What we Learned from JW's Monism

[AshvinP]

Since people seem to agree the "criticism" should die out, I am starting a new one to comment on Cleric's attempt to refocus on the underlying philosophical issue at play.

Martin, what do you make out of JW's insistence that Energy is the basis of all? And the question was not even if Energy or Consciousness is the basis - it was the simple fact that before we can even speak of a basis we must think. So whatever we chose as our basis it always comes second to thinking. This is not something that only Ashvin tried to point out but also Eugene and others. For me as a bywatcher, the way JW was refusing to even try and understand what everyone is trying to point him at, was simply scary. It's scary how someone who emerges from academia and is supposed to be the authority on such topics, has his own thinking completely in the blind spot. From that point onwards any attempt to make a meaningful conversation turned into slippery twisting evasive maneuvers. And the scary thing is that he didn't even seem to be aware that he's avoiding one of the most central points that thinkers of today must comprehend with perfect clarity.

If we put a metaphorical and metaphysical gun to JW's head and asked him what label suits him best, then I think he would have responded dual-aspect monism, which is not so far off from idealist monism which recognizes the polar relation of Idea-perception, Ideal-real, Spirit-matter, etc.. That is pretty clear from all his comments about the 'entanglement' of Energy and Consciousness. What JW was completeley unaware of, and he is certainly not alone in this regard, was that the meeting of these dual-aspects take place in his own Thinking. Another way of expressing the polar relation is meaning and sense-perception. It is in our own immanent Thinking activity where we find sense-perceptions (thought-forms) which are already united with their meaning. This is all what we have discussed in relation to PoF many times already, so I won't rehash it here.

The key insight for me was that everyone directly or indirectly involved in this discussion - JW, BK, and whoever else - is searching for what is "prior to" everything else. We all basically agree that it is very important to identify this "prior to". And JW goes further to say the "prior to" cannot be any abstract metaphysical concept, such as "consciousness", "idea", "will", "substance", "ego-I", "energy/matter", etc., and I agree with that critique of BK's idealism (although it also applies to JW). So if we must look to immanent experience for this "prior to", the only conceivable place to look, quite literally, is our own Thinking. It is impossible to conceive of another place to look, because "looking", like all other similar verbs, presuppose Thinking. One way to test of whether we are genuinely following this thinking logic to our own Thinking activity is whether a sense of joy, excitement, awe, and/or any similar feeling washes over us.

We have just found what philosophers have been looking for centuries and millennia right here in our own activity that is most immanent and transparent to us. The activity we employ constantly throughout the course of our day. It is the very same activity that we used to perceive that activity's significance. It doesn't matter what dual-aspects are being employed in someone's thought-system, because they are all manifestations of Idea-Perception (Meaning-Form) in the same manner, and we know with certainty that both aspects are immanently present in our Thinking experience. It doesn't matter how well-read someone is on philosophy, how many languages they speak, how many famous intellectuals they studied under or worked with... Thinking is the great equalizer and unifier, and anyone can verify that in their experience. As Cleric aptly put it - "Thinking is not restricted in the loops of the intellect. Thinking moves along the full spectrum. Thinking is humble."

[Dave casarino]

I find it bizarre that he kept insisting that consciousness is a metaphysical concept and that energy is not when consciousness IS what we are experiencing, this is consciousness, anything that can be called energy is a texture of experience, which is according to him created by the brain, so how do we even trust that it is there in the first place when it is but a sensation generated within subjection? Of course someone like him would point out that I have used the term "created by the brain" and he would point out the structure of sense apparatus (like ears and eyes) and their resultant representations and argue that these are fine tuned to detect the contours of something "out there", but here is the part where the subject and object meet, where matter and mind intersect, the flimsy little bridge across the Kantian divide. The shape of the ear, the nature of the sound, the wave hits the ear and the ears shape catches the wave and it travels along the shape and into the ear where the matrix inside the ear is caressed upon it's surfaces the incoming wave, now the wave touches the soft surfaces, and those particular neural sensors that are hit then reflect a signal in pattern for which particular sensors were touched that is signaled through neural networks and represented in mind as what we experience as sound (for some reason, instead of sight, which we experience through a different type of wave). When the wave touches the soft sensor flesh inside the ear does any of it's true nature cross the flesh and into the brain? The particular wave form hits certain spots that catch it's high points and it's low points differently to each other, a shape is drawn in sonic patterns, highs and lows, darker shades and lighter shades, wave's and their detectors mirror each other in a certain sense and are upon detection reflected in our representations of them, has our sensory and neural apparatus evolved to absorb something that's essence is it's quality? Jeffery's estheticism strangely enough argues for and then against and then back again depending on his need for immediate victory. But I ask, what crosses over from the touch of detector and what it is currently detecting?

[Ben Iscatus]

- JW, BK, and whoever else - is searching for what is "prior to" everything else. We all basically agree that it is very important to identify this "prior to". And JW goes further to say the "prior to" cannot be any abstract metaphysical concept, such as "consciousness", "idea", "will", "substance", "ego-I", "energy/matter", etc., and I agree with that critique of BK's idealism

It's quite possible to show that Consciousness, as subject, is indeed the "prior to", if you accept that thinking is something a conscious subject does. It's not everything a conscious subject does. When I'm not thinking, my phenomenal consciousness includes endogenous awareness, feelings, etc, and to suggest that thinking comes first means it would have to be applicable to all animals, even to an amoeba.

I'd also say to JW that Consciousness doesn't die when the dissociated alter dies (it is dissociation that ends, i.e. separation of the personal mind from the transpersonal mind that ends, not Consciousness). If this is so, then Consciousness obviously does not depend on energy.

[AshvinP]

I find it bizarre that he kept insisting that consciousness is a metaphysical concept and that energy is not when consciousness IS what we are experiencing, this is consciousness, anything that can be called energy is a texture of experience, which is according to him created by the brain, so how do we even trust that it is there in the first place when it is but a sensation generated within subjection? Of course someone like him would point out that I have used the term "created by the brain" and he would point out the structure of sense apparatus (like ears and eyes) and their resultant representations and argue that these are fine tuned to detect the contours of something "out there", but here is the part where the subject and object meet, where matter and mind intersect, the flimsy little bridge across the Kantian divide. The shape of the ear, the nature of the sound, the wave hits the ear and the ears shape catches the wave and it travels along the shape and into the ear where the matrix inside the ear is caressed upon it's surfaces the incoming wave, now the wave touches the soft surfaces, and those particular neural sensors that are hit then reflect a signal in pattern for which particular sensors were touched that is signaled through neural networks and represented in mind as what we experience as sound (for some reason, instead of sight, which we experience through a different type of wave). When the wave touches the soft sensor flesh inside the ear does any of it's true nature cross the flesh and into the brain? The particular wave form hits certain spots that catch it's high points and it's low points differently to each other, a shape is drawn in sonic patterns, highs and lows, darker shades and lighter shades, wave's and their detectors mirror each other in a certain sense and are upon detection reflected in our representations of them, has our sensory and neural apparatus evolved to absorb something that's essence is it's quality? Jeffery's estheticism strangely enough argues for and then against and then back again depending on his need for immediate victory. But I ask, what crosses over from the touch of detector and what it is currently detecting?

Dave,

This was excellently stated! I am not sure if you have read Steiner's PoF, but what you write above sounds almost verbatim what he wrote in regards to "critical idealism" (of Kant and Schop) when going through its flawed reasoning. You are absolutely correct that JW was picking and choosing which 'percepts' could be considered naively real and which could be mere 'representations'. Generally, all that is in the outer world are considered "representations" while all that begins manifesting as we move towards and inside the bodily organization is considered naively real (or at least they must be considered naively real for the arguments to make any sense). That is the exact same flawed reasoning used by Kant and Schop, and of course BK agrees with the latter. It is no coincidence that this happens to mirror the Cartesian mind-matter divide, where everything 'out there' can be studied objectively and is naively real while everything 'in here' is wishy-washy subjective experience. So critical idealism just flips the naive materialist-dualist edifice around without addressing the underlying flaw in its reasoning. Here is the passage from Steiner, which is pretty lengthy but well worth the read.

It would be hard to find in the history of human culture another edifice of thought [like critical idealism] which has been built up with greater ingenuity, and which yet, on closer analysis, collapses into nothing. 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. It is quite true that I can have no percept without the corresponding sense organ. But just as little can I be aware of a sense organ without perception. From the percept of a table I can pass to the eye which sees it, or the nerves in the skin which touch it, but what takes place in these I can, in turn, learn only from perception. And then I soon notice that there is no trace of similarity between the process which takes place in the eye and the color which I perceive. I cannot eliminate my color percept by pointing to the process which takes place in the eye during this perception. No more can I rediscover the color in the nerve or brain processes. I only add new percepts, localized within the organism, to the first percept, which the naïve man localizes outside his organism. I merely pass from one percept to another.

Moreover there is a gap in the whole argument. I can follow the processes in my organism up to those in my brain, even though my assumptions become more and more hypothetical as I approach the central processes of the brain. The path of external observation ceases with the process in my brain, more particularly with the process which I should observe if I could deal with the brain using the instruments and methods of physics and chemistry. The path of inner observation begins with the sensation, and continues up to the building of things out of the material of sensation. At the point of transition from brain process to sensation, the path of observation is interrupted.

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 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. He would have to regard even his own subjective organization as a mere complex of mental pictures. But this removes the possibility of regarding the content of the perceived world as a product of our spiritual organization. One would have to assume that the mental picture “color” was only a modification of the mental picture “eye”. So-called critical idealism cannot be proved without borrowing from naïve realism. Naive realism can be refuted only if, in another sphere, its own assumptions are accepted without proof as being valid.

[AshvinP]

- JW, BK, and whoever else - is searching for what is "prior to" everything else. We all basically agree that it is very important to identify this "prior to". And JW goes further to say the "prior to" cannot be any abstract metaphysical concept, such as "consciousness", "idea", "will", "substance", "ego-I", "energy/matter", etc., and I agree with that critique of BK's idealism

It's quite possible to show that Consciousness, as subject, is indeed the "prior to", if you accept that thinking is something a conscious subject does. It's not everything a conscious subject does. When I'm not thinking, my phenomenal consciousness includes endogenous awareness, feelings, etc, and to suggest that thinking comes first means it would have to be applicable to all animals, even to an amoeba.

I'd also say to JW that Consciousness doesn't die when the dissociated alter dies (it is dissociation that ends, i.e. separation of the personal mind from the transpersonal mind that ends, not Consciousness). If this is so, then Consciousness obviously does not depend on energy.

Ben,

This is abstract metaphysics of the sort JW (and myself) are critiquing. Cleric also pointed this out in the criticism thread. It's not about what is "possible", but what we can know and, more importantly, how we can know it. I can posit an ontic prime called "Bob" and say that it is quite possible that everything we do - willing, feeling, perceiving, thinking - is also what Bob does. Bob cannot be directly detected because he is, after all, the ontic prime, but when I'm not willing, feeling, and thinking, Bob is still there and that's why everything maintains when I start thinking again. Of course, this is actually very close to what theists claim about "God" and not far off from how "MAL" or "pure Consciousness" functions in BK's idealism as well. Someone can only be satisfied with such an abstract metaphysical explanation as long as their own Thinking, which is immanently experienced and provides the basis of tracing back to the underlying Reality without abstract speculation, remains in the blind spot.

[Ben Iscatus]

This is abstract metaphysics of the sort JW (and myself) are critiquing... Someone can only be satisfied with such an abstract metaphysical explanation as long as their own Thinking, which is immanently experienced and provides the basis of tracing back to the underlying Reality without abstract speculation, remains in the blind spot.

OTOH, I'd argue that "I think" is the everyday experience, whereas "thinking thinks me" is the abstraction. I do accept that something thinks me, i.e. the subject who is the transpersonal mind, and that from my pov, that is an abstraction - but I see it as a necessary one to make sense of the world. I don't feel myself to be a process; I feel I'm a subject.

[Dojo Mojo]

Rest assured by Williams’ insisting (by way of pointing a finger outward) that it’s everyone else who disagrees with him who’s in a “cult” he forgot that he blithely exposed the three fingers pointing back at himself. His lack of a substantive reason for why all cannot be accounted for under a mind only ontology is most likely his own subconscious self contempt rearing its ugly face (in other words he is actually questioning whether it’s he who is in the cult.) Or at least this is one way to read it.

[AshvinP]

This is abstract metaphysics of the sort JW (and myself) are critiquing... Someone can only be satisfied with such an abstract metaphysical explanation as long as their own Thinking, which is immanently experienced and provides the basis of tracing back to the underlying Reality without abstract speculation, remains in the blind spot.

OTOH, I'd argue that "I think" is the everyday experience, whereas "thinking thinks me" is the abstraction. I do accept that something thinks me, i.e. the subject who is the transpersonal mind, and that from my pov, that is an abstraction - but I see it as a necessary one to make sense of the world. I don't feel myself to be a process; I feel I'm a subject.

That's what we are saying - "thinking things me" can become the everyday experience, if only we come to understand that's a possibility in the first place. I know the transpersonal mind abstraction seems like the best we can do, because it is definitely what I thought as well in the recent past. Our entire global civilization is built around that abstraction now (not specifically "transpersonal mind", but very similar functioning abstract concepts), so it's no wonder that feels like the only reality there is beyond our personal bubble as "subject". It is really a conundrum for most people, because there is simply nothing in their environment which ever makes them aware one can discover the processual Thinking which thinks them with relatively little time, money, and effort compared to most outward endeavors people engage to make themselves happy and satisifed. I am not speaking here of full-blown theosis or even imaginative cognition, just the initial stages of realizing this possibility as a concrete and immanent reality. Most people would have no sense of what the phrase "Thinking thinks you" could even refer to. That is not a conundrum for anyone following here, because there are people pointing specifically towards this possibility and often. If one feels so much distaste for claims of deeper insight by others that they will deny themselves this opportunity waiting right before them, or maybe quit this forum altogether so they don't have to hear about it anymore, then that's a real tragedy and an entirely self-imposed one.

[JustinG]

The key insight for me was that everyone directly or indirectly involved in this discussion - JW, BK, and whoever else - is searching for what is "prior to" everything else. We all basically agree that it is very important to identify this "prior to". And JW goes further to say the "prior to" cannot be any abstract metaphysical concept, such as "consciousness", "idea", "will", "substance", "ego-I", "energy/matter", etc., and I agree with that critique of BK's idealism (although it also applies to JW). So if we must look to immanent experience for this "prior to", the only conceivable place to look, quite literally, is our own Thinking. It is impossible to conceive of another place to look, because "looking", like all other similar verbs, presuppose Thinking. One way to test of whether we are genuinely following this thinking logic to our own Thinking activity is whether a sense of joy, excitement, awe, and/or any similar feeling washes over us.

Nonlinear chess:

Steiner takes Marx.
Hegel takes Steiner.
Marx takes Hegel.

Check.

[AshvinP]

The key insight for me was that everyone directly or indirectly involved in this discussion - JW, BK, and whoever else - is searching for what is "prior to" everything else. We all basically agree that it is very important to identify this "prior to". And JW goes further to say the "prior to" cannot be any abstract metaphysical concept, such as "consciousness", "idea", "will", "substance", "ego-I", "energy/matter", etc., and I agree with that critique of BK's idealism (although it also applies to JW). So if we must look to immanent experience for this "prior to", the only conceivable place to look, quite literally, is our own Thinking. It is impossible to conceive of another place to look, because "looking", like all other similar verbs, presuppose Thinking. One way to test of whether we are genuinely following this thinking logic to our own Thinking activity is whether a sense of joy, excitement, awe, and/or any similar feeling washes over us.

Nonlinear chess:

Steiner takes Marx.
Hegel takes Steiner.
Marx takes Hegel.

Check.

Non-reductive move:

Steiner resurrects Goethe's archetypal evolutionary idealism.
Steiner points to the concrete and immanent reality of Thinking working through all human culture over the epochs.
Steiner thereby synthesizes and concretizes Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche.

Check mate