The Philosophy of Freedom Study Group
The Act Of Knowing The World
5-11) PHENOMENALISM (Virgo)
[28] Except through thinking and perceiving nothing is given to us directly. The question now arises: What is the significance of the percept, according to our line of argument? We have learnt that the proof which critical idealism offers of the subjective nature of perceptions collapses. But insight into the falsity of the proof is not alone sufficient to show that the doctrine itself is erroneous. Critical idealism does not base its proof on the absolute nature of thinking, but relies on the argument of naïve realism, when followed to its logical conclusion, cancels itself out. How does the matter appear when we have recognized the absoluteness of thinking?
[29] Let us assume that a certain perception, for example, red, appears in my consciousness. To continued observation, this percept shows itself to be connected with other percepts, for example, a definite figure and with certain temperature- and touch-percepts. This combination I call an object belonging to the sense-perceptible world. I can now ask myself: Over and above the percepts just mentioned, what else is there in the section of space in which they appear? I shall then find mechanical, chemical and other processes in that section of space. I next go further and study the processes I find on the way from the object to my sense organs. I can find movements in an elastic medium, which by their very nature have not the slightest in common with the percepts from which I started. I get the same result when I go on and examine the transmission from sense organs to brain. In each of these fields I gather new percepts, but the connecting medium which weaves through all these spatially and temporally separated percepts is thinking. The air vibrations which transmit sound are given to me as percepts just like the sound itself. Thinking alone links all these percepts to one another and shows them to us in their mutual relationship. We cannot speak of anything existing beyond what is directly perceived except what can be recognized through the ideal connections of percepts, that is, connections accessible to thinking. The way objects as percepts are related to the subject as percept -- a relationship that goes beyond what is merely perceived -- is therefore purely ideal, that is, it can be expressed only by means of concepts. Only if I could perceive how the percept object affects the percept subject, or, conversely, could watch the building up of the perceptual pattern by the subject, would it be possible to speak as modern physiology and the critical idealism based on it do. Their view confuses an ideal relation (that of the object to the subject) with a process which we could speak of only if it were possible to perceive it. The proposition, "No color without a color-sensing eye," cannot be taken to mean that the eye produces the color, but only that an ideal relation, recognizable by thinking, subsists between the percept "color" and the percept "eye". Empirical science will have to ascertain how the properties of the eye and those of the colors are related to one another, by what means the organ of sight transmits the perception of colors, and so forth. I can trace how one percept succeeds another in time and is related to others in space, and I can formulate these relations in conceptual terms, but I can never perceive how a percept originates out of the non-perceptible. All attempts to seek any relations between percepts other than thought relations must of necessity fail.
Topic: Ideal Connections Of Percepts
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5-12) SENSATIONALISM (Leo)
[30] What, then is a percept? The question, asked in this general way, is absurd. A percept emerges always as something perfectly definite, as a concrete content. This content is directly given and is completely contained in what is given. The only question one can ask concerning the given content is what it is apart from perception, that is, what it is for thinking? The question concerning the "what" of a percept can, therefore, only refer to the conceptual intuition that corresponds to this percept. From this point of view, the question of the subjectivity of percepts, in the sense of critical idealism, cannot be raised at all. Only what is perceived as belonging to the subject can be termed "subjective." To form a link between something subjective and something objective is impossible for any process that is "real" in the naïve sense, that is, one that can be perceived; it is possible only for thinking. Therefore what appears for our perception to be external to the percept of myself as subject is for us "objective". The percept of myself as subject remains perceptible to me after the table which now stands before me has disappeared from my field of observation. The observation of the table has produced in me a modification which likewise persists. I retain the faculty to produce later on an image of the table. This faculty of producing an image remains connected with me. Psychology calls this image a memory-picture. It is in fact the only thing which can justifiably be called the mental picture of the table. For it corresponds to the perceptible modification of my own state through the presence of the table in my visual field. Moreover, it does not mean a modification of some "Ego-in-itself" standing behind the percept of the subject, but the modification of the perceptible subject itself. The mental picture is, therefore, a subjective percept, in contrast with the objective percept which occurs when the object is present in the field of vision. Confusing the subjective percept with the objective percept leads to the misconception of contained in idealism -- that the world is my mental picture.
[31] Our next task must be to define the concept of "mental picture" more closely. What we have said about it so far does not give us the concept of it but only shows us whereabouts in the perceptual field the mental picture is to be found. The exact concept of mental picture will make it possible for us also to obtain a satisfactory explanation of the way that mental picture and object are related. This will then lead us over the border line where the relationship between the human subject and the object belonging to the world is brought down from the purely conceptual field of cognition into concrete individual life. Once we know what to make of the world, it will be a simple matter to direct ourselves accordingly. We can only act with full energy when we know what it is in the world to which we devote our activity.
| Topic: Objective Percept Subjective: Only what is perceived as belonging to the subject. Objective: What appears for our perception to be external to the percept of myself as subject. Subjective Percept: The observation of the table has produced in me a modification which likewise persists. I retain the faculty to produce later on an image of the table. This faculty of producing an image remains connected with me. It is in fact the only thing which can justifiably be called the mental picture of the table. Objective Percept: Occurs when the object is present in the field of vision. Confusing the subjective percept with the objective percept leads to the misconception contained in idealism -- that the world is my mental picture. |
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The Hunting of the Snark
This is just a brilliant passage... there is so much that can be drawn out of it. Here is one that comes to mind:
Steiner talks about the perception of red.
Let us assume that a certain perception, for example, red, appears in my consciousness.
For many thinkers this would be enough. From here, they will start making abstract generalisations about the nature of perception and its relation to consciousness, the supposed nature of objective reality and so on. But not Steiner - he continues:
To continued observation, this percept shows itself to be connected with other percepts, for example, a definite figure and with certain temperature- and touch-percepts. This combination I call an object belonging to the sense-perceptible world.
It's easy to follow him to this point. Perhaps it's a piece of hot iron glowing red. We are not so abstract now, we have to imagine to ourselves how red appears to us in a real situation. From here we could start talking abstractly, for example, about how the real world is not composed of separate qualities like "red", "hot" etc. but presents itself to us as a conglomerate of all of these. But Steiner still doesn't stop here:
I can now ask myself: Over and above the percepts just mentioned, what else is there in the section of space in which they appear? I shall then find mechanical, chemical and other processes in that section of space.
Fair enough, that is very scientific. From here, it's possible to assert things like "well, the piece of hot iron is really a collection of imperceptible atoms constantly interacting according to certain laws". We know that experiments can be carried out to measure these processes he's talking about. That just provides additional proof that the "real" nature of the world is the one described by conventional science - force and matter. But still he doesn't stop:
I next go further and study the processes I find on the way from the object to my sense organs. I can find movements in an elastic medium, which by their very nature have not the slightest thing in common with the percepts from which I started.
Still very scientific. Of course, if we want to make assertions about the nature of perceptions it is sensible to investigate the physical conditions within which they arise. So if there are visual perceptions we find electromagnetic waves between our eye and the object, if there are sound perceptions we can measure sound waves in the air, and so on.
But Steiner now adds an important observation on the progress of this train of thought "...which by their very nature have not the slightest thing in common with the percepts from which I started". This can make me start to think for myself "well, does this all make sense? Does the scientific investigation of totally different percepts using totally different concepts really prove that my starting point (the percept of red) is not real, is only subjective? Is the percept "red" really less valid than the percept "reading on light detector" for example? They are both percepts, and thinking joins concepts to both of them to achieve knowledge in their respective contexts. And still Steiner does not give up:
I get the same result when I go on and examine the transmission from sense organs to brain.
He wishes us to think the whole thing through for ourselves, right to the end. It is all too easy to stop at one of the above points and not realise that at every step we still have to apply thinking to join the polarities of concept and percept - there is no reality "out there" that is beyond this.
Once we realise there is no reality "out there" the way is open for a very great deal in understanding the true significance of our inner life...
The Subtle Nature of Reality--"out there" and "in there"
Hello Tim,
You have written,
"He wishes us to think the whole thing through for ourselves, right to the end. It is all too easy to stop at one of the above points and not realise that at every step we still have to apply thinking to join the polarities of concept and percept - there is no reality "out there" that is beyond this.
Once we realise there is no reality "out there" the way is open for a very great deal in understanding the true significance of our inner life..."
I think we need to be careful about saying, “there is no reality 'out there.'” What Rudolf Steiner is going overboard to point out is that reality is the union of percept and concept. The concept is brought to the percept by means of thinking. Thinking is that reality which the idealists are seeking in a naïve realistic sense, something that is perceptible, in the same way any given percept is. Of course thinking is perceptible in a naïve realistic sense, and is that which can be held in this way, since qualitatively that which is initially given to us is identical to that which derives the meaning from what is given. It is thinking that gives to the percept its “objective” or “subjective” character, according to what we are actually, really confronting. “Out there” and “in there” are conditions of reality that thinking makes clear to us. The objective percept is a percept we actually confront with our sense organs even as the subjective mental image is an individualized concept, both being percepts whose relationship is clarified for us by means of thinking.
What I think we need to be careful about is over emphasizing our "inner life" as opposed to our "outer life."
gerald: linking
Hi Gerald,
I’ve asked just about everybody here at one point or another to give me a basic description of connecting a concept to a percept in their daily life. I’m collecting these types of descriptions as part of a larger study of how our languaging and theorizing affect each other.
I’d appreciate it if you would be willing to describe (as experientially as you can) at least one everyday example of what it is like for you to “connect” (or attach or link) a concept to a percept. In other journals I’ve made clear why I can’t use the language of “connection’ and “selection” and “linking” any longer, but I am beginning to really look at how people who do use PoF’s basic language actually experience this process.
In terms of the following thread, I’d like to hear you say more, specifically about your concern. I bet you’ve got some interesting reasons behind that concern. Thanks.
Jeff
Hello
Hello Jeff,
I'll expand upon my concern first and then give an experiential example of percept/concept.
From the I/spirit's perspective (intuition and its manifestation process—what is generally called, thinking) the inner life could potentially, and with justification, be regarded as “out there.” Intuition is both percept/concept. Inner and outer already exist as united in intuition. This is why thinking can be known so directly as reality. The I is free of the inner or the outer, or may be either, neither, or both. This is the basis of our freedom. The direct experience of producing myself from out of myself—from out of that which was in the beginning—the first and the last, the last and the first. For who else shall determine who I am, other than I, that is, if I am to be regarded as a free being?
Generally, our most common experience of reality is that it is divided into a percept (a given sense impression of a “thing”). Perhaps the question arises, what is it? This has arisen commonly for me when out walking and approaching some thing and wondering what it is, until I come upon the concept, as when I was approaching a large painting of a face but unable to discern that it was a face, there living in me that separation long enough to experience the two, the percept in its raw form, as it were, and then the resolution into a face through the concept. One of the challenges in discussing all of this, is that we're basing everything upon already established representations of reality, such as, color, shape, extension, language, etc, that allows us to even speak of this process itself. Another example comes from an artistic exercise that we give to the upper grades students, to look at another's eye, “seeing” for the first time the actual shape of the eye. This “seeing” is actually a conceptual process, as the given percept still carries qualitatively the same impression as before, but now there is a spiritual activity that formerly was not present.
My concern is in regarding all of this as some sort of inner process, when it is the intuition that carries the inner and outer. This whole POF process can just as well be regarded as an outer process, and when that is properly taken in—neither and/or both are also justifiable.
I'll make a point of going back over some of your earlier posts in order to get some idea of your position. Thanks for your comments,
Gerald
Gerald: percept/concept
Thanks for your response, Gerald. I'm going to take a few minutes to respond, but not sure if I'll have a chance to send it off yet. In the meantime, if you go to my journal and go down to "The Separation Imagination"....you'll read much of what I'm thinking about in terms of percept/concept....
thanks again,
Jeff
Ok,Thanks for the
Ok,
Thanks for the examples. I want to focus in on them a bit. In the first you describe approaching a painting and not yet knowing what it is of and then getting close enough and seeing that it is a face. You say:
there living in me that separation long enough to experience the two, the percept in its raw form, as it were, and then the resolution into a face through the concept.
In PoF we talk about this idea that we encounter a percept and, then, activate our thinking by going out and grabing the concept and then attaching it to the percept. I've never actually experienced this and when I ask others they never actually describe such an experience. Your example is wonderful because I think we all can relate immediately to it. I notice that it doesn't matter how "hard" you look at the unclear painting; the smile "comes" when it comes. While it is certainly possible to stop and start making all sorts of guesses as to what it might be, very often we simply keep walking with a focus on the image and then we see the smile.
If I am doing a puzzle and I look at the piece in front of me, I might then go searching for a piece that will fit and, eventually, go bring that one over and unite them. We use words such as "the percept and concept are united by me or by thinking"....but I think we lose sight of the actual phenomena when we talk about linking or connecting.
You used the phrase "until I come upon the concept". Our concern that thinking (free thinking) must be controlled by "our" will has us often avoiding such phrases as yours. We immediately want to point out that coming upon a concept is not like coming upon a tire in the middle of the country road. But we know that the smile on the paiting was found in the same way as the painting itself. This points to a deeper aspect.
In PoF Steiner asks us to imagine a pure percept. I think it is critical to a reading of the book that, yes, we imagine such a way of seeing BUT we not lose sight of how highly congnitive such an imagination is. I find that many students of PoF get caught up in the imagination and then develop this concept of a "pure percept" as if it is something they've experienced. Once you generate the metaphyisical notion of a a pure percept, then you can start talking about a realm of percepts needing to be "connected" to a their missing concepts....But, so farthere is not an empirism associated with the disconnected, fragmentary, timeless, blooming, buzzing realm.
If I were to tap your shoulder, Gerald, as you are curiously approaching the painting and ask, "hey what is going on for you right now"....I doubt you would say,
"Well...it's weird...I notice this buzzing splotch of somethingness over there and I notice that I'm actively trying to connect an idea to it....it's just a scramble of pure bizarre randam senseations....."
I bet it would be more like,
"Well, I'm walking in this amazing art museum that has many of my favorite pieces of art. I'm looking a painting over there...It looks somewhat like a Milonte but I'm not sure...I can already tell that the artist was using interesting colors and they must be oils. I'm curious to see it more closely"
As we take a few more steps, "Oh, Jeff, it's a face, i think...I'm not sure...Yes, It's a smile"
even closer, "hmmm...it's not really a smile....It's actually more like a feigned smile. i'm not even sure this is a smile, but I am drawn into the exaughstion of this subject"
The language of PoF can sort of put us in trance in which we talk about our experiences as if we encounter percepts apart from concepts.
I'm not being naive. I understand that we learn about things. So far I just haven't found things that aren't richly and inherently cognitions in themselves. We must go to very extreme examples to try and find the blooming, buzzing, fragmented realm...but even in those, if we look clearly, we don't find the type of separation suggestion by the terms. That's just what I've noticed. I think what I'm pointing to is actually very related to your concern about "inner/outer", Gerald.
Yes about the "seeing" of an eye. That is a wonderful exercise you give your students. A typical theory of perception would say that as your students look more closely at the eye, they are moving away from cognition and being with bare perception. I agree with you that the "seeing" is a HIGHLY conceptual activity; it's just not the clunky intellectual activity of verbal-mind.
I don't see evidence that reality comes about by a uniting of percepts with concepts, but I do think that Steiner was trying to use those words to point at a phenomenology that he was most interested in. He would have had to first write an entire book about language and the evolution of consciousness if he wanted to write PoF in a manner that is actually congruent with the phenomenology that he was involved with. After establishing anthroposophy for a decade or so, he did indeed, speak again of perception/cognition but in ways that did not imply a "connecting" of percept and concept. In "Anthroposophy- A Fragment" we see him starting in a very different fashion. It's not surprising that he felt he couldn't find the words to really write that book; the words he was using (while highly creative and brillant) still carried with them the implications of "separation-first".
Your concern that we would lose sight of the fact that from PoF's view "inner" and "outer" are always already together is, I think, similiar to my concern that we not get swept away into imaginatios of "connecting" two things that are different and apart.
There are confusing sensory experiences. But, so far, those seem to always be happening as and in cognitive conditions. We humans become fascinated by such encounters. I don't think animals have such encounters and I think it is because they can't cogntively generate them. PoF helps us recognize that if we are drawn to "know" what this strange thing is, we have already given it its "strange thingness", cognitively. And, yes, of course, we can have recognition experiences and go, "Oh, those strange lines moving on the table are CHOP STICKS...WOW"....I am concerned that we take the effect of this WOW to mean a concept has been attached to a percept.
I've also noticed that many student of PoF read the beginning of chapter 4 as if while looking at the pool table Steiner is looking into a mass of percepts that need to be connected to concepts. We must realize that Steiner is already in a highly intricate and complex cogntive realm the moment he experiences that he is looking at balls on the table that will be used to impact each other and generate motion. These are not "percepts' in the way the term is often used. I'm fine with the term as long as we don't use it create a false division into "percepts" over here and "concepts" over there.....
Anway, while this has been far from clear, it might help you see where I'm coming from.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, so let me ask: when you finally notice the painting has a smile in it, are you having the experiencing of searching for the concept of smile and then attaching it to a jumple of lines to create the "reality" of the smile on the painting? Perhaps this example was doomed from teh beginning because it didn't involve so-called willed thinking. Can you give me an example of a time in which you had to freely search for teh concept (away from the percept) and then bring it over the percept to create reality?
Thanks
Jeff
Seeing Red
Thanks for this, Tim. It inspired me to actually go through the whole perceptual sequence one step at a time. That's never a wasted exercise in PoF! I'd been thinking I could move on because, for once, I got the main point. Which is, it seems to me, that the Critical Idealist, stringing whole long chains of percepts together, makes much of the gap between the red thing out there and our private experience of it, but fails to notice that between every one of his percepts there's just as much of a gap, filled and fillable only by thinking.
I enjoyed the exercise of the red perceptual sequence, because only thinking it out step by step could bring home the extreme would-be perceptibility of the whole process as science explains it. It's as if the whole experience takes place in real time, like a messenger running from the red-hot iron bar to me, running, swimming, crawling through caves, flying, changing form at every turn, until, after eons it seems, he arrives in my brain, panting with exhaustion, a shadow of his former self. What a Rube Goldberg journey! And what a way to make us feel that, as humans, we see nothing, hear nothing, know nothing. So it's not just funny, it's also full of consequences for us.
It will be an interesting exercise to go back sometime and compare this red perceptual sequence with the way it was presented in Chapter Three (3.10--3.11).
I didn't get the feeling that you're saying there's no reality out there, that for instance the red-hot iron bar isn't real, but only that apart from the potential percepts and potential concepts we have of it, there's no mysterious "reality-in-itself" lurking behind things. That doesn't mean we perceive all the potential percepts or link them with all the potential concepts, by a long ways.
I also like how the "elastic medium" between the object and me (the one that gets movements transferred to it from the object, in the critical idealist version of the sequence), which is presumably light-filled air, gives way to the connecting medium of thinking that "weaves through all these spatially and temporally separated percepts."
Finally, going over the perceptual sequence step by step, one can't help but notice that huge amounts of thinking are required at every turn. Just listing the required concepts would be an amazing exercise, if I had about a week to do it in.
Inner vs. Outer
Well - from a certain perspective, as soon as we look at an outer percept, and add the concept to it , that counts as 'inner life' - I think that is what Lori was getting at.
In, out: Hokey Cokey
I begin by brandishing my learner L plates.
I used to do an exciting session with new co-workers to Camphill where I challenged them to come up with anything that is wholly outer. I meant outside the soul I suppose. I then went on to ask about the source and motivation of so-called inner work.
Can someone help me understand how to grasp the concept of outer in this context as I am even suspicious of 'things' I have not yet experienced being fully outside. I am also no believer in outer space... but I like to dance in it.
In/Out
Hi John
I'm not sure about the inside/outside distinction either. But maybe it has something to do with how Steiner nails the difference between subjective and objective percepts in Section 5.12:
Therefore what appears for our perception to be external to the percept of myself as subject is for us "objective". The percept of myself as subject remains perceptible to me after the table which now stands before me has disappeared from my field of observation. The observation of the table has produced in me a modification which likewise persists. I retain the faculty to produce later on an image of the table......The mental picture is, therefore, a subjective percept, in contrast with the objective percept which occurs when the object is present in the field of vision.
Maybe "what appears for our perception to be external" to our self-perception is outside, and all the rest is inside?
Getting Back To Jeff
I find that the process Rudolf Steiner is taking us through is fairly straightforward, even simple, at a certain level. In the future, amongst some at least, it may well be regarded as common sense. He is attempting to extricate us from a certain trap that we have all been led into. What else besides observing some given thing and intuiting (thinking of) it, is there involved in recognizing what it is? Once I realize this, I have the experience you are asking about, no matter how "weak" it may be. Intuition lives even in the intellect--"I intuit that what is before me is a cup." We don't "think" about it, we recognize that it is so. Intuition lives throughout the entire thinking process, even as I enter into a more pictorial form of thinking (as in a picture is worth a thousand words), and on into the inspirational realizations that can carry us for a lifetime. Once I realize this I am experiencing the seed quality that leads to the rock of my being--I am! Even the idealists, mystics, and the volunatarists utilize thinking to formulate their world views (how else would they?). Realizing the absolute nature of thinking is, so called, willed thinking. Once I know that I think I know that I must be doing it.
It is possible to have the experience of suspending the conceptual awareness of a given thing. I have had this experience and been aware that it was lingering, I even found myself playing with the experience (although it was for a brief period of time) before the full realization of what some familiar object before me was became clear to me. I don't think that this is that uncommon of an experience, merely one not often noticed. And when confronting the mysterious, we have to live in the suspension of the correct idea, often for an entire lifetime. The experience of the concept and the percept together is too obvious, too mundane to be what Rudolf Steiner could be talking about. Our abstract experience of thinking seemingly can't possibly contain the germ of our being. It is too shadowy. And that it is. But one can realize, even intellectually what the process is, and allow this newly engendered awareness to act as a seed and carry one beyond mere intellectualization. But we have to start where we are at and allow the embryonic process of becoming to take its course. The essential thing is that we activate the process, which is what I believe we're all about here.
Gerald you say: But we
Gerald you say:
But we have to start where we are at
I would add: and we must STAY THERE, no matter how much it changes. In other words we need not get lost in our imaginings.
All this talk of adding a concept to a percept as if it is obvious. Where is it obvious? My observation, so far, is that I never get a description of something being added/connected/linked to something else. But yet it is spoken of in such a way. As researchers we must observe. If I asked you to describe the connecting of puzzle pieces, you could do so in great detail without any recourse to metaphyics or metaphor. But when we talk about our perceptual/cognitive experiences, we tend to leave the rich descriptions we enjoy elsewhere. I don't think we leave PoF one inch by dropping expressions that don't match our experiences. It's a good book.
Notice what happens as you learn about a teddy bear or a baseball or a rainbow….Watch the learning itself; don’t think about or make mental pictures of what might be happening. Stay with the intimacy of the ongoing moment. Do you see things getting moved over and then attached to other things. There you are having an amazing realization about the rainbow across the valley as your friend reads you the first three chapters of Saving the Appearances. PoF should encourage us to simply stay with what is happening.
I agree Gerald that it is not uncommon at all to have experiences in which we suspend the conceptual naming or solidifying of an object. I’m saying that when we let go of the familiar categorical naming of an object and rest in the more fluid experience of approaching it freshly, we are in a very cognitive relationship….There is nothing like bare and separation buzzing and blooming percept that is sometimes imagined. Those incredible experiences of letting go of a formed category are always happening within a highly specific cognitive and individuated experience. Those of us who have been teachers of children get to watch what happens to face when it drops into non-conceptual thinking.
Jeff
Seeing Red
Seeing red, a percept in our field of experience, is mentioned at the end of chapter five. This is a quite particular place in the book. The chapter begins with the statement: "It follows from our considerations so far that we cannot prove our percepts are mental picures by investigating the content of our observations."
Already in chapter three thinking was established as something absolute.
It seems to me that seeing red should speak to us from within. "Look within!" -Is not the west window of the Goetheanum not the "Red Window"? Does it not also challenge one to look within?
Just another question,
Roger
Red Here and There
Hi Roger
This is an interesting observation. By the end of the chapter a working definition of "mental picture" is ours. It's a subjective percept, meaning that it's associated with our percepts of our self, while the objective percept is outside that set of self-percepts and may come and go independently (the red bird might fly away.) So I suppose that this underscores the idea expressed at the start of the chapter, which is that "we cannot prove our percepts are mental picures by investigating the content of our observations," but only by relating them to ourselves, whether they're inside or outside our self-percepts. The only means to relate anything to anything is thinking. And we certainly have to look within to do that!
seeing More red
Steiner says:
Let us assume that a certain perception, for example, red, appears in my consciousness. To continued observation, this percept shows itself to be connected with other percepts, for example, a definite figure and with certain temperature- and touch-percepts.
I want to know what peole think he is talking about before the "continued observation". I think we run from this. That is one question. It is excedingly rare that a human being just sees redness. In most cases we are already noticing some kind of suchness- as whole- and then we isolate the color of this suchness. Only humans can "isolate" like this. Only humans can abstract (or detail) sections of a given suchness and let these sections become the focus of attention. Only humans can cognitively let go of the finished concept and sink into the isolated phenomena. I think that it is possible to misunderstand PoF in a way that ends up calling such experiential pre-conceptual isolations as percepts, as if the so-called percept is not already the result of your own congnitive (and sometimes quite conscious)process. When Steiner did spiritual research he did not stare blankly at a blooming, buzzing, fragmented assortment of sounds and colors. He talks about this. He selected very percise observations and isolated them in various ways, allowing himself to merge and/or participate within the isolated slice. Because he wasn't fixated on a concept, he was able to to let the cognitions (observations) unfold before him. But this isn't a connecting of concepts and percepts, just as our study of a tennis ball or a red wall isn't either.
So far, whenever I ask people to describe the percept before it is connected to the concept, they describe something that is already a cognitive product. I think that is right! I just wish we didn't jump so fast into calling that a percept. It's like we get hamstrug into the language of the book and forfeit our human experence.
In terms of "within": I'm fine with using that word as long as we aren't using it metaphyisically. As long as we aren't using it to mean that there is an actual "withinness" that must be contrasted with an actual "withoutness". If we say "within" to simply point to the moment in which we let our attention rest upon itself, fine. But then, somtimes, the best way to go deep within is to stare at a tree. And the way many people check "out" is to go cozily within. I'm always happy each person using words in ways that help "get at" their experiences, but the trick is to notice when the words are imposing (somtimes very subtle) mental pictures and presumptions of their own.
PoF points way beyond the inner/outer construction, just as Steiner talks about it preceeding the subject/object one. PoF is before and after those momentary formations. Spiritual Science goes into those formations and researches them. PoF is the reality that is unchanged no matter what is being researched or when. To study the etheric polomps of a Throne, you must be observing them. To study PoF you can be observing a table or a Throne....or a cloud.....or a dead uncle. There is no specific content in which PoF is more available. That said, there is good reason why Steiner encouraged focusing on thoughts that live on the boundary of normal consciousness; relatively speaking such thoughts are good at destabalizing our mental/emotional tendencies and allowing space for the cognitive perception of our essential humanity.
I wish I had seen the "Red Window", John. I definitately must look "within" to peek through it!
Jeff
Thinking About Red
Hi Jeff
Aren't you asking us to say what the original percept is? This is impossible to answer, isn't it? I'm in accord with what Steiner says here, "What, then is a percept? The question, asked in this general way, is absurd. A percept emerges always as something perfectly definite, as a concrete content. This content is directly given and is completely contained in what is given. The only question one can ask concerning the given content is what it is apart from perception, that is, what it is for thinking? The question concerning the "what" of a percept can, therefore, only refer to the conceptual intuition that corresponds to this percept."
And, it also seems that you're saying all percepts are subjective. But I find myself able to think the following thought quite clearly: "The mental picture is, therefore, a subjective percept, in contrast with the objective percept which occurs when the object is present in the field of vision. Confusing the subjective percept with the objective percept leads to the misconception of contained in idealism — that the world is my mental picture."
Whether these thoughts are ultimately right or wrong, I'm glad that I can think them honestly and truly, based on the arguments that came before, and on my own sense of rightness. Because it does seem that in order to continue the journey of PoF beyond this point it's necessary to have fully and consciously arrived at this point.
Red Lori
Hi Lori,
I understand what you are saying. Steiner does say:
"the question concerning the "what" of a percept can, therefore, only refer to the conceptual intuition that corresponds to this percept."
But haven't you noticed how common we find people talking about uniting the concept to the percept? I have a feeling you could find that basic phrase mentioned over 12,000 times on this website. Ok, so when things are not united they are apart, right? So I'm asking anybody who believes that they have ever attached a concept to a percept to pretty please describe the percept?
Lori, I agree with you that it is an impossible question to answer, but we don't agree on why. I think it is impossible because you don't ever actually experience it as such. There is no connecting happening. If we are using words like "connect", "attach" and "link" as conventions of speech, fine...I'm ok with that. But, and correct me if I'm wrong, but most people who study PoF are actually suggesting that there is really a percept that exists apart from a concept that that the "individual" uses thinking to bring them together. That's my first point.
Lori, you said:
And, it also seems that you're saying all percepts are subjective.
no, I'm saying that thus far I don't see that percepts "are" at all. I guess that would mean they are subjective in the same way that my imaginary friend is subjective, but at least my imaginary friend is something that I can actually describe as such. I have yet to read an actual description of anything (call it a percept or a gercept) that is set aside from a concept, but I read countless statement about connecting percepts to their concepts.
When Steiner says:
"The mental picture is, therefore, a subjective percept, in contrast with the objective percept which occurs when the object is present in the field of vision.
He is not using the word "percept" in the way that we are here. He's using it to mean the object of perception; this is already cognitively grounded. that is, Steiner's percept is already a definite conception. I stare at the tree. He is calling a "subjective percept" what happens when I close my eyes and "see" the tree. I'm with that. But this isn't the percept that is somehow outside our cognitive activity. Do you see what I mean?
Lori, if you have time and can read 4-3{9,10,11}, I would so much like to know how you think of it. What would you call the stuff that Steiner asks us to imagine in that section? And, most importantly, what would you say he means when he says that concepts get "linked" (end of 4-3{11}) to that "stuff". What do you call that which Steiner says we must imagine. And notice, he is saying that we must imagine this in order to really understand how the "object of perception" really comes into our consciousness. Is that how you experience objects of perception coming into your consciousness? I love how you enter into each inch of Steiner's words, so it would be like a warm bath of pefection to see you go into those three (short sections).....thanks thanks thanks!
Jeff
Empathic red
I can empathise with you here Jeff. I do not have a dead uncle (or a live one, since we are getting personal) and this so hampers my understanding...
Your post is really helpful, Jeff, in all other aspects. It has taken me back to earlier thoughts about qualia and Steiner's assertion about thinking and pre-birth experiences. Perhaps you registered the red window before you got those eyes? The standard explanation of qualia almost invariably includes the redness of red. Coincidence?
Respectfully grateful to you with a light heart... Outside it is raining. Damn that outside illusion! I just cannot discard it today.
Question for Jeff
Hi Jeff
I'll be glad to look at that section you mention here, and soon. But in the meantime, I have a big question. You wrote:
"When Steiner says:
'The mental picture is, therefore, a subjective percept, in contrast with the objective percept which occurs when the object is present in the field of vision.'
He is not using the word "percept" in the way that we are here. He's using it to mean the object of perception."
Why do you think that, I wonder? The objective percept only occurs when the object is present. It's not the object, it's something that occurs when the object is present. It couldn't possibly be the object, because the object is a whole thing, not something broken up into percept/concept as we break it up. The objective percept is like a little flake of the object that flashes up as we look in its direction. It causes a change in us, and that's the subjective percept. That's what I think anyhow.
Plus, the subjective percept can stay in us, even when the objective percept disappears. But the objective percept caused the change nevertheless. And the object can also stay there while the objective percept we had of it it disappears. For instance, maybe the object is a mirror and it reflected the red of a red bird flying by. We do a double-take and wonder where that red went, but we remember it flashing on our consciousness. The memory is the change, the mental picture. It's all so great the way Steiner explains this here! It shows how we can trust our percepts, and trust ourselves to be able to distinguish between objective and subjective percepts.
Hi Lori, When Steiner talks
Hi Lori,
When Steiner talks about the percept as a thing that one notices as something, he isn't talking about the "stuff" that supposedly gets attached to other stuff. That's why I said that he wasn't using the word in the specific way it was being used in that context.
I agree with everything you said about "red" and flashing and mirrors. But notice: you didn't say anything about having to connect a concept to a supposed percept. As long as we are just talking about the fact that we notice things and then remember them, I'm fine calling the things "percepts". My concern only kicks in when we talk as if we have observed a process in which a concept is found and brought towards something called a percept, they are united and then we have the reality of the "thing". That is the type of language I see here; that percepts are hanging out on one side and thninking goes and find concepts to attach to them. But nobody describes this process.
It would be like me saying a snowflake is a piece of God's dandruf. You ask me to describe how I know this. I say, "well the snowflakes fall off of God's head and come to earth". You say, "fine, but could you describe what you've seen of this falling off of God's head". I say, "well, if we accept that God has dandruf and that snow is from his head, it's clear that we can say snowflakes are God's dandruf"
The talk of percepts and concepts is a core piece of PoF. I think that is why I focus so strongly on wanting to hear actual descriptions of people's experiences, rather than falling into the "percept is connected to the concept" trance.
I agree with you Lori, that it is great to trust our percepts. I trust mine! But the only people I know who have problems trusting their percepts (in their day to day life) are in clinics doubting that they are sitting on real chairs or looking at real people. Trusting our percepts is the given, as far as I can tell. Sure, you'll get strange philosophers talking about how nothing really exists or it's all an illusion. But that is only when they are trying to form metaphyisical theories. Each of them trusts their percepts 100%.
Please know that I am not trying to argue that we should worry about the truth or falsity of the "things" we see and touch before us. I'm really just interested in hearing if people actually experience "percepts" as the kinds of things they talk about getting attached to concepts. I think it is such a huge part of PoF. And since PoF is a book in which the author stresses that he has no interest in philosophies of inference, I would expect that students of PoF would ground their most core claims in experience. That's why I'm interested in knowing what you would call the imagination that Steiner presents in 4. Also, why does Steiner say that in order to understand how we become aware of objects in our consciousness, we must imagine a blooming, buzzing and fragmented experience? Is he suggesting that we all experience this chaos unconsciously but because we are so quick to constantly link concepts to this chaos that we don't notice it? I think that conceptless imagination is seductive because it seems so obvious a step to take. As Steiner says:
This aggregate is the content of pure, unthinking observation. Over against it stands thinking, ready to begin its activity as soon as a point of attack presents itself. Experience shows at once that this does happen.
Is this your experience? Is Steiner talking about some type of initation experience that common readers of the book simply are too undeveloped to test? I don't think so. I think we can really notice if it's true that we have thinking over on one side and unthinking observation over on the other side. The trick is that if we forget that we are imagining the landscape of unthinking observation, we are very very very likely to see how "obvious" it is that all that fragmented pure perception needs thinking to connect it up with ti's concepts. All I'm asking is that before we submit ourselves to those mental pictures, we describe what we notice and see if we see (Steiner's words:)
"The world would then appear to this being as nothing but a mere disconnected aggregate of objects of sensation : colors, sounds, sensations of pressure, of warmth, of taste and smell; also feelings of pleasure and pain."
It is my opinon- so far- that we don't start with that disconnected world and attach concepts to it. Even research on new born infants shows how they are experiencing a world that is highly specific to them and already interconnected with very specific instincts and motivations. I think this "disconnected world" that Steiner wants us to imagine can only be imagined by a very sophisticated modern mind. I also think it isn't a coincidence that Steiner says that we MUST imagine this "disconnected realm" if we want to understand the process of "connecting" concepts and percepts. If Steiner (the big Dog) is telling his students that they must think up this imagination, you can bet that they probably will use that imagination as a basis for their understanding. It just helps me to keep things simple and ask for descriptions of experience as opposed to getting lost in language about notions of ideas....
You could describe certain process that take place on your farm with intricate detail. I could then watch the phenomena and notice the things you were pointing out. You could describe emotions like anger and jealously and pride and joy in detail, even how they morph and change during a conversation. If percepts and concepts are really linked or connected or united......I think we should demand no less of that process and share descriptions of it. I can't do it. You know me. I like to write. I like to describe. I'll describe 1000 different ways I experience my perceptions and cognitions. I can even be quite subtle. But, so far, I can't talk about what it is like to reach over there and tug a concept over to this other thing over here until I push them together into their reality as a whole. And, so far, when I ask people to describe their experiences of connecting percepts and concepts, they always give brilliant and personal descriptions of experiences that don't include the events Steiner asks us to imagine in 4-3.
Remeber that post I recently made about the children playing at the dance. Everything I'm talking about here is directly related to that. I'm only avoiding evocative language because I do think it's important to be able to talk in basic terms. That's why I'm sticking with "percept", "concept" and "connecting"; they are core terms in PoF. But they are also in the park at dusk.
jeff
Connecting, for Jeff
Hi Jeff
I would pretty much reply in the same vein as Sebastian has to the question of how I experience connecting percept with concept. Waking up in a strange bed, having spent the night away from home. Or trying to figure out what an odd shape in the distance is. I know it's something, just not sure what. A whole series of possibilities presents itself. I choose one, connect it, or maybe the connection doesn't work, so then I choose another.
Any time I try to figure something out, I'm trying to connect a percept with a concept. When I make the connection, I can become aware of the act of connecting, instead of just skipping over it and going to the next thing.
Lori "connect"
Thanks, but now describe it. Let's say you said you connected the rubber thing to the brown stick. You'd say,
"Ok I saw the stick over there and I saw the rubber thing over there. I walked over the rubber thing and picked it up. It was very small and felt somewhat delicate on my fingertips. I walked over and it took me awhile to get it to fit over the brown stick. Finally it sort of snapped into place."
At any point I could pause you and ask you to describe these separate moments and it would be fine.
Waking up in a strange bed is a very interesting even to study. But let's at least acknowledge that it doesn't happen much. Maybe you experience that 12 times a year, at most. Trying to figure out an odd shape is also significant, but it is an edge experience. I'm not throwing those both out. I want to talk about them. But you are saying, aren't you, that in the ordinary act of recognizing a table or a ball you are needing to connect a concept to a percept. Am I right about this? I'm glad that in PoF Steiner says that such basic and ordinary recognitions require the seeing of the percept and then the selecting of the concept. I'd be happy to hear you describe what it is like to connect the concept of the odd shape to the percept, but I just want to point out that it is not quite the same as what happens when you look around the room.
I'm concerned that we take these wonderful edge experiences and then generalize our experience of them into places they don't belong. I know what it is like to stare out at the Pacific ocean and try to figure out what the heck that thing out there is?????????? I see this little brown splotch....Is it a boat (I might make a mental picture of a boat)....Is it a piece of drift wood (mental pictures of drift wood).....is it................
But what I notice, Lori, is that I don't reach out to a mental picture and attach it to the thing out there. I'm looking, thinking, guessing and the.......BANG......I SEE it!!!!!!! It's a strange modern raft! I didn't go out and find the concept "strange modern raft". I looked and saw the strange modern raft.
But you stand strong by the notion of connecting. Here's a question: What's it like for you when you've got the concept but haven't connected it yet? Can you keep it apart? Once you see that the odd shape is a car driving on the country road, can you separate the concept and thing again? If you look at the car and then notice that it is an electric car, did you have to go out and find "electric" or is that a concept that just sneaks into the thing.
PoF says that the I see this computer screen as a computer screen because I have seen a percept of it and connected it to a concept. Lori, as you look around the room you are in, are you having to do a lot of connecting of buzzing blooming "percepts" with their concepts, or do you look around and notice the things in the room?
And I am hoping to know what you call the stuff that Steiner asks us to imagine in 4-3....I'm interested if that is real stuff to you.
Thanks,
Jef
What's all this "edge"
What's all this "edge" business?!? Every thing we see for the first time is an edge experience, then after that, it isn't anymore. My little baby is having thousands of edge experiences. He is getting to grips with digestion, light, hunger, wanting to be asleep. All of these things are his edge at the moment. And so our edge moves out.
Jeffrey my friend, your edge argument don't hold no water!
S-)
Sebastian, more than
Sebastian, more than anything, I'd like to know what you were experiencing as you typed what you wrote above. Not to get "edgy" but that would be where the action is....
Because when you say my edge argument doesn't hold water it kind of strikes me as simliar to when you corrected me in my conversation with Carl and told me about your Jeff hypothesis; the one about how I don't read clearly what I am writing and therefor will tell Carl that I didn't say things I obviously said...!!! I read what you wrote with delight because I knew that you might be right. It was just icing on the cake that you were actually the one reading too fast....But the very desire to have playful "go" didn't go unnoticed.
so, you say my edge argument doesn't hold water. What arguement was I making about edges? I was simply using 'edge' the way Steiner uses "border" when we talks about finding those more extreme experiences that let us see a phehomena more clearly. Lori was using those less normal experiences when we actually feel a perceptual or cognitive process get caught, so to speak...I see a dog, no that's alog...nope...what is it???hmmmm....Oh, that's my MOM!!!!
I'm not making an arguement, sebastion (are you?). I'm just trying to distinguish those edge experiences from normal recognition experiences. I don't think one is better than the other and I definiately don't think Lori was wrong or silly to bring up her experience. But, for me, in order to really look at what happens when we "see" something (a father, a book, log on the road), it's important to notice different classes of experiences. I wasn't trying to argue about this.
I'm not suggesing that those edge-type experiences hold water, sebastian. I'm just pointing to a difference between what you've called experiences in which percept and concept come to the viewer at the exact same moment and experiences in which there is a lag between them. Does saying it that way make it more clear for you?
Jeff
p.s. I really, really, really meant it when I said didn't mind you "having a go" with me about my talk with Carl. It was fun and you did it with much respect and pleasentness. But, your "go" did contain a kind of competitive challenge. That's great. It also contained a correction, as if you were kindly tapping my shoulder and showing me that I had contradicted myself. When you say that my "edge argument" doesn't hold water....it kind of sounds like I just tried to argue something and you just pointed to it not making sense. And my little sicilan fingers only typed "edge" to point out a difference that wasn't even part of my main argument: "connecting" is used in a way that is not part of our experience and, therefore, gives us a chance to really sink into our experience and see what's there!
Fortunately, even these edgier moments go right to core of this question I'm asking: do we really connect concepts to percepts?
My guess is that you mostly find my writing to be incoherent, but enough of it
(just enough) is nice or somewhat interesting....that might generate some frustration, especially when it sounds like I'm constantly saying that you guys don't experience things that you are constantly saying you experience("connecting" concepts to percepts)! What gall on my part. I know I can come across clumbsy and brash and competitive and I'm sure that contributes to things. As long as you know that my question is sincere and not an attempt to prove anything (not at this point)....I am really open to knowing how you experience this "connection", but I still will need to point out when it seems that we move from empirical descriptions to more theoretical speculation. This morning I stared up at the ceiling and let the image become a bizzarre zwang of lines moving across lines and seeming to rush towards me and reatreat back....I love that stuff. I think I'm aware of what student's of Pof mean when they talk about no-conceptual observations. But when it became a regular ceiling again, I didn't have to connect a concept to it. Four years ago I would have honestly said that I did!
Oh, have you seen those computer generated images that look like pure blur...and you have to stare at them the right way and then a 3 dimentional image appears!!!! that would be an edge experience as well that be helpful in looking at if concepts and percepts are really ever apart!
Life-Changing Experience
Hi Jeff
First of all, I want to thank you for questions you asked above that led me into a whole train of thought where I realized that Chapter Five has been a life-changing experience for me. I've been walking around with a big smile in my heart and on my face ever since. (Well, it's still in my heart. My face got tired.)
I looked at section 4.3. It's an exercise in imagining something, since such a person (coming into the world for the first time with the ability to think already there) can't exist. So, no, it isn't real in that sense to me, but I can imagine it. I think it's repeated, but at a different level, every time you don't know what something is and then put a name to it. Putting a name to something is like connecting it with a concept. Maybe with practice one could become adept at experiencing this every time one looked around the room, instead of just doing it unconsciously. I don't know that I would bother, because you have to pick your battles and there's only so much you can do.
You're right, I was speaking of phenomena, not metaphorically, when I said I have a bunch of possible things something could be. But you're right, it does seem that they leap out toward me rather than me reaching out to them, though why the difference should be important isn't clear to me. Probably because this is not my battle.
I don't care about defeating philosophers or philosophies. I don't live in a world of abstract thought. The thing-in-itself bothers me because I connect it (that word again!) with many of the things and forces that undermine our backbreaking work and cause human life to be mean and shitty, instead of the great and glorious thing that it is. So I'm not talking about Kant's books or even blaming it on him particularly. And I'm certainly not saying it's "out there" and not in me. (We have met the enemy and he is us.) You seem to call it "the split." I think we mean the same thing.
As far as trusting our percepts, the saying is that the exception proves the rule. "Proves" in this case means "tests." The exception tests the rule, and I don't think the idea that everyone trusts his percepts passed the test. Though for the most part it's true that we all know when a chair's a chair and what to do with a pen. There are a million other percepts of soul and spirit that we don't feel like we have to bother with because they may not even be true, such as a pervasive feeling that something's wrong with the way we do things in this country. I think most people have this percept and feel free to ignore it because of the excuse that they can't be sure if it's real or not. We're too busy perceiving all our nice toys. So I'm guessing that we were speaking of different kinds of percepts when we disagreed as to how much trust is normally there. I'm saying, not so much, when it comes to the things that matter.
This has been a great discussion, but now, because my time's so limited, I want to move on to reviewing Chapter Five. (Always enjoy reading you, can't always answer back!) I'll see you in Chapter Six if you're inspired!
Thanks again!
L.
Great, thanks, Lori. My
Great, thanks, Lori. My final comment is just that I agree with you almost in all your statements. It's just that you call "percepts" things that to me are already conceptual. Like when you say that people have the percept that something is wrong with this country, I would call that percept a feeling but would recognize that the feeling is made of all sorts of thoughts and cognitions. Really, it's no big deal to me in terms of just talking back and forth. But as you study PoF you are trying to know what Steiner means by his terms and so that's the only reason I'm trying to narrow down and fix what we mean by "percept". In the imagination of 4-3 Steiner is asking us to imagine something that is unimaginble; it would be like saying close your eyes and see an invisible picture of invisible people. You could do something creative that would symbolize such a visualization, but the very nature of the meaning of the words makes it impossible. I think people studying PoF think percepts (objects of attention that are no inherently already cognized) are real because of the way the terms are set up.
I don't think any of this matters at all, really. There are so many study groups of PoF and each talks about the book in their own way. My curiousity is simply as to whether anybody really experiences the type of "connecting" they talk about.
Finally, I think we are on the same page about trusting "percepts". I'm not saying I trust them more or less than you or that you trust them more or less than my mom, but it seems we mean about the same thing. Yes, there are definitely exceptions to our typcial experiences. Thanks again.
Jeff
Lori "connect": II
In your post when you say;
A whole series of possibilities presents itself.
I don't know if you are talking metaphorically or phenomenolgically in that sentence. That's part of the reason I've been confused about "conneting" and "attaching"...I take it as a metaphor. But I'm glad you have made clear that with "connecting" you are describing an actual experience of placing things together.
In the above quote do you mean "possibilities presents itself" as a metaphor. I hope not!
I'm hoping that you are being a phenomenologist there. That matches my experience. I'll look at something. Curiousity presents itself. A few seconds ago it was just a blur in front of me on the road; I wasn't even thinking about it. Now, out of nowhere, I am caught up in this Curiousity about that blur. I notice mental pictures coming into my mind; they present themselves to me....Is it this? Is it that? I don't reach out and select them, like going to my closet to pull out a pair of pants or shirt. They step right in, and I have NO idea what will present itself to me as I go along with this curiousity. And, for me (i stress ME), the thing presents itself as well. I might be all caught up in the wonderful mental pictures that are presenting themself to me (it's a bush, maybe, or a tree, maybe or a dog or a house) and then, boom, It's somebodies briefcase. It came. I didn't connect or select. Sure, it could have been that I was really fixated on the mental picture "bush" (I think it's a bush, I think it's a bush, I reallly really think it's a bush) and then I notice that.....it's......a.......bush....But, for me, the noticing what it is really has nothing to do with all the mental pictures that might be presenting themselves to me. If I was right about it being a bush, I can imagine philosophising that I took my concept of bush and attached it to the blur, but when I go back to what actuallly took place, I don't see anything like "attatching"....The bush presented itself to me in the midst of all my conceptulazing. Again this is an edge experience that is more rare than not. Fine, but PoF is brave enough to say that we also are connecting percept to concept when we recognize anything. That's brave!
Does my description of how the bush presents itself in the midst of all the self-presenting concepts, match yours at all?
Jeff
On Trusting Percepts
Hi Jeff
You wrote:
I agree with you Lori, that it is great to trust our percepts. I trust mine! But the only people I know who have problems trusting their percepts (in their day to day life) are in clinics doubting that they are sitting on real chairs or looking at real people. Trusting our percepts is the given, as far as I can tell. Sure, you'll get strange philosophers talking about how nothing really exists or it's all an illusion. But that is only when they are trying to form metaphyisical theories. Each of them trusts their percepts 100%.
Jeff, I'm not so sure that people trusting their percepts is a given. If it is, then why do we always need to ask for verification from experts? How many times is a child told, "You're only imagining that there's something wrong between Mommy and Daddy." In other words, don't trust your percepts, listen to me while I lie to you. Of course thinking plays the key role here, how could it not? But if we don't even trust that we really saw something, then how do we feel confident to think about it and try to put it into a context?
Why do we need to defeat the idea of the thing-in-itself (beyond perception) if we already trust our percepts, that they really have something to do with the objects of the world and aren't just our own fantasies? Steiner writes here, "From this point of view, the question of the subjectivity of percepts, in the sense of critical idealism, cannot be raised at all." Now that I know I can always distinguish between subjective and objective percepts, by finding how they're related to my set of percepts of myself, I feel a profound sense of liberation. Why is that, if everyone already trusts his own percepts? Surely I'm a part of that "everyone."
My feeling that there's a profound difference between what you mean by saying "everyone trusts his percepts" and what I mean by saying "now for the first time I can trust my percepts," is in itself a percept. As such, I trust that it relates to something that really exists. This may be a subjective (my-own-inner-life) percept or it may be an objective (meaning-of-PoF) percept. My job is to connect it with concepts to my own satisfaction, and perhaps even to yours!
First of all, I wonder if perhaps there's a difference between just walking around trusting your percepts without ever having heard of critical idealism, and actually having to engage in a life-or-death wrestling match with critical idealism for a few years first. Then I also wonder if there isn't some insidious creeping Kantianism built into the way we live life in the modern way, so that even without thinking about critical idealism, we don't buy into some of its ideas in some deep way that we'd be better for shaking off.
I wonder also if the people you describe who aren't sure they're sitting in a real chair aren't just the brave souls who have dared to follow the prevailing mode of thought out to its real conclusion?
great stuff, Lori First:
great stuff, Lori
First: unfortunately, the people I was talking about are more tortured than brave. I'm thinking, right now, of my client who desperately wanted me to tell her which of the voices were real and which were not. But she couldn't trust that my voice was not the devil's when I spoke to her and tried to console her. There was an old man who often would suddently suspect my office was the really the jail he used to live in. These were very brave people, but it was a bravery in the midst of this torturous doubt about everything that presented itself to them. It was not the kind of bravery that I think you are pointing to. Like when Steiner describes being a young man and forcing his thoughts to the limits (running after the train yelling at his friend about the reality of thought!)
You say:
Jeff, I'm not so sure that people trusting their percepts is a given. If it is, then why do we always need to ask for verification from experts? How many times is a child told, "You're only imagining that there's something wrong between Mommy and Daddy." In other words, don't trust your percepts, listen to me while I lie to you. Of course thinking plays the key role here, how could it not? But if we don't even trust that we really saw something, then how do we feel confident to think about it and try to put it into a context?
That's a very intense example. My experience that it requires rather sever and often sustained phyiscal and/or psychological trauma to get a person to the point where they live in a state of doubting what they are seeing or hearing. I've definately had many clients in that condition. However, even with them the doubt is context specific. They aren't really doubting percepts. They walk in my office and identify the chair just fine. They pick up the pen and sign their names on the check just fine (thank heavens). When they go into doubting things they've seen or heard it is almost always connected to very specific ideas/situation. That is, the doubt is not just coming randomly at them, but is a function of needs and worries they have about situations they are experiencing.
You're right, when I say that people trusting their pecepts is a given, I am not talking about situations like the above. But I don't see those experience (that you rightly point to) as given. To me they are very much the result of specific and highly conceptual (even phyisical abuse is a damage to our thinking) pathologies.
Why do we need to defeat the idea of the thing-in-itself (beyond perception)
We don't have to as an intellectual exercise. There are so many new age philosophies that have "defeated" Kant in that sense. You can just deny all separation and be ONE with everything, and you can do this in very sophisticated an intellectual manners.
But "the thing-in-itself" is more than an abstract puzzle that tens of thousands of philosophers talk about. (By the way, it wasn't long after Steiner that many schools of thought cropped up that threw Kant out the window as well.)
The "thing-in-itself" is a function of the split. It's so much more than a way of talking about reality. It IS the reality that we live within by presuming it in every cell of our body. It is the Split.
I can agree with you that it must be "defeated". But not intellectually. When we defeat it, our victory will certaintly find a mental expression. If you defeat the "thing-in-itself" as a philosopher, you will most likely find yourself experssing your liberation within whatever set of terms and phrases you find most relevent for you philosophical community. If you are a painter or a teacher and you defeat the Split, you will find ways of representing that as well. But your mental reflections of this liberation from the presumption of "thing-in-itself" might not have anything to do with 19th century philosophy. They might express themselves in an inspirational and radical book about teaching 4th grade student.
You say:
First of all, I wonder if perhaps there's a difference between just walking around trusting your percepts without ever having heard of critical idealism, and actually having to engage in a life-or-death wrestling match with critical idealism for a few years first.
I don't know. One reason I used to read every philosophe I could get my hands on was because of the drama of how it really was a life-or-death wrestling match for so many of them. This is why Steiner loved Nietche so much. There are many very serious and morally alive philsophers who have fought against critical idealism and won, at least to their satisifacton (Rorty, Husserl, Wittgenstein; on and on; all in their own ways).
I don't want to sound glib but my tendency is to think that having profound knowledge about any specific set of philosophies and knowing exactly how and why your specific philosophy has defeated it is not necessarily connected at all to the reality of freedom that Steiner is getting at. I don't think PoF can happen without the heart opening in profound ways that change us well beyond our ability to philosophies.
If I read somebody who says they have overcome critcal idealism after years of thinking and feeling theirselves through it and then I watch that person humilate his ex-wife at the grocery store or passive aggressively respond to a critique of his latest essay, I'm not sure what he as really discovered. I'm not saying that there isn't somethng valuable about forming one's own personal and memorized philosophy. But PoF seems to be so much about what Steiner says in the 1918 addition: about finding the realm in which the answer is always being given (and not in a conceptulaized and memorable form). Whether we call it Freedom or Love or Spiritualized Thinking or our own essence......it's gotta be closer to the actual action of PoF than whatever hard won victory over Kant we've achieved.
I'm not minimizing those of us who use philosophy of fight the Split, to battle the "thing-in-itself". I'm only suggesting that our battle is using the sybols of complicated ideas to take on something very basic; the sense of being apart from God, separted from a great "Love-in-itself that is somewhere outside our present experience. We are fighting life and death against the presumption that we each, as individuals, are making; that we need to do something to earn or deserve the Grand Love-in-Itself that awaits those who transform themselves enough to approach it. BUT NEVER to BE it. It must always stand apart. At most (at MOST) we can connect our"selves" or Unite our"selves" to this Love, but it will alyways remain something that we are not, no matter how attached or connected we are to it.
I am one of those people, as you know Lori. I read philosophy and fight for ideas about reality, freedom and truth. But when you get screamed at by somebody who really does "understand" PoF (in terms of those basic connecting ideas you and I are talking about)and who really does experience fluid and transformed thinking.......man......you start to wonder what they have really learned and where they think PoF is asking us to place our attention. Then you meet a dancer who has never read a book of philosophy, but who has learned to listen so deeply to her body that she can, in any situation, feel her way into truthful and brave actions; not guided by a battle with Kant explicitly, but by a battle with a culture of "thing-in-itself" that would do almost anything to make sure she not learn to listen to her body as she does. And you should see her dance!!!!
Finally, Lori, you wondefully say:
Then I also wonder if there isn't some insidious creeping Kantianism built into the way we live life in the modern way, so that even without thinking about critical idealism, we don't buy into some of its ideas in some deep way that we'd be better for shaking off.
This, I guess, is what I am saying as well. But I want to stress that when I say that Kantianism has crept into our lives, I don't mean the books or ideas of Kant crept into culture(those are just symptoms of a Kantianism that preceeded even Kant). I mean that the continual presumption of our separation from the great "Love-in-Itself" has continued to play itself into every inch of our daily lives and culture.
And, therefore, when I say that PoF is creeping into our lives and culture, I don;t mean the ideas in the book will become more widely understood or grasped (those are just Symptoms as well; very important still!) I mean that more and more people are "listening" to their freedom for no reason other than the love of that very act of "listening". I mean that this "listening" is healing us from the effects of presuming our separation from Love. That's only abstract if we aren't living it right now. There aren't a lot of great words or diagrams for this love, but, fortunately, it need them. It wil do whatever it wants. It might make me run over to my daughter in a moment and hug the heck out of her. Or it might have me open my heart this evening to 7 o'clock client. I have no clue. I know that I very well might separate myself from this love at any moment, and I know that if I do, it won't be that this love has left or is waiting for a stronger will on my part. It will wait for me to let go of whatever mental object I picked up and, then, there it will be "making" me offer up prayers of gratitude for the way my legs get me to the mailbox later today....who knows?
Jeff
Well, I'm going to have a
Well, I'm going to have a go at this one!
I have thought of two examples of having on one side observations and on the other thinking waiting to pounce.
The first concerns the occasion when I was woken up by an earthquake. As I wake I see the drawers of the bedroom furniture jumping in and out. As I get out of bed I have a sense of the world moving. I stand in the middle of the floor thinking "nothing" for a discernible length of time. For a discernable length of time I just have perceptions without any explanations. Then a fear pushes itself up from below and I think its a ghost, then the thought that it's an earthquake explodes in to my mind. The key piece of evidence I need to prove it was an earthquake is whether the road has lots of people standing about in it. I go to the window with trepidation, and there they all are. There was the experience of not knowing, of not having a concept to connect. At first there were just things happening, then I started making connections.
Another time I walked in the barber shop to have my hair cut. There was a man sitting on a chair having his hair cut too. I thought nothing, just saw this man sitting there having his hair cut. Then, bang, I realised the man was my father! Such a shock, such a jolt. I had the most incredible experience of a vast concept load suddenly connecting to a perception that had no particular thought content. It was the vastness of my concept of father and the nothingness of the original observation that made the experience so extraordinary.
There have been many occasions when I was looking at something, or hear something, and struggle to understand it. Until the cognition occurs I am with percepts just as Steiner describes: colours, taste, pressure etc.
We make the connection incredibly fast because the usual experience is of the percept and the concept presenting at the same time. Most things I look at I know instantly. However, that is not always the case, as I have described. Also, I think it is possible, with Goethean Observation exercises to push the day to day connection back with the hope of observing differently, in the hope of thinking differently.
Finally, in the experience of reading your writing Jeff, I experience percept and concept and connection. Take this thread for instance, I reach the bottom of it, and I feel that I have the concepts you are trying to convey with your words in my mind. I know, from many occasions, the experience of reading your words and of them being just percepts. No concepts attached. Squiggles on the page. I recognise that the squiggles are letters and words, but they might as well be squiggles for all the meaning the words convey to me.
Now either, I have not understood your concepts, or I have understood them, but not understood my examples, or I have given you the first experience of someone's experience of having percepts without instantly connected concepts.
S-)