Cleric K wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 7:04 am
Let's look closely at the above thinking attitude. It would be quite on the mark if the question was "Is string theory right?". Then one could answer "Contingently and pragmatically, string theory works for me but I prefer not to accept it as religious dogma and remain open that at some point it might be proven wrong". Such an attitude is indeed the healthiest approach for intellect operating with the Kantian divide. It's the most logical thing to do. If the thing-in-itself is in principle to forever remain only asymptotically approached through mental models which approximate the dynamics of its appearances, then it's only a sign of sound thinking that we don't claim absolute truthiness for our model. Even if our model currently matches all known facts it could still turn out that thousand years from now, a new phenomenon can be discovered that doesn't fit the model. This is all fine and is indeed the healthy attitude towards the unknowable thing-in-itself (if we assume that it is indeed forever unknowable).
Cleric, you are twisting the arguments. Such position is not necessarily based on Kantian premise (although it may be for many modern scientists, but it does not have to be that way). Even if the Reality may be fully knowable and if there is there is no fundamental Kantian divide, that does not mean that our
current knowledge of it is ultimate and complete. So what you are doing is starting from the (implicit) assumption that the reality is fully knowable and immediately jumping to the view that your knowledge of the Reality is the ultimate Truth.
But let's consider something else. You already gave similar example. Let's take the statement "I experience thinking". If we approach this with the same attitude as the above, it will sound something like "My working hypothesis is that I do indeed experience thinking but that's only my pragmatic approach. I remain open to the possibility that I may not be experiencing thinking. I want to remain unbiased and accept that I can only asymptotically approach this fact but I can never be certain about it. If I claim certainty, it would immediately turn into religious dogma and this is simply bad science."
Twisted argument again. As I said above, nobody is questioning the experiencing of thinking, but using that obvious fact (of experiencing thinking) you are trying to smuggle an unwarranted assumption that there is nothing else in the world other than Thinking. The former is an obvious fact of our direct experience, the latter is an assumption, which, if smuggled without accepting it as an explicit assumption, becomes a religious dogma.
Another example. I see a pencil on the desk in front of me. I can speculate: "It is either possible or impossible to lift that pencil with my hand". Eugene and Martin say "We're open that it might be possible to lift the pencil but we don't want to subscribe to religious dogma. We'll live our life as if the pencil can be lifted because it has beneficial pragmatic consequences but we stay on the sure side and remain open that this can be proven wrong at any point in time."
...What is not understood here is that part (1) actually speaks about a path of experience, not about empty speculations that are bound to remain phantom models of reality-in-itself. Yes, it might be that the path leads to a dead end but adding (2) simply shows that there's no intent whatsoever to verify (1).
No, the pragmatic approach is to actually
try to lift it without assuming any beliefs whether it is possible or not, but assuming a
working hypothesis that it can be lifted until it is experimentally proven that it can not be lifted. Such approach is pragmatic and active but does not require any religious unwarranted beliefs, it only needs working hypotheses until they become proven facts, or become disproven. It is exactly the path of experience.
For the n-th time I say that it's not about convincing anyone that the possibility of lifting the pencil is the true possibility, without the person verifying it for himself. It's all about pointing out to the simple cognitive error that is being committed over and over again. The error is that thinking self-defeats itself. It declares openness for a possibility in (1) but in the second part of the sentence (2) it practically denies that very possibility. It's as simple as that. Really! In (1) we open up for the possibility to find the cognitive element in reality at large, in (2) we say "Yeah but we can never know if this is really true so it's better to remain honest and embrace agnosticism." Seriously. Is it really so difficult to see the glaring contradiction in this? What's the point of speaking about the possibility of cognitive element in reality in (1) when just an instant later (2) we declare that it is in principle impossible to know if this is true.
It is true that too much of skepticism leads to a stagnant agnosticism when people do not want to do anything because they don't know anything about Reality and do not want to make any assumptions in order to undertake actions. This is an extreme to be avoided. But you are using this example to drag us to the other extreme: do not question any assumptions but accept them as religious beliefs because only in this case you can advance yourself in spiritual knowledge. But that approach is as unhealthy and dangerous and the agnostic one. We should accept certain assumptions and undertake actions in order to advance our knowledge, but we should do it with understanding that our assumptions may be wrong so that we can be open to correct our assumptions if our practice gives us evidences that the assumptions might be wrong.
Now, I said it before, here what the real issue is. I'm studying PoF now and I see that Steiner was indeed an outstanding thinker and his PoF has a lot of valuable spiritual and philosophical insights. But what I'm also seeing happening is a tendency to make a religious sect out of his philosophy, which I'm sure Steiner himself would not support. I have seen too many abusive religious sects that were initially based on healthy practices and teachings but later became closed and abusive sectarian groups. There are certain red flags to distinguish a healthy spiritual practice or teaching form a sect. One of them is discouraging critical thinking and questioning the assumptions, but instead enforcing a belief system that needs to be taken as faith without questioning. The argument is exactly like Cleric put it: you have to accept the teaching/practice as a belief because you are not spiritually advanced enough to verify that it is in fact true. If you will have any doubts in it, your doubts will not let you to advance in the spiritual practice, so you have to let them go in order to advance. Another common feature is a total trust in the spiritual leader: since you are not advanced enough, you cannot have a judgement of what's true and what's not, so you need to trust your teacher and do the practice he teaches you without questioning it. I'm not saying that every religion is a sect, by far it is not. However, those who had been involved in religious practices know the difference between a healthy religious tradition and a sectarian one.