Criticism

[Cleric K]

so no lightbulb above his head?

Oh, there is lightbulb. I would say scientist today don't even grasp the full significance of these ideas. I mean, they do grasp them intellectually, they look them straight into the face but when they have to think about time existing simultaneously, they simply don't know what to make out of this. They still wonder if it is just a mathematical tool or there's something real in it.

[Martin_]

so no lightbulb above his head?

Oh, there is lightbulb. I would say scientist today don't even grasp the full significance of these ideas. I mean, they do grasp them intellectually, they look them straight into the face but when they have to think about time existing simultaneously, they simply don't know what to make out of this. They still wonder if it is just a mathematical tool or there's something real in it.

Right. But did Einstein? I admit that there might be doub't on this. I see how you technically could arrive at E=mc² by merely playing around with mathematical symbolism without having any understanding of what you're really doing.

But Einstein. Metaphysically, is it possible that he was using the True Concepts of "E", "=", "m", "c", and "²" and he used Reason to put them together. The math to justify it scientifically in that case came after.

[Eugene I]

The thought "the sky is green" is still a meaningful arrangement of concepts but it simply doesn't correspond to perceptions in the wider context. It fits nicely in our local curvature of meaning but not with the curvature at large.

OK, that's basically the Russel's Correspondence Theory of Truth and makes sense. However, SS also claims that the percepts are essentially the offspring of the "wider content" world of ideas. Which means that essentially there is a special kind of a "unified and harmonious" set of ideas, and there are other ideas that do not "it/belong to that set and do not correspond to any of them. So we now have two sets of ideas: the set of "unified and harmonious ideas" according to which our perceived world is built, and the set of ideas that do not belong to that elite class. Which means that te world of all ideas is not unified, it is divided into two separate classes ("harmoniously unified" one and the rest that do not fit to the first class).

But "the sky is green - vs - blue" is a too simplistic example unfortunately, here we can say that one concept corresponds to the percepts and the other just plainly does not. But how about my example of a variety of geometries? Which ones correspond to the unified set of ideas and which ones do not?

[Eugene I]

Just sharing an article about historical development of Anthroposophy, quite illuminating
Anthroposophy and Ecofascism

[Cleric K]

But Einstein. Metaphysically, is it possible that he was using the True Concepts of "E", "=", "m", "c", and "²" and he used Reason to put them together. The math to justify it scientifically in that case came after.

Concepts as E, m, c are arrived at by the intellect when it 'counts' some qualities and puts symbols to them. If you're asking if these concepts are the primary elements through which the world is created - no, they aren't. There are no primary elements because the intellect is not primary. And trying to see the world as made of concepts/elements is only possible in the intellect. In certain sense the intellect creates eigen basis of concepts on which it projects the world content and then imagines that the world is created from these concepts. But it's not. The intellect and its concepts are only decohered forms of higher order spiritual activity.

[Cleric K]

OK, that's basically the Russel's Correspondence Theory of Truth and makes sense. However, SS also claims that the percepts are essentially the offspring of the "wider content" world of ideas. Which means that essentially there is a special kind of a "unified and harmonious" set of ideas, and there are other ideas that do not "it/belong to that set and do not correspond to any of them. So we now have two sets of ideas: the set of "unified and harmonious ideas" according to which our perceived world is built, and the set of ideas that do not belong to that elite class. Which means that te world of all ideas is not unified, it is divided into two separate classes ("harmoniously unified" one and the rest that do not fit to the first class).

But "the sky is green - vs - blue" is a too simplistic example unfortunately, here we can say that one concept corresponds to the percepts and the other just plainly does not. But how about my example of a variety of geometries? Which ones correspond to the unified set of ideas and which ones do not?

See the response to Martin. I once again remind that Idea shouldn't be taken as intellectual concept. The problem above is that you're trying to imagine ideas as 'things'. I think we agreed that there's no point in imagining some Platonic world of ideas out there. Focus on your own state of being. The question is to find the living ideas which unite perceptions. The difficulty is that man of today immediately pictures the visual panorama of the sensory world and tries to imagine what would these ideas be which explain rocks, plants and so on. But this is actually the most difficult thing to do. We can't even comprehend how this is possible if we don't start from what's closest to us. If we can't experience how the ideas that we live through, give the unity of our own thought-perceptions, it's simply impossible to even approach understanding of the nature of higher idea-beings. The next step would be to observe how thinking is shaped by the wider context of opinions, desires, likes and dislikes and so on. All of this gradually expands our consciousness. It is impossible to find the ideas that explain the sensory world - in the way we naively imagine - because these ideas operate from very different perspective. In other words, to express simply, when God designs man he doesn't work with something external, as the sculptor today shapes the sculpture. The world is created through metamorphoses of the inner, first-person state of being. The vista of the sensory world as we behold it today is something unique. No being has seen the world in such a way in the process of its creation. Man is first. I can use an analogy. It's like the world is being created in the frequency domain. The convoluted state in which we live today acts as Fourier transform. These are all metaphors but there's something of essence in them. You know that the spectrum of a signal looks completely differently from the time domain. So we now see the Fourier-transformed inner world, which presents us with Maya. Everything we see is related with the frequency domain of ideas but is heavily transformed/aliased. Then we look at these elements and imagine that this is how the world was put together - that is, some gods created space and began to fill it with objects. This is very misleading idea. We imagine that for each spacetime element there's corresponding spiritual entity. This is the most serious misconception which is the prime reason for people today failing to understand what the spiritual world is. They simply translate the sensory picture into some imagined more ethereal world. But this is an illusion. We need to pass through the inverse Fourier transform. If in a signal we have spectral component of 100Hz where it is in the time domain? It is everywhere! The time domain is the interference of all spectral components. Similarly, we're heading for a great illusion if we expect to find the beings in the spiritual world as nicely packed spheres of consciousness that float around and speak to each other, every one from its own inner bubble. Physical man is not the image of the alter. He's Fourier transformed image of the whole Cosmos. This gives a truer understanding of what it means that man is a fractal of the Cosmos. This doesn't make much sense spatially because man looks nothing like the Cosmos. Attempt to draw parallels between the brain and the Cosmic filaments simply miss the point. Man is fractal of the Cosmos because he's interference of the whole Cosmic spectrum, not simply a 1:1 image of his 'alter'.

It should be clear already that all four geometries exist only as eigen bases onto which the intellect can project its thinking. Reality doesn't operate through any such geometry.

[Martin_]

Ok. 2nd try.
the Intellect gave us separations such as "E", etc.
It was Reason which recognized the unity in "E=mc²"
as per quote from Steiner:

The intellect causes the separation of the individual configurations — because they do indeed confront us in the given as individual elements [ 52 ] — and reason recognizes the unity.

The fact that it was done in a domain of extremely abstract thought forms that might not be particularly meaningful to most of us, does not mean it wasn't Reason which unified them.

[Eugene I]

It should be clear already that all four geometries exist only as eigen bases onto which the intellect can project its thinking. Reality doesn't operate through any such geometry.

OK, so, there is a “harmonious unity” of high-order Intuitive/Imaginative ideas that govern the reality ( including the sense-perceptory world) (the “time-domain ifdeas”), and there are lower-level abstract ideas formed by the intellect that attempt to describe the world but unable to do it properly due to its lower-level character (“Fourtier-tranfrom domain ideas”), and so the latter not belong to the “harmonious unity” of higher-order ieas. And Reason is a faculty of higher cognition that is able to attain clairvoyant insight into and the knowledge of the unity of higher-order world of ideas. I’m sure that this is clearly wrong and Kantian-divide dualistic because any non-initiate like me has no way to get it right, but I hope it at least roughly describes what you are saying.

Well, what to say? The attempts to know the ultimate truth has been humanity’s endeavor throughout all its history. Philosophy, science, religions, spiritual practices (dual or non-dual, Western, Eastern or Indigenous), poetry and art. Neither of them got it right, they all just spinned around in different areas of abstract ideas of lower cognition, all in vain, just rarely being able to get some intuitive glimpses of the higher-order meanings. Eventually, through the work of Goethe and Steiner a breakthrough was achieved into the realm of the unity of higher-order beings and harmonious ideas governing the world that we, lower-level beings, perceive through our senses. With our low-level cognition we can only intellectually speculate about the truths of that realm using abstractions, it’s only through the development of the faculties of Intuitive and Imaginative Reason-Thinking and through esoteric initiation attainable in the order of Anthroposophy where we can gain the true knowledge of these higher-order ideas. Goethe and Steiner were some of those initiates, Cleric is the other one.

But how do we know if the ideas they perceive actually are the true high-order ideas governing the reality and not a result of their self-intoxicating imagination or a manifestation of their personal or group sub-conscious beliefs? The adepts of SS will tell us that the only way to know it is to actually practice it, to develop the high-order Reason, Imaginative and Intuitive abilities and to know these ideas through direct perception by these higher-order faculties. Once you perceive the true high-order meanings, you will know they are true. OK, but are there any other criteria to somehow verify that this knowledge is actually relevant to reality and not just another product of human subtle self-confirming intuitive imagination? Well, let’s look at what knowledge Steiner brought us from the realms of higher-order ideas. There are plenty of them, for example, the knowledge about Atlantis, about ethnic supremacy of Arian and Germanic nations, about Zodiacs governing our life on Earth. Any other breakthroughs into the knowledge of the world of natural phenomena? Did he attain the knowledge about big bang or black holes, or elementary particles, or QM or GR prior to their discovery by science? Or could he explain why the natural phenomena always follow exactly the QM Shroedinger or GR equations? Nope, that’s too abstract, not for clairvoyants, they see much deeper. May be biochemistry, immunology, human biology? Sure:

Steiner said that the heart is not a pump, but that the blood in a sense pumps itself. … Steiner used imagination and insight as a basis for his ideas, drawing mystical knowledge from the occult Akashic Records, a work which is supposedly situated on the astral plane, and which Steiner said was accessible to him via his intuitive powers.[3] On this basis, Steiner proposed "associations between four postulated dimensions of the human body (physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego), plants, minerals, and the cosmos".[2] Steiner also proposed a connection betweens planets, metals and organs so that, for example, the planet Mercury, the element mercury and the lung were all somehow associated.

May be he got the knowledge about useful medicines that can cure deceases? Sure:

.. plants that grow near water are usually heavy, with big, dark green leaves that wilt and break easily. An exception is ... the white willow, a tree that always grows near water and loves light. However, unlike other "watery" plants, the willow has fine, almost dry leaves and looks very light ... Its branches are unbelievably tough. They are elastic and cannot be broken. They bend easily and form "joints" rather than break. These few signatures can give us the clue to what salix can be used for therapeutically: arthritis, deformation of joints, swollen joints ...[22]

Well, if anyone is convinced, then they are surely free to adopt this system of beliefs and practices. At least I don’t think they are harmful.

[JeffreyW]

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.

First, I need to again correct some misunderstandings.

1. If you think I have failed to keep up with the latest developments, please show what has surpassed Rovelli, Penrose, Wigner, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein that would restore Reason as applicable to fundamental truth. You have made this claim several times with no demonstration.

2. Reason itself is the gateway to metaphysics, and as seen in Kant, inevitably leads to duality. I escape duality because I deny anything exists other than the physical reality we encounter. Kastrup escapes duality by denying materiality. I think you are still confusing me with Kant, and perhaps that’s my fault.

My last post only covered the limitations of Reason and left how we can know deeper reality for the next post.
Let’s call my last post Part I: The Unreasonable Applicability of Reason to Reality; and what follows as Part II: Esthetic Understanding.

Let’s start by returning to Goethe’s Morphology and his example of a seed. He attempts to avert duality by asserting there is nothing beyond the sky, and everything is revealed in its apprehension. He takes the further step of positing reality as an unfolding event which reveals the ideal form inherent at its beginning. It is this morphological form I want to focus on for now.

Goethe has inferred from observation that elemental reality consists of continual manifestations of ideal forms at its essence. The seed develops through these forms, the Ideas of which originally reside as this essence. Through reason, we can ascertain these forms and know elemental reality.
As I wrote before, Goethe was an early transitional figure coming out of the Enlightenment. His denial of the noumenal and vision of reality as process are parts of his steps forward, but in conflict with Ideas - a conflict that later thinkers would address.

To that, I will contrast my thinking. I fully agree that the physical world is all of reality, and it is a process of eternal becoming out of its own essential nature. I have spoken about how rational objectification, propositional logic, and reductionism are practical adaptations with no deeper insight into the essence of things, If I were to remain within Kant’s epistemology, this would indeed lead a sort of dualism of phenomenal and noumenal. But I don’t. There is a second more primordial and more profound mode of thought that is essentially esthetic, and one more suited to deeper exploration.
Rovelli repeats what Pythagoras knew millennia ago: the world is fundamentally waves. Everything is a complex playing out of these waves, but playing out only in accordance with the possibilities inherent in its essence, much as in Goethe’s seed. But in this eternal event of playing out, there is no Idea. What appears as an Ideal form to us is only a moment fixed in our mind, a blink of an eye in its eternal becoming that we elevate to permanence. But the history of the universe tells us something quite different. Evolution of life alone shows that what inheres in seeds are not Ideal forms, but continuous change arising out of an essential nature that transcends any notion of form. We can pick an infinite number of points in time and space and in freezing the frame intuit a form. But we mistake becoming for elemental ideas by killing that moment and fixating it with a pin. Again, this is what Heraclitus knew and we only recently remembered.

There is a unity to this universe, one that is an unimaginable manifold. It becomes clearer when we switch the example from a seed to music. Music is our elemental experience of this manifold playing out of waves. It is nothing but wave. There are those who try to understand music as form or as mathematical relations, but there is no longer any music in those representations. What I love most about authentic musicians is that once somebody tries to impose form or theory on them, the immediate response is to break those rules, while the true irrepressible essence of reality laughs. Beethoven and Miles Davis are preeminent examples.

We only understand music as an event in which we participate with the innermost part of our own being. We resonate with reality and thereby know it, but not in a reasoned or analytical way. It is the same with everything else that is important. We know love through sympathetic relations with others. We know morality through the experience of empathy. Both events of becoming from our own essential nature, which is in turn derived from universal essence.
Thus, thinking becomes a consciousness of sensation - a sensing of the experience of the revelation of a deeper harmony - the playing of elemental waves in their true deeper essence. Thought is making sense. Making sense is adjusting our inner being to the essence of the vibrations. This essence is no Idea, no form, nothing conceptual. It is the eternal play of universal spirit we intuit through music elementarily inherent in our every experience.

[Eugene I]

To that, I will contrast my thinking. I fully agree that the physical world is all of reality, and it is a process of eternal becoming out of its own essential nature. I have spoken about how rational objectification, propositional logic, and reductionism are practical adaptations with no deeper insight into the essence of things, If I were to remain within Kant’s epistemology, this would indeed lead a sort of dualism of phenomenal and noumenal. But I don’t. There is a second more primordial and more profound mode of thought that is essentially esthetic, and one more suited to deeper exploration.

We only understand music as an event in which we participate with the innermost part of our own being. We resonate with reality and thereby know it, but not in a reasoned or analytical way. It is the same with everything else that is important. We know love through sympathetic relations with others. We know morality through the experience of empathy. Both events of becoming from our own essential nature, which is in turn derived from universal essence.
Thus, thinking becomes a consciousness of sensation - a sensing of the experience of the revelation of a deeper harmony - the playing of elemental waves in their true deeper essence. Thought is making sense. Making sense is adjusting our inner being to the essence of the vibrations. This essence is no Idea, no form, nothing conceptual. It is the eternal play of universal spirit we intuit through music elementarily inherent in our every experience.

So, JW, you are saying that the world is only physical. This means that it is inherently void of ideas and meanings that are simply by-products of human consciousness having nothing to do with the reality of the physical world, and the human consciousness itself is a emergent byproduct of unfolding physical processes. Yet, somehow, the essence of the physical world is esthetic, and it is through its esthetics and through our sense of esthetics that springs form the universal non-conscious physical spirit where we can connect to the deepest essence of reality. But aren't you just replacing one way of wishful thinking (that we can know the non-conscious physical reality through intellectual cognition or reason) with another kind of wishful thinking (that you can perceive the essence of reality through your esthetic sense)? Being a musician myself, I fully resonate with esthetic way of perceiving the world. But how do you actually know that what you are perceiving through your esthetic sense is actually the very essence of physical reality and not just another byproduct of your human consciousness? And how/why would a non-conscious physical reality have anything to do with esthetical beauty? How and why a non-conscious physical world by itself would employ esthetical beauty? Beauty can only be appreciated by consciousness. A non-conscious reality should not have any reason to unfold specifically in harmonious and beautiful forms. You can still believe that it can and it does, but how is it not another kind of religious or metaphysical belief?

Personally, I do think that the reality is esthetic in essence and we indeed have a capacity to connect to its essence through our esthetic sense, so I'm on the same page with you. I just think that there is a different reason for that: the world is esthetic exactly because it is consciousness, because only consciousness can experience and manifest esthetic forms. Isn't that just another king of belief? Yes, it is. It just makes more sense to me, not rationally, but exactly esthetically.