Truth and Science 4/6: Rudolf Steiner. God became man so that I might become God
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ต.ค. 2024
- Jeff and I continue digging into GA 3, Truth and Science (Wahrheit und Wissenschaft) which Steiner called "A prologue to the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity" In this episode we look at chapter 5 "Cognition and Reality".
We talk about understanding the difference between the activity of thinking versus cognition in relation to the "Given".
#apperception
#rudolfsteiner
#cognition
The Book
rsarchive.org/...
Another book I refer to at the end of the video that was important in taking my understanding to a new level was:
rsarchive.org/...
Re: Thinking vs Cogito in Latin. I'll share my answer here when I have had that conversation.
We had a few tech problems with the slides so here are the book excerpts:
Through a postulate we have separated from the rest of the given world-picture a particular part of it; this was done because it lies in the nature of cognition to start from just this particular part. Thus we separated it out only to enable us to understand the act of cognition. In so doing, it must be clear that we have artificially torn apart the unity of the world-picture
To permeate the world, as given, with concepts and ideas, is a thinking consideration of things. Therefore, thinking is the act which mediates knowledge. It is only when thinking arranges the world-picture by means of its own activity that knowledge can come about. Thinking itself is an activity which, in the moment of cognition, produces a content of its own. Therefore, insofar as the content that is cognized issues from thinking, it contains no problem for cognition.
Gideon Spicker is therefore quite right when he says in his book, Lessings Weltanschauung, (Lessing's World-View), page 5, “We can never experience, either empirically or logically, whether thinking in itself is correct.” One could add to this that with thinking, all proof ceases. For proof presupposes thinking. One may be able to prove a particular fact, but one can never prove proof as such
The process takes place as follows: Thinking first lifts out certain entities from the totality of the world-whole. In the given nothing is really separate; everything is a connected continuum. Then thinking relates these separate entities to each other in accordance with the thought-forms it produces, and also determines the outcome of this relationship. When thinking restores a relationship between two separate sections of the world-content, it does not do so arbitrarily. Thinking waits for what comes to light of its own accord as the result of restoring the relationship.
When Kant speaks of “the synthetic unity of apperception” it is evident that he had some inkling of what we have shown here to be an activity of thinking, the purpose of which is to organize the world-content systematically. But the fact that he believed that the a priori laws of pure science could be derived from the rules according to which this synthesis takes place, shows how little this inkling brought to his consciousness the essential task of thinking.
At this point it will be useful to refer briefly to Hume's description of the concept of causality. Hume said that our concepts of cause and effect are due solely to habit. We so often notice that a particular event is followed by another that accordingly we form the habit of thinking of them as causally connected, i.e. we expect the second event to occur whenever we observe the first. But this viewpoint stems from a mistaken representation of the relationship concerned in causality.
The activity of thinking is only a formal one in the upbuilding of our scientific world-picture, and from this it follows that no cognition can have a content which is a priori, in that it is established prior to observation (thinking divorced from the given); rather must the content be acquired wholly through observation. In this sense all our knowledge is empirical.
…
Thinking says nothing a priori about the given; it produces a posteriori, i.e. the thought-form, on the basis of which the conformity to law of the phenomena becomes apparent.
Seen in this light, it is obvious that one can say nothing a priori about the degree of certainty of a judgment attained through cognition.
Therefore the content of thinking, which appears to us to be something separate, is not a sum of empty thought-forms, but comprises determinations (categories); however, in relation to the rest of the world-content, these determinations represent the organizing principle. The world-content can be called reality only in the form it attains when the two aspects of it described above have been united through knowledge.
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1:12:40ish, yes I love that, living in the tension between no being and deadness. What a description!
1:01:40 ish, I love that, that animal experience is thinking without the body of cognituin as a reflection of it. Because animals act lawfully, and animals have experience of the given, so how do we explain this? I think that is a great way, and essentially addresses what Bonitta Roy kept asking. Similarly, that life exists in the mineral world without a life body to hold it. But it still exists and guides mechanical process. So does thought. Becausethought IS continuous with the natural laws.
Yes! You know that never occurred to me before that moment? I am wondering of thinking IS natuRAL LAW complexly articulated as species for example.
Jeff 1:11:01, may all your "towers" be irradiated with the flaming Sacred Heart of love for Humanity as a Moral Imagination.
Beautiful. Thank you.
Your comments on Newton clarified the intellectual soul mission to me as well, the awakening ability to make distinctions and categories. I suppose the problem is the tendency of the intellectual soul to feel certain in itself, and we try to have certainty in the knowledge body, so producing illusory or stagnant laws. Which now, in the consciousness soul, people like Bonnita Roy are questioning, can we really say that the laws of "dead matter" are certain after all? Is the tree more complex than the soil it grows in? Because the consciousness soul recognizes the need for openness to the processural. (Recognizes that ontology requires epistemology?)
I want to now think about how the sentient soul confuses the intellectual soul. Is that a possibility? Is that how, say, heteronomy was born?
I get quite stuck if we are Recreating or if we are Remembering or Finding the hidden element in the given. Is this the essential analytic/synthetic distinction?
When I read this chapter my mental image of the concepts was that Nature is continuous with the Mind, and thinking finds and restores what is hidden by the Mind, which was always there, to reunify what we don't understand, establish recognition of a law about the given.
I keep coming back to this idea, is knowledge not all analytic? As in everything contains the law inherent in it. I can't help but feel relieved in that concept and I don't know why really, I don't really know what is meant by synthetic thinking, only that thinking is an Activity and it is new in itself, bringing together concept and percept. But the concept is already in the given, only it's expression is in the mind not in substance. I am in a "two sides of the same coin" bent, I suppose that's dialectic! (About 40 min in, will continue to comment and question).
Ha and then 50 min in Jeff says what I mean! Exactly, thinking is remembering what we already know, and it is also love in the sense it brings together lost parts.
I see the Plato Aristotle categories will help me
1:41:00ish, trying to get into the idea of synthetic judgement.
My naive and common sense perspective has always been for a kind of monism, and for a kind of empiricism where thought forms are always post experience.
I can analyse this and do backwards dialectic to see that Kant postulating the the a priori synthetic judgements is the antithesis to Humean, all is empirical and our thoughts are just habitual reflections. Ive never found truth in either and found both ideas really counter experience. Because we can experience thinking itself, we are not determinee either by objective experience or subjectice experience.
So the synthetic judgements arise because we can think about the thinking about. Which is why we can make novel connections wnd becom artists of concepts? And also why we can develop systems of logic, to externalise the idk.. mental sensation? Of rightness and accurateness that arises from self reflective thinking.
I think, because I am trying to get into Hegelian ideas, I am letting go of my sympathy of Kant and becoming blind in Hegelian mazes. I don't understand him but I keep grabbing for his concepts as handrails in my own thinking.
@@theseventh7865 Please bring these oh so vital questions to our next meeting! I liked the latest Interdisciplinary Astronomy conversation in the Urphanemon group. They really pulled out the importance of experience in these equations and dialectics. How and where do we as humans experience knowing within reality beyond logic and analytics. I think this is what Schickler is getting at as well.
Red! Come with your hair on fire!