The Philosophy of Freedom Study Group
The World as Percept
Topics: Mathematical and Qualitative Dependence and Subjective Perception
4.4 Do the objects of my perceptions exist only through me, and only in as far, and as long as, I perceive them?
4-5) MATHEMATISM (Gemini)
[17] How is it that we are compelled to make these continual corrections to our observations?
[18] A simple reflection gives the answer to this question. When I stand at one end of an avenue, the trees at the other end, away from me, seem smaller and nearer together than those where I stand. My percept-picture changes when I change the place from which I am looking. Therefore the form in which it presents itself to me is dependent on a condition which is due not to the object but to me, the perceiver. It is all the same to the avenue wherever I stand. But the picture I have of it depends essentially on just this viewpoint. In the same way, it makes no difference to the sun and the planetary system that human beings happen to look at them from the earth; but the percept-picture of the heavens presented to them is determined by the fact that they inhabit the earth. This dependence of our percept-picture on our place of observation is the easiest one to understand. The matter becomes more difficult when we realize how our world of percepts is dependent on our bodily and spiritual organization. The physicist shows us that within the space in which we hear a sound there are vibrations of the air, and also that the body in which we seek the origin of the sound exhibits a vibrating movement of its parts. We perceive this movement as sound only if we have a normally constructed ear. Without this the world would be for ever silent for us. Physiology tells us that there are people who perceive nothing of the magnificent splendor of color which surrounds us. Their percept-picture has only degrees of light and dark. Others are blind only to one color, for example, red. Their world picture lacks this hue, and hence it is actually a different one from that of the average man. I should like to call the dependence of my percept-picture on my place of observation, "mathematical", and its dependence on my organization, "qualitative". The former determines the proportions of size and mutual distances of my percepts, the latter their quality. The fact that I see a red surface as red -- this qualitative determination -- depends on the organization of my eye.
Topic: Mathematical and Qualitative Dependence of Picture
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4-6) RATIONALISM (Taurus)
[19] My percept-pictures, then, are in the first instance subjective. The recognition of the subjective character of our percepts may easily lead us to doubt whether there is any objective basis for them at all. When we realize that a percept, for example that of a red color or of a certain tone, is not possible without a specific structure of our organism, we may easily be led to believe that it has no permanency apart from our subjective organization and that, were it not for our act of perceiving it as an object, it would not exist in any sense. The classical representative of this view is George Berkeley, who held that from the moment we realize the importance of the subject for perception, we are no longer able to believe in the existence of a world without a conscious Spirit:
“Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, to wit, that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word, all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind, that their being is to be perceived or known; that, consequently, so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit.‿
On this view, when we take away the fact of its being perceived, nothing remains of the percept. There is no color when none is seen, no sound when none is heard. Extension, form, and motion exist as little as color and sound apart from the act of perception. Nowhere do we see bare extension or shape, but these are always bound up with color or some other quality unquestionably dependent upon our subjectivity. If these latter disappear when we cease to perceive them, then the former, being bound up with them, must disappear likewise.
[20] To the objection that there must be things that exist apart from consciousness and to which the conscious percept-pictures are similar, even though figure, color, sound, and so on, have no existence except within the act of perceiving, the above view would answer that a color can be similar only to a color, a figure only to a figure. Our percepts can be similar only to our percepts and to nothing else. Even what we call an object is nothing but a collection of percepts which are connected in a particular way. If I strip a table of its shape, extension, color, etc. -- in short, of all that is merely my percept -- then nothing remains over. This view, followed up logically, leads to the assertion that the objects of my perceptions exist only through me, and indeed only in as far as, and as long as, I perceive them; they disappear with my perceiving and have no meaning apart from it. Apart from my percepts, I know of no objects and cannot know of any.
[21] No objection can be made to this assertion as long as I am merely referring to the general fact that the percept is partly determined by the organization of myself as subject. The matter would appear very different if we were in a position to say just what part is played by our perceiving in the bringing forth of a percept. We should then know what happens to a percept while it is being perceived, and we should also be able to determine what character it must already possess before it comes to be perceived.
Topic: Percept exists only in Subjective Perception
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| 4-5.mp3 | 1.03 MB |
| 4-6.mp3 | 1.5 MB |
Math is Tidy
It's interesting to me how much math there is in this "Mathematist" section of Chapter Four. Linear perspective in art, developed in the 1400s and based on algebra and geometry, eclipsed the Medieval practice of sizing figures and objects in a painting according to their relative (often spiritual) importance. What the eye actually sees became more important than what concepts were attached to it, and great store was put in convincing the viewers that they were looking at a 3-dimensional space instead of a flat surface.
About the heliocentric model of the mathematician Copernicus, Wikipedia has this to say:
"Copernicus' work contradicted then-accepted religious dogma: it could be inferred that there was no need of an entity (God) that granted a soul, power and life to the World and to human beings — science could explain everything that was attributed to Him.
Copernicanism, however, also opened a way to immanence, the view that a divine force, or divine being, pervades all that exists — a view that has since been developed further in modern philosophy. Immanentism also leads to subjectivism: to the theory that it is perception that creates reality, that there is no underlying reality that exists independent of perception. Thus some argue that Copernicanism demolished the foundations of medieval science and metaphysics.
A corollary of Copernicanism is that scientific law need not be congruent with appearance. This contrasts with Aristotle's system, which placed much more importance on the derivation of knowledge through the senses.
Copernicus' concept marked a scientific revolution. The publication of his De revolutionibus orbium coelestium is often taken to mark the beginning of the Scientific Revolution, together with the publication of Andreas Vesalius' De Humani Corporis Fabrica."
Both sound and color are, of course, defined mathematically in physics, the color Red having the wavelength interval of 625-740 nm, and the frequency of 480 - 405 THz. Glad that's settled!
So it appears that even what Steiner calls here the "qualitative determination" of our percept-pictures can be tied up into neat mathematical packages!
Percept-Pictures in 4.5
"When I stand at one end of an avenue, the trees at the other end, away from me, seem smaller and nearer together than those where I stand."
Not true! They seem to be exactly what they are: the same size trees, the same distance apart, but seen at a distance. That's because we correct for perspective all the time without thinking about it. In the 15th Century, when Brunelleschi traced the reflected images of Florentine buildings on a mirror, and then looked at the markings geometrically, he found a way to take the concepts out of the situation and discover what we really see. By painting the percept-picture, as opposed to the mental picture that we've already corrected for perspective, Brunelleschi was able to induce his viewers to make the same kind of automatic, conceptual corrections that caused them to feel as though they were looking at a 3-dimensional scene. When he reflected both his painting and the actual view of the building in a mirror, the viewers were barely able to tell the difference.
"My percept-picture changes when I change the place from which I am looking."
"Percept-picture" appears for the first time in this section, and only reappears twice in Chapter Nine. This is interesting, because a percept-picture is a very different thing from a mental picture. A percept-picture has not yet been corrected by concepts. For instance, when I stand and look down the avenue, my mental picture differs greatly from my percept-picture. I guess that a percept-picture must be a collection of percepts, with little or no conceptual content.
How often do we correct our percept-pictures -- what we actually see -- by our mental pictures -- what we think we see? And how often do the corrections serve reality in the way that the corrections do that we supply to our percept-pictures of roads dwindling off into the distance? And is it possible, like Brunelleschi and his mirror, to rip away concepts, look at what's left, and then put concepts back again, maybe even better ones this time?
Half-Truths in 4.6
In Section 4.6, Steiner takes us down a sidepath into Berkeley's philosophy and beyond, as if to show what happens when we take a partial truth and run with it.
The partial truth is, "My percept-pictures are subjective." Where we end up is, "The objects of my perceptions exist only through me, and indeed only in as far as, and as long as, I perceive them; they disappear with my perceiving and have no meaning apart from it."
Is this solipsism, or what? How many steps further down this path can we take before we say, "Other people exist only to serve my needs?"
Steiner draws us back from this brink. The reason we got this far, he points out, is that we seized on a general fact, that "the percept is partly determined by the organization of myself as subject," and built it up into a world view, instead of investigating it further. What we should have asked is, "What part is played by our perceiving in the bringing forth of a percept?"
Working with this question, he implies, will uncover some kind of objective existence for our percepts, for only things that exist can have a character and a fate. Their character is, what they must be like in order for us to perceive them. Their fate is, what happens to them as we perceive them.
What Is, Is
The idea, that what is holds greater weight than what is perceived, is conspicuously absent in 4.6. According to Bishop Berkeley's argument, nothing even exists unless it's perceived. He uses this to get rid of the material world by turning it into a mental construct that an omnipotent God causes to live in our heads, thus proving God's existence. But couldn't the same argument be extended a little further to prove the non-existence of the (unperceived) spiritual world and its beings? And to rationalize child abuse and all kinds of other criminal behavior, because, unless it's dragged out of its hiding place into the light of day, it's as though it weren't real?
In my impecunious youth, I thought about entering a women's pornographic writing competition with a fat prize. I'd begun to frame my story when I suddenly had the revelation that it didn't matter at all what's perceived, but only what is. That is, I could keep my future prize-winning pornographic story a secret by using a clever pen name, but that would have no bearing on what would be the fact that I had brought it into existence. Something that hadn't existed before would thereafter be occupying its small space in the universe of created things forever, because of me! Even if nobody ever read or saw it again.
Seen in that light, the project lost its appeal, so I dropped it. But when I told my friend Gail about my revelation, she scorned it. She said I was just imagining some kind of God or other punishing figure. She couldn't believe that I would grant reality to something not in the material or social world unless that something was going to help or harm my life in some material or social way, or in some silly version of an afterlife.
Gail was a Rationalist if I ever met one. She used to tease me that "organic farming" meant nothing, because all things grown on farms were organic by definition, being made of carbon in various forms. I suppose that she saw things partly from the point of view expressed in this section, that only things that are somehow perceivable can possibly exist. She was like another friend of mine, a mechanical genius and great conversationalist, who once said, "If irradiated strawberries look and taste exactly like strawberries that haven't been irradiated, what's the difference to me?" He liked to say things like that once in awhile, just to get my goat, but there was also an element of sincerity in his skepticism. It didn't extend to the idea that if he couldn't see the "germs" on the strawberry that supposedly necessitated its irradiation, they didn't exist either! In our culture, we believe in some invisible things but not others.
Covering Up
The idea that unperceived things don't exist can be used to cover up our misbehavior in another way. You can speak to someone quite rudely, or in an angry way, and when he confronts you about it, can reply that he was projecting his own fears, or reading something into the situation that wasn't there. Dismiss his perception, treat it as a figment of his imagination, and you don't have to own up to, explain, or apologize for your behavior. People use this tactic on each other all the time, especially adults with children. No wonder we grow up without confidence in our perceptions and our thinking!
Defending oneself in this ultimately deceitful manner doesn't contribute in any way to freedom, but undermines it. I hope that I can remember this the next time someone says something to me that threatens my self-image!