Prospects for a Phenomenological Idealism

[ScottRoberts]

If we are extending mathematical thinking to necessarily include higher cognition, then I suppose you are correct. I try to stay away from the term 'non-referential', because that can be misleading. Most mathematical thought doesn't refer to sensory (spatial) forms, but it does refer to spiritual (temporal or even timeless) forms-relations that are not perceived. I don't think we should imagine that, by thinking mathematically, we are necessarily experiencing the 'things-themselves'. In fact, we are not even doing so with Imaginative cognition.

By 'concrete', I basically mean 'practical' or 'pragmatic'. If we weave our thinking in the beautiful symmetries and relations of mathematics but can't find an avenue in which this higher insight can be applied to more effectively steer our stream of becoming towards higher ideals in the manifest world, then I think that would make it more abstract than concrete.

Right. I recall (now, how quickly I forget) our earlier discussion, where you pointed out that our mathematical concepts are shadows -- or abstractions -- of higher order forms. But for those of us restricted to normal cognition, they are, so to speak, apparently non-referential and non-abstract -- that is, not "drawn out" from anything in the way our concept of lion is. So, back to the drawing board to figure out how to handle this.

[AshvinP]

If we are extending mathematical thinking to necessarily include higher cognition, then I suppose you are correct. I try to stay away from the term 'non-referential', because that can be misleading. Most mathematical thought doesn't refer to sensory (spatial) forms, but it does refer to spiritual (temporal or even timeless) forms-relations that are not perceived. I don't think we should imagine that, by thinking mathematically, we are necessarily experiencing the 'things-themselves'. In fact, we are not even doing so with Imaginative cognition.

By 'concrete', I basically mean 'practical' or 'pragmatic'. If we weave our thinking in the beautiful symmetries and relations of mathematics but can't find an avenue in which this higher insight can be applied to more effectively steer our stream of becoming towards higher ideals in the manifest world, then I think that would make it more abstract than concrete.

Right. I recall (now, how quickly I forget) our earlier discussion, where you pointed out that our mathematical concepts are shadows -- or abstractions -- of higher order forms. But for those of us restricted to normal cognition, they are, so to speak, apparently non-referential and non-abstract -- that is, not "drawn out" from anything in the way our concept of lion is. So, back to the drawing board to figure out how to handle this.

Here's another thought on approaching moral intuition - if you are presenting evidence for the evolution of consciousness, then one could also notice the pattern of progression in which the birth of conscience is situated, which corresponds to the birth of the free-thinking individual who can relate to fellow humans (to begin with) through a shared thought-world that transcends physical characteristics and even soul characteristics, like language. That also ties in with the development of mathematics as a 'universal language'. Here we have a clear natural-cultural progression that implies higher-than-human moral intent.

[ScottRoberts]

Here's another thought on approaching moral intuition - if you are presenting evidence for the evolution of consciousness, then one could also notice the pattern of progression in which the birth of conscience is situated, which corresponds to the birth of the free-thinking individual who can relate to fellow humans (to begin with) through a shared thought-world that transcends physical characteristics and even soul characteristics, like language. That also ties in with the development of mathematics as a 'universal language'. Here we have a clear natural-cultural progression that implies higher-than-human moral intent.

I'm not sure why it implies higher-than-human moral intent. I think a skeptic could ascribe all these changes to "spreading memes", just humanity getting a little more grown-up. The change from the 3rd to 4th P-A epoch can be discerned from language changes, but it is not so obvious for the change from 4th to 5th. Or so it seems to me.

[Federica]

But maybe you meant it in a different way that I haven't understood?

I think so, and I think I should apologize for trying to express things without also providing sufficient background for why I express things in the way I do. The following may help to provide that background:

https://sites.google.com/site/nondualistlogic/thinking-and-feeling-language-and-perception

So, roughly, I define mathematical thinking as non-referential thinking, and I am saying that the thinking of beings of the spiritual hierarchy that creates worlds is non-referential. But the same is happening in the worlds that our mathematical thinking creates. It's just that they are tiny and don't have the strength to think an atom into existence.

You certainly shouldn't apologize but thanks, Scott. I'm reading the background. I'll come back.

[AshvinP]

Here's another thought on approaching moral intuition - if you are presenting evidence for the evolution of consciousness, then one could also notice the pattern of progression in which the birth of conscience is situated, which corresponds to the birth of the free-thinking individual who can relate to fellow humans (to begin with) through a shared thought-world that transcends physical characteristics and even soul characteristics, like language. That also ties in with the development of mathematics as a 'universal language'. Here we have a clear natural-cultural progression that implies higher-than-human moral intent.

I'm not sure why it implies higher-than-human moral intent. I think a skeptic could ascribe all these changes to "spreading memes", just humanity getting a little more grown-up. The change from the 3rd to 4th P-A epoch can be discerned from language changes, but it is not so obvious for the change from 4th to 5th. Or so it seems to me.

I think the changes are obvious for the 4th to the 5th, and within the 5th from modern to 'post-modern', even with ordinary reasoning, but it requires a deep dive into historical records, the changing understanding of science (Zajonc's book on the changing view of Light is a great resource), art, religion, and so forth. So that is probably not going to work too well for your project if it is aiming to be a much more condensed resource. When you said you are presenting 'evidence' for the evolution of consciousness, what did you have in mind? A brief overview of philological changes?

It is true that a skeptic can rationalize all these developments away. After all, that is the main theme of the evolution of consciousness - the World only presents to us phenomenally what we have the proper ideas-concepts to see, and we only acquire those proper ideas with a healthy willingness to trust the thinking spirit that animates our conceptual life. A person looking for reasons and excuses not to trust that spirit will certainly find them. I doubt it makes too much sense to pursue such a project with the goal of convincing the skeptic for that reason.

[Federica]

But maybe you meant it in a different way that I haven't understood?

I think so, and I think I should apologize for trying to express things without also providing sufficient background for why I express things in the way I do. The following may help to provide that background:

https://sites.google.com/site/nondualistlogic/thinking-and-feeling-language-and-perception

So, roughly, I define mathematical thinking as non-referential thinking, and I am saying that the thinking of beings of the spiritual hierarchy that creates worlds is non-referential. But the same is happening in the worlds that our mathematical thinking creates. It's just that they are tiny and don't have the strength to think an atom into existence.

Leaving PoF in the background for a moment, can we go to your “Divine and Local Simplicity, and the Question of Will” (since the essay you linked above refers to it as background)? I've tried to follow your argument and noted my comments, but please take them as questions. I know you have carefully pondered these topics and distilled these essays through time and I’m afraid I’ll be much like an elephant in the porcelain store. I apologize in advance for the 'results'.


For me, what raises questions in the unfolding of your argument at first, is the absence of any gradient between God and our human experience. You briefly refer to God’s being and thoughts, and simply put them side by side with our human experience. For example you say: “For God, a thought is an act of will is a feeling etc.” This implicitly prompts us to think of a thought of God as sharing something immediately intelligible with what we commonly conceive as “a thought”, or at least it prompts us to imagine a thought of God as being understandable ‘just like that’ but gesturing as we usually do in common language with words and concepts like “thought” and “feeling”.

It’s like trying to directly catch God’s reality at the starting point of inquiry, by throwing the net of our worldly language, with no preparation, as if common words and concepts were ‘natural’, ‘impartial’, 'external' tools of knowledge. This seems to me like an implicit assumption in your argument. By contrast, in PoF, one is prompted to embark on an exploration that does point to the wholeness of reality, and ultimately to God, but along a gradient that starts from the given of human experience, and promises to take years, decades, or entire lives before it can yield fruits.

The next juncture I notice in your reasoning, when you go from the unitary simplicity of God all the way to the nature of our human thinking, feeling and willing activity, is when you argue: “throughout reality, a thought is a feeling is an act of will. It is only our limitations that have caused us to have separate words.” Here I wonder why you restrict the separation to the “words”. This seems to me another implicit assumption. From my perspective it’s our human experience of TFW that is differentiated, not only the language we use to point to it. But you make it a linguistic question, rather than an experiential one, and then write the other essay (Thinking and Feeling, Language and Perception) on that premise.

In this way, you conclude that our consciousness is fundamentally as simple as divine consciousness, only “made enormously complex by being local, or limited”. While I believe this is a final realization common to all monistic perspectives, Anthroposophy, and the vast majority of our current discussions on this forum, argumenting it in this extremely simplified way sounds abstract to me, and in fact mystical.

But to continue on the point of various qualities of thinking, as you say: “when doing a mathematical exercise, we are, inseparably, thinking and willing”. I agree, but when we do Cleric’s vowel exercise it’s the same. We are inseparably thinking and willing. It’s also the same in any exercise of concentration. Would you call the thought-images of the vowel exercise referential or non-referential? As I said before, I think what counts is the willed thinking gesture that brings consciousness - through the object - back to the activity, no matter if the object is referential or not. In mathematics it’s more straightforward, because we don’t have to take the detour through the sensory world. It’s sense-free activity, and it’s 'easier' to bring consciousness to what we are doing. However, when one concentrates on a pin, one can ascend in a similar way to a higher level of consciousness of the activity.

The fact that we don’t bring a pin into material existence by concentrating on it is not important for our purposes, since we don’t “create and maintain into existence” a triangle either, when we think it (here I have to confirm disagreement already expressed in a previous post). The triangle doesn’t need our activity to exist and to remain in existence. We don’t create the triangle. Rather, we orient and center our consciousness ‘around’ the reality of the triangle, and we seek in that gesture to willingly connect with the beings that are it. In conclusion, my impression is that, when you distinguish between a house (or a pin) that we can’t create through thinking, and a triangle that we (supposedly) create, you are being too anchored in the sensory sphere, using the sensory/non-sensory as the main watershed (=we create, since we are not limited by references to matter). But what counts is how conscious we can be inside our activity, rather than whether or not we have to take a deeper plunge all the way down into the sensory sphere, as we have to when we concentrate on a pin. Sure, we don't create a material pin, but that comparison is misleading. Anyway, before we can master matter from the outside, and create pins, we will have to first learn to create plants, and then animals. We are not even close... so I would completely drop matter as a point of reference, that's not the focus.

To see that, I think one should try to put oneself more holistically, more neutrally, in the perspective of the gradient of spirit-soul-physical reality, rather than living in our sensory experience as implicit background of the philosophical reflection. Then we can see that what counts is to search for the gradual experience of coincidence of the object with the first-person activity, through freedom and discipline.

In other words, it’s not that in mathematical thinking our task is accomplished, and our thinking is perfect. There are still ample ways to remain lost in abstraction there. Moreover, a triangle does refer to something outside of it. True, it’s sense-free thinking, and that is helpful, but in a sense that’s secondary, because we may think of a triangle and still have no idea of the dynamic interplay of thought-seeds and archetypal forms the triangular form is made of. The intelligences behind the triangle, and the form of our concentric existence in that context, may still completely escape us.


These were my initial thoughts on the first essay. I can imagine you have already considered ‘objections’ of this sort, and I’d be interested in how you would reason through these thoughts.

[ScottRoberts]

I think the changes are obvious for the 4th to the 5th, and within the 5th from modern to 'post-modern', even with ordinary reasoning, but it requires a deep dive into historical records, the changing understanding of science (Zajonc's book on the changing view of Light is a great resource), art, religion, and so forth. So that is probably not going to work too well for your project if it is aiming to be a much more condensed resource.

The changes are obvious, but the supernatural cause of the changes isn't. One might be more open to describing the 3rd to 4th change (thinking moving from outside to inside) as requiring something supernatural, while the 4th to 5th change (which might be described as learning to doubt one's own thinking), not as much.

When you said you are presenting 'evidence' for the evolution of consciousness, what did you have in mind? A brief overview of philological changes?

Two things: the evidence that in the time of original participation, people were naive idealists, while now we are naive dualists. The other is that our mental vocabulary is borrowed almost entirely from physical vocabulary, evidence that original participators did not distinguish the mental from the physical. I consider these as evidence of idealism.

It is true that a skeptic can rationalize all these developments away. After all, that is the main theme of the evolution of consciousness - the World only presents to us phenomenally what we have the proper ideas-concepts to see, and we only acquire those proper ideas with a healthy willingness to trust the thinking spirit that animates our conceptual life. A person looking for reasons and excuses not to trust that spirit will certainly find them. I doubt it makes too much sense to pursue such a project with the goal of convincing the skeptic for that reason.

Right. I am not trying to convince the skeptic. But then, that makes me wonder what I am trying to do. I think it is to put into practice something Lessing said (quoted by Steiner, though I can't remember where): "Revelation is not rational when it is revealed, but is revealed so as to become rational." So the logic to follow is what Peirce called "abductive": Show that something not experienced (by normal consciousness) makes sense of what is experienced. The "not experienced" would include higher beings with higher cognition (to explain nature and evolution), all-pervasive moral law (to explain pangs of conscience). All presupposing idealism. What's still to figure out is how to indicate that the "not experienced" can be experienced.

One needs at least to get into what is meant by "becom[ing] rational" . This will involve making Coleridge's distinction between "reason" and "understanding", and that the latter (ordinary intellect) is insufficient to "make sense" of it all.

[ScottRoberts]

Leaving PoF in the background for a moment, can we go to your “Divine and Local Simplicity, and the Question of Will” (since the essay you linked above refers to it as background)? I've tried to follow your argument and noted my comments, but please take them as questions. I know you have carefully pondered these topics and distilled these essays through time and I’m afraid I’ll be much like an elephant in the porcelain store. I apologize in advance for the 'results'.

For me, what raises questions in the unfolding of your argument at first, is the absence of any gradient between God and our human experience. You briefly refer to God’s being and thoughts, and simply put them side by side with our human experience. For example you say: “For God, a thought is an act of will is a feeling etc.” This implicitly prompts us to think of a thought of God as sharing something immediately intelligible with what we commonly conceive as “a thought”, or at least it prompts us to imagine a thought of God as being understandable ‘just like that’ but gesturing as we usually do in common language with words and concepts like “thought” and “feeling”.

It’s like trying to directly catch God’s reality at the starting point of inquiry, by throwing the net of our worldly language, with no preparation, as if common words and concepts were ‘natural’, ‘impartial’, 'external' tools of knowledge. This seems to me like an implicit assumption in your argument. By contrast, in PoF, one is prompted to embark on an exploration that does point to the wholeness of reality, and ultimately to God, but along a gradient that starts from the given of human experience, and promises to take years, decades, or entire lives before it can yield fruits.

I should start by saying that I use the word 'God' as a reference to whatever is responsible for our and our environment's existence. I certainly don't claim to know what even an angel's ideational activity is "like", never mind that of higher spiritual beings. My intention in this essay was to borrow the theological concept of "God's simplicity" and apply it our own ideational activity.

The next juncture I notice in your reasoning, when you go from the unitary simplicity of God all the way to the nature of our human thinking, feeling and willing activity, is when you argue: “throughout reality, a thought is a feeling is an act of will. It is only our limitations that have caused us to have separate words.” Here I wonder why you restrict the separation to the “words”. This seems to me another implicit assumption. From my perspective it’s our human experience of TFW that is differentiated, not only the language we use to point to it. But you make it a linguistic question, rather than an experiential one, and then write the other essay (Thinking and Feeling, Language and Perception) on that premise.

But don't we have different words because we have distinguishable experiences? My point in the Thinking and... essay is to say that referential language in general is a consequence of our experience as beings apparently cut off from the divine, and the thinking/feeling distinction is one of those experiential consequences.

In this way, you conclude that our consciousness is fundamentally as simple as divine consciousness, only “made enormously complex by being local, or limited”. While I believe this is a final realization common to all monistic perspectives, Anthroposophy, and the vast majority of our current discussions on this forum, argumenting it in this extremely simplified way sounds abstract to me, and in fact mystical.

My error here is to use "simple" in a different way than is meant in the phrase "Divine simplicity". That is, the opposite of "simple" is, in this sense, "divided", not "complex". And our error is to divide ideational activity into thinking, feeling, and willing, and not just distinguish them. As for "enormous" I suppose what is enormous are the consequences of the Fall that this division is a symptom of.

But to continue on the point of various qualities of thinking, as you say: “when doing a mathematical exercise, we are, inseparably, thinking and willing”. I agree, but when we do Cleric’s vowel exercise it’s the same. We are inseparably thinking and willing. It’s also the same in any exercise of concentration. Would you call the thought-images of the vowel exercise referential or non-referential?

Non-referential, like music.

As I said before, I think what counts is the willed thinking gesture that brings consciousness - through the object - back to the activity, no matter if the object is referential or not. In mathematics it’s more straightforward, because we don’t have to take the detour through the sensory world. It’s sense-free activity, and it’s 'easier' to bring consciousness to what we are doing. However, when one concentrates on a pin, one can ascend in a similar way to a higher level of consciousness of the activity.

I agree. Even working on a crossword puzzle is consciously willed thinking. Only what I refer to in the essay as "monkey mind" is not. But that too is willed, just not consciously, rather by something subconcious.

The fact that we don’t bring a pin into material existence by concentrating on it is not important for our purposes, since we don’t “create and maintain into existence” a triangle either, when we think it (here I have to confirm disagreement already expressed in a previous post). The triangle doesn’t need our activity to exist and to remain in existence. We don’t create the triangle. Rather, we orient and center our consciousness ‘around’ the reality of the triangle, and we seek in that gesture to willingly connect with the beings that are it.

I would say we re-create the triangle.

In conclusion, my impression is that, when you distinguish between a house (or a pin) that we can’t create through thinking, and a triangle that we (supposedly) create, you are being too anchored in the sensory sphere, using the sensory/non-sensory as the main watershed (=we create, since we are not limited by references to matter). But what counts is how conscious we can be inside our activity, rather than whether or not we have to take a deeper plunge all the way down into the sensory sphere, as we have to when we concentrate on a pin. Sure, we don't create a material pin, but that comparison is misleading. Anyway, before we can master matter from the outside, and create pins, we will have to first learn to create plants, and then animals. We are not even close... so I would completely drop matter as a point of reference, that's not the focus.

To see that, I think one should try to put oneself more holistically, more neutrally, in the perspective of the gradient of spirit-soul-physical reality, rather than living in our sensory experience as implicit background of the philosophical reflection. Then we can see that what counts is to search for the gradual experience of coincidence of the object with the first-person activity, through freedom and discipline.

In other words, it’s not that in mathematical thinking our task is accomplished, and our thinking is perfect. There are still ample ways to remain lost in abstraction there. Moreover, a triangle does refer to something outside of it. True, it’s sense-free thinking, and that is helpful, but in a sense that’s secondary, because we may think of a triangle and still have no idea of the dynamic interplay of thought-seeds and archetypal forms the triangular form is made of. The intelligences behind the triangle, and the form of our concentric existence in that context, may still completely escape us.

But I'm not trying, in this or any of my essays, to "accomplish the task". I am only trying to rearrange our thoughts a bit. In doing so, I am leaving out anything esoteric, such as the idea that a triangle has a reference to the ideational activity of higher beings.

These were my initial thoughts on the first essay. I can imagine you have already considered ‘objections’ of this sort, and I’d be interested in how you would reason through these thoughts.

I hadn't already considered these objections/questions, so thanks for them.

[Federica]

But I'm not trying, in this or any of my essays, to "accomplish the task". I am only trying to rearrange our thoughts a bit. In doing so, I am leaving out anything esoteric, such as the idea that a triangle has a reference to the ideational activity of higher beings.

These were my initial thoughts on the first essay. I can imagine you have already considered ‘objections’ of this sort, and I’d be interested in how you would reason through these thoughts.

I hadn't already considered these objections/questions, so thanks for them.

Scott, thank you for addressing all of them! I would only insist on one point, if I may.
I don’t understand how the idea that "a triangle has a reference to the ideational activity of higher beings" is esoteric for you. What if we call the beings "intelligences"? Is it not inevitable in an idealistic conception that the ideas are active (living) realities, interacting with one another in some ways? Even BK speaks of a likely metaconscious mind@large. Is MAL also esoteric?

If you agree with this - that there are necessarily (and only) operating ideas in reality (in other words, living intelligences) - then, we can’t disregard the referential nature of the thought of a triangle, that is, the existence of the idea/concept of triangle outside of our thoughts. Our thought is precisely our willed connection with that idea/concept. How could it be otherwise? (Again, I may be wrong, but I believe that when you say "a thought of a triangle is the tirangle", you are reasoning by contrast with the sensory world, where this doesn't happen. You use the sensory experience as point of reference, which mislead you into believing that the triangle is re-created in our mind without references).

If we, as human beings, were to create, or re-create, a new triangle every time we think about it, and this myriad of man-made triangles had no reference to an existing triangle-concept/idea, then what makes them all triangles? If ideas are real and interacting, then when we think of the idea, it can only mean that we connect with it, we enter in some form of interaction with it. We can decide we won't call the idea "a being" (to comply with Ahriman's imperatives a little longer) but it’s the same thing, since it’s a reality that operates with will.

Therefore, I believe it’s necessary to abandon the abstract image of our mind creating non-referential mathematical worlds, or re-creating independent mathematical objects, out of no existing ideal substance. How would we be able to realize it’s a triangle? How would we be able to integrate all that the idea-triangle brings in it as potential? Only if we realize that our thought of a triangle emerges from our connection with the idea/concept of triangle (a reality, living outside of human mind) will it make sense/be possible. As Ashvin said, "non-referential" can easily become a source of misunderstanding.


What do you think?


Cleric explained it best in this post.

Ideas shouldn't be considered as something that exists only in the human mind. Everything in reality is an expression of ideal activity. At our stage we can conceive this easily only for beings, such as humans, which seem to be localized in space but we have to imagine that even the 'carrier waves' of reality, within which our inner life is embedded, are forms of Intelligence.

For this reason, when we work in ideas, even though we may not realize it, we are secretly trying to approach the states of being of those Intelligences which drive the metamorphoses of the World state and within which our own spiritual activity is also modulated. To approach doesn't mean to have some theory about this but to attune to the World Thoughts that drive the metamorphoses of the Cosmos.

Maybe we can further clarify this with the following metaphor:



We know that in order to balance an object on a point, it has to pass through the imaginary line connecting its center of mass with the center of the Earth (like this).

The inverted cone above symbolizes the manifold relations of the ideal (spiritual world). For example, if we take something like 'freedom' or 'evolution', these are certainly ideas but they can never be understood in isolation. What would be the meaning of 'evolution' in an empty world? The meaning of this idea is grasped only because we have realized certain lawfulness in the temporal unfolding of existence. It is something we 'read out' from the totality of our experience. We have to consider the kingdoms of Nature and the development of human soul life, and explore their dynamics in order to grasp certain gradation which we call 'evolution'. The key however is that this idea shouldn't remain abstract but we need to remember that it is extracted from the totality of our experience (or we could say that we attune to it as we penetrate the mystery of existence). This is what the widening inverted cone symbolizes - the fact that ideas ultimately lead us into the reality of the World's totality and the Intelligent intents that drive its metamorphoses.

The point of balance is the concept. When we think of a concept we can always imagine something point-like. This doesn't in the least mean that a concept is self-sufficient point that can exist in isolation. The concept of 'evolution' is the point-like experience of ideal balance through which we basically say "When I concentrate on the concept of 'evolution' it is like I exist amidst a totality of complicated ideal relations. I cannot easily grasp this totality. It is living, it is dynamic. I have to consider simultaneously all the Kingdoms and beings in their continual metamorphoses and complicated relations if I'm to grasp it. My mind would burst If I were to do that - I simply can't fit it all. Nevertheless I feel that there's certain lawful unity within the totality, something which captures a specific ideal current with it. In my mind I can find this specificity as a kind of point of balance. When my mind is focused in this point I feel as if I have found a peculiar point of stability within the totality - it is the point-experience that makes sense of the totality. The ideal totality is vastly larger than the soul life I experience at any instance, yet in my mind I can find a point which is stable and somehow remains at rest amidst the dynamics of the ideal. This ideal point in my mind I can call the concept. It is only a symbolic point of balance within my intellect which captures something essential of an ideal totality.

So that's in a nutshell. The concept is the concrete point-like ideal experience in our intellect. It's not 'some thing'. It's a point of balance, point of rest from within which our mind feels it keeps some aspect of the ideal world balanced like the inverted cone. We simply feel that in that point we grasp the idea.

[AshvinP]

I think the changes are obvious for the 4th to the 5th, and within the 5th from modern to 'post-modern', even with ordinary reasoning, but it requires a deep dive into historical records, the changing understanding of science (Zajonc's book on the changing view of Light is a great resource), art, religion, and so forth. So that is probably not going to work too well for your project if it is aiming to be a much more condensed resource.

The changes are obvious, but the supernatural cause of the changes isn't. One might be more open to describing the 3rd to 4th change (thinking moving from outside to inside) as requiring something supernatural, while the 4th to 5th change (which might be described as learning to doubt one's own thinking), not as much.

Right, the change from outer experience to inner experience of thinking is definitely the most stark. If one considers it in terms of a change from the necessary obeyance of natural and cultural authorities for moral guidance to the possibility of following only one's increasingly lucid conscience, then we arrive at the core theme of the 2nd half of PoF and 'ethical individualism'.

When you said you are presenting 'evidence' for the evolution of consciousness, what did you have in mind? A brief overview of philological changes?

Two things: the evidence that in the time of original participation, people were naive idealists, while now we are naive dualists. The other is that our mental vocabulary is borrowed almost entirely from physical vocabulary, evidence that original participators did not distinguish the mental from the physical. I consider these as evidence of idealism.

It is true that a skeptic can rationalize all these developments away. After all, that is the main theme of the evolution of consciousness - the World only presents to us phenomenally what we have the proper ideas-concepts to see, and we only acquire those proper ideas with a healthy willingness to trust the thinking spirit that animates our conceptual life. A person looking for reasons and excuses not to trust that spirit will certainly find them. I doubt it makes too much sense to pursue such a project with the goal of convincing the skeptic for that reason.

Right. I am not trying to convince the skeptic. But then, that makes me wonder what I am trying to do. I think it is to put into practice something Lessing said (quoted by Steiner, though I can't remember where): "Revelation is not rational when it is revealed, but is revealed so as to become rational." So the logic to follow is what Peirce called "abductive": Show that something not experienced (by normal consciousness) makes sense of what is experienced. The "not experienced" would include higher beings with higher cognition (to explain nature and evolution), all-pervasive moral law (to explain pangs of conscience). All presupposing idealism. What's still to figure out is how to indicate that the "not experienced" can be experienced.

One needs at least to get into what is meant by "becom[ing] rational" . This will involve making Coleridge's distinction between "reason" and "understanding", and that the latter (ordinary intellect) is insufficient to "make sense" of it all.

In my mind, the key is to show how the "not experienced" is experienced if we pay enough attention, and ideally how it is experienced in the very act of exploring the question of how it is experienced. Until then, the 'supernatural cause' will elude us or remain hopelessly abstract, because our normal habit of thinking will find satisfactory explanations for the evidence presented in natural causes or cultural conventions. Or it will go the Kantian route and say "this isn't satisfactory, but the only possibility of satisfaction is once the veil is lifted for me by physical death". So I'm not sure how to establish that part of Part I without already blending into Part II, i.e. metaphors that compare parts of our familiar experience and understanding to experience of higher worlds.