification of Scientific Theories of Consciousness

[AshvinP]

No you didn’t loose me on that, I’m just not convinced - especially with the idea that science is anywhere near revealing the foundations. Assuming environmental collapse, or the adoption of anti-reason by our universities, doesn’t cause a collapse of civilisation, I would expect there to be Kuhnian type revolution every century or so, for many more centuries. Each time it happens, humanity will yet again think we’re close to understanding nearly everything.

In terms of our “scientific mode of consciousness”, I actually think that to some extent this has a disintegrating effect. Even in classical times there were a range of narratives from extreme skeptics to strange cults, but the extent to which so many people have abrogated responsibility for seeking any deeper meaning to life (beyond the 24hr news cycle and various conspiracies) is surely more extreme than it ever was then.

I’m hoping we’re past the peak of this, but the idea that the wider collective consciousness is at some point of making a great leap forward is not one I see in the wider culture. Maybe some of the realisations in parts of the scientific community about the limits of materialism - such as in consciousness studies - will eventually filter through. Certainly there are pockets of sub cultures that are yearning for wisdom, but often that’s not much more than a rediscovery of past wisdom. Overall I see just as many backward steps as forward steps, and if anything the big picture is one of increasing disintegration and fragmentation.

I sound very negative and I should add that I see plenty of reason for hope in many areas. I just don’t see this species wide leap to an Omega point that you envision.

How can we blame them for abrogating responsibility if the narrative 'we' offer is "you can never experience and know the true sources of your being" or only know them after death and until then they will always, at best, remain a shadowy intellectual concept? We are the ones who are supposedly seeing through all the BS of materialism-dualism and exploring the deepest metaphysical-spiritual questions, yet, when all is said and done, we offer the same narrative as they do. It is that cynicism which allows us all to abrogate responsibility indefinitely. You are correct that the religious, scientific, cultural, etc. paradigms of the last few centuries have isolated and alienated people more from the world, from others, from God more than ever.

And that is exactly why it so important to fully embrace a new paradigm within our Thinking now; within our spiritual activity. To use a trite phrase, we need "to be the change we want to see". The old paradigms were all about emphasizing how little we can "objectively" know about our spiritual nature and the spiritual realm, i.e. our conscious activity and ideal relations with the world, so the new paradigms need to go in the opposite direction - they need to emphasize how much each individual human can truly accomplish with the Spirit that connects all to all. They need to bring us back from the shores of nihilism. "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible".

[Simon Adams]

But is there any answer other than the old ones that actually work; contemplation, meditation, mindfulness, compassion, charity, forgiveness, treading lightly on the environment, prayer, ritual, detachment from things, humility, fasting etc ?

It seems these have always been the way to connect to the reality behind the representations. They are not always easy, but they’re not that difficult if you have the will over time, and they work. I don’t know how any conceptualisation can bypass them?

[Eugene I]

“Unknowing, or agnosia, is not ignorance or absence of knowledge as ordinarily understood, but rather the realization that no finite knowledge can fully know the Infinite One, and that therefore He is only truly to be approached by agnosia, or by that which is beyond and above knowledge.”
― Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

[AshvinP]

But is there any answer other than the old ones that actually work; contemplation, meditation, mindfulness, compassion, charity, forgiveness, treading lightly on the environment, prayer, ritual, detachment from things, humility, fasting etc ?

It seems these have always been the way to connect to the reality behind the representations. They are not always easy, but they’re not that difficult if you have the will over time, and they work. I don’t know how any conceptualisation can bypass them?

So why do we equate what has "always been the way to connect to the reality" with what will always be the way? To me, that is sort of like saying "it has always been the way for mammals to move using all four limbs", while ignoring that early humans began to walk upright. It is just a flawed assumption which allows us to continue claiming the "inner" world can only be approached in certain private ways. But what are we to make of the 20th century which, as mentioned before, has seen the arrival of rigorous scientific approaches to the workings of mind? Are we simply claiming that has no significance for any long-term spiritual development? It is not about bypassing that which works but adding new tools to our toolbox.

[Simon Adams]

Leave the senses and the workings of the intellect, and all that the sense and the intellect can perceive, and all that is not and that is; and through unknowing reach out, so far as this is possible, toward oneness with him who is beyond all being and knowledge. In this way, through an uncompromising, absolute, and pure detachment from yourself and from all things, transcending all things and released from all, you will be led upwards toward that radiance of the divine darkness that is beyond all being.

Entering the darkness that surpasses understanding, we shall find ourselves brought, not just to brevity of speech, but to perfect silence and unknowing.

Emptied of all knowledge, man is joined in the highest part of himself, not with any created thing, nor with himself, nor with another, but with the one who is altogether
unknowable; and in knowing nothing, he knows in a manner that surpasses understanding.

Pseudo-Dyonysius

[AshvinP]

“Unknowing, or agnosia, is not ignorance or absence of knowledge as ordinarily understood, but rather the realization that no finite knowledge can fully know the Infinite One, and that therefore He is only truly to be approached by agnosia, or by that which is beyond and above knowledge.”
― Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

In relation to the above, Steiner's discussion of Nicholas of Cusa is very helpful:

In [Cusa's] way of thinking one recognizes a peculiar renewal of the ideas we encounter in the writing of a certain Dionysius. Scotus Erigena, mentioned above, had translated this work into Latin. He calls the author “the great and divine revealer.” These writings were first mentioned in the first half of the sixth century. They were ascribed to that Dionysius the Aeropagite mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, who was converted to Christianity by Paul.
...
From the point of view of Nicolas of Cusa therefore, one cannot say that there is only one kind of cognition. Cognition, on the contrary, is clearly divided into what mediates a knowledge of external things, and what is itself the object of which one acquires knowledge. The former kind of cognition rules in the sciences which we acquire concerning the things and processes of the sensory world; the latter kind is in us when we ourselves live in what has been acquired. The second kind of cognition develops from the first. Yet it is the same world to which both kinds of cognition refer, and it is the same man who shares in both. The question must arise, How does it come about that one and the same man develops two kinds of cognition of one and the same world? — The direction in which the answer to this question is to be sought was already indicated in our discussion of Tauler (cf. above).

Here this answer can be formulated even more definitely with regard to Nicolas of Cusa. First of all, man lives as a separate (individual) being among other separate beings. To the influences which the other beings exercise upon one another, in him is added the faculty of (lower) cognition. Through his senses he receives impressions of the other beings, and he works upon these impressions with his spiritual faculties. He directs his spiritual gaze away from external things and looks at himself, at his own activity. Thus self-knowledge arises in him. As long as he remains upon this level of self-knowledge he does not yet look upon himself in the true sense of the word.

He can still believe that there is some hidden entity active within him, and that what appears to him as his activity are only the manifestations and actions of this entity. But the point can come at which it becomes clear to man through an incontrovertible inner experience that in what he perceives and experiences within himself he possesses, not the manifestation, the action, of a hidden force or entity, but this entity itself in its primordial form. He can then say to himself: All other things I encounter in a way ready-made, and I, who stand outside them, add to them what the spirit has to say with regard to them. But in what I myself thus creatively add to things in myself, in that I myself live, that is what I am, that is my own essence. But what is it that speaks in the depths of my spirit? It is knowledge that speaks, the knowledge I have acquired about the things of the world.

But in this knowledge it is not some action, some manifestation which speaks; something speaks which keeps nothing back of what it has in itself. In this knowledge speaks the world in all its immediacy. But I have acquired this knowledge from things and from myself, as from a thing among things. Out of my own essence it is I myself and the things who speak. In reality I no longer merely express my nature; I express the nature of things. My “I” is the form, the organ through which things declare themselves with regard to themselves. I have gained the experience that I experience my own essence within myself, and for me this experience becomes enlarged into another, that in me and through me the universal essence expresses itself, or, in other words, knows itself. Now I can no longer feel myself to be a thing among things; I can only feel myself to be a form in which the universal essence has its life. — It is therefore only natural that one and the same man should have two kinds of cognition.

With regard to the sensory facts he is a thing among things, and, insofar as this is the case, he acquires a knowledge of these things; but at any moment he can have the higher experience that he is the form in which the universal essence looks upon itself. Then he himself is transformed from a thing among things into a form of the universal essence — and with him the knowledge of things is changed into an utterance of the nature of things. This transformation however can in fact be accomplished only by man himself. What is mediated in the higher cognition is not yet present as long as this higher cognition itself is not present. It is only in creating this higher cognition that man develops his nature, and only through the higher cognition of man does the nature of things come into actual existence.

If therefore it is required that man should not add anything to the things of the senses through his higher cognition, but should express only what already lies in them in the outside world, then this simply means renouncing all higher cognition. — From the fact that, as regards his sensory life, man is a thing among things, and that he only attains higher cognition when as a sensory being he himself accomplishes his transformation into a higher being, from this it follows that he can never replace the one cognition by the other. Rather, his spiritual life consists of a perpetual moving to and fro between the two poles of cognition, between knowing and seeing.

If he shuts himself off from seeing, he foregoes the nature of things; if he were to shut himself off from sensory knowing, he would deprive himself of the things whose nature he wants to understand. — The same things reveal themselves to the lower understanding and to the higher seeing, only they do this at one time with regard to their external appearance, at the other time with regard to their inner essence. — Thus it is not due to things themselves that at a certain stage they appear only as external objects; rather it is due to the fact that man must first transform himself to the point where he can reach the stage at which things cease to be external.
-Steiner, Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age

[Simon Adams]

So why do we equate what has "always been the way to connect to the reality" with what will always be the way? To me, that is sort of like saying "it has always been the way for mammals to move using all four limbs", while ignoring that early humans began to walk upright. It is just a flawed assumption which allows us to continue claiming the "inner" world can only be approached in certain private ways. But what are we to make of the 20th century which, as mentioned before, has seen the arrival of rigorous scientific approaches to the workings of mind? Are we simply claiming that has no significance for any long-term spiritual development? It is not about bypassing that which works but adding new tools to our toolbox.

I just think they are fundamentally different ways of knowing. The deeper you go the less there is anything you can say about it. I don’t think science gives us any tools whatsoever for the spiritual journey. It can study the health of people who meditate or have faith, try to work out what aspects relate to living longer or being healthier etc, but as I’ve said a few times, I think science is so far from understanding these things that at present there is a categorical difference - it’s comparing apples and oranges.

Maybe psychology offers a kind of in between world that’s not really science and not spiritual either, but nonetheless crosses both domains. However even in this, I find the simple insights of someone like M Scott Peck show that the more we understand, the more we realise the truth of the old insights. In some ways you could say he was the original Jordan Peterson, although perhaps he accepted the reality behind the archetypes more readily.

He has his own version of Fowlers psychological development stages, from I-centric to we-centric, and ultimately for some, us-centric. They are broadly;

1. Anti-social/Chaotic
2. Formal/Institutional
3. Doubt/Skepticism
4. Mystical/Communion

For your average US evangelical christian, stage 2 seems to be the goal. For those with a science bent, the aim is of course stage 3 (although many of course remain in a science oriented stage 2). Stage 4 are always the ones that are beyond the need of psychology, and that transition is almost entirely outside of the intellect.

[AshvinP]

So why do we equate what has "always been the way to connect to the reality" with what will always be the way? To me, that is sort of like saying "it has always been the way for mammals to move using all four limbs", while ignoring that early humans began to walk upright. It is just a flawed assumption which allows us to continue claiming the "inner" world can only be approached in certain private ways. But what are we to make of the 20th century which, as mentioned before, has seen the arrival of rigorous scientific approaches to the workings of mind? Are we simply claiming that has no significance for any long-term spiritual development? It is not about bypassing that which works but adding new tools to our toolbox.

I just think they are fundamentally different ways of knowing. The deeper you go the less there is anything you can say about it. I don’t think science gives us any tools whatsoever for the spiritual journey. It can study the health of people who meditate or have faith, try to work out what aspects relate to living longer or being healthier etc, but as I’ve said a few times, I think science is so far from understanding these things that at present there is a categorical difference - it’s comparing apples and oranges.

Maybe psychology offers a kind of in between world that’s not really science and not spiritual either, but nonetheless crosses both domains. However even in this, I find the simple insights of someone like M Scott Peck show that the more we understand, the more we realise the truth of the old insights. In some ways you could say he was the original Jordan Peterson, although perhaps he accepted the reality behind the archetypes more readily.

He has his own version of Fowlers psychological development stages, from I-centric to we-centric, and ultimately for some, us-centric. They are broadly;

1. Anti-social/Chaotic
2. Formal/Institutional
3. Doubt/Skepticism
4. Mystical/Communion

For your average US evangelical christian, stage 2 seems to be the goal. For those with a science bent, the aim is of course stage 3 (although many of course remain in a science oriented stage 2). Stage 4 are always the ones that are beyond the need of psychology, and that transition is almost entirely outside of the intellect.

Again Steiner is very helpful to consider here re: Cusa and different ways of knowledge.

It is just on the point under consideration here that Nicolas of Cusa has excellent ideas. His keeping the lower and the higher cognition clearly separated from each other permits him on the one hand to gain a full insight into the fact that as a sensory being man can have within himself only processes which must, as effects, be unlike the corresponding external processes; on the other hand, it preserves him from confusing the inner processes with the facts which appear in our field of perception and which, in their immediacy, are neither outside nor inside, but are elevated above this contrast. — Nicolas was “prevented by his priestly cloth” from following without reservations the path which this insight indicated to him. We see him making a good beginning with the advance from “knowing” to “not-knowing.”

But at the same time we must observe that in the field of “not-knowing” he has nothing to show except the theological teachings which are offered to us by the Scholastics also. It is true that he knows how to develop this theological content in an ingenious manner: on providence, Christ, the creation of the world, man's redemption, the moral life, he presents teachings which are altogether in line with dogmatic Christianity. It would have been in keeping with his spiritual direction to say: I have confidence that human nature, having immersed itself in the sciences of things on all sides, is able from within itself to transform this “knowing” into a “not-knowing,” hence that the highest cognition brings satisfaction. Then he would not have accepted, as he has, the traditional ideas of soul, immortality, redemption, God, creation, the Trinity, etc., but would have upheld those which he himself had found.

But Nicolas, personally was so penetrated with the concepts of Christianity that he could well believe he was awakening his own proper “not-knowing” within himself, while he was only putting forth the traditional views in which he had been educated — However it must be considered that he was standing before a fateful abyss in human spiritual life. He was a scientific man. And science at first removes man from the innocent concord in which he exists with the world as long as the conduct of his life is a purely naïve one. In such a conduct of life man dimly feels his connection with the totality of the universe. He is a being like others, integrated into the chain of natural effects. With knowledge he separates himself from this whole. He creates a spiritual world within himself. With it he confronts nature in solitude. He has become richer, but this wealth is a burden which he bears with difficulty.

For at first it weighs upon him alone. He must find the way back to nature through his own resources. He must understand that now he himself must integrate his wealth into the chain of universal effects, as nature herself had integrated his poverty before. It is here that all the evil demons lie in wait for man. His strength can easily fail. Instead of accomplishing the integration himself, when this occurs, he will take refuge in a revelation from the outside, which again delivers him from his solitude, and leads the knowledge he feels to be a burden back into the primordial origin of existence, the Divinity.

He will think, as did Nicolas of Cusa, that he is walking his own road, while in reality he will only find the one his spiritual development has shown him. Now there are three roads — in the main — upon which one can walk when one arrives where Nicolas had arrived: one is positive faith, which comes to us from outside; the second is despair: one stands alone with one's burden and feels all existence tottering with oneself; the third road is the development of man's own deepest faculties. Confidence in the world must be one leader along this third road. Courage to follow this confidence, no matter where it leads, must be the other.

[Eugene I]

"With regard to the sensory facts he is a thing among things, and, insofar as this is the case, he acquires a knowledge of these things; but at any moment he can have the higher experience that he is the form in which the universal essence looks upon itself. Then he himself is transformed from a thing among things into a form of the universal essence — and with him the knowledge of things is changed into an utterance of the nature of things.

Thus it is not due to things themselves that at a certain stage they appear only as external objects; rather it is due to the fact that man must first transform himself to the point where he can reach the stage at which things cease to be external.
Steiner, Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age"

WOW, I'm becoming a Steiner's fan, he is spot on, and that is exactly what I was saying all along: what you called "higher cognition" is exactly " universal essence looking upon itself", looking meaning directly and consciously experiencing-knowing itself prior to any rational cognition. It is Consciousness being experientially aware of itself, of its own existence and "essence" in every form and thing that unfolds in it. There is a reason this knowing is called "knowing" (gnosis) and "unknowing" (agnosia) at the same time, because it is a different kind of knowing, not rational or cognitive, but direct/existential/experiential.

I think, Ashvin, you misinterpret such "higher cognition" as a kind of cognitive gnosis, but only of some kind of a higher order. But what all those mystics, Western and Eastern alike, were pointing to is a different kind of knowing - gnosis and agnosis at the same time, immediate, existential/experiential and prior to any cognition.

"With an empty mind and open heart, let yourself be naked before grace... Let yourself sleep in this dark awareness of God as he is."
Anonymous, The Cloud of Unknowing

"no finite knowledge can fully know the Infinite One, and that therefore He is only truly to be approached by agnosia, or by that which is beyond and above knowledge.”
― Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite

[Simon Adams]

I have to admit that I just don’t really get Steiner. He just doesn’t resonate with me on any level. I assume he must have some good insights, but they just don’t really register fully with me for some reason.