Prospects for a Phenomenological Idealism

[ScottRoberts]

[Detached from the Reincarnation and Analytic Idealism thread]

Right. I suppose I am mostly trying to explore how we can build a phenomenological gradient to such supersensible realities. PoF is one way, but I think your polar philosophical idealism is probably a useful stepping stone for many people since I have often heard others say that they have a hard time following PoF right out of the gate. In some ways, it is too dissimilar from the normal philosophical habits of thinking. Eventually, that leap into uncomfortable territory needs to be made, but perhaps there is a bridge here that makes it less of a leap. It is also useful to think through all the various questions, concerns, objections, and so forth that would be raised to the experiential reality of 'there is only ideational activity'.

This is pretty much what I have been working on lately, though I am not sure whether one can reach supersensible realities, other than to show why they must exist. I think one can start with a simplified PoF, by which I mean a list of its phenomenological insights and warnings. It must be about 30 years since I first read it, but it is only recently that it sank in about the dangers of 3rd-person views, in that I kept arguing for the "better 3rd-person view".

I am at a loss on how to provide a strictly phenomenological claim that "there is only IA”. There are (in my opinion) good arguments for it (avoidance of hard problems, the old argument from design, the Barfieldian evidence that we were once all naive idealists), but in the end I suspect one must rely on a Pascalian Wager argument: deny it, and one goes nowhere, accept it and start reading anthroposophists and see that it can become phenomenal.

Comparing the particular forms of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms to the words of an incomprehensible language (for the intellect) spoken by ideational agencies is a great approach. I think speech will always be one of the most helpful metaphors for the ideational structure of reality since we intuitively resonate with that activity. Similarly, we could say that the ideational quality of animal consciousness is to be found flowing through the human perspective that observes them. So we point to the simple phenomenological principle that we can only know of animal consciousness through our own.

Good point.

When we go beyond the snapshots for particular animals to systematically observe how groups of animals behave, then we discern something more akin to our own intent-driven ideational capacity. The ideational activity is discerned in the temporally extended, ecological behavior of the animals, within their own groups and also with respect to the other natural kingdoms.

The way I think of it is that what we call instinct is the product of the ideational activity of the species.

I wonder if that can be usefully extended to point towards higher-than-human ideational activity. What sort of ideational activity can be experientially discerned by observing groups of humans over time? I think here we probably need to get into the evolution of consciousness across the ages and see whether it can be thoughtfully discerned as the result of higher ideational activity which spans it. So we need to start thinking of segments of time as particular snapshots, like we have done with spatial perceptions or individual experiences, spanned by ideational activity.

Do you have any thoughts on how to philosophically address that or, similarly, the objection that the forces of nature do not appear to be ideational but rather instinctive? Bernardo often mentioned how natural forces are mathematically predictable like that of an instinctive crocodile, whereas human ideational activity is much more unpredictable. How do we reconcile that difference?

I would suggest a programming metaphor. The mineral, plant, and animal IA are more or less fixed libraries of code, using which humans exist and program new IA.

[Federica]

[Detached from the Reincarnation and Analytic Idealism thread]

Right. I suppose I am mostly trying to explore how we can build a phenomenological gradient to such supersensible realities. PoF is one way, but I think your polar philosophical idealism is probably a useful stepping stone for many people since I have often heard others say that they have a hard time following PoF right out of the gate. In some ways, it is too dissimilar from the normal philosophical habits of thinking. Eventually, that leap into uncomfortable territory needs to be made, but perhaps there is a bridge here that makes it less of a leap. It is also useful to think through all the various questions, concerns, objections, and so forth that would be raised to the experiential reality of 'there is only ideational activity'.

This is pretty much what I have been working on lately, though I am not sure whether one can reach supersensible realities, other than to show why they must exist. I think one can start with a simplified PoF, by which I mean a list of its phenomenological insights and warnings. It must be about 30 years since I first read it, but it is only recently that it sank in about the dangers of 3rd-person views, in that I kept arguing for the "better 3rd-person view".

Scott, I was wondering: do you mean by that that you are writing a simplified version of PoF Part I, where you maintain the original structure and rewrite the insights in logical sequence, without the references to literature, and with present-day language, syntax, and examples? That would be an incredible endeavor, and a highly useful one!
It reminds me that online there is an attempt to propose a more readable version of PoF. I haven't read it, and I guess what you are considering is a work of a quite different nature, but I mean that the need is definitely there!

[AshvinP]

[Detached from the Reincarnation and Analytic Idealism thread]

Right. I suppose I am mostly trying to explore how we can build a phenomenological gradient to such supersensible realities. PoF is one way, but I think your polar philosophical idealism is probably a useful stepping stone for many people since I have often heard others say that they have a hard time following PoF right out of the gate. In some ways, it is too dissimilar from the normal philosophical habits of thinking. Eventually, that leap into uncomfortable territory needs to be made, but perhaps there is a bridge here that makes it less of a leap. It is also useful to think through all the various questions, concerns, objections, and so forth that would be raised to the experiential reality of 'there is only ideational activity'.

This is pretty much what I have been working on lately, though I am not sure whether one can reach supersensible realities, other than to show why they must exist. I think one can start with a simplified PoF, by which I mean a list of its phenomenological insights and warnings. It must be about 30 years since I first read it, but it is only recently that it sank in about the dangers of 3rd-person views, in that I kept arguing for the "better 3rd-person view".

I am at a loss on how to provide a strictly phenomenological claim that "there is only IA”. There are (in my opinion) good arguments for it (avoidance of hard problems, the old argument from design, the Barfieldian evidence that we were once all naive idealists), but in the end I suspect one must rely on a Pascalian Wager argument: deny it, and one goes nowhere, accept it and start reading anthroposophists and see that it can become phenomenal.

That's mostly how I think about it as well. It seems to me that, since Steiner himself spoke of PoF and spiritual science as an expansion of Goethe's phenomenology, that might be the most fruitful place to look for a more basic philosophy-science of ideational activity. Perhaps in Hegel and Coleridge as well. When searching for the latter on the archive, I came across this from Owen Barfield.

https://rsarchive.org/Books/GA021/Engli ... index.html

What did happen was well expressed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, when he pointed out in his Aids to Reflection that Descartes, having discovered a technical principle, which “as a fiction of science, it would be difficult to overvalue”, erroneously propounded that principle as a truth of fact. (The principle in question was the necessity of abstracting from corporeal substance all its positive properties, “in order to submit the various phaenomena of moving bodies to geometrical construction”.) And of course the same point has since been made by A. N. Whitehead and others. But Coleridge could also point prophetically, in another place, 2 to

"the necessity of a general revolution in the modes of developing and disciplining the human mind by the substitution of Life, and Intelligence (considered in its different powers from the Plant up to that state in which the difference of Degree becomes a new kind — man, self-consciousness but yet not by essential opposition) for the philosophy of mechanism which in everything that is most worthy of the human Intellect strikes Death, and cheats itself by mistaking clear Images for distinct conceptions ..."

The necessity for such a revolution, he said, arises from the fact that, for self-conscious man, although to experience a world of corporeal substance as existing quite apart from his thinking self is “a law of his nature,” it is not ‘;a conclusion of his judgment”. That this is indeed the case hardly needs arguing today, since it has become the discovery of technological science itself. Whether we go to neurology or to physics, or elsewhere, we are confronted with the demonstrable conclusion that the actual, macroscopic world of nature — as distinct from the microscopic, submicroscopic and inferred world of physical science — is (as, for instance, the biologist, Professor Marjorie Grene, puts it in her book The Knower and the Known) “mediated by concepts as well as presented through the senses”. What is remarkable is the rapidity with which the presence of this Trojan Horse in the citadel of its methodology was detected by technological science itself, as it was progressively realised that everything in nature that constitutes her “qualities” must be located on the res cogitans, and not the res extensa, side of the Cartesian guillotine. But this is as much as to say that those qualities are, in the technological sense, “occult”; and it could be argued without much difficulty that any science which proposes to enquire into them must also be “occult” — unless it is content to do so by extrapolating into the psyche a theoretical apparatus applicable, by definition, only to subject-matter that has first been sedulously dehydrated of all psyche.

I think it is imperative for any philosophy of ideational activity to immerse itself in the differentiated structure of the natural kingdoms and point toward how the Spirit expresses itself in form, life, soul (passions, instincts), and finally in its own element, ideation. Goethe did that in the plant kingdom with the observation of living archetypes. Ultimately this sort of detailed investigation seems to be how human ideation can recognize itself in the manifest world without going so far as explicitly occult research.

In the case of an organism, sense-perceptible factors appear—form, size, color, warmth conditions of an organ, for example—that are not determined by factors of the same kind. One cannot say of the plant, for example, that the size, form, location, etc. of the roots determine the sense-perceptible factors of the leaf or blossom. A body for which this were the case would not be an organism but rather a machine. It must be admitted that all the sense-perceptible factors of a living being do not manifest as a result of other sense-perceptible factors, as is the case with inorganic nature. On the contrary, in an organism, all sense-perceptible qualities manifest as the result of a factor that is no longer sense-perceptible. They manifest as the result of a higher unity hovering over the sense-perceptible processes. It is not the shape of the root which determines that of the trunk, nor the trunk’s shape which determines that of the leaf, and so on; rather, all these forms are determined by something standing over them that itself is not again a form observable by the senses; these forms do exist for one another, but not as a result of one another. They do not mutually determine one another, but rather are all determined by something else. Here we cannot trace what we perceive with our senses back to other sense-perceptible factors; we must take up, into the concept of the processes, elements that do not belong to the world of the senses; we must go out of and beyond the sense world. Observation no longer suffices; we must grasp the unity conceptually if we want to explain the phenomena.

Because of this, however, a separation occurs between observation and concept; they no longer seem to coincide with each other; the concept hovers over what is observed. It becomes difficult to see the connection. Whereas in inorganic nature, concept and reality were one, here they seem to diverge and actually to belong to two different worlds. The observation that offers itself directly to the senses no longer seems to bear within itself its own basis, its own being. The object does not seem explainable out of itself, but rather from something else. Because the object appears in a way not governed by the laws of the sense world, but is there for the senses, appears nevertheless to the senses, it is then as though we stood here before an insoluble contradiction in nature, as though a chasm existed between inorganic phenomena, which are comprehensible through themselves, and organic beings, in which an intrusion into the laws of nature occurs, in which universally valid laws seem suddenly to be broken. Up until Goethe, in fact, science generally considered this chasm to exist; he was the first to succeed in speaking the word that solved the riddle. 

[Federica]

[Detached from the Reincarnation and Analytic Idealism thread]

Right. I suppose I am mostly trying to explore how we can build a phenomenological gradient to such supersensible realities. PoF is one way, but I think your polar philosophical idealism is probably a useful stepping stone for many people since I have often heard others say that they have a hard time following PoF right out of the gate. In some ways, it is too dissimilar from the normal philosophical habits of thinking. Eventually, that leap into uncomfortable territory needs to be made, but perhaps there is a bridge here that makes it less of a leap. It is also useful to think through all the various questions, concerns, objections, and so forth that would be raised to the experiential reality of 'there is only ideational activity'.

This is pretty much what I have been working on lately, though I am not sure whether one can reach supersensible realities, other than to show why they must exist. I think one can start with a simplified PoF, by which I mean a list of its phenomenological insights and warnings. It must be about 30 years since I first read it, but it is only recently that it sank in about the dangers of 3rd-person views, in that I kept arguing for the "better 3rd-person view".

I am at a loss on how to provide a strictly phenomenological claim that "there is only IA”. There are (in my opinion) good arguments for it (avoidance of hard problems, the old argument from design, the Barfieldian evidence that we were once all naive idealists), but in the end I suspect one must rely on a Pascalian Wager argument: deny it, and one goes nowhere, accept it and start reading anthroposophists and see that it can become phenomenal.

That's mostly how I think about it as well. It seems to me that, since Steiner himself spoke of PoF and spiritual science as an expansion of Goethe's phenomenology, that might be the most fruitful place to look for a more basic philosophy-science of ideational activity.

Ashvin, Scott,

I don't know about Goethe's phenomenology, but maybe another fruitful place to look at is Steiner's doctoral dissertation, chapters IV to VII. It looks like a more focused, precise variation of PoF part I. There, Steiner comes to the conclusion:


"The attempt here is to acquire insight into reality by observing the process of cognition. And we believe that we have shown that all conflicts between world-views result from a tendency to attempt to attain knowledge of something objective (thing, I, consciousness, etc.) without having first gained a sufficiently exact knowledge of what alone can elucidate all knowledge: the nature of knowledge itself."

I would think that his elaborations derive that there is only IA, because by strictly adhering to a phenomenological-only process of cognition, arbitrariness is eliminated from the worldview that we can know through the process of cognition. As he puts it: "Our theory of knowledge supplies the foundation for true idealism in the real sense of the word."


In short:

- through a comparison between the aspect of the WC under examination and the rest of the WC, he comes to the conclusion: "The world-content can be called reality only in the form it attains when the two aspects of it described above [immediate given and categories revealed through thinking] have been united through knowledge."

- immediate given is given to the I, and the world of thinking rises up. The I first separates then re-unites the two, to form the "idea of knowledge". In the remainder of the WC given and concept are also united, but in a fundamentally different way, that is, original.

- so all other ideas that are not the "idea of knowledge" are fundamentally united with their given, but the idea of knowledge is artificially united, by the free act of knowledge, thus "Consciousness as a reality exists only if it produces itself".

- the nature of reality only becomes clear to us if we ourselves build it up out of the given + thinking. "The essential What of the given is postulated for the I only through the I itself.

- it also follows that "the division between I and external world, like all other divisions, is valid only within the given... The I ceases to be seen as something separated from the external world when the world is permeated by thinking".


So maybe it phenomenologically shows that nothing can exist outside this IA? And maybe also that if one denies it, one is only demonstrating the described working of IA necessary in order to reach that conviction, thus it would never be possible to demonstrate that there is something that can't be known / that is not IA?


*******


Here I'm pasting a short version of those 4 chapters (minus the asides, etc.):

IV. The Starting Point of Epistemology


AS WE HAVE SEEN in the preceding chapters, an epistemological investigation must begin by rejecting existing knowledge. Knowledge is something brought into existence by man, something that has arisen through his activity. If a theory of knowledge is really to explain the whole sphere of knowledge, then it must start from something still quite untouched by the activity of thinking, and what is more, from something which lends to this activity its first impulse. This starting point must lie outside the act of cognition, it must not itself be knowledge. But it must be sought immediately prior to cognition, so that the very next step man takes beyond it is the activity of cognition. This absolute starting point must be determined in such a way that it admits nothing already derived from cognition.

Only our directly given world-picture can offer such a starting point, i.e. that picture of the world which presents itself to man before he has subjected it to the processes of knowledge in any way, before he has asserted or decided anything at all about it by means of thinking. This “directly given” picture is what flits past us, disconnected, but still undifferentiated. [Differentiation of the given, indistinct, world picture into distinct entities is already an act of thought-activity.] In it, nothing appears distinguished from, related to, or determined by, anything else. At this stage, so to speak, no object or event is yet more important or significant than any other. The most rudimentary organ of an animal, which, in the light of further knowledge may turn out to be quite unimportant for its development and life, appears before us with the same claims for our attention as the noblest and most essential part of the organism. Before our conceptual activity begins, the world-picture contains neither substance, quality nor cause and effect; distinctions between matter and spirit, body and soul, do not yet exist. Furthermore, any other predicate must also be excluded from the world-picture at this stage. The picture can be considered neither as reality nor as appearance, neither subjective nor objective, neither as chance nor as necessity; whether it is “thing-in-itself,” or mere representation, cannot be decided at this stage. For, as we have seen, knowledge of physics and physiology which leads to a classification of the “given” under one or the other of the above headings, cannot be a basis for a theory of knowledge.

If a being with a fully developed human intelligence were suddenly created out of nothing and then confronted the world, the first impression made on his senses and his thinking would be something like what I have just characterized as the directly given world-picture. In practice, man never encounters this world-picture in this form at any time in his life; he never experiences a division between a purely passive awareness of the “directly-given” and a thinking recognition of it.

…

This division between the “given” and the “known” will not in fact, coincide with any stage of human development; the boundary must be drawn artificially. But this can be done at every level of development so long as we draw the dividing line correctly between what confronts us free of all conceptual definitions, and what cognition subsequently makes of it.

It might be objected here that I have already made use of a number of conceptual definitions in order to extract from the world-picture as it appears when completed by man, that other world-picture which I described as the directly given. However, what we have extracted by means of thought does not characterize the directly given world-picture, nor define nor express anything about it; what it does is to guide our attention to the dividing line where the starting point for cognition is to be found. The question of truth or error, correctness or incorrectness, does not enter into this statement, which is concerned with the moment preceding the point where a theory of knowledge begins. It serves merely to guide us deliberately to this starting point. No one proceeding to consider epistemological questions could possibly be said to be standing at the starting point of cognition, for he already possesses a certain amount of knowledge.

To remove from this all that has been contributed by cognition, and to establish a precognitive starting point, can only be done conceptually. But such concepts are not of value as knowledge; they have the purely negative function of removing from sight all that belongs to knowledge and of leading us to the point where knowledge begins. These considerations act as signposts pointing to where the act of cognition first appears, but at this stage, do not themselves form part of the act of cognition. Whatever the epistemologist proposes in order to establish his starting point raises, to begin with, no question of truth or error, but only of its suitability for this task. From the starting point, too, all error is excluded, for error can only begin with cognition, and therefore cannot arise before cognition sets in.

Only a theory of knowledge that starts from considerations of this kind can claim to observe this last principle. For if the starting point is some object (or subject) to which is attached any conceptual definition, then the possibility of error is already present in the starting point, namely in the definition itself. Justification of the definition will then depend upon the laws inherent in the act of cognition. But these laws can be discovered only in the course of the epistemological investigation itself. Error is wholly excluded only by saying: I eliminate from my world-picture all conceptual definitions arrived at through cognition and retain only what enters my field of observation without any activity on my part. When on principle I refrain from making any statement, I cannot make a mistake.

Error, in relation to knowledge, i.e. epistemologically, can occur only within the act of cognition. Sense deceptions are not errors. That the moon upon rising appears larger than it does at its zenith is not an error but a fact governed by the laws of nature. A mistake in knowledge would occur only if, in using thinking to combine the given perceptions, we misinterpreted “larger” and “smaller.” But this interpretation is part of the act of cognition.

To understand cognition exactly in all its details, its origin and starting point must first be grasped. It is clear, furthermore, that what precedes this primary starting point must not be included in an explanation of cognition, but must be presupposed. Investigation of the essence of what is here presupposed, is the task of the various branches of scientific knowledge. The present aim, however, is not to acquire specific knowledge of this or that element, but to investigate cognition itself. Until we have understood the act of knowledge, we cannot judge the significance of statements about the content of the world arrived at through the act of cognition.

This is why the directly given is not defined as long as the relation of such a definition to what is defined is not known. Even the concept: “directly given” includes no statement about what precedes cognition. Its only purpose is to point to this given, to turn our attention to it. At the starting point of a theory of knowledge, the concept is only the first initial relation between cognition and world-content. This description even allows for the possibility that the total world-content would turn out to be only a figment of our own “I,” which would mean that extreme subjectivism would be true; subjectivism is not something that exists as given. It can only be a conclusion drawn from considerations based on cognition, i.e. it would have to be confirmed by the theory of knowledge; it could not be assumed as its basis.

This directly given world-content includes everything that enters our experience in the widest sense: sensations, perceptions, opinions, feelings, deeds, pictures of dreams and imaginations, representations, concepts and ideas. Illusions and hallucinations too, at this stage are equal to the rest of the world-content. For their relation to other perceptions can be revealed only through observation based on cognition.

When epistemology starts from the assumption that all the elements just mentioned constitute the content of our consciousness, the following question immediately arises: How is it possible for us to go beyond our consciousness and recognize actual existence; where can the leap be made from our subjective experiences to what lies beyond them? When such an assumption is not made, the situation is different. Both consciousness and the representation of the “I” are, to begin with, only parts of the directly given and the relationship of the latter to the two former must be discovered by means of cognition. Cognition is not to be defined in terms of consciousness, but vice versa: both consciousness and the relation between subject and object are to be defined in terms of cognition. Since the “given” is left without predicate, to begin with, the question arises as to how it is defined at all; how can any start be made with cognition? How does one part of the world-picture come to be designated as perception and the other as concept, one thing as existence, another as appearance, this as cause and that as effect; how is it that we can separate ourselves from what is objective and regard ourselves as “I” in contrast to the “not-I?”

We must find the bridge from the world-picture as given, to that other world-picture which we build up by means of cognition. Here, however, we meet with the following difficulty: As long as we merely stare passively at the given we shall never find a point of attack where we can gain a foothold, and from where we can then proceed with cognition. Somewhere in the given we must find a place where we can set to work, where something exists which is akin to cognition. If everything were really only given, we could do no more than merely stare into the external world and stare indifferently into the inner world of our individuality. We would at most be able to describe things as something external to us; we should never be able to understand them. Our concepts would have a purely external relation to that to which they referred; they would not be inwardly related to it.

For real cognition depends on finding a sphere somewhere in the given where our cognizing activity does not merely presuppose something given, but finds itself active in the very essence of the given. In other words: precisely through strict adherence to the given as merely given, it must become apparent that not everything is given. Insistence on the given alone must lead to the discovery of something which goes beyond the given. The reason for so insisting is not to establish some arbitrary starting point for a theory of knowledge, but to discover the true one. In this sense, the given also includes what according to its very nature is not-given. The latter would appear, to begin with, as formally a part of the given, but on closer scrutiny, would reveal its true nature of its own accord.

The whole difficulty in understanding cognition comes from the fact that we ourselves do not create the content of the world. If we did this, cognition would not exist at all. I can only ask questions about something which is given to me. Something which I create myself, I also determine myself, so that I do not need to ask for an explanation for it.

This is the second step in our theory of knowledge. It consists in the postulate: In the sphere of the given there must be something in relation to which our activity does not hover in emptiness, but where the content of the world itself enters this activity.

The starting point for our theory of knowledge was placed so that it completely precedes the cognizing activity, and thus cannot prejudice cognition and obscure it; in the same way, the next step has been defined so that there can be no question of either error or incorrectness. For this step does not prejudge any issue, but merely shows what conditions are necessary if knowledge is to arise at all. It is essential to remember that it is we ourselves who postulate what characteristic feature that part of the world-content must possess with which our activity of cognition can make a start.

This, in fact, is the only thing we can do. For the world-content as given is completely undefined. No part of it of its own accord can provide the occasion for setting it up as the starting point for bringing order into chaos. The activity of cognition must therefore issue a decree and declare what characteristics this starting point must manifest. Such a decree in no way infringes on the quality of the given. It does not introduce any arbitrary assertion into the science of epistemology. In fact, it asserts nothing, but claims only that if knowledge is to be made explainable, then we must look for some part of the given which can provide a starting point for cognition, as described above. If this exists, cognition can be explained, but not otherwise. Thus, while the given provides the general starting point for our theory of knowledge, it must now be narrowed down to some particular point of the given.

Let us now take a closer look at this demand. Where, within the world-picture, do we find something that is not merely given, but only given insofar as it is being produced in the actual act of cognition?

It is essential to realize that the activity of producing something in the act of cognition must present itself to us as something also directly given. It must not be necessary to draw conclusions before recognizing it. This at once indicates that sense impressions do not meet our requirements. For we cannot know directly but only indirectly that sense impressions do not occur without activity on our part; this we discover only by considering physical and physiological factors. But we do know absolutely directly that concepts and ideas appear only in the act of cognition and through this enter the sphere of the directly given. In this respect concepts and ideas do not deceive anyone. A hallucination may appear as something externally given, but one would never take one's own concepts to be something given without one's own thinking activity. A lunatic regards things and relations as real to which are applied the predicate “reality,” although in fact they are not real; but he would never say that his concepts and ideas entered the sphere of the given without his own activity. It is a characteristic feature of all the rest of our world-picture that it must be given if we are to experience it; the only case in which the opposite occurs is that of concepts and ideas: these we must produce if we are to experience them. Concepts and ideas alone are given us in a form that could be called intellectual seeing.

…

(By concept, I mean a principle according to which the disconnected elements of perception become joined into a unity. Causality, for example, is a concept. An idea is a concept with a greater content. Organism, considered quite abstractly, is an idea.) However, they must be considered in the form which they possess while still quite free of any empirical content. If, for example, the pure idea of causality is to be grasped, then one must not choose a particular instance of causality or the sum total of all causality; it is essential to take hold of the pure concept, Causality. Cause and effect must be sought in the world, but before we can discover it in the world we ourselves must first produce causality as a thought-form.

…

Before proceeding further, a possible objection must be considered. It might appear that this discussion is unconsciously introducing the representation of the “I,” of the “personal subject,” and using it without first justifying it. For example, in statements like “we produce concepts” or “we insist on this or that.” But, in fact, my explanation contains nothing which implies that such statements are more than turns of phrase. As shown earlier, the fact that the act of cognition depends upon and proceeds from an “I,” can be established only through considerations which themselves make use of cognition. Thus, to begin with, the discussion must be limited to the act of cognition alone, without considering the cognizing subject. All that has been established thus far is the fact that something “given” exists; and that somewhere in this “given” the above described postulate arises; and lastly, that this postulate corresponds to the sphere of concepts and ideas. This is not to deny that its source is the “I.” But these two initial steps in the theory of knowledge must first be defined in their pure form.


V. Cognition and Reality


CONCEPTS AND IDEAS, therefore, comprise part of the given and at the same time lead beyond it. This makes it possible to define what other activity is concerned in attaining knowledge.

Through a postulate we have separated from the rest of the given world-picture a particular part of it; this was done because it lies in the nature of cognition to start from just this particular part. Thus we separated it out only to enable us to understand the act of cognition. In so doing, it must be clear that we have artificially torn apart the unity of the world-picture. We must realize that what we have separated out from the given has an essential connection with the world content, irrespective of our postulate. This provides the next step in the theory of knowledge: it must consist in restoring that unity which we tore apart in order to make knowledge possible. The act of restoration consists in thinking about the world as given. Our thinking consideration of the world brings about the actual union of the two parts of the world content: the part we survey as given on the horizon of our experience, and the part which has to be produced in the act of cognition before that can be given also. The act of cognition is the synthesis of these two elements. Indeed, in every single act of cognition, one part appears as something produced within that act itself, and, through the act, as added to the merely given. This part, in actual fact, is always so produced, and only appears as something given at the beginning of epistemological theory.

To permeate the world, as given, with concepts and ideas, is a thinking consideration of things. Therefore, thinking is the act which mediates knowledge. It is only when thinking arranges the world-picture by means of its own activity that knowledge can come about. Thinking itself is an activity which, in the moment of cognition, produces a content of its own. Therefore, insofar as the content that is cognized issues from thinking, it contains no problem for cognition. We have only to observe it; the very nature of what we observe is given to us directly. A description of thinking is also at the same time the science of thinking. Logic, too, has always been a description of thought-forms, never a science that proves anything. Proof is only called for when the content of thought is synthesized with some other content of the world.

Gideon Spicker is therefore quite right when he says in his book, Lessings Weltanschauung, (Lessing's World-View), page 5, “We can never experience, either empirically or logically, whether thinking in itself is correct.” One could add to this that with thinking, all proof ceases. For proof presupposes thinking. One may be able to prove a particular fact, but one can never prove proof as such. We can only describe what a proof is. In logic, all theory is pure empiricism; in the science of logic there is only observation. But when we want to know something other than thinking, we can do so only with the help of thinking; this means that thinking has to approach something given and transform its chaotic relationship with the world-picture into a systematic one.

This means that thinking approaches the given world-content as an organizing principle. The process takes place as follows: Thinking first lifts out certain entities from the totality of the world-whole. In the given nothing is really separate; everything is a connected continuum. Then thinking relates these separate entities to each other in accordance with the thought-forms it produces, and also determines the outcome of this relationship. When thinking restores a relationship between two separate sections of the world-content, it does not do so arbitrarily. Thinking waits for what comes to light of its own accord as the result of restoring the relationship. And it is this result alone which is knowledge of that particular section of the world content. If the latter were unable to express anything about itself through that particular relationship established by thinking, then this attempt made by thinking would fail, and one would have to try again. All knowledge depends on man's establishing a correct relationship between two or more elements of reality, and comprehending the result of this.

There is no doubt that many of our attempts to grasp things by means of thinking, fail; this is apparent not only in the history of science, but also in ordinary life; it is just that in the simple cases we usually encounter, the right concept replaces the wrong one so quickly that we seldom or never become aware of the latter.

…

Suppose, for example, that we detach one content, a, from the world-picture, and likewise another, b. If we are to gain knowledge of the law connecting a and b, then thinking must first relate a to b so that through this relationship the connection between them presents itself as given. Therefore, the actual content of a law of nature is derived from the given, and the task of thinking is merely to provide the opportunity for relating the elements of the world-picture so that the laws connecting them come to light. Thus there is no question of objective laws resulting from the synthetic activity of thinking alone.

We must now ask what part thinking plays in building up our scientific world-picture, in contrast to the merely given world-picture. Our discussion shows that thinking provides the thought-forms to which the laws that govern the world correspond. In the example given above, let us assume a to be the cause and b the effect. The fact that a and b are causally connected could never become knowledge if thinking were not able to form the concept of causality. Yet in order to recognize, in a given case, that a is the cause and b the effect, it is necessary for a and b to correspond to what we understand by cause and effect. And this is true of all other categories of thinking as well.

…

The activity of thinking is only a formal one in the upbuilding of our scientific world-picture, and from this it follows that no cognition can have a content which is a priori, in that it is established prior to observation (thinking divorced from the given); rather must the content be acquired wholly through observation. In this sense all our knowledge is empirical. Nor is it possible to see how this could be otherwise.

…

Thinking says nothing a priori about the given; it produces a posteriori, i.e. the thought-form, on the basis of which the conformity to law of the phenomena becomes apparent.
Seen in this light, it is obvious that one can say nothing a priori about the degree of certainty of a judgment attained through cognition. For certainty, too, can be derived only from the given. To this it could be objected that observation only shows that some connection between phenomena once occurred, but not that such a connection must occur, and in similar cases always will occur. This assumption is also wrong. When I recognize some particular connection between elements of the world-picture, this connection is provided by these elements themselves; it is not something I think into them, but is an essential part of them, and must necessarily be present whenever the elements themselves are present.

…

A true law of nature is simply the expression of a connection within the given world-picture, and it exists as little without the facts it governs as the facts exist without the law.

We have established that the nature of the activity of cognition is to permeate the given world-picture with concepts and ideas by means of thinking. What follows from this fact? If the directly-given were a totality, complete in itself, then such an elaboration of it by means of cognition would be both impossible and unnecessary. We should then simply accept the given as it is, and would be satisfied with it in that form. The act of cognition is possible only because the given contains something hidden; this hidden does not appear as long as we consider only its immediate aspect; the hidden aspect only reveals itself through the order that thinking brings into the given. In other words, what the given appears to be before it has been elaborated by thinking, is not its full totality.

This becomes clearer when we consider more closely the factors concerned in the act of cognition. The first of these is the given. That it is given is not a feature of the given, but is only an expression for its relation to the second factor in the act of cognition. Thus what the given is as such remains quite undecided by this definition. The second factor is the conceptual content of the given; it is found by thinking, in the act of cognition, to be necessarily connected with the given. Let us now ask: 1) Where is the division between given and concept? 2) And where are they united?

The answers to both of these questions are undoubtedly to be found in the preceding discussion. The division occurs solely in the act of cognition. In the given they are united. This shows that the conceptual content must necessarily be a part of the given, and also that the act of cognition consists in re-uniting the two parts of the world-picture, which to begin with are given to cognition separated from each other. Therefore, the given world-picture becomes complete only through that other, indirect kind of given which is brought to it by thinking. The immediate aspect of the world-picture reveals itself as quite incomplete to begin with.

If, in the world-content, the thought-content were united with the given from the first, no knowledge would exist, and the need to go beyond the given would never arise. If, on the other hand, we were to produce the whole content of the world in and by means of thinking alone, no knowledge would exist either. What we ourselves produce we have no need to know. Knowledge therefore rests upon the fact that the world-content is originally given to us in incomplete form; it possesses another essential aspect, apart from what is directly present. This second aspect of the world-content, which is not originally given, is revealed through thinking. Therefore the content of thinking, which appears to us to be something separate, is not a sum of empty thought-forms, but comprises determinations (categories); however, in relation to the rest of the world-content, these determinations represent the organizing principle. The world-content can be called reality only in the form it attains when the two aspects of it described above have been united through knowledge.




VI. Theory of Knowledge Free of Assumptions and Fichte's Science of Knowledge


WE HAVE NOW defined the idea of knowledge. In the act of cognition this idea is directly given in human consciousness. Both outer and inner perceptions, as well as its own presence are given directly to the “I,” which is the center of consciousness. (It is hardly necessary to say that here “center” is not meant to denote a particular theory of consciousness, but is used merely for the sake of brevity in order to designate consciousness as a whole.) The I feels a need to discover more in the given than is directly contained in it. In contrast to the given world, a second world — the world of thinking — rises up to meet the I and the I unites the two through its own free decision, producing what we have defined as the idea of knowledge. Here we see the fundamental difference between the way the concept and the directly given are united within human consciousness to form full reality, and the way they are found united in the remainder of the world-content. In the entire remainder of the world picture we must conceive an original union which is an inherent necessity; an artificial separation occurs only in relation to knowledge at the point where cognition begins; cognition then cancels out this separation once more, in accordance with the original nature of the objective world. But in human consciousness the situation is different. Here the union of the two factors of reality depends upon the activity of consciousness. In all other objects, the separation has no significance for the objects themselves, but only for knowledge. Their union is original and their separation is derived from the union. Cognition separates them only because its nature is such that it cannot grasp their union without having first separated them. But the concept and the given reality of consciousness are originally separated, and their union is derived from their original separation; this is why cognition has the character described here. Just because, in consciousness, idea and given are necessarily separated, for consciousness the whole of reality divides into these two factors; and again, just because consciousness can unite them only by its own activity, it can arrive at full reality only by performing the act of cognition. All other categories (ideas), whether or not they are grasped in cognition, are necessarily united with their corresponding forms of the given. But the idea of knowledge can be united with its corresponding given only by the activity of consciousness. Consciousness as a reality exists only if it produces itself. I believe that I have now cleared the ground sufficiently to enable us to understand Fichte's Science of Knowledge through recognition of the fundamental mistake contained in it.

…

The present discussion shows that the I is free when it cognizes, when it objectifies the ideas of cognition. For when the directly given and the thought-form belonging to it are united by the I in the process of cognition, then the union of these two elements of reality — which otherwise would forever remain separated in consciousness — can only take place through a free act.
Our discussion sheds a completely new light on critical idealism. Anyone who has acquainted himself intimately with Fichte's system will know that it was a point of vital importance for this philosopher to uphold the principle that nothing from the external world can enter the I, that nothing takes place in the I which is not originally postulated by the I itself. Yet it is beyond all doubt that no idealism can derive from the I that form of the world-content which is here described as the directly given. This form of the world-content can only be given; it can never be constructed out of thinking. One need only consider that if all the colors were given us with the exception of one single shade, even then we could not begin to provide that shade out of the I alone. We can form a picture of distant regions that we have never seen, provided we have once personally experienced, as given, the various elements needed to form the picture. Then, out of the single facts given us, we combine the picture according to given information. We should strive in vain to invent for ourselves even a single perceptual element that has never appeared within our sphere of the given. It is, however, one thing merely to be aware of the given world: it is quite another to recognize its essential nature. This latter, though intimately connected with the world-content, does not become clear to us unless we ourselves build up reality out of the given and the activity of thinking. The essential What of the given is postulated for the I only through the I itself. Yet the I would have no occasion to postulate within itself the nature of something given if it did not first find itself confronted by a completely undetermined given. Therefore, what is postulated by the I as the nature and being of the world is not postulated without the I, but through it.

The true shape is not the first in which reality comes before the I, but the shape the I gives it. That first shape, in fact, has no significance for the objective world; it is significant only as a basis for the process of cognition. Thus it is not that shape which the theory of knowledge gives to the world which is subjective; the subjective shape is that in which the I at first encounters it. If, like Volkelt and others, one wishes to call this given world “experience,” then one will have to say: The world-picture which, owing to the constitution of our consciousness, appears to us in a subjective form as experience, is completed through knowledge to become what it really is.

Our theory of knowledge supplies the foundation for true idealism in the real sense of the word. It establishes the conviction that in thinking the essence of the world is mediated. Through thinking alone the relationship between the details of the world-content becomes manifest, be it the relation of the sun to the stone it warms, or the relation of the I to the external world. In thinking alone the element is given which determines all things in their relations to one another.

An objection which Kantianism could still bring forward would be that the definition of the given described above holds good in the end only for the I. To this I must reply that according to the view of the world outlined here, the division between I and external world, like all other divisions, is valid only within the given and from this it follows that the term “for the I” has no significance when things have been understood by thinking, because thinking unites all opposites. The I ceases to be seen as something separated from the external world when the world is permeated by thinking; it therefore no longer makes sense to speak of definitions as being valid for the I only.


VII. Epistemological Conclusion


WE HAVE ESTABLISHED that the theory of knowledge is a science of significance for all human knowledge. The theory of knowledge alone can explain to us the relationship which the contents of the various branches of knowledge have to the world. Combined with them it enables us to understand the world, to attain a world-view. We acquire positive insight through particular judgments; through the theory of knowledge we learn the value of this insight for reality. Because we have adhered strictly to this absolutely fundamental principle and have not evaluated any particular instances of knowledge in our discussion, we have transcended all one-sided world-views. One-sidedness, as a rule, results from the fact that the enquiry, instead of first investigating the process of cognition itself, immediately approaches some object of this process.

Our discussion has shown that in dogmatism, the “thing-in-itself” cannot be employed as its fundamental principle; similarly, in subjective idealism, the “I” cannot be fundamental, for the mutual relationship of these principles must first be defined by thinking. The “thing-in-itself” and “I” cannot be defined by deriving one from the other; both must be defined by thinking in conformity with their character and relationship. The adherent of skepticism must cease to doubt the possibility of knowing the world, for there is no room for doubt in regard to the “given” — it is still untouched by all predicates later bestowed on it by means of cognition. Should the skeptic maintain that our cognitive thinking can never approach the world, he can only maintain this with the help of thinking, and in so doing refutes himself. Whoever attempts to establish doubt in thinking by means of thinking itself admits, by implication, that thinking contains a power strong enough to support a conviction. Lastly, our theory of knowledge transcends both one-sided empiricism and one-sided rationalism by uniting them at a higher level. In this way, justice is done to both. Empiricism is justified by showing that as far as content is concerned, all knowledge of the given is to be attained only through direct contact with the given. And it will be found that this view also does justice to rationalism in that thinking is declared to be both the necessary and the only mediator of knowledge.

…

The attempt here is to acquire insight into reality by observing the process of cognition. And we believe that we have shown that all conflicts between world-views result from a tendency to attempt to attain knowledge of something objective (thing, I, consciousness, etc.) without having first gained a sufficiently exact knowledge of what alone can elucidate all knowledge: the nature of knowledge itself.

[ScottRoberts]

Scott, I was wondering: do you mean by that that you are writing a simplified version of PoF Part I, where you maintain the original structure and rewrite the insights in logical sequence, without the references to literature, and with present-day language, syntax, and examples? That would be an incredible endeavor, and a highly useful one!
It reminds me that online there is an attempt to propose a more readable version of PoF. I haven't read it, and I guess what you are considering is a work of a quite different nature, but I mean that the need is definitely there!

I am hoping to cover both Part I and II, but I have barely started. Still, I think in a couple of days I should have something to show, though far from complete. And yes, it will maintain the structure, but stripped of references to other philosophers, and of many examples. It should end up as just the phenomenological steps. I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being so terse that it is just useful after reading PoF as a reminder of its main points.

[ScottRoberts]

That's mostly how I think about it as well. It seems to me that, since Steiner himself spoke of PoF and spiritual science as an expansion of Goethe's phenomenology, that might be the most fruitful place to look for a more basic philosophy-science of ideational activity. Perhaps in Hegel and Coleridge as well. When searching for the latter on the archive, I came across this from Owen Barfield.

I'm kinda hoping that PoF includes what one can get from Steiner's other early works (on Goethe, and his Truth and Knowledge. But I'll need to reread them at some point. But not Hegel .

I think it is imperative for any philosophy of ideational activity to immerse itself in the differentiated structure of the natural kingdoms and point toward how the Spirit expresses itself in form, life, soul (passions, instincts), and finally in its own element, ideation. Goethe did that in the plant kingdom with the observation of living archetypes. Ultimately this sort of detailed investigation seems to be how human ideation can recognize itself in the manifest world without going so far as explicitly occult research.

Yes, but later. I'm still trying to get a clear statement of the basic epistemology and methodology.

[ScottRoberts]

I don't know about Goethe's phenomenology, but maybe another fruitful place to look is Steiner's doctoral dissertation, chapters IV to VII. It looks like a more focused, precise variation of PoF part I.
In short:

I do intend to reread it (though I always get lost when he talks about Fichte), but I'm not sure that it adds any phenomenal principles that aren't in PoF.

So maybe it phenomenologically shows that nothing can exist outside this IA? And maybe also that if one denies it, one is only demonstrating the described working of IA necessary in order to reach that conviction, thus it would never be possible to demonstrate that there is something that can't be known / that is not IA?

One can show that we can never know anything that isn't IA, but I don't see how one can show that nothing exists outside IA (beyond the non-phenomenal arguments for any idealism)., though we can acknowledge that any such existence can never matter to us. The issue, it seems to me, is whether phenomenological idealism can provide the motivation to search for IA in that which does not immediately seem to have it.

[Federica]

I do intend to reread it (though I always get lost when he talks about Fichte), but I'm not sure that it adds any phenomenal principles that aren't in PoF.

To me it would make sense that, in the early works, there is more of what you are looking for than there is in PoF, because we are looking for the Ahrimanic layout here. We want to extract the level of consequential reasoning that is at par with the level at which humanity needed to be picked up at the end of Kali-Yuga, to bring the invisible back into focus. Probably in PoF Steiner was already on his way up, one step above the entry step of the compelling, brilliantly intellectual philosophical reasoning. In that form, he treated it once, precisely in his dissertation, but not twice. PoF already requires/elicits an openness, an intuitive thirst for knowledge that is not pure aridity, but incorporates a movement of the heart. Which I guess is part of why it’s a difficult book. I am reminded of what I recently reported from Scaligero about how PoF falls into place in that particular moment in the evolution of consciousness. I would only increase the zoom, and add the extra-step of the dissertation in between:

So we can see that, in the sphere of Ahriman, man finally becomes independent from Lucifer. However, woe betide man if he doesn’t realize what has happened. In which case man becomes the prey of Ahriman, that is: from bad to worse. Still, that was the beginning of the possibility for man of a free act. Why free? Because the act is not anymore suggested by Lucifer, but by Ahriman, the one who tells man “Mess everything up! Wreck it!”. And in the beginning our Doctor speaks positively of this turning everything upside down: Stirner, Nietzsche, Haeckel, the positive element he found in all that evolutionary enquiry is: it’s an act of freedom. And that’s how we come to Goethe. Goethe is great because he's free. He is a scientist and he is a poet. He doesn’t follow the traditional frameworks of science. So you see, the way is long, but we are getting there. With the Ahrimanic act, human freedom begins. I would say, that was an act of courage of a lower type, nonetheless it's an important courage, because man started to be the examiner of his own inner position. And here comes the Philosophy of Freedom. The Philosophy of Freedom begins exactly at that level, there are no discontinuities, no transcendences. It starts exactly from that Ahrimanic level, and then you see how we ascend. That's how thinking has been set free. Yes… and this is only the very beginning.

Side note: this is also why I definitely prefer the title Philosophy of Freedom.
POSA, as a title, is actually a better match with the content of the doctoral dissertation.

One can show that we can never know anything that isn't IA, but I don't see how one can show that nothing exists outside IA (beyond the non-phenomenal arguments for any idealism)., though we can acknowledge that any such existence can never matter to us. The issue, it seems to me, is whether phenomenological idealism can provide the motivation to search for IA in that which does not immediately seem to have it.

Jo, the step from knowing to reality is made throught the "idea of knowledge".
As I understand it, the motivation you speak of is provided by phenomenological idealism, and then immediately rewarded, as soon as it elucidates the normal process of cognition. There, we very soon find IA in what appears as matter to the naive realist. But here we are searching for a more advanced bridge? Namely, that all reality is IA, not only the reality of the flower we are looking at.

[AshvinP]

That's mostly how I think about it as well. It seems to me that, since Steiner himself spoke of PoF and spiritual science as an expansion of Goethe's phenomenology, that might be the most fruitful place to look for a more basic philosophy-science of ideational activity. Perhaps in Hegel and Coleridge as well. When searching for the latter on the archive, I came across this from Owen Barfield.

I'm kinda hoping that PoF includes what one can get from Steiner's other early works (on Goethe, and his Truth and Knowledge. But I'll need to reread them at some point. But not Hegel .

I think it is imperative for any philosophy of ideational activity to immerse itself in the differentiated structure of the natural kingdoms and point toward how the Spirit expresses itself in form, life, soul (passions, instincts), and finally in its own element, ideation. Goethe did that in the plant kingdom with the observation of living archetypes. Ultimately this sort of detailed investigation seems to be how human ideation can recognize itself in the manifest world without going so far as explicitly occult research.

Yes, but later. I'm still trying to get a clear statement of the basic epistemology and methodology.

PoF always seems to include more than I thought every time I return to it, so at this point, I am assuming it includes everything I suppose that is why Steiner said that, although Anthroposophy and spiritual science in their current form will fade away within a few hundred years as things evolve and new spiritual research develops, PoF will remain because it strikes at the very heart of Cosmic evolution, i.e. the rhythmic unfolding of moral thinking-will as we intimately experience it.

But the question is whether we can get a stepping stone that is closer to normal habits of philosophical thinking, to ease the transition so to speak. The epistemic statement has to be that we only can know the outer world through our thinking consciousness and there is no fundamental limit to that knowledge. It also has to include that the outer world we perceive is not something finished until our thinking consciousness interacts with it. So would you say you are looking for a different way of illustrating that through philosophical principles? (nevermind, I just saw your post to Federica... looking forward to the finished product!)

I'm at a loss as to whether there is any other methodology for establishing the outer world is ideational (or the world of our feeling and will) other than the sort of natural phenomenology carried out by Goethe.

[ScottRoberts]

PoF always seems to include more than I thought every time I return to it, so at this point, I am assuming it includes everything

That's ominous, with respect to what I'm trying to do with PoF. Anyway, here's a link to what I've done so far (I'm in the middle of Chapter 4). Very much subject to revision, and criticism, in particular as to what I've stripped out but shouldn't have.

[url=https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Eik ... sp=sharing[/url]