Criticism

[JeffreyW]

The first part is true and I agree, Goethe does not hold to any 'transcendental' realm of abstract metaphysical concepts which explain Nature, but the bold part is something you have added without any warrant and contrary to all evidence in Goethe's writings. The person who wrote Faust did not think "everything is made apparent" in the mere perceptions of the world, especially the richness of the normally invisible spiritual reality. The very idea of his archetypal proto-plant, which he perceived but Schiller did not, refutes that assertion. I suspect the reason you are adding this onto his thought is intimately related to #2.





It took us awhile to circle back to my original criticism in the first few pages of this thread, but the above indicates you are holding to Kant's epistemology in CoPR, which I flatly reject. What you write above is exactly what I am saying is the result of implicit dualism and naive realism, even though I am well aware Kant assumed he had overcome both. That is why he failed to notice the inconsistency in his own argument within a span of a few pages. It assumes "sense perception" is only what comes through our eyes, ears, noses, mouths, and touch, but not any content which comes through our conceptual activity, which he calls concepts of "pure reason". That simple error embeds metaphysical dualism and naive realism within it, and all subsequent Reasoning, ironically, is thrown off by those flawed assumptions.








Steiner's illustration above should clarify this. Reason is not only a means to a deeper reality, but the only way in which we can make sense of terribly fragmented sense-perceptions which do not resemble the living reality undergirding them whatsoever (in this example, the living and growing rosebud) . The "continual process of development" does not occur without our Reason. The latter is a temporal manifestation of Logic which continues to evolve. Reason is the last mode of cognition evolved through humanity and will be the first to be transfigured into a new mode, but what applies to the rosebud also applies to our own cognition - if we treat the recent stage of Reason as a black hole of genuine knowledge, we have practically stopped observing our cognitive development and will thereby have an incomplete picture of Logos as such.

1. This flatly contradicts your assertion:

Die Bläue des Himmels offenbart uns das Grundgesetz der Chromatik.

How? It says nothing of "everything made apparent" in the blue sky.

2. Why are you attributing Kant’s epistemology, which I only summarized, to me?

I don't know. You really don't make it easy to figure out what your position is with these short and cryptic answers. Earlier you were adopting various positions for sake of argument without tellying anyone that was what you were doing I really didn't want to get into any other thinkers anyway, which is why I am trying to focus only on the phenomenology of perceiving-thinking.

It literally says makes apparent (offenbart) the grounding law of color, and hides nothing behind it.

[Eugene I]

In light of all this, I see no way to support the metaphysical assertion that Reason leads to deeper truth. Just the opposite.

Good overview.

From idealist standpoint one of the unwarranted assumptions in Steiner's philosophy is that if reality is meaningful it necessarily implies that it is reasonable and knowable by cognitive faculty of reasoning. But that it not necessarily true. The reality can be meaningful but still unreasonable/a-reasonable. There are plenty of examples of meanings that have nothing to do with reason, such as esthetic, musical, mystical etc.

[Martin_]

I wrote all this at the beginning, but it was generally ignored so I’ll do it again. In the 19th century, reason had become a questionable basis for knowledge. Of course, Nietzsche was the most prominent philosopher to refute the validity of reason, but those from other fields played a role. Henri Poincare, a prominent mathematician and physicist, played an important role with his essay on The Four Geometries, in which he demonstrated that four geometries with contradicting premises could be equally internally consistent, suggesting that rational systems are artificial constructions.

Eugene Wigner, a Nobel Prize winning physicist, later expanded this idea in his often misunderstood but seminally important essay: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences. His ironic use of “Unreasonable” is often missed. In the essay he demonstrates two important principles:
Given the same data, time, and space, multiple explanations can be given that are equally sound given their premises. For example, both heliocentric and geocentric theories accurately predicted the movements of the night sky.

All rational systems break down at some point. Newtonian physics accurately describes the thin slice or reality in which our reason evolved, but breaks down when we expand the scope either micro or macro. Relativity and quantum physics describe their own realm accurately, but flatly contradict each other and Newtonian physics. He goes on to propose his Epistemological Law of Empiricism, which says that any rational system is an imposition of order on a limited number of events, space, and time, and this apparent order will always tear apart as we expand the spatial and temporal scope, or the number of events. The persistent failure to achieve any unification theory only underscores this.

Quantum mechanics describes an irrational reality that violates both the identity principle through superposition, and the principle of sufficient reason through indeterminacy, again suggesting that Reason is a practical adaptation suited for reducing reality to icons that can be manipulated and predicted within a very narrow band of reality, but no applicability beyond that.

Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem shows the impossibility to justify any rational system. From this, Penrose determines that the most elemental reality is non-computational and arational.

Rovelli demonstrates that all order is an illusion made possible only through “ignorance”, by which he means blurring almost all of reality to a few related events in a subsystem, the appearance of which disappears back into the chaotic spin foam when we reduce the myopia.

In light of all this, I see no way to support the metaphysical assertion that Reason leads to deeper truth. Just the opposite.

These are all valid points and need to be considered. They point towards something important.
However, I disagree with your conclusion.

I posit (for the moment) that Reason is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for getting to the deeper truth.
When I have my "Meaningful Insights", Reason is definitely one faculty that I used to get there.

[Eugene I]

These are all valid points and need to be considered. They point towards something important.
However, I disagree with your conclusion.

I posit (for the moment) that Reason is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for getting to the deeper truth.
When I have my "Meaningful Insights", Reason is definitely one faculty that I used to get there.

100% agree

[Cleric K]

From idealist standpoint one of the unwarranted assumptions in Steiner's philosophy is that if reality is meaningful it necessarily implies that it is reasonable and knowable by cognitive faculty of reasoning. But that it not necessarily true. The reality can be meaningful but still unreasonable/a-reasonable. There are plenty of examples of meanings that have nothing to do with reason, such as esthetic, musical, mystical etc.

I posit (for the moment) that Reason is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for getting to the deeper truth.
When I have my "Meaningful Insights", Reason is definitely one faculty that I used to get there.

Would I be wrong to say that in the both cases above, when speaking about Reason, you actually imagine the intellect? Abstract arrangements of concepts that try to make a mental picture of reality through their own means?

[Eugene I]

Would I be wrong to say that in the both cases above, when speaking about Reason, you actually imagine the intellect? Abstract arrangements of concepts that try to make a mental picture of reality through their own means?

Not necessarily, it may be intuitive. But before we go into this discussion, can you give us your description or definition of Reason? What is this term referring to in our conscious/thinking experience?

I also like you posts that are less than 3-pages long

[Martin_]

From idealist standpoint one of the unwarranted assumptions in Steiner's philosophy is that if reality is meaningful it necessarily implies that it is reasonable and knowable by cognitive faculty of reasoning. But that it not necessarily true. The reality can be meaningful but still unreasonable/a-reasonable. There are plenty of examples of meanings that have nothing to do with reason, such as esthetic, musical, mystical etc.

I posit (for the moment) that Reason is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for getting to the deeper truth.
When I have my "Meaningful Insights", Reason is definitely one faculty that I used to get there.

Would I be wrong to say that in the both cases above, when speaking about Reason, you actually imagine the intellect? Abstract arrangements of concepts that try to make a mental picture of reality through their own means?

Yes. I think (!) so. something which needs to be added to that (in order to satisfy "sufficient") is the contextuality which you referred to when we were discussing fractals. the union of that might be Thinking. There is some kind of dynamic interplay in there which is hart to put words on.

[AshvinP]

JW,

I have written the following multiple times as well, but it has been ignored, so I will write it again. The reason you conclude what you do in your last comment is, ironically, you have stopped observing the development of philosophical and scientific-mathematic systems over human history and reasoning through their manifestations as soon as you reach your desired conclusion (Reason cannot lead to deeper understanding of reality). All error in the modern age is born of incompleteness in that manner, and your metaphysical errors here are no different. They are metaphysical because they have nothing to do with the scientific results per se, but only your interpretation of them based on dualist and naive realist assumptions. (this is why Eugene agrees with you... he holds the same assumptions).

The claim that reason is the means to a unified living reality is merely a metaphysical assertion, and one that current understanding of the universe flatly contradicts. It gives me no basis to believe that the fragments themselves aren’t indicative of reality and Reason is merely our practical construction.

The bold is clearly naive realism (and functionally equivalent to Kant's epistemology). It is basically saying that any process extended through time is only reflecting our inner conceptual reality (which also embeds subject-object dualism) and nothing belonging to the temporal phenomena we are observing, such as a rosebud growing. The only way around that is to then claim the momentary fragments also do not indicate anything about reality, i.e. they are only 'pixels' on our computer screen which do not resemble the underlying 'hardware' whatsoever (which I partially agree with). What is missed in such an argument is that one must first assume naive realism to avoid naive realism in that manner. This is what Kant and Schop did - they had to assume some aspect of perception is naively real in order to provide a foundation for ruling out those aspects which come to us via thoughtful reasoning activity. I am providing the argument for why below and will come back to your other points later, because this one really needs to be contemplated and understood first.

Let us look a little closer at the way it has been constructed. One starts with what is given in naïve consciousness, with the thing as perceived. Then one shows that none of the qualities which we find in this thing would exist for us had we no sense organs. No eye — no color. Therefore the color is not yet present in that which affects the eye. It arises first through the interaction of the eye and the object. The latter is, therefore, colorless. But neither is the color in the eye, for in the eye there is only a chemical or physical process which is first conducted by the optic nerve to the brain, and there initiates another process. Even this is not yet the color. That is only produced in the soul by means of the brain process. Even then it does not yet enter my consciousness, but is first transferred by the soul to a body in the external world. There, upon this body, I finally believe myself to perceive it. We have traveled in a complete circle. We became conscious of a colored body. That is the first thing. Here the thought operation starts. If I had no eye, the body would be, for me, colorless. I cannot therefore attribute the color to the body. I start on the search for it. I look for it in the eye — in vain; in the nerve — in vain; in the brain — in vain once more; in the soul — here I find it indeed, but not attached to the body. I find the colored body again only on returning to my starting point. The circle is completed. I believe that I am cognizing as a product of my soul that which the naïve man regards as existing outside him, in space.

As long as one stops here everything seems to fit beautifully. But we must go over the whole thing again from the beginning. Hitherto I have been dealing with something — the external percept — of which, from my naïve standpoint, I have had until now a totally wrong conception. I thought that the percept, just as I perceive it, had objective existence. But now I observe that it disappears together with my mental picture, that it is only a modification of my inner state of soul. Have I, then, any right at all to start from it in my arguments? Can I say of it that it acts on my soul? I must henceforth treat the table, of which formerly I believed that it acted on me and produced a mental picture of itself in me, as itself a mental picture. But from this it follows logically that my sense organs and the processes in them are also merely subjective. I have no right to speak of a real eye but only of my mental picture of the eye. Exactly the same is true of the nerve paths, and the brain process, and no less of the process in the soul itself, through which things are supposed to be built up out of the chaos of manifold sensations. If, assuming the truth of the first circle of argumentation, I run through the steps of my act of cognition once more, the latter reveals itself as a tissue of mental pictures which, as such, cannot act on one another. I cannot say that my mental picture of the object acts on my mental picture of the eye, and that from this interaction my mental picture of color results. Nor is it necessary that I should say this. For as soon as I see clearly that my sense organs and their activity, my nerve and soul processes, can also be known to me only through perception, the train of thought which I have outlined reveals itself in its full absurdity.

The way of thinking here described, known as critical idealism, in contrast to the standpoint of naïve consciousness known as naïve realism, makes the mistake of characterizing the one percept as mental picture while taking the other in the very same sense as does the naïve realism which it apparently refutes. It wants to prove that percepts have the character of mental pictures by naïvely accepting the percepts connected with one's own organism as objectively valid facts; and over and above this, it fails to see that it confuses two spheres of observation, between which it can find no connection.

Critical idealism [Kant and Schop] can refute naïve realism only by itself assuming, in naïve-realistic fashion, that one's own organism has objective existence. As soon as the idealist realizes that the percepts connected with his own organism are exactly of the same nature as those which naïve realism assumes to have objective existence, he can no longer use those percepts as a safe foundation for his theory.

It must also be pointed out once again that everything that you conclude about math and science in your last comment presupposes Reason as a means to deeper reality. To be truly consistent, you would have to refrain from writing anything at all about modern science and what it tells us about the ability or inability of Reason to penetrate deeper layers of reality. I know this seems "unfair" to most people, because it is an immediate refutation of the anti-Reason argument, which is self-defeating in that manner, but that does not make it any less true or any less of an argument you must contend with.

[Martin_]

Would I be wrong to say that in the both cases above, when speaking about Reason, you actually imagine the intellect? Abstract arrangements of concepts that try to make a mental picture of reality through their own means?

Not necessarily, it may be intuitive. But before we go into this discussion, can you give us your description or definition of Reason? What is this term referring to in our conscious/thinking experience?

I also like you posts that are less than 3-pages long

Right. I almost asked that as well. words words words. Our oh so limiting mode of communication...

[Ben Iscatus]

Right. I almost asked that as well. words words words. Our oh so limiting mode of communication...

I think what all this shows is that we need a glossary of Spiritual Science. If it doesn't exist, would somebody write one? I'd appreciate it.