The world does not exist outside of perception, yet neither does it not exist.

[AshvinP]

Also have a look at my essay on 'The Objective Stance'

Wayfarer, I hope it's at least clear now that we do have a fundamental disagreement with your position, which was anticipated before. Especially the "inability to know the knower" which you posit in your 'iteration' of AI, and which Cleric quite comprehensively addressed in his illustration/metaphor.

Since you quote Schop's famous opening in that essay, I will share Steiner's response from PoF, as an addition to what Federica also shared.

This much, then, is certain: Investigation within the world of percepts cannot establish critical idealism, and consequently, cannot strip percepts of their objective character.

Still less can the principle “the perceived world is my mental picture” be claimed as obvious and needing no proof. Schopenhauer begins his chief work 6 with the words:

The world is my mental picture — this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and cognizes, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness. If he really does this, he has attained to philosophical discretion. It then becomes clear and certain to him that he knows no sun and no earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth; that the world which surrounds him is there only as mental picture, that is, only in relation to something else, to the one who pictures it, which is he himself. If any truth can be asserted a priori, it is this one, for it is the expression of that form of all possible and thinkable experience which is more universal than all others, than time, space, or causality, for all these presuppose it ...

This whole theory is wrecked by the fact, already mentioned, that the eye and the hand are percepts no less than the sun and the earth. Using Schopenhauer's expressions in his own sense, we could reply: My eye that sees the sun, my hand that feels the earth, are my mental pictures just as much as the sun and the earth themselves. That with this the whole theory cancels itself, is clear without further argument. For only my real eye and my real hand could have the mental pictures “sun” and “earth” as modifications of themselves; the mental pictures “eye” and “hand” cannot have them. Yet it is only of these mental pictures that critical idealism is allowed to speak.

Critical idealism is totally unfitted to form an opinion about the relationship between percept and mental picture. It cannot begin to make the distinction, mentioned above, between what happens to the percept in the process of perception and what must be inherent in it prior to perception. We must, therefore, tackle this problem in another way.
...
From the foregoing considerations it follows that it is impossible to prove by investigating the content of our observation that our percepts are mental pictures. Such proof is supposed to be established by showing that, if the process of perceiving takes place in the way in which — on the basis of naïve-realistic assumptions about our psychological and physiological constitution — we imagine that it does, then we have to do, not with things in themselves, but only with our mental pictures of things. Now if naïve realism, when consistently thought out, leads to results which directly contradict its presuppositions, then these presuppositions must be discarded as unsuitable for the foundation of a universal philosophy. In any case, it is not permissible to reject the presuppositions and yet accept the consequences, as the critical idealist does when he bases his assertion that the world is my mental picture on the line of argument already described. (Eduard von Hartmann gives a full account of this line of argument in his work, Das Grundproblem der Erkenntnistheorie.)

The truth of critical idealism is one thing, the force of its proof another. How it stands with the former will appear later on in the course of this book, but the force of its proof is exactly nil. If one builds a house, and the ground floor collapses while the first floor is being built, then the first floor collapses also. Naïve realism and critical idealism is related as ground floor to the first floor in this simile.

I think you are misunderstanding the argument against critical idealism, based on your last comment, but I will let her respond first, and perhaps the above also helps clarify it.

[Wayfarer]

Steiner was first a rigorous philosopher within the German idealist tradition, before he started writing or lecturing anything 'esoteric/occult'. He wrote books like Goethean Science and Philosophy of Freedom, neither of which speak of esoteric wisdom in the least. They contain direct considerations and refutations of everything that Kastrup now argues for, metaphysically and epistemologically (which went from the World as Idea, to the World as instinctive animal consciousness).

So - is this a Bernardo Kastrup forum, or a Rudolf Steiner forum? I've already explained what I think is incorrect with Steiner's dismissal of Schopenhaur, I think it clearly demonstrates a misunderstanding, as I've explained. And Kastrup's exegesis of Schopenhauer is one of the books that lead me to this forum in the first place. But maybe I'm in the wrong place?

[AshvinP]

Steiner was first a rigorous philosopher within the German idealist tradition, before he started writing or lecturing anything 'esoteric/occult'. He wrote books like Goethean Science and Philosophy of Freedom, neither of which speak of esoteric wisdom in the least. They contain direct considerations and refutations of everything that Kastrup now argues for, metaphysically and epistemologically (which went from the World as Idea, to the World as instinctive animal consciousness).

So - is this a Bernardo Kastrup forum, or a Rudolf Steiner forum? I've already explained what I think is incorrect with Steiner's dismissal of Schopenhaur, I think it clearly demonstrates a misunderstanding, as I've explained. And Kastrup's exegesis of Schopenhauer is one of the books that lead me to this forum in the first place. But maybe I'm in the wrong place?

It's a forum seeking the Truth of the matter, without any ideological commitments to preconceived worldviews which dictate what arguments can and cannot be taken into consideration.

This is exactly what we mean we speak of naive realism of inner concepts, i.e. the intellectual 'diving suit' - it gets to the point where a person can't be bothered to even work through challenges to their conceptual worldview. These are not 'estoeric' challenges, as you can see, but ones firmly rooted in the German idealist stream of philosophy. Quoting Steiner is just our admittedly lazy way of saving ourselves from typing out the argument.

Ask yourself this, would Kastrup or Schopenhauer or any serious philosopher consider this an 'explanation'?

Grave misconception here in my view. Critical idealism is not representative realism: it's not as if 'the idea of the table' is an image that represents the table. That is John Locke.

The second 'explanation' - "The second point is the idea of making the process of cognition itself an object of perception - which can't be done" - is begging the question - whether the knower can be known, whether cognition can become the object of perception, is exactly what's in dispute. We can't appeal to our interpretation of the Upanishads or Advaita Vedanta as a philosophical argument for the capacities of modern reasoning consciousness.

Finally your last comment - "I'm also dubious of this claim 'The path of inner observation begins with the sensation, and continues up to the building of things out of the material of sensation'. What of judgement and reason? Where do they fit?" - is actually a criticism of Schopenhauer, since that is a description of his argument, which indeed leaves the central role of Reason in the blind spot. The critical idealists forget what they are doing with their own reasoning in the process of using it, due to the default dogma that the knower can't be known, which forces them to rely on naive realism. It is the same reason why materialists feel there are percepts which just appear independent of cognitive activity, except pushed back one layer deeper - the critical idealists feel there are concepts which just appear independent of deeper cognitive activity.

[Wayfarer]

Ask yourself this, would Kastrup or Schopenhauer or any serious philosopher consider this an 'explanation'?

What I think is the issue with that passage I had been asked to comment on is contained in this statement:

I must henceforth treat the table, of which formerly I believed that it acted on me and produced a mental picture of itself in me, as itself a mental picture. But from this it follows logically that my sense organs and the processes in them are also merely subjective. I have no right to speak of a real eye but only of my mental picture of the eye.

This is based on analysis of Schopenhauer's opening paragraph from WWR, which (I take it) is the text at issue. What I'm saying is wrong with it is that I think it misinterprets Schopenhauer.

Look at Schop's opening sentences again:

“The world is my idea”— this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness. If he really does this, he has attained to philosophical wisdom. It then becomes clear and certain to him that what he knows is not a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth; that the world which surrounds him is there only as idea, i.e., only in relation to something else, the consciousness, which is himself. If any truth can be asserted a priori, it is this...

Steiner's criticism is, then, that 'the eye' and 'the hand' are also themselves merely 'subjective representations', same as any other object. So Schopenhauer is being accused of a vicious regress - these things he says about 'the sun' and 'the earth' can also be said about the elements of the nervous system, such as the eye. And the reason I don't think the criticism is warranted, is that 'the eye' and 'the hand' are representative, not of objects as such, but of 'the act of seeing' or 'grasping'. And the act of seeing cannot itself be made an object of perception, in the way 'the sun' and 'the earth' or the 'table' are objects of perception. (It was John Locke's representative realism that says that concepts refer to things, hence my reference to Locke.)

Schopenhauer, and Kant before him, are elaborating on the way the intellect constructs the experience-of-the-world. At the time Kant originated this line of argument, it was entirely novel in Western philosophy, although arguably it has precedents. And so I don't agree that Steiner's argument here 'wrecks' Schopenhauer's basic thesis. What I've said is based solely on the paragraph of text I was asked to respond to, not on any general view of Steiner, about whom I don't hold any particularly strong opinion.

[AshvinP]

Ask yourself this, would Kastrup or Schopenhauer or any serious philosopher consider this an 'explanation'?

What I think is the issue with that passage I had been asked to comment on is contained in this statement:

I must henceforth treat the table, of which formerly I believed that it acted on me and produced a mental picture of itself in me, as itself a mental picture. But from this it follows logically that my sense organs and the processes in them are also merely subjective. I have no right to speak of a real eye but only of my mental picture of the eye.

This is based on analysis of Schopenhauer's opening paragraph from WWR, which (I take it) is the text at issue. What I'm saying is wrong with it is that I think it misinterprets Schopenhauer.

Look at Schop's opening sentences again:

“The world is my idea”— this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness. If he really does this, he has attained to philosophical wisdom. It then becomes clear and certain to him that what he knows is not a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth; that the world which surrounds him is there only as idea, i.e., only in relation to something else, the consciousness, which is himself. If any truth can be asserted a priori, it is this...

Steiner's criticism is, then, that 'the eye' and 'the hand' are also themselves merely 'subjective representations', same as any other object. So Schopenhauer is being accused of a vicious regress - these things he says about 'the sun' and 'the earth' can also be said about the elements of the nervous system, such as the eye. And the reason I don't think the criticism is warranted, is that 'the eye' and 'the hand' are representative, not of objects as such, but of 'the act of seeing' or 'grasping'. And the act of seeing cannot itself be made an object of perception, in the way 'the sun' and 'the earth' or the 'table' are objects of perception. (It was John Locke's representative realism that says that concepts refer to things, hence my reference to Locke.)

Schopenhauer, and Kant before him, are elaborating on the way the intellect constructs the experience-of-the-world. At the time Kant originated this line of argument, it was entirely novel in Western philosophy, although arguably it has precedents. And so I don't agree that Steiner's argument here 'wrecks' Schopenhauer's basic thesis. What I've said is based solely on the paragraph of text I was asked to respond to, not on any general view of Steiner, about whom I don't hold any particularly strong opinion.

Thanks for this clarification. Here are the issues:

1) The other quote you shared seems to indicate Schopenhauer is actually speaking of the physical eye and the physical hand. Let's be clear - no one is claiming Schopenhauer believes the physical eye and hand are real or representative objects, but rather that he must treat them as such in order to make his argument work.

All that is objective, extended, active—that is to say, all that is material—is regarded by materialism as affording so solid a basis for its explanation, that a reduction of everything to this can leave nothing to be desired (especially if in ultimate analysis this reduction should resolve itself into action and reaction). But we have shown that all this is given indirectly and in the highest degree determined, and is therefore merely a relatively present object, for it has passed through the machinery and manufactory of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and ever active in time. From such an indirectly given object, materialism seeks to explain what is immediately given, the idea (in which alone the object that materialism starts with exists), and finally even the will from which all those fundamental forces, that manifest themselves, under the guidance of causes, and therefore according to law, are in truth to be explained.

Why must he treat them as such for purposes of his argument? That is related to the fact that he keeps the role of his first-person Thinking in the blind spot (further indicated by the underlined dualism between Idea and Will). If this activity were not in the blind spot, then it would occur that perceptions are not 'subjective representations' constructed by the intellect, but half-complete images of Reality which need to be united, through our thinking consciousness, with inner concepts and ideas to make them wholly complete, which is a never-ending process taking place at ever-greater levels of cognitive depth. Then this need to rely on naive realism to defeat naive realism would be avoided, as we stop philosophizing the whole process taking place 'from the side', but rather from within the first-person creative thinking force.

2) Even if we grant that he is speaking of the 'act of seeing' (eye), 'act of grasping' (hand), 'act of thinking' (brain), these are still perceptions in the same sense as the Sun, Earth, etc. Anything which can be made the object of thinking is a "perception". The key question is whether the reasoning mind is formatting a pre-existing 'noumenal' reality (whether theistic, pantheistic, materialistic, etc.) with its concepts, or whether that reasoning mind is perceiving the ideal-meaningful pole of reality which has been sundered from the sense-perceptible pole and thereby restoring its Unity.

[Wayfarer]

Well, I'd call that a constructive disagreement, and thank you for it, but will leave it at that for now pending some other responses and some more thought on my part.

[Wayfarer]

As Schopenhauer has become subject of discussion in this thread, it's perhaps worth mentioning Bernardo Kastrup's blog post about his 2019 book, Decoding Schopenhauer's Metaphysics. In it, he says:

I believe Schopenhauer’s most valuable legacy is precisely his metaphysical views: they anticipate salient recent developments in analytic philosophy, circumvent the insoluble problems of mainstream physicalism and constitutive panpsychism, and provide an avenue for making sense of the ontological dilemmas of quantum mechanics. ... Had the coherence and cogency of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics been recognized earlier, much of the underlying philosophical malaise that plagues our culture today—with its insidious effects on our science, cultural ethos and way of life—could have been avoided.

He adds:

I hope to show that my own metaphysical position, as articulated in my earlier works, isn’t peculiar or merely fashionable, but part instead of an established, robust and evolving chain of thought in Western philosophy. ...

Primarily, [the book] is about elucidating, in a concise and easily-accessible manner, Schopenhauer's extraordinary and sophisticated ideas on the nature of mind and reality; ideas whose plausibility, explanatory power and importance have only increased over the past two centuries. Schopenhauer's work is a veritable metaphysical treasure that deserves much more recognition than it has gotten.

[Cleric K]

Well, I'd call that a constructive disagreement, and thank you for it, but will leave it at that for now pending some other responses and some more thought on my part.

Wayfarer, let’s try to put things into perspective. Presently, your focus of work is to point out the path on which the mind realizes its self-supported illusions and moves into its foundations. From that vantage point the mind sees everything as mental pictures, for which it has no justification to say that they represent some distinct objective reality-in-itself. The existence/non-existence of such a reality is in itself an undecidable problem (like Turing’s halting problem: if we assume it is solvable, then this leads to recursive paradoxes).

Now imagine the following. As long as men have beards, a barber is needed. At this point you contribute something to society by trimming men’s beards, basically saying “You’re being distracted by your curly hairs. If you get a shave, you’ll move closer to the follicles and see how you’re struggling with your impossible questions that you have let grow out of control.”

Now imagine that by some miracle all this is accepted and understood at large. Men become like children, with cheeks as smooth as baby's bottom and no longer grow beards. Now there’s no longer any need for a barber. What would be the new focus of your work then?

I beg you to consider this metaphor because despite its comical form, it speaks of something very concrete. After there’s universal agreement, what do we make of our human life? Normally we’re tempted to answer “Well, I don’t need to bother with that at this point. There’s so much more trimming to do. I’ll think about it when all the trimming is done and beards no longer grow.” And in a way that’s fine. We obviously can’t skip stages of development. But we should also be vigilant if we’re not simply pushing a milestone (even if subconsciously) far into the future and feeling comfortable that we don’t have to think about it today. Imagine the work of a doctor. He or she says “The goal of my work is universal health. Of course, if that is to happen I’ll be left unemployed. Luckily, I don’t have to worry about that because this ain’t gonna happen anytime soon.” And if the doctor is ill-intended it can be made sure that patients are never completely cured so that there will always be a steady flow of clients. There are many situations in life where we have certain ideal but a part of us would gladly sabotage that ideal in order to prolong our journey towards it indefinitely.

So in our context it would be really useful if we not only say “my interests lie in trimming beards” but also have a clear idea of where this is going. There’s no need to worry that we’ll be left unemployed, there’s indeed a lot of trimming that needs to be done but we should be aware with ourselves if we have made that an end in itself.

Let’s see what will happen if these ideas are universally adopted. What happens can be described as extreme agnosticism. Yes, we have done a tremendous amount of work with our reason but all that this achieved was to think ourselves into a corner. Now the most we can say about reality is that we have spiritual experience of images coming and going. As soon as we try to think something about these images, we’re growing beards again. We have reached a state indistinguishable from blissful ignorance, except that we have worked very hard and reasoned our way to that state with great ingenuity.

We can take it that you have been successful in trimming our beards (Federica’s lucky she didn’t need such a procedure ). Now we’re on the same page and we’re completely at peace with our spiritual experiences. We neither think that something outside our mental images exists, nor that it doesn’t exist. Where does this leave us as h. sapiens? For some inexplicable reason we still need to experience the movements of mental images of foodstuff and their disappearance inside an opening of the bodily image. Then the images of foodstuff reappear in unrecognizable form, color and fragrance from another opening of the bodily image.

I intended to write also about knowing and the knower but I guess it would be better to take it step by step. Let’s focus on this stage – we’re all clear that our subjective perspective is the only foundational given. We have also given up making beard braids, believing that in them, like in some hairy crystal ball, we see the existence or non-existence of a world out there. How do we proceed from here? Clearly we’re still forced to follow a perspective within the images (and their not so decent details). Are these to be taken as the inexplicable mystery of existence that no beard can know (even shaved one)? Or now we’re at the threshold where we can gain actual experience of the creative forces behind the images?

[AshvinP]

As Schopenhauer has become subject of discussion in this thread, it's perhaps worth mentioning Bernardo Kastrup's blog post about his 2019 book, Decoding Schopenhauer's Metaphysics. In it, he says:

I believe Schopenhauer’s most valuable legacy is precisely his metaphysical views: they anticipate salient recent developments in analytic philosophy, circumvent the insoluble problems of mainstream physicalism and constitutive panpsychism, and provide an avenue for making sense of the ontological dilemmas of quantum mechanics. ... Had the coherence and cogency of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics been recognized earlier, much of the underlying philosophical malaise that plagues our culture today—with its insidious effects on our science, cultural ethos and way of life—could have been avoided.

He adds:

I hope to show that my own metaphysical position, as articulated in my earlier works, isn’t peculiar or merely fashionable, but part instead of an established, robust and evolving chain of thought in Western philosophy. ...

Primarily, [the book] is about elucidating, in a concise and easily-accessible manner, Schopenhauer's extraordinary and sophisticated ideas on the nature of mind and reality; ideas whose plausibility, explanatory power and importance have only increased over the past two centuries. Schopenhauer's work is a veritable metaphysical treasure that deserves much more recognition than it has gotten.

Speaking to Cleric's latest questions, and to what I mentioned earlier, I hope we can agree Kastrup's ideas, which are in turn Schopenhauer's ideas from the 19th century, are not ends-in-themselves. I hope he would also urge us to continue reasoning through these issues for ourselves, to continue that evolving chain of thought in Western philosophy. Steiner did so in the early 20th century, but no one here claims he was the end-itself of cognitive evolution, either.

Kastrup certainly took a concrete step towards de-mystifying German idealist philosophy, making the abstract discourse more concrete and related to things we can point to in life experience. But there is no reason, which is not self-imposed, why it must end there, and why we cannot take additional steps to now experience more directly the creative forces which do the philosophizing, which continuously crystallize intuition into concepts-perceptions and feedback the lessons learned to intuition.

[Wayfarer]

Presently, your focus of work is to point out the path on which the mind realizes its self-supported illusions and moves into its foundations. From that vantage point the mind sees everything as mental pictures, for which it has no justification to say that they represent some distinct objective reality-in-itself.

That is not the intent of the OP and not a conclusion I seek to draw, although I can see how it can be read that way.

My intent was broadly in support of the kinds of arguments that Kastrup employs to demonstrate that what is generally considered a 'mind-independent', truly existing material reality is itself dependent on mind. I also appealed to Buddhism, because Buddhism has a very sophisticated form of philosophical psychology, namely Abhidharma, although on reflection, I might have left that out, because explaining the abhidharma framework would be too great an undertaking in a medium such as this.

In any case, I've decided not to continue with this forum, as it is too esoteric for my liking, with far too much emphasis on Rudolf Steiner, so I'm signing out. Thanks for all the responses and all the best.