AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun May 01, 2022 9:31 pmAnthony,GrantHenderson wrote: ↑Sun May 01, 2022 5:09 pm 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:
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.
Cleric wrote: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.
Jared,
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.
You don’t have to understand computations to understand that. Even just considering the computational elements as visual contents imbued with meaning is all you need to do. The only thing difficult about that is my writing style.
I think it might just be a more precise demonstration of what you were explaining. It demonstrates how the meaning of objects of our perception inverts to become the objects of meaning (among other things).
The important thing to note for understanding this visual analogy is that perception is both unbound and infinitely penetrable: Since the contents of perception penetrates the bounds of perception, such contents always entails a qualitative meaning that isn’t entirely known by the perceptual agent. Inversely, since perception also bounds its contents, it always gives qualitative meaning to its contents. This is demonstrated by pixelated representations (contents of perception) penetrating a circle's circumference (local boundary of perception), and also, an outer circle (non-local boundary of perception) around the pixels (contents of perception) that are penetrating the inner circle's circumference. There is always empty space between the two circumferences that the mind will act to “fill in”, only to prompt repetition of the same process over and over again in a non-equilibrium steady state. The meaning of the object within our perception inverts to become the object of meaning, which carries fourth additional meaning, and so on.
And this idea might put into perspective what Steiner is demonstrating — The square that is perceived when relating two “points” by triangulating their positions in both directions. The points don’t actually exist independent of subjective pixelated representations. So it’s a subjective estimation of “points” in a kind of grid space. It’s important to note that the pixilated representations aren’t of something more fundamental in nature. They are just what we use to model the world.
More so, this dynamic of consciousness acts as a universal grammar.
This idea might also be supported by certain neuroscientific research. So here’s that same basic idea proposed as a universal grammar, and fitted more in neuroscientific terms:
Grammar is a mental adaptation to the spatial-temporal incompatibility between the digital signals (pixels) by which the brain forms spatial representations, and the analog signals which bounds its perception of the world, and syntactically organizes such pixels.
Due to the incompleteness to which a grid cell forms spatial representations carried from an analog signal, it semantically references that code as a transitional element (verb). Then, due to that grid cells future adaptive representation of that previous pixelation(s) through a higher bandwidth analog signal, it semantically references that code completely as a definite element (noun).
When the grid cell completely represents pixels as semantically defined elements (nouns), it consequently represents other pixels incompletely as semantically transitional elements (verbs), as grid cells code interactions between neural oscillations at escalating frequencies across time.
As such, the brain is constantly linking nouns to verbs, and verbs to nouns. In so doing, it distinguishes nouns from verbs, and verbs from nouns.
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.
Perception is like a vessel of activity. We allow meaning to flow through us so we can view it from an “outer” perspective, and to reveal additional factors of influence (meaning). This involves stopping it in its tracks so we can hold it in place. If we think about it (literally and figuratively), will requires disruption. But we want to minimize the level of disruption in order to keep the flow of activity moving freely.
We should treat it like sailing. Adjust your sail (attention) to the direction of the wind. Hold it until the wind changes, then change the angle of the sail accordingly.
Consider this first section of Cleric's essay which provides an exercise to work with.
I like how Cleric used a very mundane task to highlight the intended effect. If he had told us to focus on a task with any sort of meaningful implications, they may pose as distractions to the intended effect of the task.
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.
Yeah that's fair. I like the Goethe, Newton analogy too.
There isn't a strong reason to suggest it isn’t correct, but a strong reason to suggest that we cannot know if it is correct. While, it isn’t pointless to consider the potential truth of such concepts, it is pointless to put too much stock in them.
Though I do think it’s potential infallibility means something. I don’t know of many logical arguments regarding the nature of consciousness and the universe that are both infallible, and, at least, more suggestive of a conscious creator than this one. That makes it at least interesting (to me at least). I’m okay with that at the end of the day.