ChatGPT answers metaphysical questions :)

[AshvinP]

It seems to me that you are now clinging to this amalgam of word and concept that you have come from (I suspect JP to be responsible), and into this discussion. You speak of “symbolic concepts” and of “conceptual portals”, and that spiritual science has to rely on “precise, replicable and verifiable ways to communicate the results of research into higher realities”, but this precise communications are not exact linguistic communications, you say - not definitions - but precisely these “symbolic concepts” and “conceptual portals”, which to me are just impossible oxymorons, impossible attempts to unite earthly communication (symbols, portals) with concepts. These to me are more and more blurred formulations - notice how they are also quite new in your own language. I think they mark this impossible new striving towards what I have called spiritual impressionism. You want precise communications for spiritual science, but you also want to stay away from precise worded communications, and so you resort to the amalgam of “symbolic concepts”, an element supposed to be not word-precise, but still precisely communicable and symbolic, and not fully ideal but still fluid and conceptual. Can we do a reset?

What is a “symbolic concept”? How can a concept be symbolic? I’ll make an attempt to word this issue. A concept is a dynamic concentrate. The concept of birch tree is a resting ideal point with a medium level of dynamism, as it has to balance out the entire spectrum of birch-ness, in one meaningful gesture (not a symbol). The concept of a singular birch has a lower level of dynamism, as it only spans around more limited manifestations of birch-ness anchored to shorter waves of becoming. The concept of tree invites us into a high level of dynamism, as it requires us to concentrate a more meaningful quality of being within one ideal ‘device’ which is just as point-like as the concept of a single birch tree. However, the word “tree” or any other symbolic representation of tree aren’t any of these concepts. A symbol is only a freeze frame out of the dynamism of concept. And the reason why we pick a certain freeze frame rather than another, among the million possible, to symbolize our existence in etched Earthly symbols, is specific to an individual or group, that is, it has a feeling character. It qualifies the concept feeling-wise. It pins it down in a personalized way. In this sense, Steiner says:

Let us take an example from the German language. In German something is described that rests quietly on our body, is round and has eyes and nose in front. It is called in German Kopf, in Italian testa. We take a dictionary and find that the translation of Kopf is testa. But that is purely external and superficial. It is not even true. The following is true. Out of a feeling for the vowels and consonants contained in the word Kopf, for instance, I experience the o quite definitely as a form which I could draw: it is, as eurythmists know, the rounded form which in front is developed into nose and mouth. We find in this combination of sounds, if we will only let ourselves experience it, everything that is given in the form of the head. So, if we wish to express this form, we make use of larynx and lungs and pronounce the sounds approximating to K-o-pf. But now we can say: In the head there is something which enables one person to speak to another. There is a means of communication. We can impart to another person the content of something which we wish to make known—a will or testament for instance.—If you want to describe the head, not in relation to its round form, but as that which imparts information, which defines clearly what one wishes to communicate, then language out of its own nature gives you the means of doing so. Then you say testa. You give a name to that which imparts something when you say testa; you give a name to the rounded form when you say Kopf. If the Italian wanted to describe roundness, he too would say Kopf; and likewise, if the German wanted to express communication, he would say testa. But both the Italian and the German have become accustomed to expressing in language something different, for it is not possible to express totally different things in a single word. Therefore we do not say exactly the same thing when we speak the word testa or Kopf. The languages are different because their words express different things.

The human head concept is, I would say, a concept with a medium-high level of dynamism. We can feel it more anchored to its rounded form, or more anchored to the activity springing from it. But please tell me, what would its “symbolic concept” be? I can’t follow what your thoughts are doing when you speak of symbolic concepts.

Sorry I have to go - I will continue later.

Before you continue, just contemplate the concepts used on this forum, for example in the inner space stretching essays. What would you call these precise and lucid concepts, if not symbolic, portals, etc. to higher realities? Steiner put it like this:

By truly experiencing the silence of the soul, we become able to hear spiritually what dwells in the world of Spirit. The ordinary sensory world then becomes a means for us to interpret what lives in the spiritual world... what resounds approaches me with a certain vivacity, it can give me, say, something like the color yellow gives me if I am sensitive and receptive to colors. Then I have something in the sense world through which I can express my experience in the world of Spirit. My perception is one I can describe by saying that 'it effects me as the color yellow does'. Or like the tone C or C sharp in music, or like warmth or cold. In brief, my sensory experiences offer me a means for expressing in ordinary words what appears to me in the world of Spirit. In this way, the whole sensory world becomes like a language to express what I experience in the spiritual world.

Those who seek too rapid progress do not understand this and come only to a superficial judgment. This is why patient investigators describe their experiences in terms of colors, tones, and so on. Just as we shouldn't confuse the word "table" with an actual table, so we should not confuse the world of Spirit itself... with the manner in which it is described.

We don't need to complexify this too much, it's really simple. Cleric has often spoken of our thoughts becoming 'symbolic testimonies' in this same sense. I have always been speaking of our concepts becoming "symbolic portals" (or analogical portals, etc.) in this sense, throughout all the recent essays and posts. It is a realization that our concepts are meaningful gestures to dynamic ideal relations, as you put it. And this is what mathematical-scientific models and mappings are, in their essence, even if the people developing them are completely unaware of that symbolic function.

When it comes to JP, I don't think there is any reason to suspect he is confusing our spiritual nature for the manner in which it is described via modern philosophy, science, or ancient Biblical imagery alike, especially if we consider the wider context of his thinking.

[AshvinP]

These to me are more and more blurred formulations - notice how they are also quite new in your own language. I think they mark this impossible new striving towards what I have called spiritual impressionism. You want precise communications for spiritual science, but you also want to stay away from precise worded communications, and so you resort to the amalgam of “symbolic concepts”, an element supposed to be not word-precise, but still precisely communicable and symbolic, and not fully ideal but still fluid and conceptual. Can we do a reset?

What is a “symbolic concept”? How can a concept be symbolic? I’ll make an attempt to word this issue. A concept is a dynamic concentrate. The concept of birch tree is a resting ideal point with a medium level of dynamism, as it has to balance out the entire spectrum of birch-ness, in one meaningful gesture (not a symbol). The concept of a singular birch has a lower level of dynamism, as it only spans around more limited manifestations of birch-ness anchored to shorter waves of becoming. The concept of tree invites us into a high level of dynamism, as it requires us to concentrate a more meaningful quality of being within one ideal ‘device’ which is just as point-like as the concept of a single birch tree. However, the word “tree” or any other symbolic representation of tree aren’t any of these concepts. A symbol is only a freeze frame out of the dynamism of concept. And the reason why we pick a certain freeze frame rather than another, among the million possible, to symbolize our existence in etched Earthly symbols, is specific to an individual or group, that is, it has a feeling character. It qualifies the concept feeling-wise. It pins it down in a personalized way.

I want to briefly add something here. Hopefully it's clear this language of 'symbolic concept' is not at all new. You can do a quick search for 'symbolic' under either Cleric or me to be convinced it is nothing new.

With respect to the 'dynamism' of a symbolic concept or perception, this isn't something we can define beforehand. It will be entirely dependent on the life and purity of the thinking consciosness that is approaching the concept. All concepts eventually lead into the infinite ideal relations, most proximately our personal soul context through which the conceptual meaning is grasped (including our emotional life).

Of course we shouldn't equate the concept with the perceptual content that anchors it, like the visual or audial perception of "birch tree". But we don't need to divide them either, that's why we say it "anchors" the conceptual meaning or intuition. The word perception may normally feel more individualized but this isn't some fixed rule - perceptual content (like vowels and consonants) can also be immediately experienced as anchoring more universal intuitions, depending on our inner development.

[Federica]

Just because I spoke of a materialism of feeling (a materialism practiced in the linguistic subset of the sensory spectrum) I am not advocating for, or imagining, an opposite pole, a sort of mysticism of feeling and language, where words can simply be bypassed and/or don't contribute anything of value to the flow. I never suggested that, I hope. I suggested a spiritualization of language that reconnects feeling with its linguistic sensory expression (sound). Cleric, please let me know if this makes sense, and in any case, what part of what I wrote made you think it was useful to remind that shovelfuls of dirt can’t just be casted off. If you can share what paragraph(s), or passage(s), it would be very useful to me.

I think the core can be located here:

Precisely. He thinks that we can meaningfully use LLMs outputs as such to statistically analyse the textual output of human beings, and - here comes the crucial part - he thinks we can recover some extract of the nature of meaning from such an analysis. This is wildly different from what Cleric does. JP best reveals his conception when he gives the witch example, in the other video. There, it's clear how he thinks that the statistical summary provided by GPT has something to teach us about what the meaning of witch is, how it comes about, which is a common but clear misunderstanding of what "semantics" and language are. To make it very concrete, coming back to this video above, he says:


“...the degree Chat GPT is intelligent is because of the intelligence that's encoded only in language, and if the linguistic corpus of the body of text that we've all produced is biased and warped in some way that'll be built into the chat GPT system and along with whatever biases the programmers might have purposely or inadvertently put into the system.”


Again, the same problem: there is no meaning “encoded only in language”. The only reason language makes sense to us, if it does, is because we already hold real meaning. Meaning can go down from reality into language, but it cannot go back up from language into reality. This JP doesn’t realize. We have seen this misunderstanding now multiple times in different contexts. There is no two-way connection between reality and its linguistic outpression. There’s a check valve in between. Nothing standalone is “encoded” in language. There can only be a recognition in language. This can happen only IF the intelligence is already somehow else acquainted with meaning. If this is not the case, language alone leads nowhere, it’s a huis clos. There are openings, but one can only open them from the outside in, not from the inside out.

Put another way, language only holds half of the code, or rather a feel for the code. So all those statistical interrelations that JP wonders about don’t allow to build back anything of the quality of real meaning, but rather semi-conscious associations, operated, we could say, while "lost in translation”, lost in the linguistic layer. It’s a sort of dream world of its own, the dream of language. This layer can easily be experienced pretty much exclusively horizontally, in isolation from meaning. Then language is perfectly useless for the purpose of moving vertically, beyond the level of that dream, and up towards some recovery of living meaning.

Now, this life of dreaming in language is the vast majority of contemporary language use. However, even if GPT was trained only on the very best texts - let’s imagine a PoF Bot - no meaning will be contained in those outputs either. Because, if we really want to break it down pedantically, there are two problems. The first: there is that check valve. Just because one reads PoF doesn’t mean one gets it: one has to first overcome one’s own personal linguistic dreaming habits. And the same would be true with the PoF bot, of course, so no use. On top of that, the second problem is added to the first one, when GPT is trained on immense amounts of texted material: the regularities then discovered are only a measure of the average linguistic bubble our usual consciousness dreams up around symbols. So there’s an additional step away from relevant meaning.

JP doesn’t see all that. He’s rather captive of the wow narrative, the Alice in Wonderland narrative around these models, and really believes there is meaningful potential in the outputs that summarize human linguistic daydreaming. He really thinks this summary will bring light to what the real meaning of "witch" is. And to conclude his train of thought, it’s enough to put AI and images together, in this fascinating futuristic narrative, for the first example to come to mind to be sexual, of course. A GPT sexual partner and a fake video looking like a real speech by the real DT, are the two examples he brings, when asked about the future of AI, and the pros and cons of this technology for humanity. I'll leave the punchline to your imagination.

My math notation example intended to show that sometimes we may need to symbolically map out our thoughts and then by thinking over the mapped symbols we may have an insight into deeper ideal relation between the thoughts that have been individually mapped. This doesn't mean that the meaning of this ideal connection is somehow 'contained' in the written-down symbols, but the reading of the symbols can help us get there.

I think that JP means something similar when saying that LLMs have mapped out the symbolic world. The output presents some of the learned weightings but one must still read them and reach any potential insight (meaning) in the way any book that we find illuminating is read.

I now realize that I could have missed your main motivational point. Do you argue that JP in particular, seeks meaning as somehow emerging from the LLM output? Or you mean that no meaning in principle can be read from such output?

Thank you, Cleric. No you haven't missed it. I meant both. Not that the output we may decide to work with doesn't enter our flow of becoming. A student who uses GPT to write a dissertation surely has GPT frames entering the flow, mental pictures, receding memories --- "meaning" in some standard sense. And the same happens if I use it. But other than that, I believe what we can learn from the LLMs doesn't come from the side of its output, but from a reflection on its advent as a technology. And I don't see that the result of a query, for example the reply to the question "What is a witch", is a map similar to the Mandelbrot map above. The real LLM map, as GS said, remains hidden for us, in its connection with output generation. The "map" of the LLM similar to the Mandelbrot map is precisely what's in the background of the technology, not in its output. The map is what can be grasped while watching GS's videos. What new, insightful thoughts can you get from an instance (or multiple instances) of output, as below? How this instance of output is different, meaning-wise than any other standard sources of info about witches? What deeply meaningful hard science of symbols can one get here? What meaning that only an LLM can provide?

Q: What is witch?


GPT: The term witch can have several meanings depending on the context, but it broadly refers to a person who is believed to practice witchcraft, which often involves magic, spells, rituals, and a connection with supernatural forces or natural energies. Here are some common interpretations:

1. Historical Perspective
In history, especially during the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period in Europe, a "witch" was often seen as someone (typically a woman) accused of performing harmful magic or being in league with the devil. These accusations led to widespread witch trials, persecution, and executions.
Witch-hunting was based on fear, superstition, and societal control, with no real evidence of witchcraft being presented.

2. Cultural/Religious Perspective
In various cultures, witches are viewed differently. For instance:
In African, Indigenous American, or Asian traditions, a witch may be seen as a healer or a shaman, someone who uses their knowledge of herbs, spirits, and rituals to help the community.
In Western Paganism, such as Wicca, being a witch is often a self-identified role. Witches practice modern, earth-centered spiritualities that emphasize harmony with nature and positive energy.

3. Literary and Pop Culture
Witches often appear in literature and media as magical characters, ranging from malevolent figures like the Wicked Witch of the West.

JP says: "the large language models have mapped out the symbolic world and what they have mapped out is the probability
that ideas will co-occur" so he thinks one can read ideas, directly, in the symbolic output, that is, he calls idea the average of the very mixed bag of more or less dreamy language use. There is a lot of what Steiner calls "thinking in words" there, which is a main driving force of why words (not ideas) co-occur. But JP sees it as a mapping of co-occurring ideas, rather than co-occurring words. I believe the link between aggregated word usage and living ideas is weak, such as can be gathered from outputs like this, and the link between the singular output (as for example above) and the Mandelbrot-like high-level map is also weak... but I realize that mental pictures are being formed, as we read the GPT results.

[Federica]

Before you continue, just contemplate the concepts used on this forum, for example in the inner space stretching essays. What would you call these precise and lucid concepts, if not symbolic, portals, etc. to higher realities? Steiner put it like this:

By truly experiencing the silence of the soul, we become able to hear spiritually what dwells in the world of Spirit. The ordinary sensory world then becomes a means for us to interpret what lives in the spiritual world... what resounds approaches me with a certain vivacity, it can give me, say, something like the color yellow gives me if I am sensitive and receptive to colors. Then I have something in the sense world through which I can express my experience in the world of Spirit. My perception is one I can describe by saying that 'it effects me as the color yellow does'. Or like the tone C or C sharp in music, or like warmth or cold. In brief, my sensory experiences offer me a means for expressing in ordinary words what appears to me in the world of Spirit. In this way, the whole sensory world becomes like a language to express what I experience in the spiritual world.

Those who seek too rapid progress do not understand this and come only to a superficial judgment. This is why patient investigators describe their experiences in terms of colors, tones, and so on. Just as we shouldn't confuse the word "table" with an actual table, so we should not confuse the world of Spirit itself... with the manner in which it is described.

We don't need to complexify this too much, it's really simple. Cleric has often spoken of our thoughts becoming 'symbolic testimonies' in this same sense. I have always been speaking of our concepts becoming "symbolic portals" (or analogical portals, etc.) in this sense, throughout all the recent essays and posts. It is a realization that our concepts are meaningful gestures to dynamic ideal relations, as you put it. And this is what mathematical-scientific models and mappings are, in their essence, even if the people developing them are completely unaware of that symbolic function.

When it comes to JP, I don't think there is any reason to suspect he is confusing our spiritual nature for the manner in which it is described via modern philosophy, science, or ancient Biblical imagery alike, especially if we consider the wider context of his thinking.

The concepts (ideas) used on this forum are portals to inner realities, but not symbols, not word symbols. They lead to inner reality as such, not as symbols. It's a direct usefulness that can be evoked by multitude of different symbols, but only becomes real as direct experience. These ideas can be expressed in a variety of word sequences. So I don't question the importance of the ideas, of course, but they have substance and meaning as experiences, not in their more or less weak correlation with specific symbols. They are not the same thing and the various symbols used to evoke them.

By the way, if I search for symbolic testimony, or testimonies, here, I don't find anything by Cleric. It's more your own preferred idea to tightly attach symbol and concept, in your recent posts and essays, as you say. I believe that when you do that you prevent yourself from distinguishing what language is, in and of itself, and what spiritualization of language will be, since you eclipse its valence by crushing it onto concepts.

[Federica]

I want to briefly add something here. Hopefully it's clear this language of 'symbolic concept' is not at all new. You can do a quick search for 'symbolic' under either Cleric or me to be convinced it is nothing new.

With respect to the 'dynamism' of a symbolic concept or perception, this isn't something we can define beforehand. It will be entirely dependent on the life and purity of the thinking consciosness that is approaching the concept. All concepts eventually lead into the infinite ideal relations, most proximately our personal soul context through which the conceptual meaning is grasped (including our emotional life).

Of course we shouldn't equate the concept with the perceptual content that anchors it, like the visual or audial perception of "birch tree". But we don't need to divide them either, that's why we say it "anchors" the conceptual meaning or intuition. The word perception may normally feel more individualized but this isn't some fixed rule - perceptual content (like vowels and consonants) can also be immediately experienced as anchoring more universal intuitions, depending on our inner development.

I don't find this hybrid creation of "symbolic concept" in Cleric. Where do you find it?
The thing is, a concept is not symbolic, if with symbolic we mean word-symbols. It can be rendered through a variety of linguistic arrangements. That’s a very different thing. Haven't you started using the (screeching) expression "linguistic cognition" after JP uttered it, speaking of LLMs? I believe so. You didn't use it before. By the way, you have still not explained how the paradoxical task of your "symbolic concept" can be successfully realized. You want your "symbolic concept" to convey "precise, verifiable communications", but you also don't want these communications to be precisely worded (otherwise they would be definitions, right?). How do you achieve that, what does that mean practically? And, you want them to be conceptual, that is dynamic, but also symbolic, that is static, pinned down to a symbol. How do you manage?


Regarding the dynamism of concepts, I think concepts have it. That their dynamic nature may be more or less realized consciously in this or that mind, is another question. But a concept doesn't acquire its dynamism from being received in some human minds rather than in other ones. This is for the same reason that we don't think - we don't receive concepts - because we are subjects, but we realize to be individual subjects because concepts can reach us. Concepts reach us as they are, then our capacity to realize ourselves through them vary.

[AshvinP]

I want to briefly add something here. Hopefully it's clear this language of 'symbolic concept' is not at all new. You can do a quick search for 'symbolic' under either Cleric or me to be convinced it is nothing new.

With respect to the 'dynamism' of a symbolic concept or perception, this isn't something we can define beforehand. It will be entirely dependent on the life and purity of the thinking consciosness that is approaching the concept. All concepts eventually lead into the infinite ideal relations, most proximately our personal soul context through which the conceptual meaning is grasped (including our emotional life).

Of course we shouldn't equate the concept with the perceptual content that anchors it, like the visual or audial perception of "birch tree". But we don't need to divide them either, that's why we say it "anchors" the conceptual meaning or intuition. The word perception may normally feel more individualized but this isn't some fixed rule - perceptual content (like vowels and consonants) can also be immediately experienced as anchoring more universal intuitions, depending on our inner development.

I don't find this hybrid creation of "symbolic concept" in Cleric. Where do you find it?
The thing is, a concept is not symbolic, if with symbolic we mean word-symbols. It can be rendered through a variety of linguistic arrangements. That’s a very different thing. Haven't you started using the (screeching) expression "linguistic cognition" after JP uttered it, speaking of LLMs? I believe so. You didn't use it before. By the way, you have still not explained how the paradoxical task of your "symbolic concept" can be successfully realized. You want your "symbolic concept" to convey "precise, verifiable communications", but you also don't want these communications to be precisely worded (otherwise they would be definitions, right?). How do you achieve that, what does that mean practically? And, you want them to be conceptual, that is dynamic, but also symbolic, that is static, pinned down to a symbol. How do you manage?


Regarding the dynamism of concepts, I think concepts have it. That their dynamic nature may be more or less realized consciously in this or that mind, is another question. But a concept doesn't acquire its dynamism from being received in some human minds rather than in other ones. This is for the same reason that we don't think - we don't receive concepts - because we are subjects, but we realize to be individual subjects because concepts can reach us. Concepts reach us as they are, then our capacity to realize ourselves through them vary.

I may add some more later. For now here is something to contemplate. Honestly, your inability to recognize what we have been discussing for many months now via many essays with respect to 'symbolic testimonies' is bewildering to me, as is the denial of symbolic status to our ordinary concepts, as is the notion that precisely worded meaning must be "definitions". Do you agree that Cleric's essays are precisely worded yet no simply a list of definitions? And then there's the suggestion that JP invented "linguistic cognition" Bewildering!

Now this shouldn't make us think that linguistic thinking was an evolutionary mistake. For our evolutionary scenario it was completely necessary. And it is only through the hierarchical structure of linguistic cognition that we can gradually move towards the even deeper spiritual fractal-levels of reality. In that sense, we haven't yet even utilized the full significance of the spoken word.

[Federica]

I want to briefly add something here. Hopefully it's clear this language of 'symbolic concept' is not at all new. You can do a quick search for 'symbolic' under either Cleric or me to be convinced it is nothing new.

With respect to the 'dynamism' of a symbolic concept or perception, this isn't something we can define beforehand. It will be entirely dependent on the life and purity of the thinking consciosness that is approaching the concept. All concepts eventually lead into the infinite ideal relations, most proximately our personal soul context through which the conceptual meaning is grasped (including our emotional life).

Of course we shouldn't equate the concept with the perceptual content that anchors it, like the visual or audial perception of "birch tree". But we don't need to divide them either, that's why we say it "anchors" the conceptual meaning or intuition. The word perception may normally feel more individualized but this isn't some fixed rule - perceptual content (like vowels and consonants) can also be immediately experienced as anchoring more universal intuitions, depending on our inner development.

I don't find this hybrid creation of "symbolic concept" in Cleric. Where do you find it?
The thing is, a concept is not symbolic, if with symbolic we mean word-symbols. It can be rendered through a variety of linguistic arrangements. That’s a very different thing. Haven't you started using the (screeching) expression "linguistic cognition" after JP uttered it, speaking of LLMs? I believe so. You didn't use it before. By the way, you have still not explained how the paradoxical task of your "symbolic concept" can be successfully realized. You want your "symbolic concept" to convey "precise, verifiable communications", but you also don't want these communications to be precisely worded (otherwise they would be definitions, right?). How do you achieve that, what does that mean practically? And, you want them to be conceptual, that is dynamic, but also symbolic, that is static, pinned down to a symbol. How do you manage?


Regarding the dynamism of concepts, I think concepts have it. That their dynamic nature may be more or less realized consciously in this or that mind, is another question. But a concept doesn't acquire its dynamism from being received in some human minds rather than in other ones. This is for the same reason that we don't think - we don't receive concepts - because we are subjects, but we realize to be individual subjects because concepts can reach us. Concepts reach us as they are, then our capacity to realize ourselves through them vary.

I may add some more later. For now here is something to contemplate. Honestly, your inability to recognize what we have been discussing for many months now via many essays with respect to 'symbolic testimonies' is bewildering to me, as is the denial of symbolic status to our ordinary concepts, as is the notion that precisely worded meaning must be "definitions". Do you agree that Cleric's essays are precisely worded yet no simply a list of definitions? And then there's the suggestion that JP invented "linguistic cognition" Bewildering!

Now this shouldn't make us think that linguistic thinking was an evolutionary mistake. For our evolutionary scenario it was completely necessary. And it is only through the hierarchical structure of linguistic cognition that we can gradually move towards the even deeper spiritual fractal-levels of reality. In that sense, we haven't yet even utilized the full significance of the spoken word.

I didn't suggest at all that JP invented the expression, but that you started using it only recently, after watching those videos. If you refrained yourself a little from becoming bewildered, it would be easier. It was a question that I asked, by the way: so did you use it before noticing it in JP, or not?

Of course Clerics essays are not lists of definitions, they are worded in internally consistent manner. However, they could have been equally worded with alternative word sequences. So the connection between those concepts and their symbols depends on Clerics individual choices - or Steiners choices, when he decided to pursue a particular use as in Steiner. There is no immanent connection between those concepts and their worded materialization in the essays.


And I'm very glad you picked up this quote from Cleric! If we extend the quote a little, up and down, the distinction I am making to keep concept and word distinct becomes patently clear. As we can see, in this quote linguistic congition/ linguistic thinking is intended not as you and JP intend it - as an indissociable unity of concept and word-symbol - but as what our activity does when we put our concepts in verbal forms. It's synonym with verbal thinking. And "becoming dependent of verbal tokenization" here points to the same thing Steiner calls "thinking in words". Can you see it?

Verbal thinking develops as symbolic 'encoding' of such soul images and their transformation (this is of course a quite materialistic way of putting it). This is obviously necessary for verbal communication but in many cases it is also more convenient to think through the symbolic tokens instead of energetically stirring our whole imagination. That's why it can also become a trap, where we become too lazy to think in pictures and become dependent on verbal tokenization.

Now this shouldn't make us think that linguistic thinking was an evolutionary mistake. For our evolutionary scenario it was completely necessary. And it is only through the hierarchical structure of linguistic cognition that we can gradually move towards the even deeper spiritual fractal-levels of reality. In that sense, we haven't yet even utilized the full significance of the spoken word.

So it's not about simply abandoning verbal thinking but uniting its hierarchical structure of meaning with pictorial thinking. The first step would be to simply relearn how to think pictorially, even if somewhat flatly. For example, you may have some plans for tonight. Usually we think verbally "When I get home I'll do this, I'll read that" and so on. You can try to make these plans entirely pictorially. Just picture yourself doing what you intend to do. It doesn't have to be vivid picture, but it must engage your full-body and senses imagination.

Again -- where do you find this "symbolic concepts" in Cleric? The quote you brought speaks for the opposite of such amalgam. It clearly distinguishes pictorial thinking from verbal thinking ("linguistic cognition").

[AshvinP]

There is no immanent connection between those concepts and their worded materialization in the essays.

What does this mean, Federica? How is there is no immanent connection? Yes, different words could be used, the essays could also be written in a different language, but some words had to be used for us to locate and resonate with the relevant inner gestures. How could that happen without an immanent connection? How can you think verbally about spiritual scientific research in a spiritually prodctive way without such a connection?

Again -- where do you find this "symbolic concepts" in Cleric? The quote you brought speaks for the opposite of such amalgam. It clearly distinguishes pictorial thinking from verbal thinking ("linguistic cognition").

So what function do mental images, like our verbal thoughts and visualizations, serve if not a symbolic one? Are they not pointing beyond their immediate content to the spiritual movements that birth that content? Let's say we live in wordless intuition of some meaning, like the meaning (concept) of triangle. Does this concept serve a symbolic function, or does it only point to itself?

[Federica]

There is no immanent connection between those concepts and their worded materialization in the essays.

What does this mean, Federica? How is there is no immanent connection? Yes, different words could be used, the essays could also be written in a different language, but some words had to be used for us to locate and resonate with the relevant inner gestures. How could that happen without an immanent connection? How can you think verbally about spiritual scientific research in a spiritually productive way without such a connection?

How can you think verbally without words? Indeed, you can't, but that's the whole point I've been making from the beginning: you can think non-verbally. So I believe I've already answered the question, and you may want to read the post by Cleric quoted above in its entirety. But to elaborate, I would add the following.

As long as one moves within the space of standard cognition, words come in handy, and may be necessary, for two purposes. First, in case we want to fit in our intellect complex ideas and work with them. Then, we use language like a sort of Zip software, to compress concepts and ideas, so that they take less space, and can be managed and assembled in fluid reasoning by the intellect. Words are also used - like in Clerics essays - as a way to make the concepts portable and available to others, across time and space, in standard cognitive mode. However, there is no immanence of the symbolic tokens in the concepts themselves. Rather, the tokens are like useful add-ons. We can think non-verbally and be operational with concepts, in full and direct connection with meaning. We can even, to some extent, communicate with others non-verbally. Now, the precise extent to which we may engage in spiritual activity, and share it with others, free from any tokenization of experience in word-symbols, depends on the level of cognition of the individuals involved. But even in standard cognition, it’s easy to see how we can receive concepts, and behold them as they are, without verbal commentary, for example in the realm of sensory experiences.

You can picture to yourself the Eiffel tower without any need to rely on words. If, in the moment you recall it or think about it, you momentarily forget what it’s called, you can still see it very clearly in your mind’s eye. Here it's evident how the concept of the Eiffel tower doesn’t need any symbolic tokens to exist, to be received, and to be immediately operable in your consciousness. The verbal token we are familiar with - be it in any idiom, expressed in whatever worded workaround - is superfluous for the concept to dynamically shine in you. There is no symbolic concept of the Eiffel Tower. There is its concept and, optionally, there are linguistic ways to zip it in language form, to create a tokenized sensory experience (sound and rhythm) on top of the initial mental picture, that connects with that concept. No immanence. The zip file is very useful though, to make the concept portable, for you and for others, and easily communicable (for example in an essay), transferable through time and/or space. Although, if you are not writing an essay, but on holiday in Paris with a friend, and visit the Eiffel Tower, you don’t even need any zip file to share that experience with her. The concept can reach both of you in connection with the Eiffel tower precepts, and, although there surely are some individual experiential differences, there is certainly some form of sharing going on without any tokenization needed.

This examples of normal experiences in standard cognition already go a long way to show the non-immanence of word-symbols in concepts. But notice, when higher cognition is developed, the need to rely on verbal tokens for certain purposes (complex reasoning and communication) decreases. If you and a friend have higher cognition (or perhaps even only one of you) and you Ashvin are thinking about the Eiffel tower as part of a particular intent that also involves them, they may know it, without any need for you to zip the Eiffel tower and send it over in word symbols. Of course, this is not a black and white thing, but I want to highlight from yet another viewpoint that there is no immanence of word-symbols in the concept. Anyone can speechlessly recall or picture to oneself the Eiffel tower. Not only that, individuals who have developed some level of higher cognition may communicate it to/from others just as speechlessly, to the extent they can connect with another mind above the level of verbal (sensory) communication.

We could go on and consider what happens with sequences of mental pictures of complex ideas, to find that our intellect needs language to accommodate within its mindspace long series of concepts and operate with them. Then, the intellect needs the zip files, otherwise its capacity is rapidly overwhelmed. And we could enter in the workings of the Zip software, look at the coding inside, but do you agree so far?

[Federica]

Again -- where do you find these "symbolic concepts" in Cleric? The quote you brought speaks for the opposite of such amalgam. It clearly distinguishes pictorial thinking from verbal thinking ("linguistic cognition").

So what function do mental images, like our verbal thoughts and visualizations, serve if not a symbolic one? Are they not pointing beyond their immediate content to the spiritual movements that birth that content? Let's say we live in wordless intuition of some meaning, like the meaning (concept) of triangle. Does this concept serve a symbolic function, or does it only point to itself?

That’s how I see it. Mental images have varying functions, depending on what we are doing with our Earthly life at any given moment. Verbal and non-verbal mental pictures alike may have the primary function of guiding our flow within the sensory space, or they may have a more spiritually developmental function, like the mental pictures forming while study-meditating. If we live in a verbal, or non-verbal alike, mental picture of this second kind, the concept that nurtures it obviously doesn’t point to itself. But it’s also not a symbol. The concept is not an encoding. A symbol is an encoding. It's static, it's the result of a compression. The concept (for example of a triangle) is not the result of a compression. On the contrary, it holds all possible triangular forms, beyond the pictures of the various possible triangle forms.

It's rather the other way around. The concept gets itself compressed in a mental picture, by the workings of perception. So perception - or a mental picture of a triangle - is, if you will, a compression of the concept of triangle, a symbolic compression of the concept of triangle. The optional verbalization of the picture - the word “triangle” or other wordings - is an additional symbolic compression, manifesting in an additional mental picture (for those who become dependent on verbal tokenization it’s not additional, it replaces the non-verbal picture, in a more dreamy process).

Therefore, I think the mental picture serves a symbolic function, it symbolizes the concept, be it in the form of pictorial or worded symbol. But the concept cannot be symbolic in turn, in a way that points back to language. The concept does not symbolize. It is symbolized. It’s dynamic ideal content, not a pinned-down symbol.

From the perspective of higher reality, it may perhaps be said that concepts are portals to higher ideas. But I don’t see how we can call that function "symbolic", without creating great confusion. It’s an entirely different function compared to the symbolic encoding of concepts in sense-level linguistic symbols.