How Nature looks

[findingblanks]

When discussion the 'dashboard' theory of perception, BK will often say things like, "So the trees, and clouds, and mountains are not how nature really looks but they are the dials we use to navigate ourselves through reality."

I fully get and agree with his point regarding our perceptions not being veridical 'pictures' of reality. This is an important point I feel he makes it very well. However, one of the greatest blemishes that materialism has left on the world (in my opinion) is what Coleridge called 'the despotism of the eye.' Sometimes he called it the 'tyranny of the eye.' This is the tendency to implicitly assume that causes are fundamentally something that could be perceived if we simply had powerful enough instruments of perception. The tyranny of the eye expresses itself not only in explicit theories of reality like physicalism, but, perhaps even more perniciously, it deeply shapes even non-physicalist ways of trying to understand reality.

While I understand and appreciate Bernardo's 'dashboard' metaphor (and Hoffman's interface metaphor) of perception, I feel he goes to far in stressing the fact that they are not veridical (which should be stressed) by saying, "This is not at all how nature appears"

Coleridge, Goethe, Steiner, Barfield and many others who share the 'dashboard' understanding (in their own ways) would say that it is important that we actually realize deep into our bones (or into our 'figuration' as Barfield would stress) that, actually, the trees and clouds and mountains we see are exactly nature's appearance. Once we drop naïve realism, we can easily slide into various forms of the 'idols of the study' or non-participative ways of experiencing nature. Somebody could have very accurate idealist ontology and still be holding it and living their lives in a very deadened way that treats the images of the natural world as literal 'dials' and 'icons' rather than the sumptuous and direct expressions of Nature herself that they literally are.

Again, my worry here is not around the metaphor. The metaphors are great. But the metaphors themselves hint at being produced by the 'tyranny of the eye' and this is possible made evident when Bernardo (and Hoffman in his way) drop the metaphor yet continue to speak of Nature herself in a way that implies the appearances are living representations of her visceral and participated meaning.

My comments can be boiled down to merely saying that I think an important aspect of the idealist ontology is lost when we repeatedly hear statements like, "These are not what reality looks like!"

Yes, they are exactly how Nature manifests via each unique being's organization. Or as Barfield says '{When we} sense the energy in the center of ourselves identified with the energy of which external nature is an image, {we are} being intensely aware of our participation.'

That 'energy' is an intuitive recognition of 'being' which is perceived within/as the trees, clouds, mountains and rivers.

To say that Nature does not look like a river is to lose our footing to take the next real steps with our ontology, methinks.

[findingblanks]

To claim that the tree or cloud or mountain is not how Nature appears seems to leave behind all objective beauty that idealism gives us to look forward to.

"To be intensely aware of participation is to feel the center of energy in ourselves identified with the energy of which external nature is the image." - Owen Barfield

and a relatively new one for me, shared recently by the friend who introduced me to Bernardo's work:

“We first share the life by which things exist and afterwards see them as appearances in nature and forget that we have shared their cause.” - Emerson

As long as we don't only take Emerson's 'first' and 'afterwards' literally, I really love how that expresses Barfield's final participation.

On the one hand Bernardo often stresses that a great thing about idealism is that-- unlike the way materialism reduces the beauty of nature to a mere 'picture' that looks nothing like reality -- idealism explains that the beauty of the clouds and flowers and mountains is direct and real.

And yet on the other hand-- often when explaining his 'dashboard' metaphor -- Bernardo stresses over and over that the clouds, flowers, and mountains are merely dials that help us get around in a reality that looks nothing like the dials. I get the whole point about the 'dashboard', but to the extent that it leads even Bernardo to state that a cloud looks nothing like nature, I think we need a reality check. We can remain clear regarding the point of the metaphor and yet stil realize that nature indeed has very specific (often beautiful and terrifying) looks, each presented via the unique pathway of the various alters that peek out at Her. To claim Nature doesn't appear as the beautiful flower (because it is merely a dial on our dashboard) is to get lost in the metaphor, methinks.

[AshvinP]

When discussion the 'dashboard' theory of perception, BK will often say things like, "So the trees, and clouds, and mountains are not how nature really looks but they are the dials we use to navigate ourselves through reality."

I fully get and agree with his point regarding our perceptions not being veridical 'pictures' of reality. This is an important point I feel he makes it very well. However, one of the greatest blemishes that materialism has left on the world (in my opinion) is what Coleridge called 'the despotism of the eye.' Sometimes he called it the 'tyranny of the eye.' This is the tendency to implicitly assume that causes are fundamentally something that could be perceived if we simply had powerful enough instruments of perception. The tyranny of the eye expresses itself not only in explicit theories of reality like physicalism, but, perhaps even more perniciously, it deeply shapes even non-physicalist ways of trying to understand reality.

While I understand and appreciate Bernardo's 'dashboard' metaphor (and Hoffman's interface metaphor) of perception, I feel he goes to far in stressing the fact that they are not veridical (which should be stressed) by saying, "This is not at all how nature appears"

Coleridge, Goethe, Steiner, Barfield and many others who share the 'dashboard' understanding (in their own ways) would say that it is important that we actually realize deep into our bones (or into our 'figuration' as Barfield would stress) that, actually, the trees and clouds and mountains we see are exactly nature's appearance. Once we drop naïve realism, we can easily slide into various forms of the 'idols of the study' or non-participative ways of experiencing nature. Somebody could have very accurate idealist ontology and still be holding it and living their lives in a very deadened way that treats the images of the natural world as literal 'dials' and 'icons' rather than the sumptuous and direct expressions of Nature herself that they literally are.

Again, my worry here is not around the metaphor. The metaphors are great. But the metaphors themselves hint at being produced by the 'tyranny of the eye' and this is possible made evident when Bernardo (and Hoffman in his way) drop the metaphor yet continue to speak of Nature herself in a way that implies the appearances are living representations of her visceral and participated meaning.

My comments can be boiled down to merely saying that I think an important aspect of the idealist ontology is lost when we repeatedly hear statements like, "These are not what reality looks like!"

Yes, they are exactly how Nature manifests via each unique being's organization. Or as Barfield says '{When we} sense the energy in the center of ourselves identified with the energy of which external nature is an image, {we are} being intensely aware of our participation.'

That 'energy' is an intuitive recognition of 'being' which is perceived within/as the trees, clouds, mountains and rivers.

To say that Nature does not look like a river is to lose our footing to take the next real steps with our ontology, methinks.

I get your concern here and think it is valid in the modern era - if we stray too far into the "Nature is dashboard illusion", then we start to lose all interest and curiosity of what can be gained by studying natural processes of the world. We start to think there is no point in pursuing any such deep penetration into Nature's living dynamics, because the gap between phenomenon and noumenon seems too vast to bridge.

That being said, I am not sure whether I would put BK and Hoffman in that "illusionist" camp. It is definitely accurate for them to claim the collective representations (Barfield) of the phenomenal world do not resemble the underlying relations of idea-beings which produce them. Those relations are ideal in essence, so there is no physical structure or quantitative properties to them. We cannot look at on the natural world, see a river and assume that is what the idea-beings producing the river would look like if we are able to them.

[Czinczar]

If you open my skull you will see my brain, but it will tell you nothing about my inner life. I am the thing in itself and so I know for certain that the way it looks like to you or even to me has absolutely nothing in common with being the thing in itself. According to BK, the same goes for the mind at large : the way it looks like, the way it appears to us has nothing in common with the thing in itself, which is made of mental states of the same nature as your own mental states at this very moment.

Then there is evolution, which according to BK and Donald Hoffman, didn't favor truth, but adaptation and survival. And since according to BK, what we call the physical world, the atoms and electrons, are a category of our perception, a production of our consciousness, it is very unlikely that these appearances are close to the truth of the thing in itself. What we see is the interface that we have inherited through evolution. Not only we don't see the thing in itself, but we aren't even sure that what we see accounts for everything that really exists.

[findingblanks]

"That being said, I am not sure whether I would put BK and Hoffman in that "illusionist" camp. It is definitely accurate for them to claim the collective representations (Barfield) of the phenomenal world do not resemble the underlying relations of idea-beings which produce them. Those relations are ideal in essence, so there is no physical structure or quantitative properties to them. We cannot look at on the natural world, see a river and assume that is what the idea-beings producing the river would look like if we are able to them."

In a similar way, we know that the words of a poem are nothing like the reality which they explicate. Sure, we can notice that the words are like dials and meters that help us 'navigate' the poem. Without them, we would not even notice that a poem is surrounding us

But just because 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune', as words printed on a page or specific shapings of sound, are nothing like their meaning, they are nearly perfect expressions of their meaning and THE meaning has given itself as fully as it can to them.

To treat them as dials and dashboards can be an accurate way of pointing to one aspect of what they are. In the context of the philosophy of science, this is why Bernardo's 'dashboard' analogy is wonderful. I only worry because I see that aspects of the dashboard metaphor are leaking - or seem to be- into other domains, coloring more than the narrow point they intend to make. In general, I see them smuggling in a stance towards nature that was perfected by the physicalism they are fighting against, a detached stance that still views the surrounding world as if it is filled with the idols of the study. Because, at the end of the day, a dashboard and a laptop interface are just utilitarian objects. They aren't the speaking of a living meaning. But they really really are!

When discussion the 'dashboard' theory of perception, BK will often say things like, "So the trees, and clouds, and mountains are not how nature really looks but they are the dials we use to navigate ourselves through reality."

I fully get and agree with his point regarding our perceptions not being veridical 'pictures' of reality. This is an important point I feel he makes it very well. However, one of the greatest blemishes that materialism has left on the world (in my opinion) is what Coleridge called 'the despotism of the eye.' Sometimes he called it the 'tyranny of the eye.' This is the tendency to implicitly assume that causes are fundamentally something that could be perceived if we simply had powerful enough instruments of perception. The tyranny of the eye expresses itself not only in explicit theories of reality like physicalism, but, perhaps even more perniciously, it deeply shapes even non-physicalist ways of trying to understand reality.

While I understand and appreciate Bernardo's 'dashboard' metaphor (and Hoffman's interface metaphor) of perception, I feel he goes to far in stressing the fact that they are not veridical (which should be stressed) by saying, "This is not at all how nature appears"

Coleridge, Goethe, Steiner, Barfield and many others who share the 'dashboard' understanding (in their own ways) would say that it is important that we actually realize deep into our bones (or into our 'figuration' as Barfield would stress) that, actually, the trees and clouds and mountains we see are exactly nature's appearance. Once we drop naïve realism, we can easily slide into various forms of the 'idols of the study' or non-participative ways of experiencing nature. Somebody could have very accurate idealist ontology and still be holding it and living their lives in a very deadened way that treats the images of the natural world as literal 'dials' and 'icons' rather than the sumptuous and direct expressions of Nature herself that they literally are.

Again, my worry here is not around the metaphor. The metaphors are great. But the metaphors themselves hint at being produced by the 'tyranny of the eye' and this is possible made evident when Bernardo (and Hoffman in his way) drop the metaphor yet continue to speak of Nature herself in a way that implies the appearances are living representations of her visceral and participated meaning.

My comments can be boiled down to merely saying that I think an important aspect of the idealist ontology is lost when we repeatedly hear statements like, "These are not what reality looks like!"

Yes, they are exactly how Nature manifests via each unique being's organization. Or as Barfield says '{When we} sense the energy in the center of ourselves identified with the energy of which external nature is an image, {we are} being intensely aware of our participation.'

That 'energy' is an intuitive recognition of 'being' which is perceived within/as the trees, clouds, mountains and rivers.

To say that Nature does not look like a river is to lose our footing to take the next real steps with our ontology, methinks.

I get your concern here and think it is valid in the modern era - if we stray too far into the "Nature is dashboard illusion", then we start to lose all interest and curiosity of what can be gained by studying natural processes of the world. We start to think there is no point in pursuing any such deep penetration into Nature's living dynamics, because the gap between phenomenon and noumenon seems too vast to bridge.

That being said, I am not sure whether I would put BK and Hoffman in that "illusionist" camp. It is definitely accurate for them to claim the collective representations (Barfield) of the phenomenal world do not resemble the underlying relations of idea-beings which produce them. Those relations are ideal in essence, so there is no physical structure or quantitative properties to them. We cannot look at on the natural world, see a river and assume that is what the idea-beings producing the river would look like if we are able to them.

[findingblanks]

"That being said, I am not sure whether I would put BK and Hoffman in that "illusionist" camp. It is definitely accurate for them to claim the collective representations (Barfield) of the phenomenal world do not resemble the underlying relations of idea-beings which produce them. Those relations are ideal in essence, so there is no physical structure or quantitative properties to them. We cannot look at on the natural world, see a river and assume that is what the idea-beings producing the river would look like if we are able to them."

In a similar way, we know that the words of a poem are nothing like the reality which they explicate. Sure, we can notice that the words are like dials and meters that help us 'navigate' the poem. Without them, we would not even notice that a poem is surrounding us

But just because 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune', as words printed on a page or specific shapings of sound, are nothing like their meaning, they are nearly perfect expressions of their meaning and THE meaning has given itself as fully as it can to them.

To treat them as dials and dashboards can be an accurate way of pointing to one aspect of what they are. In the context of the philosophy of science, this is why Bernardo's 'dashboard' analogy is wonderful. I only worry because I see that aspects of the dashboard metaphor are leaking - or seem to be- into other domains, coloring more than the narrow point they intend to make. In general, I see them smuggling in a stance towards nature that was perfected by the physicalism they are fighting against, a detached stance that still views the surrounding world as if it is filled with the idols of the study. Because, at the end of the day, a dashboard and a laptop interface are just utilitarian objects. They aren't the speaking of a living meaning. But they really really are!

[findingblanks]

Hi Czinczar,

"If you open my skull you will see my brain, but it will tell you nothing about my inner life. I am the thing in itself and so I know for certain that the way it looks like to you or even to me has absolutely nothing in common with being the thing in itself."

Yes! And if you show an incredible poem to a person with no language or reading capacity, it'll appear as a black-and-white scramble of strange lines. It might even resemble a brain in it's squiggly randomness. It certainly won't look like the meaning of the poem that it perfectly embodies.

So we must learn to read nature.

"And since according to BK, what we call the physical world, the atoms and electrons, are a category of our perception, a production of our consciousness, it is very unlikely that these appearances are close to the truth of the thing in itself."

Well put. Words fall into the category of perception and, therefore, we should not be surprised that words look nothing like the endogenous reality they carry forward into our experience. We won't find the meaning of the words by simply studying their contours. We learn language by paying loving and close attention to our caretakers. Nature is working hard to provide all that we need.

We must learn to read nature.

Thanks so much for sharing.

[AshvinP]

"That being said, I am not sure whether I would put BK and Hoffman in that "illusionist" camp. It is definitely accurate for them to claim the collective representations (Barfield) of the phenomenal world do not resemble the underlying relations of idea-beings which produce them. Those relations are ideal in essence, so there is no physical structure or quantitative properties to them. We cannot look at on the natural world, see a river and assume that is what the idea-beings producing the river would look like if we are able to them."

In a similar way, we know that the words of a poem are nothing like the reality which they explicate. Sure, we can notice that the words are like dials and meters that help us 'navigate' the poem. Without them, we would not even notice that a poem is surrounding us

But just because 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune', as words printed on a page or specific shapings of sound, are nothing like their meaning, they are nearly perfect expressions of their meaning and THE meaning has given itself as fully as it can to them.

To treat them as dials and dashboards can be an accurate way of pointing to one aspect of what they are. In the context of the philosophy of science, this is why Bernardo's 'dashboard' analogy is wonderful. I only worry because I see that aspects of the dashboard metaphor are leaking - or seem to be- into other domains, coloring more than the narrow point they intend to make. In general, I see them smuggling in a stance towards nature that was perfected by the physicalism they are fighting against, a detached stance that still views the surrounding world as if it is filled with the idols of the study. Because, at the end of the day, a dashboard and a laptop interface are just utilitarian objects. They aren't the speaking of a living meaning. But they really really are!

Yes I agree. The Kantian divide can easily be smuggled in if we are not careful with these analogies. Or not really smuggled in, because it's always been there in Western philosophical tradition. So we have to actively and continuously try to overcome it. There is an especially potent danger when not only are the bare perceptions of natural process treated as dials, but the principles underlying those natural processes and the meaning of those principles are also treated as completely fictional. I will give credit to BK here for consistently calling himself "naturalist" to make clear there is no divide between natural processes in their essence and underlying Reality.

[findingblanks]

"I will give credit to BK here for consistently calling himself "naturalist" to make clear there is no divide between natural processes in their essence and underlying Reality."

Yeah, and I personally give BK credit for demonstrating that you can congruently consider yourself a naturalist in a manner that doesn't deny any objective patterns of experience that are reported by other living beings.

I personally agree with the general point that M@L isn't not meta-consciousness and I appreciate that BK has provided a very clear cognitive space in which I can explore the kind of evolution that Coleridge was trying to get at, along with Goethe and anybody else who worked from a participatory view of nature.