Would you push someone off a bridge to save five others? According to researchers, your moral choice may be determined by the health of your brain's ventromedial prefrontal cortex. The constant flow of these scientific reports demonstrates how dominate the scientific mode of thinking is today. Even ethics is now considered a brain function. The Philosophy of Freedom path was developed to raise scientific thinking to the experience of moral intuition.
(WebMD) Scientists may have pinpointed the area in the brain where morality and emotions clash in dicey situations. The area is the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), report the researchers. Koenigs and colleagues studied six people who suffered VMPC damage as adults. The VMPC is involved in emotional responses and social emotions such as compassion, shame, and guilt, Koenigs' team notes. For comparison, the researchers also looked at 12 healthy adults with no brain damage and 12 adults with brain damage that didn't affect the VMPC or other emotion-related areas.
In the study, participants read fictional scenarios that presented dilemmas, such as sacrificing one person's life to save the lives of others. For example, one scenario featured a runaway boxcar careening towards a crowd. Study participants were asked if they would push one person off a bridge to save five other people from the boxcar.
Those with VMPC damage were the most likely to agree with that action and similar choices in other personal, emotional, life-and-death scenarios. They also made such decisions faster than other participants. However, these VMPC-damaged participants handled impersonal, low-stakes scenarios much like the other study participants. The researchers aren't calling the VMPC-damaged participants cold or immoral. But they say the findings support the theory that the VMPC is involved in making personal, emotional, intense moral decisions.
By Miranda Hitti, WebMD Health News
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"involved"
I actually see the way this research is presented to not contradict Steiner's basic take on the relationship to the sphere of freedom and the functioning of the material brain. From Steiner's developmental perspective, he stresses the absolute necessity of healthy and fully functioning organic/material brain.
Of course Steiner also makes clear that a healthy material brain is one characterized by the capacity to be "suppressed" in its functioning by self-sustained thinking activity. We must imagine that the more we discover about the organically based functioning of the brain, the more we will find research like the above.
The part I appreciate in the wording of the above researchers (I see that they were not in quotes, so...) is that they used the word "involved". I think it is always helpful when scientists underline that their research is looking at the associations of all kinds of intricate aspects of our being. I have no doubt that the VMPC is very much related to human freedom. I also don't doubt that those researches hold a world-view that will categorically deny the kind of "suppression" that Steiner speaks of in PoF.
Brains and mirrors
From the anthroposophical perspective, studying the brain the way modern researchers do is like holding up a mirror to a complicated process in nature, and then - in order to understand the process - examining the part of the mirror that reflects the process.
Sounds silly doesn't it?
Of course, if we imagined a world where people could only see mirrors, and not the processes which the mirror merely reflects, it doesn't seem so silly.
Just pitiful.
the mirrored mirror
Hi Jay; I've always loved the way Steiner used the mirror analogy for studying the function of the brain!
Steiner would be in hog heaven with modern brain research, wouldn't he? In his day he was constantly studying the most recent research on physiology and, like Goethe, he never turned down a chance to observe internal anatomy with the naked eye.
He would feel no pressure, of course, to interpret the research via the metaphysic lens of modern science, but he would undoubtedly pour through the neurological journals. I have a feeling that the experiments in neurology would be very fruitful for him.
He would stick with the "involved" I underlined in the above researchers comments. The mirror is absolutely involved with our experience and causes it to that extent, even though it is not the cause of the prior activity of thinking itself.
brains and mirrors
A distorted mirror will give distorted images. Likewise a brain that is not properly formed will give improper info 'back' to the ego.
My above comment was not directed at you, in any case, but merely a thought that occurred to me after reading the article.
Steiner doing or not doing
How can we say what Steiner would do or not do if he were living today and the same person he was in 1924/25. Of course, he is not living today, and if he or she has reincarnated he or she will probably have a totally new soul personality and we cannot know how they would behave in the world, what their destiny or karma would be, and what they would or would not enjoy doing. As a matter of fact, when reading what Steiner says about reincarnation, he does state that our new life would be entirely different from who and what we were in a former life. Although it is fun to play at suppose......using one's imagination.
Cheers,
Patri
common characteristic
Jay, I wasn't clear: I was enjoying your comment.
Patri: I think Steiner shared a characteristic with many of us, which is the tendency to project things into the future. He seemed to enjoy imagining what various historical figures would say if they lived in different times. I like to do that as well. I just hope I don't start quoteing my imaginary Steiner!
Steiner and Moi
Hi Jeff,
It's funny that, because Rudi and I were having a wonderful imaginary conversation just the other day. Gosh, what a great sense of humor my friend Rudi has.
From living in London, I have British member periodicals and newsletters. In one British Anthroposophical publication, Rudi Lissau wrote an article about Anthroposophy in the UK. He wrote about various times Steiner spent in the UK lecturing and just having a good time. He spoke of the fact that Steiner was quoted as saying to several people, that he enjoyed speaking in the UK, because there he could speak our of the Consciousness Soul. The English language lives in the Consciousness Soul, and when in the German speaking countries, Steiner had to relate to his audience and members there out of the Intellectual Soul because that was where they lived (of course there were probably individual exceptions). Anyway, in this article by Rudi Lissau, he shared how after one of his British tours, Steiner was being escorted to the train station by a very aristocratic Don of Oxford University, who had showed Steiner around Oxford University and Steiner had remarked how dapper and well dressed this gentleman always was. When Steiner was seated on the train looking out the rolled down window to say goodbye to his British friends standing on the platform to see him off, including this Don from Oxford (sorry I've forgotten his name), the Don said, Dr. Steiner when will we see you again (this was late summer 1924 approximately), and Steiner leaning out the window when the train was taking off said: It will be in America and we shall both be very poor. This, of course, left the Don flummoxed, what what - him in America and him poor. Sounds like a good sense of humor on Steiner's part.
Love,
Patri
POF and the Soul
I've heard that Steiner said part 2 of POF more appropriate for americans and the english and part 1 for the germans. Perhaps (if this is accurate) this has something to do with the intellectual/consciousness soul distinction...
Any comments?
Jay, Part 1 of POF begins
Jay, Part 1 of POF begins with the object and ascends to knowledge. Part 2 begins with intuitive insight and descends into conscious action. This seems to indicate a theory / conscious action relationship.
THANKS
It's been over 5 years since i've heard a fresh Steiner story!!!!!!!! That's a great one.
Jeff
Steiner in the dark
Here's one you may not have heard...
(I don't know if I've posted this before or not...)
Steiner was lecturing on tour and was scheduled to stay at a wealthy socialite's house. The wealthy lady of the home was showing Steiner and his attendant to their rooms, and walking up stairs when the lights went out.
The lady said, "Now is the time to let my inner light shine!"
Steiner's attendant overheard him mumble - "No wonder we are still in the dark."
There's no getting around it - Steiner was an absolute character. Almost the polar opposite of your typical high brow stuffed shirt academician.
new Steiner biography
Has anyone read the new Steiner biography by Gary Lachman, published in Feb. 2007? From the blurb it sounds promising.
Cheers,
Patri
Steiner's prediction comes true
Here is a link to a review by Carlin Romano on Lachman's book on Steiner, Scientist of the Invisible. The review and the book are more examples of how Steiner's prediction has come true that his only work that would endure was The Philosophy of Freedom. The modern scientific mind lacks the faith needed to accept Steiner's seer readings or the language of Theosophy but recognizes the logic and science of POF. Fortunately, all the principles of anthroposophy are in POF so nothing is lost.
Romano writes:
"Steiner confuses many readers of philosophy because his first important book, The Philosophy of Freedom (1894), contains no overt occultism. He sounds like a recognizable 19th-century Idealist and anti-mechanist, familiar with Kantian philosophy and its upshots. After he turned 40, though, Steiner came out, like a newly tenured literature professor switching from his credentialed scholarship to a maverick tome on iPods and sex tourism. Steiner posited that we have four bodies: a physical body, an "etheric" body (which comes with an aura), an "astral" or soul body that survives the physical body, and the spirit or "I."
Romano on Lachman's book:
"While never mocking Steiner "the occult seer," Lachman admits his doubts about Steiner's far-fetched claims." (Buddha on Mars, Karl Marx became Karl Marx because he'd previously been a landowner stripped of his property, "Old Moon" past, Atlantis figures mightily in the history of Western culture)
There is some kind of irony
There is some kind of irony in the idea that it is people's lack of faith in his comments about astral planes and such that cause PoF to be the book that might endure.
I guess it is not ironic. Steiner makes clear in his PoF introduction that we are increasingly needing our knowledge to be individuated. I imagine that means that the average human won't get sucked into astral language like they once might have.
I wonder if there are any signs that PoF is growing (as a book) outside anthropop circles? Anybody know?
Jeff
Suspicion of Spiritual Science
Thanks Tom, that is an interesting review. I guess as long as we are still deeply embedded in a materialistic culture anything outside of what today's culture considers reputable science, will be seen with suspicion. Steiner knew this and he kept on sharing his understanding of the spiritual world in spite of this, because he considered it important for human development. Some of the world is now catching up with Steiner and biodynamic farming, Waldorf education, etc., are being appreciated as Steiner hoped they would be. Look at “Sekem” a biodynamic farming enterprise in Egypt, started by Anthroposophist, Dr. Ibrahim Abouleish. Sekem has been so successful it has now influenced the whole of farming in Egypt. Reincarnation is being accepted by more and more people now, and actually being experienced by some in its reality.
Cheers,
Patri
Language of POF
Because the Society hasn't embraced the Philosophy of Freedom and its terms but instead speaks in the language of theosophy for the most part, it is no longer understood, and in fact rejected. The language of POF such as ethical individualism, conceptual thinking, pure thinking, moral intuition etc. is accepted today as philosophy/psychology science terms and will be for a long time to come. The language of old German theosophy is valuable for those who speak it, perhaps within inner circles, but it is rejected by the public. Their is no reason for this because Steiner gave a language to explain anthroposophy in POF that the modern public would embrace.
This in no way diminishes other initiatives but would only support them. When the public gets the impression that Waldorf is based upon Steiner's more cookie sounding stuff they use it to attack Waldorf. Instead, Waldorf could be presented in POF terms such as the development of moral intuition, moral imagination, and moral technique and the public would love it and understand it. The Waldorf movement would also be better informed and put more emphasis on math and the development of pure thinking at the appropriate time rather than the over emphasis on art as some sort of spiritual path.
Points well taken
Your points well taken. Why don't you write an article expressing these views, that could be submitted to an anthroposophical publication, i.e. "New View" which is a British anthroposophical publication, or perhaps to the U.S. Members newsletter.
Cheers,
Patri
The nice thing about the
The nice thing about the Society is that anyone can start a Society group and grow it into a branch. A small new effort is being made locally to form a new Society within the existing Society structure. What is needed is a demonstration model of a Society branch that reaches for the ideals that Steiner set for the Society in a way that works in the 21st century rather than the 19th. I hope to regularly report on its development if it gets off the ground.