A Simple, Logical System for Proving the Existence of God — Idealist Metaphysics

[GrantHenderson]

As far as I can tell, your criticisms suggest that god cannot be empirically proven. No chance that would happen. Although empirics do inform my logical axioms, we cannot form inner concepts demonstrating how our sense perceptions pertain to “god”. I don’t think any of this negates the proposal that one cannot construct a truthful (or at least valid) proof procedure for “god”, but rather, highlights the limitations of logical proof in general— especially one of this nature. One problem with logical proofs, as you point out, is a problem of achieving consensus on definitions. Another problem is the reduction in epistemic certainty by abstracting away from inner concepts.

I can’t argue with these. They are all true.

For the longest time, I thought you were claiming that, contrary to my argument, the way to logically prove god was through inner concepts — I couldn’t understand why you thought that could make for a valid argument. Now I realize that you are claiming that inner concepts are the most epistemically certain conceptualizations we can engage in with regards to the structure and function of consciousness — more so than any logical proof of an abstract god. Additionally, they can inform us about attributes of a potential God that won’t be found in a proof procedure such as this one.

Can’t argue with that.

Grant,

I apologize if my posts have been unclear on the nature of the criticism. There are four general points:

1) Even assuming a conceptual proof can be made for the Ontic Prime (I say this is a bad assumption), it seems to me that the one you presented is a tautology. I think you have embedded the conclusion within the definitions of Reality and God, by making the latter extremely broad.

For ex. - Axiom 1) Consciousness has a proposed definition -- “That which gives qualitative meaning to its properties” ---> this sounds to me like "Consciousness is Reality" because there is no experience of Reality without qualitative meaning.

2) We can empirically investigate the structure of Consciousness by looking at our own Thinking activity and how it is shaped by the currently invisible meaningful context. This comes through a combination of inner meditative practice and logical reasoning through first-person experience as it manifests (without assuming the "essence" of anything from the outset). We already know that what gives reality its conceptual meaning, whether the concepts of Being or Nothingness (absolute or otherwise), is our Thinking (see Steiner quote previously posted). So, naturally, that is the place to investigate the OP. It is here where we find the underlying activity (thinking) and the product of that activity (concepts) united, the noumenon and phenomenon, and therefore transparent to us.

3) If the practical aim is to recover the experience of ideal activity permeating the world around us, which was stripped away by materialist mindset, logical proofs for "mind=reality" are entirely inadequate. We can easily discern this by reflecting on how many times such proofs have been given and how little difference they have made to human experience of the world. What reason do we have to think logical proofs can alter the very cognitive perspective and experience of human beings? At best, they can only be the very first symbolic steps taken towards a more living understanding, and, more importantly, a means of strenghtening our logical thinking faculty (Logos).

4) (this is new) Even without inner work of the sort mentioned above, we can reason out how mind=reality in much greater resolution. For ex., we can reason out what relation there is between the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms we perceive and our own inner activity of willing, feeling, thinking. We can reason out how nested hierarchical Ideas actually structure our daily experience, or the entire human experience over long stretches of time. Many similar things can be reasoned out, relating ourselves and our inner activity to the meaningful World Content we perceive, including all other living organisms. Isn't this more of a fruitful path and satisfying explanation than the broad conclusion, "mind=reality"?

This is much more clear to me, thank you.

For ex. - Axiom 1) Consciousness has a proposed definition -- “That which gives qualitative meaning to its properties” ---> this sounds to me like "Consciousness is Reality" because there is no experience of Reality without qualitative meaning.

But like you say, that’s just the “experience of reality” -- Experience and consciousness are synonyms. While contrarily, the realist will always inquire about “that which could theoretically occur outside of the experience of reality”. In this post, I attempt to demonstrate that there is nothing “beyond” experience.
Of course, we know that there is a qualitative element posed upon reality because we experience it that way. This doesn’t mean that reality is fundamentally qualitative as opposed to quantitative, or whatever else could theoretically be “beyond” experience.

You didn’t mention this, but I’ll also note that I don’t think the proposition that “reality can be defined as x” presupposes consciousness or god either. Afterall, other logical models which assert propositions don’t presuppose consciousness or God within those propositions. Consciousness is only implied by this proposition under the condition that all axioms correspond to certain empirical truths which are defining of consciousness — consciousness is that which gives meaning to properties.
And this is an empirical truth as far as I can tell. Cleric basically spells it out as well in that passage you showed me.

This idea isn’t demonstrated well by my post. Hence why I stated that I will probably rewrite it to reflect this.

2) We can empirically investigate the structure of Consciousness by looking at our own Thinking activity and how it is shaped by the currently invisible meaningful context. This comes through a combination of inner meditative practice and logical reasoning through first-person experience as it manifests (without assuming the "essence" of anything from the outset). We already know that what gives reality its conceptual meaning, whether the concepts of Being or Nothingness (absolute or otherwise), is our Thinking (see Steiner quote previously posted). So, naturally, that is the place to investigate the OP. It is here where we find the underlying activity (thinking) and the product of that activity (concepts) united, the noumenon and phenomenon, and therefore transparent to us.

I absolutely agree.

3 and 4

You realize the importance of constructing inner concepts for explaining the underlying activity of mind, and that modern philosophical ideologies contradict that pursuit. As such, it seems like you make it your goal to help us get away from these modern ideologies. That’s a fair goal, because a paradigm shift is needed.

Believe it or not, I much prefer thinking in this manner as well. I have engaged in it for years, and it’s a breath of fresh air to see it done so frequently on this forum. This makes me wish I had instead shared something of such relevance.

It’s not like I've made it my life’s goal to prove god or anything like that. Not at all. This has been nothing more than an interesting exercise of logic. A step away from the normal thought patterns about the inner workings of mind, among other unrelated things. I don’t claim this post as having any application past that which can be posed by logical models.

With that said, while it would certainly be harmful if abstractions were replaced by concepts of inner experiences, I don't think this is the case here. I think logical models about reality can be useful for the construction of inner concepts.
Inner concepts are immensely useful for understanding the commonalities in the structure and function of living and perhaps even non-living things. Whereas, logical models are important for grounding these inner concepts in true laws. For example, the only reason we may justify thoughts as having “centers of gravity” is because of certain laws of reality (like general relativity) that inform us upon what variables to use when explaining inner concepts.
Even with regards to this post: If, hypothetically, you could construct a true logical theory which asserts that consciousness is fundamental to reality (if), it would just add merit to any insights produced by inner conceptualizations. So long as it’s consistent with that which is true by virtue of experience, it can only add positive value. The limitations of that positive value have certainly been illuminated within this exchange, but positive value still.
Additionally, there is in fact a meaningful message in this post that I didn't mention previously. This post literally demonstrates that reality is what you make of it. This isn’t just an interesting insight, but I would be hard pressed to think of something more essential to our eminent personal experience. The meaning of life is that life is the meaning you give it. We have this incredible ability to view even the saddest circumstances in positively meaningful or even beautiful ways.

But, despite that, I understand that my post is still quite pointless. Firstly, the meaning within my post isn’t something people would necessarily derive. Secondly, it has a very (too) broad application in meaning to be used for anything concrete. Thirdly, hardly anybody is going to read it anyways.
Yes, I’m in the camp that logical models about reality are pretty pointless. Any philosophy that doesn’t have direct utility to me is not something that I was hoping to waste as much time on in this thread that I already have…

Learning logic for the sake of logic contravenes what is taught by logic.
Man is an artist first and foremost. As in, man acts out of inspiration for the sake of meaning. Any inspiration to learn logic for logic's sake is thwarted once he learns its limits in utility to his life.
At the rudimentary level of universal mind is a crisis in meaning and identity. Indecision between the whole and its parts for the sake of refining the whole by its parts. When that in itself is emphasized and refined by the individual, his identity risks implosion. It's focusing only on the idea that there is only change, while letting change slip your perception.
Learning knowledge is an immersion that weighs against action on knowledge. It only has utility when to act would be unwise; que philosophy -- Philosophy is meant to be learned in order to refine our systems of knowledge when natural inclinations and inspirations become inadequate or null of meaning.
even more; philosophical thinking is driven by the fear of grounding observations in sense perceptions, to elucidate the nature of that fear, and to be overcome by bliss. This also means that the purpose of philosophical thinking is to learn to thrive in life free of the constraints posed by philosophical thinking. I am reaching that point. Philosophical thinking becomes more and more useless to me in day to day life — and this even includes the exploration of inner concepts.

I felt like that slight digression was necessary to affirm that stance with greater conviction, for it seems to have been in doubt.

Again, I don’t claim this post as having any application past that which can be posed by logical models. Yes, there is more practical utility to be derived from constructing inner concepts as opposed to ontological models such as the one I have presented. But I would also argue that The relative importance between these types of conceptualizing have different metrics for evaluation, as they attempt to do different things. Furthermore, there are utilitarian benefits to some logical proofs that should not be completely overlooked, of which may even apply to the construction of inner concepts (and vice versa of course). Thus, I don’t really see the point in evaluating the utilitarian importance of these approaches against one another while analyzing what they are attempting to do, respectively. Especially, when this isn’t even the object of the discussion.
Not to mention the fact that I already agree that we can learn more about consciousness through inner concepts rather than logical models about reality.
Hopefully that addresses points 3 and 4 on your list.

Edit:
On a personal-moral note -- Philosophy (including exploration of inner concepts) basically teaches us to engage in more hyper sensory creative activities. Instead of trying to penetrate god, and consequently undermining god, you get to co-create with god! Our life purpose isn't merely to fully understand reality, but to try and enhance reality by our understanding of it.
If there’s one thing I regret from this post, it’s bringing God into this. I should have just referenced “consciousness”.

[GrantHenderson]

As far as I can tell, your criticisms suggest that god cannot be empirically proven. No chance that would happen. Although empirics do inform my logical axioms, we cannot form inner concepts demonstrating how our sense perceptions pertain to “god”. I don’t think any of this negates the proposal that one cannot construct a truthful (or at least valid) proof procedure for “god”, but rather, highlights the limitations of logical proof in general— especially one of this nature. One problem with logical proofs, as you point out, is a problem of achieving consensus on definitions. Another problem is the reduction in epistemic certainty by abstracting away from inner concepts.

I can’t argue with these. They are all true.

For the longest time, I thought you were claiming that, contrary to my argument, the way to logically prove god was through inner concepts — I couldn’t understand why you thought that could make for a valid argument. Now I realize that you are claiming that inner concepts are the most epistemically certain conceptualizations we can engage in with regards to the structure and function of consciousness — more so than any logical proof of an abstract god. Additionally, they can inform us about attributes of a potential God that won’t be found in a proof procedure such as this one.

Can’t argue with that.

Grant,

I apologize if my posts have been unclear on the nature of the criticism. There are four general points:

1) Even assuming a conceptual proof can be made for the Ontic Prime (I say this is a bad assumption), it seems to me that the one you presented is a tautology. I think you have embedded the conclusion within the definitions of Reality and God, by making the latter extremely broad.

For ex. - Axiom 1) Consciousness has a proposed definition -- “That which gives qualitative meaning to its properties” ---> this sounds to me like "Consciousness is Reality" because there is no experience of Reality without qualitative meaning.

2) We can empirically investigate the structure of Consciousness by looking at our own Thinking activity and how it is shaped by the currently invisible meaningful context. This comes through a combination of inner meditative practice and logical reasoning through first-person experience as it manifests (without assuming the "essence" of anything from the outset). We already know that what gives reality its conceptual meaning, whether the concepts of Being or Nothingness (absolute or otherwise), is our Thinking (see Steiner quote previously posted). So, naturally, that is the place to investigate the OP. It is here where we find the underlying activity (thinking) and the product of that activity (concepts) united, the noumenon and phenomenon, and therefore transparent to us.

3) If the practical aim is to recover the experience of ideal activity permeating the world around us, which was stripped away by materialist mindset, logical proofs for "mind=reality" are entirely inadequate. We can easily discern this by reflecting on how many times such proofs have been given and how little difference they have made to human experience of the world. What reason do we have to think logical proofs can alter the very cognitive perspective and experience of human beings? At best, they can only be the very first symbolic steps taken towards a more living understanding, and, more importantly, a means of strenghtening our logical thinking faculty (Logos).

4) (this is new) Even without inner work of the sort mentioned above, we can reason out how mind=reality in much greater resolution. For ex., we can reason out what relation there is between the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms we perceive and our own inner activity of willing, feeling, thinking. We can reason out how nested hierarchical Ideas actually structure our daily experience, or the entire human experience over long stretches of time. Many similar things can be reasoned out, relating ourselves and our inner activity to the meaningful World Content we perceive, including all other living organisms. Isn't this more of a fruitful path and satisfying explanation than the broad conclusion, "mind=reality"?

This is much more clear to me, thank you.

For ex. - Axiom 1) Consciousness has a proposed definition -- “That which gives qualitative meaning to its properties” ---> this sounds to me like "Consciousness is Reality" because there is no experience of Reality without qualitative meaning.

But like you say, that’s just the “experience of reality” -- Experience and consciousness are synonyms. While contrarily, the realist will always inquire about “that which could theoretically occur outside of the experience of reality”. In this post, I attempt to demonstrate that there can be nothing “beyond” experience by using reality as the basis of reasoning.
Of course, we know that there is a qualitative element posed upon reality because we experience it that way. This doesn’t mean that reality is fundamentally qualitative as opposed to quantitative, or whatever else could theoretically be “beyond” experience.

You didn’t mention this, but I’ll also note that I don’t think the proposition that “reality can be defined as x” presupposes consciousness or god either. Afterall, other logical models which assert propositions don’t presuppose consciousness or God within those propositions. Consciousness is only implied by this proposition under the condition that all axioms correspond to certain empirical truths which are defining of consciousness — consciousness is that which gives meaning to properties.
And this is an empirical truth as far as I can tell. Cleric basically spells it out as well in that passage you showed me.

This idea isn’t demonstrated well by my post. Hence why I stated that I will probably rewrite it to reflect this.

2) We can empirically investigate the structure of Consciousness by looking at our own Thinking activity and how it is shaped by the currently invisible meaningful context. This comes through a combination of inner meditative practice and logical reasoning through first-person experience as it manifests (without assuming the "essence" of anything from the outset). We already know that what gives reality its conceptual meaning, whether the concepts of Being or Nothingness (absolute or otherwise), is our Thinking (see Steiner quote previously posted). So, naturally, that is the place to investigate the OP. It is here where we find the underlying activity (thinking) and the product of that activity (concepts) united, the noumenon and phenomenon, and therefore transparent to us.

I absolutely agree.

3 and 4

You realize the importance of constructing inner concepts for explaining the underlying activity of mind, and that modern philosophical ideologies contradict that pursuit. As such, it seems like you make it your goal to help us get away from these modern ideologies. That’s a fair goal, because a paradigm shift is needed.

Believe it or not, I much prefer thinking in this manner as well. I have engaged in it for years, and it’s a breath of fresh air to see it done so frequently on this forum. This makes me wish I had instead shared something of such relevance.

It’s not like I've made it my life’s goal to prove god or anything like that. Not at all. This has been nothing more than an interesting exercise of logic. A step away from the normal thought patterns about the inner workings of mind, among other unrelated things. I don’t claim this post as having any application past that which can be posed by logical models.

With that said, while it would certainly be harmful if abstractions were replaced by concepts of inner experiences, I don't think this is the case here. I think logical models about reality can be useful for the construction of inner concepts.
Inner concepts are immensely useful for understanding the commonalities in the structure and function of living and perhaps even non-living things. Whereas, logical models are important for grounding these inner concepts in true laws. For example, the only reason we may justify thoughts as having “centers of gravity” is because of certain laws of reality (like general relativity) that inform us upon what variables to use when explaining inner concepts.
Even with regards to this post: If, hypothetically, you could construct a true logical theory which asserts that consciousness is fundamental to reality (if), it would just add merit to any insights produced by inner conceptualizations. So long as it’s consistent with that which is true by virtue of experience, it can only add positive value. The limitations of that positive value have certainly been illuminated within this exchange, but positive value still.
Additionally, there is in fact a meaningful message in this post that I didn't mention previously. This post literally demonstrates that reality is what you make of it. This isn’t just an interesting insight, but I would be hard pressed to think of something more essential to our eminent personal experience. The meaning of life is that life is the meaning you give it. We have this incredible ability to view even the saddest circumstances in positively meaningful or even beautiful ways.

But, despite that, I understand that my post is still quite pointless. Firstly, the meaning within my post isn’t something people would necessarily derive. Secondly, it has a very (too) broad application in meaning to be used for anything concrete. Thirdly, hardly anybody is going to read it anyways.
Yes, I’m in the camp that logical models about reality are pretty pointless. Any philosophy that doesn’t have direct utility to me is not something that I was hoping to waste as much time on in this thread that I already have…

Learning logic for the sake of logic contravenes what is taught by logic.
Man is an artist first and foremost. As in, man acts out of inspiration for the sake of meaning. Any inspiration to learn logic for logic's sake is thwarted once he learns its limits in utility to his life.
At the rudimentary level of universal mind is a crisis in meaning and identity. Indecision between the whole and its parts for the sake of refining the whole by its parts. When that in itself is emphasized and refined by the individual, his identity risks implosion. It's focusing only on the idea that there is only change, while letting change slip your perception.
Learning knowledge is an immersion that weighs against action on knowledge. It only has utility when to act would be unwise; que philosophy -- Philosophy is meant to be learned in order to refine our systems of knowledge when natural inclinations and inspirations become inadequate or null of meaning.
even more; philosophical thinking is driven by the fear of grounding observations in sense perceptions, to elucidate the nature of that fear, and to be overcome by bliss. This also means that the purpose of philosophical thinking is to learn to thrive in life free of the constraints posed by philosophical thinking. I am reaching that point. Philosophical thinking becomes more and more useless to me in day to day life — and this even includes the exploration of inner concepts.

I felt like that slight digression was necessary to affirm that stance with greater conviction, for it seems to have been in doubt.

Again, I don’t claim this post as having any application past that which can be posed by logical models. Yes, there is more practical utility to be derived from constructing inner concepts as opposed to ontological models such as the one I have presented. But I would also argue that The relative importance between these types of conceptualizing have different metrics for evaluation, as they attempt to do different things. Furthermore, there can be utilitarian benefits to some logical proofs when they are not abstractions that replace concepts of inner experiences. In that case, they may even apply to the construction of inner concepts (and vice versa of course). Thus, I don’t really see the point in evaluating the utilitarian importance of these approaches against one another while analyzing what they are attempting to do, respectively. Especially, when this isn’t even the object of the discussion.
Not to mention the fact that I already agree that we can learn more about consciousness through inner concepts rather than logical models about reality.

Hopefully that addresses points 3 and 4 on your list.

Edit:
On a personal-moral note -- Philosophy (including exploration of inner concepts) basically teaches us to engage in more hyper sensory creative activities. Instead of trying to penetrate god, and consequently undermining god, you get to co-create with god! Our life purpose isn't merely to fully understand reality, but to try and enhance reality by our understanding of it.
If there’s one thing I regret from this post, it’s bringing God into this. I should have just referenced “consciousness”.

[GrantHenderson]

Rather, "if abstractions replaced concepts of inner experiences". Not, "if abstractions were replaced by concepts of inner experiences".
For some reason I am unable to edit my post again.

[AshvinP]

Furthermore, there are utilitarian benefits to some logical proofs that should not be completely overlooked, of which may even apply to the construction of inner concepts (and vice versa of course). Thus, I don’t really see the point in evaluating the utilitarian importance of these approaches against one another while analyzing what they are attempting to do, respectively. Especially, when this isn’t even the object of the discussion.
Not to mention the fact that I already agree that we can learn more about consciousness through inner concepts rather than logical models about reality.
Hopefully that addresses points 3 and 4 on your list.

Edit:
On a personal-moral note -- Philosophy (including exploration of inner concepts) basically teaches us to engage in more hyper sensory creative activities. Instead of trying to penetrate god, and consequently undermining god, you get to co-create with god! Our life purpose isn't merely to fully understand reality, but to try and enhance reality by our understanding of it.
If there’s one thing I regret from this post, it’s bringing God into this. I should have just referenced “consciousness”.

Grant,

Thanks for the response. I can find a lot of common ground in your last post.

I'm not sure whether we are on the same page re: the Divine, Logic, and inner concepts. I don't want to avoid bringing God into it, but to bring the Divine more into it by avoiding vague understanding of "consciousness" and specifying more precisely what within us can be experienced and known in its overlap with what we have traditionally considered the province of Divine meaning, i.e. soul (impulses, feelings, perceptions, etc.) and spirit (thoughts) knowledge, aesthetic meaning, and ethical meaning.

As infants, we first learn to balance ourselves in the world and walk upright, then to use language and communicate facts, then to reflect on experience through living thinking (often associated with a child's imagination). This is not programmed into us from birth, but things we develop in our early formative years according to various factors which are outside our individual control. We can call this development an image of Divine activity - the Way, the Truth, and the Life. There are 2 main questions I want to pose here, assuming you generally agree with this crude outline.

1) How can we rediscover these Divine forces in full consciousness?

2) Is anything less than rediscovering these Divine forces via immanent experience sufficient for awakening humanity to its real nature and thereby extricating from the 'meaning crisis', i.e. nihilism?

My own take on #1 is that we can do so by engaging in a higher order Logic and Reasoning. The latter is reflected to us in mythology, aesthetics, literature, and evolving human culture in general. Conceptual reasoning can take us to the threshold of this higher (more conscious) Imagination, but not across it. For the latter, a paradigmatically new perspective and effort is needed, of the sort Cleric pointed to in the TCT essay (I also recommemd you consider the follow up 3 essays, The Center of the Central Topic, if you enjoyed that one).
So for #2, my short answer is no and I don't think time is necessarily on our side anymore. Humans should have been awakening to this higher Self within them, yesterday. One of the biggest obstacles to this awakening is the assumption we are already awake, when we use conceptual models to 'explain' various domains of experience. Mostly I think these models have now become a way of restating the perceptual dynamics we already know in more abstract, technical jargon. The real value in conceptual reasoning comes from its ability to help us discern how little we actually know and the nature of our inner Logos faculty, which provides confidence we can know much more if we start looking within with sound thinking and good will. This is why the mode of thinking evolved through the modern age is more important than the conceptual content or 'proofs'.

[Soul_of_Shu]

For some reason I am unable to edit my post again.

The window for editing posts is 90 minutes.

[GrantHenderson]

Furthermore, there are utilitarian benefits to some logical proofs that should not be completely overlooked, of which may even apply to the construction of inner concepts (and vice versa of course). Thus, I don’t really see the point in evaluating the utilitarian importance of these approaches against one another while analyzing what they are attempting to do, respectively. Especially, when this isn’t even the object of the discussion.
Not to mention the fact that I already agree that we can learn more about consciousness through inner concepts rather than logical models about reality.
Hopefully that addresses points 3 and 4 on your list.

Edit:
On a personal-moral note -- Philosophy (including exploration of inner concepts) basically teaches us to engage in more hyper sensory creative activities. Instead of trying to penetrate god, and consequently undermining god, you get to co-create with god! Our life purpose isn't merely to fully understand reality, but to try and enhance reality by our understanding of it.
If there’s one thing I regret from this post, it’s bringing God into this. I should have just referenced “consciousness”.

Grant,

Thanks for the response. I can find a lot of common ground in your last post.

I'm not sure whether we are on the same page re: the Divine, Logic, and inner concepts. I don't want to avoid bringing God into it, but to bring the Divine more into it by avoiding vague understanding of "consciousness" and specifying more precisely what within us can be experienced and known in its overlap with what we have traditionally considered the province of Divine meaning, i.e. soul (impulses, feelings, perceptions, etc.) and spirit (thoughts) knowledge, aesthetic meaning, and ethical meaning.

As infants, we first learn to balance ourselves in the world and walk upright, then to use language and communicate facts, then to reflect on experience through living thinking (often associated with a child's imagination). This is not programmed into us from birth, but things we develop in our early formative years according to various factors which are outside our individual control. We can call this development an image of Divine activity - the Way, the Truth, and the Life. There are 2 main questions I want to pose here, assuming you generally agree with this crude outline.

1) How can we rediscover these Divine forces in full consciousness?

2) Is anything less than rediscovering these Divine forces via immanent experience sufficient for awakening humanity to its real nature and thereby extricating from the 'meaning crisis', i.e. nihilism?

My own take on #1 is that we can do so by engaging in a higher order Logic and Reasoning. The latter is reflected to us in mythology, aesthetics, literature, and evolving human culture in general. Conceptual reasoning can take us to the threshold of this higher (more conscious) Imagination, but not across it. For the latter, a paradigmatically new perspective and effort is needed, of the sort Cleric pointed to in the TCT essay (I also recommemd you consider the follow up 3 essays, The Center of the Central Topic, if you enjoyed that one).
So for #2, my short answer is no and I don't think time is necessarily on our side anymore. Humans should have been awakening to this higher Self within them, yesterday. One of the biggest obstacles to this awakening is the assumption we are already awake, when we use conceptual models to 'explain' various domains of experience. Mostly I think these models have now become a way of restating the perceptual dynamics we already know in more abstract, technical jargon. The real value in conceptual reasoning comes from its ability to help us discern how little we actually know and the nature of our inner Logos faculty, which provides confidence we can know much more if we start looking within with sound thinking and good will. This is why the mode of thinking evolved through the modern age is more important than the conceptual content or 'proofs'.

As infants, we first learn to balance ourselves in the world and walk upright, then to use language and communicate facts, then to reflect on experience through living thinking (often associated with a child's imagination). This is not programmed into us from birth, but things we develop in our early formative years according to various factors which are outside our individual control. We can call this development an image of Divine activity - the Way, the Truth, and the Life. There are 2 main questions I want to pose here, assuming you generally agree with this crude outline.

I think there are actually grammatical rules implemented into the structure of thinking, so language isn't something we learn from a blank slate. But that's what makes it a reflection of divine activity. Our thinking propagates off of factors that play a role in the structure of our experience which our thinking is not intrinsically aware of. We only become aware of such through metacognition.

1) How can we rediscover these Divine forces in full consciousness?
2) Is anything less than rediscovering these Divine forces via immanent experience sufficient for awakening humanity to its real nature and thereby extricating from the 'meaning crisis', i.e. nihilism?

I suppose I would just rather not limit my scope of understanding to only a few forms of conceptualizing when I don’t have to (regardless of which ones are more useful or more in touch with our sensory experiences). Don’t all valid forms of conceptualizing expand my scope of consciousness more than some limited set of them? If I'm reasoning through logic as a means to apply conclusions posed by inner-conceptual reasoning, there's nothing stopping me from also conducting inner conceptual reasoning, and vice versa.

Again, I’m not denying that the form of reasoning in this post is worse than reasoning by inner concepts in most respects. I still don’t see that as a reason to abandon it completely. The only reason I see to abandon it completely is to provide a counterweight against flawed philosophical underpinnings that dominate today's thinking (which you do).

My own take on #1 is that we can do so by engaging in a higher order Logic and Reasoning. The latter is reflected to us in mythology, aesthetics, literature, and evolving human culture in general. Conceptual reasoning can take us to the threshold of this higher (more conscious) Imagination, but not across it. For the latter, a paradigmatically new perspective and effort is needed, of the sort Cleric pointed to in the TCT essay (I also recommemd you consider the follow up 3 essays, The Center of the Central Topic, if you enjoyed that one).

I don’t understand how, but perhaps you are correct. I don’t know how this can bridge the explanatory gap from experience to reality at large. I will make a note of it to read the essays you recommended.

I think we can learn that the relationship between experience, and reality (as we measure and perceive it) have high levels of similarity. Maybe even 99% similarity (by some metric). But I don’t see how the inductive nature of this reasoning can explain why this is the case.

Essentially, this is the guideline I’m following:
1) Is there a reason why reality is conscious, as opposed to not conscious?
2) If yes, can that be reasoned?
3) If yes (2) then we can reason it.
4) If no (2) it is because there are certain things we cannot reason about.

I’m rejecting 4. We can reason it. We just can’t do so on terms that also integrate deeper aspects of our eminent personal experience. This doesn’t make it wrong, it just makes it shallow. It doesn’t explain, or utilize anything past the most broad defining features of mind. Because it is in itself a broad realizing of mind.

Also, I don’t believe the deduction ends where I have ended it. I believe it keeps going until you get to the subject level, which could integrate and explain aspects of our eminent personal experience, while also utilizing such to justify the axioms of the argument.

So for #2, my short answer is no and I don't think time is necessarily on our side anymore. Humans should have been awakening to this higher Self within them, yesterday. One of the biggest obstacles to this awakening is the assumption we are already awake, when we use conceptual models to 'explain' various domains of experience. Mostly I think these models have now become a way of restating the perceptual dynamics we already know in more abstract, technical jargon. The real value in conceptual reasoning comes from its ability to help us discern how little we actually know and the nature of our inner Logos faculty, which provides confidence we can know much more if we start looking within with sound thinking and good will. This is why the mode of thinking evolved through the modern age is more important than the conceptual content or 'proofs'.

All roads are leading here it seems. Do you find the following short passage to be a satisfactory inner-conceptualization outlining how consciousness is qualitative as opposed to quantitative? (a bit rough maybe):

When we think about anything -- say, the color of a pillow, the clouds in the sky, what we are going to eat in an hour -- we are expressing meaningful intentions as objects within our perceptual reference frame. All thought is a product of qualitative meaning referencing objects, and objects representing qualitative meaning. The pillow is qualitatively meaningful because it has a color. However, we don’t conceive of why/how the color is meaningful within that observational process. What we conceive of is limited to what we perceive in the moment of observation. Thus, we don’t conceive of any other mental faculties involved in making the color of the pillow meaningful to us.
Our sphere of awareness (perceptual frame) is always limited against other “decision making” faculties of mind. Thus, we are unable to accurately identify any point of equilibrium within our perceptual frame that can be held responsible for making our decisions. If we try to identify any point of equilibrium within our perceptual frame, it will ultimately fail to encompass other “points”. A precisely identified “point” of mental faculty would have to encompass all other points within it in order to be tangible, aka content. This cannot be the case, as our sphere of awareness is always limited against other factors of influence outside of our conscious control. Just as we make meaningful observations, but we can’t pinpoint exactly what makes them meaningful.

Long story short, I think we can take this idea further to a point where the structure of language processing becomes clear. I Won't go into that detail here, but maybe in another post.

Anyways, I like to think that we can use inner-concepts to validate some other forms of logical analysis. Sure, it's intrinsically detached from my sensory experiences but it's still an aspect of reasoning that can expand my understanding of consciousness and the universe. I would prefer not to limit my thinking if I don’t have to.

PS. I apologize for the delayed responses. Work is busy for me, and if I’m being honest, other interests have dominated more recently (this doesn't have any relation to the nature of your responses).

[AshvinP]

As infants, we first learn to balance ourselves in the world and walk upright, then to use language and communicate facts, then to reflect on experience through living thinking (often associated with a child's imagination). This is not programmed into us from birth, but things we develop in our early formative years according to various factors which are outside our individual control. We can call this development an image of Divine activity - the Way, the Truth, and the Life. There are 2 main questions I want to pose here, assuming you generally agree with this crude outline.
I think there are actually grammatical rules implemented into the structure of thinking, so language isn't something we learn from a blank slate. But that's what makes it a reflection of divine activity. Our thinking propagates off of factors that play a role in the structure of our experience which our thinking is not intrinsically aware of. We only become aware of such through metacognition.
1) How can we rediscover these Divine forces in full consciousness?2) Is anything less than rediscovering these Divine forces via immanent experience sufficient for awakening humanity to its real nature and thereby extricating from the 'meaning crisis', i.e. nihilism? 
I suppose I would just rather not limit my scope of understanding to only a few forms of conceptualizing when I don’t have to (regardless of which ones are more useful or more in touch with our sensory experiences). Don’t all valid forms of conceptualizing expand my scope of consciousness more than some limited set of them? If I'm reasoning through logic as a means to apply conclusions posed by inner-conceptual reasoning, there's nothing stopping me from also conducting inner conceptual reasoning, and vice versa....I don’t understand how, but perhaps you are correct. I don’t know how this can bridge the explanatory gap from experience to reality at large. I will make a note of it to read the essays you recommended.
I think we can learn that the relationship between experience, and reality (as we measure and perceive it) have high levels of similarity. Maybe even 99% similarity (by some metric). But I don’t see how the inductive nature of this reasoning can explain why this is the case. 
Essentially, this is the guideline I’m following:1) Is there a reason why reality is conscious, as opposed to not conscious? 2) If yes, can that be reasoned? 3) If yes (2) then we can reason it.4) If no (2) it is because there are certain things we cannot reason about.
I’m rejecting 4. We can reason it. We just can’t do so on terms that also integrate deeper aspects of our eminent personal experience. This doesn’t make it wrong, it just makes it shallow. It doesn’t explain, or utilize anything past the most broad defining features of mind. Because it is in itself a broad realizing of mind.
Also, I don’t believe the deduction ends where I have ended it. I believe it keeps going until you get to the subject level, which could integrate and explain aspects of our eminent personal experience, while also utilizing such to justify the axioms of the argument.  

I agree, we are not blank slates. And I think we both agree that these faculties are not the results of purely physical, mechanical processes, i.e. there is sentient agency behind their expression within and through us. My main point is that, as infants, we are given these Divine gifts which allow us to adapt to the physical world, survive, grow, instinctively think, etc. Eventually, we must take what was given to us from without and actively produce it from within to continue adapting and evolving, i.e. becoming more spiritually free through active reasoning and making the subconscious more conscious. This requires not only conceptual reasoning, but also first-person experience of the World Content to reason from. If we reason from flawed premises, or from arbitrarily incomplete experiential content, we are not really taking over responsibility for the inner flame of creative thinking. 

When it comes to consciousness and the Divine, i.e. soul and spirit, the concrete foundation of experience must be sought within our life of desires, impulses, feelings, thoughts, etc. These latter must become the objects of our observation and thinking, in their relation with the outer world as well. Put another way, what is normally the subject who investigates via reason must become the object of reasoned investigation. An inversion must come about from reflexive thinking entrained by perceptions and concepts to creative thinking which freely manifests and connects together perceptions and concepts within its own domain of inner activity. It is like a glove being turned inside-out, 'passing through the eye of a needle', the pinhole of cognition. I think it will really help here to distinguish between a few different domains of experience. Consider the following thought experiment:

And then there is the third thing which we do, still before reaching outer Nature. I am referring to what we do in “Phoronomy” so-called, or Kinematics, i.e. the science of Movement. Now it is very important for you to be clear on this point, — to realize that Kinematics too is, fundamentally speaking, still remote from what we call the “real” phenomena of Nature. Say I imagine an object to be moving from the point a to the point b (figure below). I am not looking at any moving object; I just imagine it. Then I can always imagine this movement from a to b, indicated by an arrow in the figure, to be compounded of two distinct movements. Think of it thus: the point a is ultimately to get to b, but we suppose it does not go there at once. It sets out in this other direction and reaches c. If it then subsequently moves from c to b, it does eventually get to b. Thus I can also imagine the movement from a to b so that it does not go along the line ab but along the line, ac or the two lines, ac and cb... You need not observe any process in outer Nature; you can simply think it — picture it to yourself in thought — how that the movement from a to b  is composed of the two other movements. That is to say, in place of the one movement the two other movements might be carried out with the same ultimate effect. And when in thinking I picture this. The thought — the mental picture — is spun out of myself. I need have made no outer drawing; I could simply have instructed you in thought to form the mental picture; you could not but have found it valid. Yet if in outer Nature there is really something like the point  — perhaps a little ball, a grain of shot — which in one instance moves from a to b and in another from a to c and then c from to b, what I have pictured to myself in thought will really happen. So then it is in kinematics, in the science of movement also; I think the movements to myself, yet what I think proves applicable to the phenomena of Nature and must indeed hold good among them.

So once we move into the domain of mechanics, even here pure thought must then combine with experiential observation of phenomena to discern something of the forces at work. Steiner gives the example of gravitational forces (weight) in that lecture. The phenomena themselves must disclose something to our conceptual reason for further investigation. If we move from mechanics into botany, we are now dealing with life-forces. Secular science assumes these life forces can be reduced to the mechanical forces, but we all know they can't be. That's where we get the 'hard problem of life', the problem of abiogenesis which cannot be solved from physical perceptions alone. When we move to sentient life, we are then dealing with soul-forces of perceptions, impulses, desires, feelings, etc. Again these cannot be reduced to anything physically perceptible - we get the hard problem of consciousness. At best, we can approach the soul forces indirectly with psychology. Finally, we have the reflective thinking experience of humans, the spiritual forces. This requires a pneumatology which practically doesn't exist anywhere in mainstream science. 

For the life, soul, and spirit forces, our conceptual reasoning must proceed from perceptions which are not available to the physical senses. Analytic idealism has vaguely recognized this reality too, so its 'solution' is to say knowledge of the living organism, of the soul life, of the life in spirit, is forever inaccessible to human perception and reasoning (actually it mostly adopts the materialist scientific explanation of living organisms like plants). We can only speculate about these forces in abstract thought which is not based in anything the phenomena themselves disclose to us. The 'noumena' exist behind a hard boundary of experience for all humans, according to analytic idealism. That is the dualistic assumption we are questioning here. We are saying the purely abstract speculation about "consciousness" vs. "matter" is (a) never going to be persuasive, since it is admittedly not based in our phenomenal experience, and (b) is unnecessary because we can, in fact, move beyond mere perceptions of the physical senses. It helps to acknowledge here what Socrates commented, "the only true Wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."

The only thing we can actually explain with physical perceptions alone are machines that we create, like a clock. These devices are isolated and we can trace their assembly back to our own agency. Everywhere else, we find mineral forces completely interwoven with life and soul forces, plant and animal life, and we have no idea what gives rise to these ecosystems. There is no such thing as isolated natural formations. So modern secular science and math is at a complete loss to explain them. Conceptual proofs only work in the domain of pure thought itself, i.e. math. We should really sense how humanity is only at the very beginning of sciences which could unveil these deeper relations of the phenomenal world, but only IF we decide not to remain enchanted by the "hard limits to knowledge" mantra. This is where analytic idealism proves to be the biggest obstacle - it backs itself into a corner and then hopes the deepest human longings regarding our relation with the Divine can be satisfied with abstract conceptual models or some mystical introspection.

Here we reach a crossroads - there are some, admittedly a few lonely voices in the wilderness right now, who say humanity has higher perceptual capacities currently unknown to secular science. Through these, much deeper insights into the nature of soul and spirit, into the structure and dynamics of qualitative consciousness, can be attained. Cleric has been writing about this for a few years on this forum. I had perceived the deep logic underlying this view, but only recently confirmed the existence of some tiny portion of the higher perceptual capacity. I should be clear, we are not speaking of abstract theories about the etheric and astral bodies, the sentient, intellectual, and consciousness soul, and imaginative, inspirative, and intuitive cognition. These are concrete realities we can come to perceive and know through our higher perceptual organs and logical reasoning faculty. Perhaps even these terms are unfamiliar if you haven't been following the discussions. 

Normally I would start only by mentioning Steiner's "Philosophy of Spiritual Activity", which I certainly still recommend to anyone who is interested in pursuing this further. But it seems many people are so used to the analytical philosophy approach that it is assumed every other philosophy presented must be of the same kind. That is not the case here. With these things in mind, I think you will get much value from Cleric's TCoTCT essays. They provide very good conceptual metaphors for the higher cognition we are referring to. That is where the conceptual reasoning capacity of modern man is most valuable and absolutely necessary - to bridge the apparent gap between physical perception-thinking and spiritual thinking. It was a great revelation for me when I understood all prior conceptual thought and worldviews I had worked out need not be abandoned, only enriched by living thinking. We will perceive how they all fit into place within the larger puzzle of Cosmic spiritual evolution. All modern world-conceptions can be understood as living gradations between the poles of Idealism-Realism, Spiritism-Materialism (see image below), expressed through various human personalities at various times. I hope the above addresses most of the points from your last post and I am happy to clarify anything written.

So for #2, my short answer is no and I don't think time is necessarily on our side anymore. Humans should have been awakening to this higher Self within them, yesterday. One of the biggest obstacles to this awakening is the assumption we are already awake, when we use conceptual models to 'explain' various domains of experience. Mostly I think these models have now become a way of restating the perceptual dynamics we already know in more abstract, technical jargon. The real value in conceptual reasoning comes from its ability to help us discern how little we actually know and the nature of our inner Logos faculty, which provides confidence we can know much more if we start looking within with sound thinking and good will. This is why the mode of thinking evolved through the modern age is more important than the conceptual content or 'proofs'.
All roads are leading here it seems. Do you find the following short passage to be a satisfactory inner-conceptualization outlining how consciousness is qualitative as opposed to quantitative? (a bit rough maybe): 

When we think about anything -- say, the color of a pillow, the clouds in the sky, what we are going to eat in an hour -- we are expressing meaningful intentions as objects within our perceptual reference frame. All thought is a product of qualitative meaning referencing objects, and objects representing qualitative meaning. The pillow is qualitatively meaningful because it has a color. However, we don’t conceive of why/how the color is meaningful within that observational process. What we conceive of is limited to what we perceive in the moment of observation. Thus, we don’t conceive of any other mental faculties involved in making the color of the pillow meaningful to us. Our sphere of awareness (perceptual frame) is always limited against other “decision making” faculties of mind. Thus, we are unable to accurately identify any point of equilibrium within our perceptual frame that can be held responsible for making our decisions. If we try to identify any point of equilibrium within our perceptual frame, it will ultimately fail to encompass other “points”. A precisely identified “point” of mental faculty would have to encompass all other points within it in order to be tangible, aka content. This cannot be the case, as our sphere of awareness is always limited against other factors of influence outside of our conscious control. Just as we make meaningful observations, but we can’t pinpoint exactly what makes them meaningful. 

Since mostly this was addressed above, I will only mention my answer to the question. I don't agree it is satisfactory, or accurate, for the reasons outlined above. It is accurate only with regards to physical sense-thinking, which we are not limited to. It also isn't satisfactory because we aren't limited to this reflexive sense-thinking, and therefore our deep human longing for meaningful existential answers can be more satisfactorily answered. The great illusion of the modern era is that humans have a longing to ask questions about the secrets of existence which cannot be answered with any logical precision. Why would such longing arise within us in the first place? Reality itself gives us a trail of perceptual and conceptual 'breadcrumbs' back to the ideal relations responsible for the existential meaning and there is nothing which stops us from following it except our own intellectual conviction that it's impossible. Here another quote from Steiner is apt.

Man is not organized as a self-consistent unity. He always demands more than the world, of its own accord, gives him. Nature has endowed us with needs; among them are some that she leaves to our own activity to satisfy. Abundant as are the gifts she has bestowed upon us, still more abundant are our desires. We seem born to be dissatisfied. And our thirst for knowledge is but a special instance of this dissatisfaction. We look twice at a tree. The first time we see its branches at rest, the second time in motion. We are not satisfied with this observation. Why, we ask, does the tree appear to us now at rest, now in motion? Every glance at Nature evokes in us a multitude of questions. Every phenomenon we meet sets us a new problem. Every experience is a riddle. We see that from the egg there emerges a creature like the mother animal, and we ask the reason for the likeness. We observe a living being grow and develop to a certain degree of perfection, and we seek the underlying conditions for this experience. Nowhere are we satisfied with what Nature spreads out before our senses. Everywhere we seek what we call the explanation of the facts... The something more which we seek in things, over and above what is immediately given to us in them, splits our whole being into two parts. We become conscious of our antithesis to the world. We confront the world as independent beings. The universe appears to us in two opposite parts: I and World.

We erect this barrier between ourselves and the world as soon as consciousness first dawns in us. But we never cease to feel that, in spite of all, we belong to the world, that there is a connecting link between it and us, and that we are beings within, and not without, the universe.

This feeling makes us strive to bridge over this antithesis, and in this bridging lies ultimately the whole spiritual striving of mankind. The history of our spiritual life is a continuing search for the unity between ourselves and the world. Religion, art and science follow, one and all, this aim. The religious believer seeks in the revelation which God grants him the solution to the universal riddle which his I, dissatisfied with the world of mere appearance, sets before him. The artist seeks to embody in his material the ideas that are in his I, in order to reconcile what lives in him with the world outside. He too feels dissatisfied with the world of mere appearance and seeks to mould into it that something more which his I, transcending it, contains. The thinker seeks the laws of phenomena, and strives to penetrate by thinking what he experiences by observing. Only when we have made the world-content into our thought-content do we again find the unity out of which we had separated ourselves.

[GrantHenderson]

As infants, we first learn to balance ourselves in the world and walk upright, then to use language and communicate facts, then to reflect on experience through living thinking (often associated with a child's imagination). This is not programmed into us from birth, but things we develop in our early formative years according to various factors which are outside our individual control. We can call this development an image of Divine activity - the Way, the Truth, and the Life. There are 2 main questions I want to pose here, assuming you generally agree with this crude outline.
I think there are actually grammatical rules implemented into the structure of thinking, so language isn't something we learn from a blank slate. But that's what makes it a reflection of divine activity. Our thinking propagates off of factors that play a role in the structure of our experience which our thinking is not intrinsically aware of. We only become aware of such through metacognition.
1) How can we rediscover these Divine forces in full consciousness?2) Is anything less than rediscovering these Divine forces via immanent experience sufficient for awakening humanity to its real nature and thereby extricating from the 'meaning crisis', i.e. nihilism? 
I suppose I would just rather not limit my scope of understanding to only a few forms of conceptualizing when I don’t have to (regardless of which ones are more useful or more in touch with our sensory experiences). Don’t all valid forms of conceptualizing expand my scope of consciousness more than some limited set of them? If I'm reasoning through logic as a means to apply conclusions posed by inner-conceptual reasoning, there's nothing stopping me from also conducting inner conceptual reasoning, and vice versa....I don’t understand how, but perhaps you are correct. I don’t know how this can bridge the explanatory gap from experience to reality at large. I will make a note of it to read the essays you recommended.
I think we can learn that the relationship between experience, and reality (as we measure and perceive it) have high levels of similarity. Maybe even 99% similarity (by some metric). But I don’t see how the inductive nature of this reasoning can explain why this is the case. 
Essentially, this is the guideline I’m following:1) Is there a reason why reality is conscious, as opposed to not conscious? 2) If yes, can that be reasoned? 3) If yes (2) then we can reason it.4) If no (2) it is because there are certain things we cannot reason about.
I’m rejecting 4. We can reason it. We just can’t do so on terms that also integrate deeper aspects of our eminent personal experience. This doesn’t make it wrong, it just makes it shallow. It doesn’t explain, or utilize anything past the most broad defining features of mind. Because it is in itself a broad realizing of mind.
Also, I don’t believe the deduction ends where I have ended it. I believe it keeps going until you get to the subject level, which could integrate and explain aspects of our eminent personal experience, while also utilizing such to justify the axioms of the argument.  

I agree, we are not blank slates. And I think we both agree that these faculties are not the results of purely physical, mechanical processes, i.e. there is sentient agency behind their expression within and through us. My main point is that, as infants, we are given these Divine gifts which allow us to adapt to the physical world, survive, grow, instinctively think, etc. Eventually, we must take what was given to us from without and actively produce it from within to continue adapting and evolving, i.e. becoming more spiritually free through active reasoning and making the subconscious more conscious. This requires not only conceptual reasoning, but also first-person experience of the World Content to reason from. If we reason from flawed premises, or from arbitrarily incomplete experiential content, we are not really taking over responsibility for the inner flame of creative thinking. 

When it comes to consciousness and the Divine, i.e. soul and spirit, the concrete foundation of experience must be sought within our life of desires, impulses, feelings, thoughts, etc. These latter must become the objects of our observation and thinking, in their relation with the outer world as well. Put another way, what is normally the subject who investigates via reason must become the object of reasoned investigation. An inversion must come about from reflexive thinking entrained by perceptions and concepts to creative thinking which freely manifests and connects together perceptions and concepts within its own domain of inner activity. It is like a glove being turned inside-out, 'passing through the eye of a needle', the pinhole of cognition. I think it will really help here to distinguish between a few different domains of experience. Consider the following thought experiment:

And then there is the third thing which we do, still before reaching outer Nature. I am referring to what we do in “Phoronomy” so-called, or Kinematics, i.e. the science of Movement. Now it is very important for you to be clear on this point, — to realize that Kinematics too is, fundamentally speaking, still remote from what we call the “real” phenomena of Nature. Say I imagine an object to be moving from the point a to the point b (figure below). I am not looking at any moving object; I just imagine it. Then I can always imagine this movement from a to b, indicated by an arrow in the figure, to be compounded of two distinct movements. Think of it thus: the point a is ultimately to get to b, but we suppose it does not go there at once. It sets out in this other direction and reaches c. If it then subsequently moves from c to b, it does eventually get to b. Thus I can also imagine the movement from a to b so that it does not go along the line ab but along the line, ac or the two lines, ac and cb... You need not observe any process in outer Nature; you can simply think it — picture it to yourself in thought — how that the movement from a to b  is composed of the two other movements. That is to say, in place of the one movement the two other movements might be carried out with the same ultimate effect. And when in thinking I picture this. The thought — the mental picture — is spun out of myself. I need have made no outer drawing; I could simply have instructed you in thought to form the mental picture; you could not but have found it valid. Yet if in outer Nature there is really something like the point  — perhaps a little ball, a grain of shot — which in one instance moves from a to b and in another from a to c and then c from to b, what I have pictured to myself in thought will really happen. So then it is in kinematics, in the science of movement also; I think the movements to myself, yet what I think proves applicable to the phenomena of Nature and must indeed hold good among them.

So once we move into the domain of mechanics, even here pure thought must then combine with experiential observation of phenomena to discern something of the forces at work. Steiner gives the example of gravitational forces (weight) in that lecture. The phenomena themselves must disclose something to our conceptual reason for further investigation. If we move from mechanics into botany, we are now dealing with life-forces. Secular science assumes these life forces can be reduced to the mechanical forces, but we all know they can't be. That's where we get the 'hard problem of life', the problem of abiogenesis which cannot be solved from physical perceptions alone. When we move to sentient life, we are then dealing with soul-forces of perceptions, impulses, desires, feelings, etc. Again these cannot be reduced to anything physically perceptible - we get the hard problem of consciousness. At best, we can approach the soul forces indirectly with psychology. Finally, we have the reflective thinking experience of humans, the spiritual forces. This requires a pneumatology which practically doesn't exist anywhere in mainstream science. 

For the life, soul, and spirit forces, our conceptual reasoning must proceed from perceptions which are not available to the physical senses. Analytic idealism has vaguely recognized this reality too, so its 'solution' is to say knowledge of the living organism, of the soul life, of the life in spirit, is forever inaccessible to human perception and reasoning (actually it mostly adopts the materialist scientific explanation of living organisms like plants). We can only speculate about these forces in abstract thought which is not based in anything the phenomena themselves disclose to us. The 'noumena' exist behind a hard boundary of experience for all humans, according to analytic idealism. That is the dualistic assumption we are questioning here. We are saying the purely abstract speculation about "consciousness" vs. "matter" is (a) never going to be persuasive, since it is admittedly not based in our phenomenal experience, and (b) is unnecessary because we can, in fact, move beyond mere perceptions of the physical senses. It helps to acknowledge here what Socrates commented, "the only true Wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."

The only thing we can actually explain with physical perceptions alone are machines that we create, like a clock. These devices are isolated and we can trace their assembly back to our own agency. Everywhere else, we find mineral forces completely interwoven with life and soul forces, plant and animal life, and we have no idea what gives rise to these ecosystems. There is no such thing as isolated natural formations. So modern secular science and math is at a complete loss to explain them. Conceptual proofs only work in the domain of pure thought itself, i.e. math. We should really sense how humanity is only at the very beginning of sciences which could unveil these deeper relations of the phenomenal world, but only IF we decide not to remain enchanted by the "hard limits to knowledge" mantra. This is where analytic idealism proves to be the biggest obstacle - it backs itself into a corner and then hopes the deepest human longings regarding our relation with the Divine can be satisfied with abstract conceptual models or some mystical introspection.

Here we reach a crossroads - there are some, admittedly a few lonely voices in the wilderness right now, who say humanity has higher perceptual capacities currently unknown to secular science. Through these, much deeper insights into the nature of soul and spirit, into the structure and dynamics of qualitative consciousness, can be attained. Cleric has been writing about this for a few years on this forum. I had perceived the deep logic underlying this view, but only recently confirmed the existence of some tiny portion of the higher perceptual capacity. I should be clear, we are not speaking of abstract theories about the etheric and astral bodies, the sentient, intellectual, and consciousness soul, and imaginative, inspirative, and intuitive cognition. These are concrete realities we can come to perceive and know through our higher perceptual organs and logical reasoning faculty. Perhaps even these terms are unfamiliar if you haven't been following the discussions. 

Normally I would start only by mentioning Steiner's "Philosophy of Spiritual Activity", which I certainly still recommend to anyone who is interested in pursuing this further. But it seems many people are so used to the analytical philosophy approach that it is assumed every other philosophy presented must be of the same kind. That is not the case here. With these things in mind, I think you will get much value from Cleric's TCoTCT essays. They provide very good conceptual metaphors for the higher cognition we are referring to. That is where the conceptual reasoning capacity of modern man is most valuable and absolutely necessary - to bridge the apparent gap between physical perception-thinking and spiritual thinking. It was a great revelation for me when I understood all prior conceptual thought and worldviews I had worked out need not be abandoned, only enriched by living thinking. We will perceive how they all fit into place within the larger puzzle of Cosmic spiritual evolution. All modern world-conceptions can be understood as living gradations between the poles of Idealism-Realism, Spiritism-Materialism (see image below), expressed through various human personalities at various times. I hope the above addresses most of the points from your last post and I am happy to clarify anything written.

So for #2, my short answer is no and I don't think time is necessarily on our side anymore. Humans should have been awakening to this higher Self within them, yesterday. One of the biggest obstacles to this awakening is the assumption we are already awake, when we use conceptual models to 'explain' various domains of experience. Mostly I think these models have now become a way of restating the perceptual dynamics we already know in more abstract, technical jargon. The real value in conceptual reasoning comes from its ability to help us discern how little we actually know and the nature of our inner Logos faculty, which provides confidence we can know much more if we start looking within with sound thinking and good will. This is why the mode of thinking evolved through the modern age is more important than the conceptual content or 'proofs'.
All roads are leading here it seems. Do you find the following short passage to be a satisfactory inner-conceptualization outlining how consciousness is qualitative as opposed to quantitative? (a bit rough maybe): 

When we think about anything -- say, the color of a pillow, the clouds in the sky, what we are going to eat in an hour -- we are expressing meaningful intentions as objects within our perceptual reference frame. All thought is a product of qualitative meaning referencing objects, and objects representing qualitative meaning. The pillow is qualitatively meaningful because it has a color. However, we don’t conceive of why/how the color is meaningful within that observational process. What we conceive of is limited to what we perceive in the moment of observation. Thus, we don’t conceive of any other mental faculties involved in making the color of the pillow meaningful to us. Our sphere of awareness (perceptual frame) is always limited against other “decision making” faculties of mind. Thus, we are unable to accurately identify any point of equilibrium within our perceptual frame that can be held responsible for making our decisions. If we try to identify any point of equilibrium within our perceptual frame, it will ultimately fail to encompass other “points”. A precisely identified “point” of mental faculty would have to encompass all other points within it in order to be tangible, aka content. This cannot be the case, as our sphere of awareness is always limited against other factors of influence outside of our conscious control. Just as we make meaningful observations, but we can’t pinpoint exactly what makes them meaningful. 

Since mostly this was addressed above, I will only mention my answer to the question. I don't agree it is satisfactory, or accurate, for the reasons outlined above. It is accurate only with regards to physical sense-thinking, which we are not limited to. It also isn't satisfactory because we aren't limited to this reflexive sense-thinking, and therefore our deep human longing for meaningful existential answers can be more satisfactorily answered. The great illusion of the modern era is that humans have a longing to ask questions about the secrets of existence which cannot be answered with any logical precision. Why would such longing arise within us in the first place? Reality itself gives us a trail of perceptual and conceptual 'breadcrumbs' back to the ideal relations responsible for the existential meaning and there is nothing which stops us from following it except our own intellectual conviction that it's impossible. Here another quote from Steiner is apt.

Man is not organized as a self-consistent unity. He always demands more than the world, of its own accord, gives him. Nature has endowed us with needs; among them are some that she leaves to our own activity to satisfy. Abundant as are the gifts she has bestowed upon us, still more abundant are our desires. We seem born to be dissatisfied. And our thirst for knowledge is but a special instance of this dissatisfaction. We look twice at a tree. The first time we see its branches at rest, the second time in motion. We are not satisfied with this observation. Why, we ask, does the tree appear to us now at rest, now in motion? Every glance at Nature evokes in us a multitude of questions. Every phenomenon we meet sets us a new problem. Every experience is a riddle. We see that from the egg there emerges a creature like the mother animal, and we ask the reason for the likeness. We observe a living being grow and develop to a certain degree of perfection, and we seek the underlying conditions for this experience. Nowhere are we satisfied with what Nature spreads out before our senses. Everywhere we seek what we call the explanation of the facts... The something more which we seek in things, over and above what is immediately given to us in them, splits our whole being into two parts. We become conscious of our antithesis to the world. We confront the world as independent beings. The universe appears to us in two opposite parts: I and World.

We erect this barrier between ourselves and the world as soon as consciousness first dawns in us. But we never cease to feel that, in spite of all, we belong to the world, that there is a connecting link between it and us, and that we are beings within, and not without, the universe.

This feeling makes us strive to bridge over this antithesis, and in this bridging lies ultimately the whole spiritual striving of mankind. The history of our spiritual life is a continuing search for the unity between ourselves and the world. Religion, art and science follow, one and all, this aim. The religious believer seeks in the revelation which God grants him the solution to the universal riddle which his I, dissatisfied with the world of mere appearance, sets before him. The artist seeks to embody in his material the ideas that are in his I, in order to reconcile what lives in him with the world outside. He too feels dissatisfied with the world of mere appearance and seeks to mould into it that something more which his I, transcending it, contains. The thinker seeks the laws of phenomena, and strives to penetrate by thinking what he experiences by observing. Only when we have made the world-content into our thought-content do we again find the unity out of which we had separated ourselves.

Thanks Ashvin, there’s much for me to learn here.

One thing confuses me:

You mention that my reasoning is only satisfactory for physical sense thinking, and suggest that there is a spiritual thinking from subjective experience of world content that my reasoning doesn’t encapsulate. However, I’m not sure where you elaborate on that more specifically. You did mention this:

When it comes to consciousness and the Divine, i.e. soul and spirit, the concrete foundation of experience must be sought within our life of desires, impulses, feelings, thoughts, etc. These latter must become the objects of our observation and thinking, in their relation with the outer world as well. Put another way, what is normally the subject who investigates via reason must become the object of reasoned investigation. An inversion must come about from reflexive thinking entrained by perceptions and concepts to creative thinking which freely manifests and connects together perceptions and concepts within its own domain of inner activity. It is like a glove being turned inside-out, 'passing through the eye of a needle', the pinhole of cognition.

I really like this. If I’m correct in assuming that this is what you are considering to negate my reasoning, I’m not sure how. As far as I can tell, this simply takes my reasoning a step further, and into greater context.

In my passage, I’m illustrating that there is no concrete “point of equilibrium” which ties together all thought-concept, but rather a non-physical essence. Even when the meaning of the thought-concept becomes the object of investigation, such always brings into focus additional meaning. This is the “eye of the needle” you reference, which, rather, isn’t some central point, but exists everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It is both unbound, but also infinitely penetrable by world content. When world content penetrates the screen of perception, it reflexively re-binds the world content, wherein the world content becomes an extrinsic appearance of the screen of perception.

This might be a good visual analogy. Imagine a circle:



The circumference doesn’t have any identifiable “point” because it is constantly arching away from any length x width dimension. Furthermore, if we try to fill in the circle with “points” (pixels), they will protrude outside of the circle boundary:



But since world content cannot exist outside of our experience of it, there is a reflexive re-enclosure of its contents. This relates directly to your idea. The points that protrude outside of the boundary are “the subject who investigates via reason”, and then when our perception re-encloses upon the subject, it becomes the “object of investigation”:



It might be more clear what this means if we explain it in computational terms. Note, what I'm doing here isn’t actually computational. But by putting it into computational terms, it demonstrates to be a sort of “proto-computational” sequence: Since a computational pattern will never be able to perfectly replicate its boundary (the screen of perception), the elements which extend outside of its boundary act as the ending of that computational pattern and the beginning of another. Thus, elements of a computational procedure interact with their boundary in a manner that permits multiple computational patterns to overlap. The preceding computation (Q) influences the succeeding computation (T) because the ending of the preceding computation (Q) acts as the beginning of the succeeding computation (T). In turn, the succeeding computation (T) completes the preceding computation (Q) because its boundary completely encompasses the preceding computation (Q). As a result, each computational procedure is computationally irreducible, as it will always be contingent on a succeeding computation. This allows the mind to smoothly integrate continuous streams of input, and adapt to new situations without overwriting previous actions which may inform valid context.

More specifically, each vertices corresponds to a noun, each edge corresponds to a verb stringing a set of nouns together, and the circular/computational boundary corresponds to the extent to which a concept applies to the set of nouns and verbs within it. An information bit (vertices) entirely encompassed within its computational boundary represents an object specified by the system. So likewise, an information bit (vertices) entirely encompassed within its computational boundary corresponds to a noun because a noun represents a general or specified object. An isolated information bit (T) would have a computational boundary which only serves to bound that information bit (T). As we know, a computation is defined where its elements completely fill in its boundary, and where the boundary encompasses its elements. Since the first information bit (T) encompassed within a computational boundary cannot also completely fill in that boundary, we must attach another information bit (Q) to the first information bit (T) in order to fill in said boundary. When the second information bit (Q) attaches to the first information bit (T), it extends outside of the computational boundary informed by the first information bit (T), and into a succeeding computational boundary. Since the second information bit (Q) only partially overlaps with both computational procedures, its object form remains unspecified to both of them respectively. However, since the second information bit (Q) overlaps with both computational procedures, it also serves as an edge linking them together. Thus, as a grammatical expression, the second information bit (Q) corresponds to an unspecified verb which relates the preceding computation with its succeeding computation. A verb is unspecified as an object by virtue of the fact that it implies a multitude of objects, or states of an object communicated through a single expression.

That's pretty dense information, so if you have any questions feel free to let me know.

But this is might be one potential way of interpreting your idea. It's also important to note that nothing is ever actually “expanding outwards” because it's met with an equal and opposite “inwards contraction”. I wont get into that however unless prompted again.

[AshvinP]

Thanks Ashvin, there’s much for me to learn here.

One thing confuses me:

You mention that my reasoning is only satisfactory for physical sense thinking, and suggest that there is a spiritual thinking from subjective experience of world content that my reasoning doesn’t encapsulate. However, I’m not sure where you elaborate on that more specifically. You did mention this:

When it comes to consciousness and the Divine, i.e. soul and spirit, the concrete foundation of experience must be sought within our life of desires, impulses, feelings, thoughts, etc. These latter must become the objects of our observation and thinking, in their relation with the outer world as well. Put another way, what is normally the subject who investigates via reason must become the object of reasoned investigation. An inversion must come about from reflexive thinking entrained by perceptions and concepts to creative thinking which freely manifests and connects together perceptions and concepts within its own domain of inner activity. It is like a glove being turned inside-out, 'passing through the eye of a needle', the pinhole of cognition.

I really like this. If I’m correct in assuming that this is what you are considering to negate my reasoning, I’m not sure how. As far as I can tell, this simply takes my reasoning a step further, and into greater context.

In my passage, I’m illustrating that there is no concrete “point of equilibrium” which ties together all thought-concept, but rather a non-physical essence. Even when the meaning of the thought-concept becomes the object of investigation, such always brings into focus additional meaning. This is the “eye of the needle” you reference, which, rather, isn’t some central point, but exists everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It is both unbound, but also infinitely penetrable by world content. When world content penetrates the screen of perception, it reflexively re-binds the world content, wherein the world content becomes an extrinsic appearance of the screen of perception.

This might be a good visual analogy. Imagine a circle:

Anthony,

I thank you for the computational metaphor - I am not good with such things, so it will take some more time for me to digest. But right from the outset, I must make a distinction here with what I wrote previously - I was not attempting to provide a conceptual metaphor for the dynamics of consciousness, so that we understand better how our consciousness works. Rather, I was trying to explain the need for us to livingly experience our own first-person thinking differently, in an 'inverted' manner. Our own thinking needs to pass through the 'eye of the needle'. Perhaps you understood that already, but I'm not quite sure.

I think we can all admit that, normally, the world of outer perception appears as something pre-existing our own consciousness and ideation. It comes to meet us and we have almost no clue why we perceive it, what it means, or what stands 'behind' it. Like you said, when I perceive the blue sky outside, I cannot really answer any of those questions. What we are speaking of here is a means of reorienting that back to its rightful relationship - where meaning flows through us into perception - so that we can truly say, "my conscious ideation is what structures the phenomenal world content in its manifold appearances to me". It is that livingly experineced ideational flow of activity which begins to explain why we perceive some phenomenon, what it means, and what is responsible for it. Most immediately, we find this nexus of meaningful flow and perception in the observation of our own thinking.

Let's say you form the thought, "triangle", and picture it inwardly. What significance does this triangle-form we picture inwardly have for our essential activity? It is the simple fact that we willed it into existence, we imbued it with the meaning of "triangle", and we perceive the final product of that activity. We then have a tiny, yet complete circuit of meaningful activity from inner will to outer thought-perception; a corner of the World Content we can plant our flag into and call our own. Now the goal is to expand this creative thinking capacity to more and more domains of perceptual experience, so that less and less of that perceptual experience comes to meet us as a mystery, at least in terms of its relation to our own ideational activity and our life of feelings, desires, etc.

Consider this first section of Cleric's essay which provides an exercise to work with. This one in particular was really helpfulf for me, personally. Generally, the purpose of these imaginative exercises is about developing 'sense-free' thinking. We want to find an image that cannot be found in the sense-world but is also very simple. Usually it comes in the form of combinations of images we won't find anywhere. Half the battle, so to speak, is following the reasoning of why we are doing the exercise and building up the image in connection with our soul experience, i.e. the life of feeling. The images can include mantras, verses, and in this case simply a string of vowel sounds morphing between one another. It is very simple but also something that most people would not have experienced yet, and vowels inherently carry inner meaning as the counter-pole to the outer forms of consonants.

Let's experiment with vowels. The goal will be to produce vowels - a, e, o, u, i - while freely morphing between them. For example, we start with 'a' and smoothly morph into 'e' - aaaaaeaaaeeaaeeeaeeeeee. It's advisable that we first warm up with producing the sounds with our physical voice (make sure no one's around ). We take a deep breath and begin slowly and smoothly morphing among random vowels in one continuous sound until we run out of air. After we get used to it, we continue the exercise but now with producing the sounds in our mind only.

There's very interesting difference when we do the exercise in our mind only - we can do it indefinitely - we never run out of air! The voice in our mind is independent of breathing (well, there's still relation but it will go well beyond the scope of this post to go into that). As a matter of fact it might be interesting to experiment also without breathing - we take a deep breath, hold it and begin producing the thought-sounds. We can't produce physical sound without passing air through the larynx but we certainly can in our mind. The reader may find that it is easier to focus when the breath is held (breathing may act as source of distraction). After we get the hang out of it we can breathe normally and hold the sound as long as possible. If we can morph the sound continuously, without any interruption, without any distraction, for about half a minute, that is actually pretty good. But even if we can keep it for much less, there's no need to be discouraged - even ten seconds can be enough if we do it with the needed concentration and intensity.

The goal of this exercise is to experience our thinking spiritual activity as clearly as possible. Yes, even producing a morphing sound can be considered a form of thinking. When we produce the sound we do that with our inner voice, the same one we use to think with verbal words. The most important thing is to feel as tightly as possible how it is through our own activity that the morphing of the sound is accomplished. The sound should feel as continuous, gradual morphing. The slower we do it, the better we can feel it. The sound should be an expression of our thinking will, of our innermost being. We should resist the temptation to split from the act of sound producing and observe it from the side or think about it. The goal is to fully engage precisely this voice which has the tendency to move in the background and imperceptibly comment on conscious phenomena as a bystander. We need to gather all the forces of this bystander and project them into the sound. We should feel this act as giving us inner stability, as if our sound producing activity finds its stable center in the sound perception. The center where the sound is focused at should be felt in the head region. As long as we're being drawn away from that center, the concentration is not yet as it should be. When our activity meets the sound in the right way, we feel very characteristic stability, almost as if a key fits a lock.

Here some may object that the feeling of being responsible for the sound is an illusion. Above all, this feeling is immediate fact of the given. It is only the thinking about that feeling which can declare it to be an illusion or not, but this in no way changes the given fact. Here we simply stick to the given. We shouldn't arbitrarily discard parts of the given because in this way we may be creating for ourselves an unsolvable problem. So in this exercise we don't postulate anything metaphysical but we simply investigate the living experience of willfully thinking a sound with clear self-propelled intent and tightly perceiving the result.

[AshvinP]

I really like this. If I’m correct in assuming that this is what you are considering to negate my reasoning, I’m not sure how. As far as I can tell, this simply takes my reasoning a step further, and into greater context.

I also want to be clear that I am not negating your reasoning in any of your posts. Let me use an analogy. Goethe developed a theory of colors contra Newtonian color theory. Newton said there is something called pure white light and all the colors are embedded within this light. When the thinking subject set up a prism, we are simply drawing out the colors already within the light without our involvement. Goethe found this explanation is not in accord with the facts, with the phenomena of colors as they manifest to us. He eventually concluded that colors result from an interplay of light and darkness, which is an archetypal phenomenon, mediated by the thinking agency. Darkness perceived through light results in blue (daytime sky), for ex., and light perceived through darkness results in reddish-orange (dawn or dusk). He didn't abstract out the thinking agency from the scientific experimental process. We can say the Newtonian color theory, still prevalent today, is analogous to materialism and the Goethean theory is analogous to idealism.

Assuming the Goethean theory is more accurate, I would compare your arguments for consciousness as fundamental to it. It is a very clever theory and in accord with experience as it manifests. The reasoning is completely sound. There was a time not too long ago that I would say these arguments, both Goethean color theory and your consciousness argument, are persuasive to the average logical mind and would sway it towards concrete idealist understanding. Now I am seeing that is not necessarily the case. As long as it remains a purely conceptual argument, relatively isolated, people can find infinite ways of discounting its significance. Or they can express intellectual assent, yet their understanding of the world phenomena doesn't really change.

Goethean theory also has practical significance those who use colors in their line of work, while analytic idealist proofs, or proofs for any ontology in general, don't really have such a practical dimension. The latter also run the risk of imparting a sense of understanding of the nature of reality while it has not yet been understood in any living way. So there is nothing wrong with your reasoning, in my view, but the critique is about the context and purpose of the reasoning and how it's employed. In fact, even materialist theories are solid reasoning and can be epistemicallly useful when employed in the proper context. Today, the context has become man himself - what do these ontologies reflect to us about our own mode of thinking and its evolutionary potential? That is what I am trying to point attention to here. This is the step further which needs to be taken and whether we take it or not makes all the practical difference in my view.