The Philosophy of Freedom Study Group
Human Individuality
6-1) MATERIALISM (Cancer)
[2] The most difficult to drive from the field are the so-called physiological proofs of the subjectivity of our percepts. When I exert pressure on my skin I perceive it as a pressure sensation. This same pressure can be sensed as light by the eye, as sound by the ear. An electric shock is perceived by the eye as light, by the ear as noise, by the nerves of the skin as impact, and by the nose as a phosphoric smell.
What follows from these facts? Only this: I perceive an electric shock (or a pressure, as the case may be) followed by an impression of light, or sound, or perhaps a certain smell, and so on. If there were no eye present, then no perception of light would accompany the perception of the mechanical disturbance in my environment; without the presence of the ear, no perception of sound, and so on. But what right have we to say that in the absence of sense organs the whole process would not exist at all? Those who, from the fact that an electrical process calls forth light in the eye, conclude that what we sense as light is only a mechanical process of motion when outside our organism, forget that they are only passing from one percept to another, and not at all to something lying beyond percepts.
Just as we can say that the eye perceives a mechanical process of motion in its surroundings as light, so we could equally well say that a regular and systematic change in an object is perceived by us as a process of motion. If I draw twelve pictures of a horse on the circumference of a rotating disc, reproducing exactly the attitudes which the horse's body successively assumes when galloping, I can produce the illusion of movement by rotating the disc. I need only look through an opening in such a way that, in the proper intervals, I see the successive positions of the horse. I do not see twelve separate pictures of a horse but the picture of a single galloping horse.
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[3] The physiological fact mentioned above cannot therefore throw any light on the relation of percept to mental picture. We must go about it rather differently.
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Topic: Sense Impressions
More on this topic in Truth and Knowledge |
6-2) SPIRITISM (Capricorn)
[4] The moment a percept appears in my field of observation, thinking also becomes active through me. An element of my thought system, a definite intuition, a concept, connects itself with the percept.
Then, when the percept disappears from my field of vision, what remains? My intuition, with the reference to the particular percept which it acquired in the moment of perceiving. The degree of vividness with which I can subsequently recall this reference depends on the manner in which my mental and bodily organism is working. A mental picture is nothing but an intuition related to a particular percept; it is a concept that was once connected with a certain percept, and which retains the reference to this percept.
My concept of a lion is not formed out of my percepts of lions; but my mental picture of a lion is very definitely formed according to a percept. I can convey the concept of a lion to someone who has never seen a lion. I cannot convey to him a vivid mental picture without the help of his own perception.
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Topic: Mental Picture: Intuition related to a percept
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From the materialistic perspective
From the materialistic perspective it can be argued that having a shock presented to the eye and the resulting sensation of color, establishes that all color arises from the eye. Although it could be just as well argued that because there is color an organ can evolve, the eye, that is eventually capable of being sensitive to it. One might likewise argue that there is no true motion in the world, only the momentary still captures of the world, put together in such a fashion so as to create the illusion of motion. We are in fact able to live out this idea with our modern virtual reality, digital music, and photography. Because the “civilized” world is able to live out this fantasy, does that mean there does not exist a world of living motion?
The mental image is what we retain of the concept/percept union. An “individualized concept” as Steiner describes it. The idea can be conveyed but not the individualized concept, one must experience that for oneself.
The key point is that we are able to distinguish between an “objective” percept and a mental image. Although, it should be acknowledged that a mental image is likewise a percept, in that I call it up in memory and perceive it. Since, “all contents of sensations, all perceptions, feelings, acts of will, dreams and fancies, representations [mental images], concepts, Ideas, all illusions and hallucinations, are given to us through observation,” we have no other means than thinking by which to organize it all, or awaken to their various relationships.
Connecting to movement
Hello Gerald
Have you been following the thread here? The problematics of understanding the perception of movement are in dire need of your clarity!
Commitment Limited
Hello John,
Thanks for the invitation; I read the thread. I'm feeling that I need to stick to one place for making my posts and be glad I can fulfill that commitment. No one appeared to be denying movement as a perception and thinking's part in organizing it all, and also, that thinking, feeling, and willing are certainly part of the perception of movement.
I had the pleasure of studying anthroposophy and of taking eurythmy classes for rank amateurs at a eurythmy school for twelve years. A most wonderful artistic expression.
Gerald
Gratitude extended
Gerald - I respect the discipline that you have imposed on yourself. I felt that your interest was probably wider than the location of your posts, and who knows the limitations of our influence in posting on this site?
If I engage and reference your posts further afield I will notify you in case you wish to exercise your right to respond.
Your commitment is much appreciated.
Wish Granted
Tom,
Thanks so much for the revolving horse-picture apparatus. (I know it has a name, but can't think of what it is.) It has always been my wish that when reading a book written in the past I could see illustrations of what obviously evoked mental pictures in the readers of the era when the book was published, but no longer have that power with the modern reader. And seeing it in action is the icing on the cake!
Imprisoned Individual
As an individual from the materialist viewpoint, I'm imprisoned in the limited view of the world that my pathetic human senses can give me. Just as my eye turns every stimulus into light, and my ear turns it into sound, so my entire combination of bodily senses turns the world into a projection of my own "I".
This is an individuality of isolation. It creates a ding-an-sich world that's outside my senses, a world of mechanical motions that, impinging on my senses, gives rise to my individual world view.
But once I realize that even motion can only be a percept that arises from my own limited point of view (peering through an aperture and seeing something that isn't), then I must either accept absolute illusionism, as in 5.1, or turn away from percepts to thinking.
Anchoring Percepts
In 6.2, the individual is not isolated in her separate body, because she gathers intuitions from the world of concepts. But if she wants her mental pictures to be vivid, she has to use her bodily and mental organization to observe the world around her. These observations will by definition be particular and distinct, because we always stand at the periphery of the circle. Without the anchor of our percepts, we will float up into the light-filled realm of concepts and merge into the cosmic unity, leaving this world to fend for itself.
We've met this lion before, in 3.0, where we see how all our collective concepts based on single objects merge in a unity. Now our percepts of "lion" also stand up to be counted. Without percepts, my mental picture of a lion will be a poor, weak thing. I won't be able to help anyone else who's never seen a lion get a good mental picture of one, unless I can engage his sensory percepts in some way. And to do that I must fully engage my own.
All writers know, or should know this. To fully engage the reader, they have to use as many of the senses as possible to describe something, such as a landscape or a character. That will help the reader make vivid mental pictures of what's going on. As Steiner says here, you can't convey a vivid mental picture without the help of the other person's perceptions. It doesn't necessarily mean that they have to have seen what you're describing, but you evoke their senses so that can imagine it. You use things they have experienced in order to give them the imaginative picture of something they haven't, or may never, experience. Steiner was good at that.