141 thoughts on “Body, Soul, and Spirit”

1. keiths:
   CharlieM, to Corneel:
   Look at the main observable differences between minerals, plants, animals and humans. What do we see in general? A rock does not have the inner vitality of plants. The difference we can call the etheric principle, formative force, life ‘body’ or some such descriptive term. The higher animals show an inner awareness that plants do not have. This can be named the astral ‘body’, sentience, feeling principle or something like that. Humans have rationality and a self-awareness not seen in animals, plants or minerals.
   I do not need to ask why the differences I observe are given these names, so long as i am satisfied that observable differences are apparent. Why the differences are given such names need not concern me to begin with. Steiner did give a few explanations as to why he used the terms he did. But as long as I am clear about my thinking on the general differences between minerals, plants, animals and humans, where I can confidently state I am correct and where I rely more on belief than knowledge, I don’t see anything objectionable in this.

   Here’s what’s objectionable about it;.

   1. You impede communication by using terms like “astral body”, for instance, if all you really mean is “sentience”. “Astral body” has all sorts of implications. It implies (well, states, really) that you are talking about a body, and that this body exists in or comes from an astral realm, or at the very least that it has astral properties, whatever those are. When someone construes the phrase in that way, and not as simply meaning “sentience”, the problem is in your failure to communicate, not in their failure to read for comprehension.

   I agree that I fail to communicate much of the time. Sometimes language is not enough to communicate personal experiences.

   But I do not mean purely sentience linked to the body. This is just a starting point in coming to understand what is meant by ‘astral body’. By ‘body’ I mean the seat of sentience. Its physical aspect is the nervous system but isn’t restricted to it. To get a glimpse of the astral I look up from the point I occupy here on earth. The light filled peripheral forces stream in towards us building up life on the earth. The sentience that lights up in life is the result of instreaming forces. My body is formed by the combination of centrifugal earthly forces and centripetal astral forces. My astral component is built up from forces streaming into me in a similar way that my physical body is built up by food, water and air streaming into me. I alter my ‘astral body’ through the force of will. All food and drink that enters my body will affect me for good or bad, and all that enters my consciousness through the senses will have an effect on me, for good or bad. As above so below.

   keiths: 2. You fool yourself, consciously or otherwise, into thinking about “astral bodies” in a similar way. I’ve seen you bandy many esoteric terms about, and it’s clear that you take the names seriously as descriptors of their referents. There’s no evidence that you take “astral body” to be merely a synonym of “sentience”. Your might regard it as the seat of sentience, but that’s a different animal altogether. It implies that “astral body” is distinct from “sentience”, not a synonym for it.

   Sentience is a gift that we possess because of our astral nature. Our senses receive incoming signals, and it is through these that consciousness lights up in us. Consciousness is not a necessity for life. Prokaryotes and plants are very successful forms of life by conventional evolutionary standards and these organisms show no signs of animal-like consciousness.

   keiths: 3. You buy into these esoteric concepts uncritically and adopt them despite their superfluity. Yes, there is a clear difference between rocks and living plants, and we refer to the latter as “alive”. But that give us no reason to conclude that an “etheric principle”, “formative force”, or “life body” is somehow involved. Indeed, science shows that particles don’t “care” whether they are part of a living body, a dead body, or an object such as a rock. They follow the same physical laws regardless. Matter and energy arranged one way can be alive; that same matter and energy arranged in a different way can be dead or nonliving. Your “etheric principle” serves no genuine explanatory purpose.

   4. You don’t just adopt the wooish names. Along with the names, you uncritically adopt the Steinerian/Theosophical horseshit that accompanies them. My impression is that you are enthralled with the horseshit, see it as having great explanatory power, feel in your gut that it must be true, and fool yourself into thinking that it must therefore actually be true. In fact it is just one of a zillion possible just-so stories with equal “explanatory power” but little or no basis in the evidence.

   You are right that particles don’t care what they are part of. But we are not particles. Each of us is a unity. We are complete functioning beings at every stage of our lives even if particles are constantly entering and leaving us.

   I gladly adopt the term ‘etheric body’ for that which maintains the unity over and above the transient physical substance. I understand that this has nothing to do with the luminiferous aether which was proposed as a carrier of light. But it does have a peripheral, field-like nature.

   Modern science has tended to look for the fundamental nature of reality in the smaller and smaller while the complimentary fundamental planar aspect has been mostly ignored. Plane is equally fundamental to point although the former cannot be fixed and treated numerically as can the latter. And it is the same when comparing the physical to the spiritual. The physical is the domain of number, weight and measure.

   If others react according to their preconceptions regarding the words I use, that is their concern. I try to provide details, from my point of view, of the concepts and ideas behind words such as etheric and astral.

2. keiths:
   CharlieM: I’m not sure what previous arguments that have been made that you’d take to be strong enough to shake my beliefs. From what I have read, all that I see is some people arguing that I should accept their beliefs rather than my own.

   keiths: That statement is massively unfair to your interlocutors, including Corneel and me. What we do is criticize your assertions (or agree with them, where appropriate), provide our reasons for disagreeing with them (often in considerable detail), lay out our own positions, and provide our reasons (often in considerable detail). I’m not saying that we do all of this every single time we disagree with you, of course, but I am saying this: I’ve never seen any of the more thoughtful commenters here tell you that you should believe what they believe simply because they believe it. I know I haven’t.

   Okay, I accept your point and apologize for my unfair comments.

   But I do try to make distinctions between what I know and what I believe. And regarding body, soul and spirit, I think that we are dealing with a clash of two basic belief systems. There are those who believe that soul and spirit, if they mean anything at all, are produced by bodily processes, and those of us who believe spirit to be primary.

   I enjoy participating here because of the polarized viewpoints. I can post here safe in the knowledge that my views will be challenged.

3. CharlieM:

   I agree that I fail to communicate much of the time. Sometimes language is not enough to communicate personal experiences.

   That isn’t the problem. We aren’t talking about personal experiences here; we are talking about some concepts and the terminology associated with them, including the ‘etheric’, the ‘astral’, and the question of whether ‘sentience’ means the same thing as ‘the seat of sentience’.

   By ‘[astral] body’ I mean the seat of sentience.

   Yet earlier you wrote:

   This can be named the astral ‘body’, sentience, feeling principle or something like that.

   In that sentence you equate ‘astral body’ with ‘sentience’, not ‘the seat of sentience’. Those are different things. You additionally equate ‘astral body’ with ‘feeling principle’, which also makes no sense. Bodies, astral or otherwise, are not principles. Your own terminology is confusing you, which is one of the dangers I pointed out earlier.

   Its [the body’s] physical aspect is the nervous system but isn’t restricted to it. To get a glimpse of the astral I look up from the point I occupy here on earth. The light filled peripheral forces stream in towards us building up life on the earth. The sentience that lights up in life is the result of instreaming forces. My body is formed by the combination of centrifugal earthly forces and centripetal astral forces. My astral component is built up from forces streaming into me in a similar way that my physical body is built up by food, water and air streaming into me. I alter my ‘astral body’ through the force of will.

   Do you have any evidence for the claims you are making in that paragraph?

   keiths:

   Yes, there is a clear difference between rocks and living plants, and we refer to the latter as “alive”. But that give us no reason to conclude that an “etheric principle”, “formative force”, or “life body” is somehow involved. Indeed, science shows that particles don’t “care” whether they are part of a living body, a dead body, or an object such as a rock. They follow the same physical laws regardless. Matter and energy arranged one way can be alive; that same matter and energy arranged in a different way can be dead or nonliving. Your “etheric principle” serves no genuine explanatory purpose.

   CharlieM:

   You are right that particles don’t care what they are part of.

   That’s crucial, but you don’t seem to be grasping the importance of it. If particles don’t ‘care’ what they’re part of, it means that they follow the same laws regardless. If that’s true, then there is no difference between the laws followed by particles within a living human body versus those followed by particles in dead bodies or in inanimate objects. And if that’s true (and all the evidence we have suggests it is), then the various ‘principles’, ‘forces’, and ‘bodies’ you are positing serve no purpose whatsoever in maintaining life or directing our actions. The particles (and the energy) do that on their own simply by following the laws of physics. The nonphysical entities you posit are superfluous, serving no explanatory purpose. They are as useless as the mythical angels pushing the planets around to keep them in their proper orbits.

4. CharlieM:

   Modern science has tended to look for the fundamental nature of reality in the smaller and smaller while the complimentary fundamental planar aspect has been mostly ignored.

   Science is just as interested in the very large as it is in the very small. Think of cosmology. Second, what is the evidence that this “planar aspect” exists and has some sort of effect on the physical world?

   Plane is equally fundamental to point although the former cannot be fixed and treated numerically as can the latter.

   Planes can actually be easier to “fix and treat numerically” than points. In a 3D Cartesian coordinate system, some planes can be fixed by specifying a single variable, whereas I have to specify three variables to fix a point. For example, y=4 specifies a plane that intersects the y axis four units from the origin and spreads out from there parallel to the x-axis and z-axis. To specify a point on that same plane, by contrast, I’d need to specify all three variables, eg. x=2, y=4, z=10. And even in the case of a plane that isn’t parallel to any of the axes, it can still be specified by three numbers (the x-, y-, and z-intercepts). So no worse than the three values needed to specify an arbitrary point.

   And it is the same when comparing the physical to the spiritual. The physical is the domain of number, weight and measure.

   You’ve told us that the etheric and astral interact with the physical, but you haven’t explained how this works, why we see no evidence of it, and why, if those things actually exist, particles follow the same laws of physics regardless.

   If others react according to their preconceptions regarding the words I use, that is their concern.

   People always react according to their preconception of the words that others use, and for obvious reasons. I have a ‘preconception’ about the word ‘bicycle’. If you tell me you rode a bicycle to work, I infer that you sat astride a two-wheeled contraption that carried you to work as you steered and pedaled it. Not my fault if by ‘bicycle’ you actually mean ‘train’. Likewise, if you talk about an ‘astral body’, I infer that you are talking about a body — not a physical body, but a body nonetheless. If by ‘astral body’ you really mean ‘feeling principle’, then that’s on you, because bodies are not principles and it is unreasonable to expect me to intuit your idiosyncratic usage.

   I try to provide details, from my point of view, of the concepts and ideas behind words such as etheric and astral.

   There are some crucial details that I (and Corneel) can never get you to provide. Namely, how do the ‘astral’ and ‘etheric’ interact with the physical? Why don’t we see any evidence that this actually happens?

5. CharlieM:

   But I do try to make distinctions between what I know and what I believe. And regarding body, soul and spirit, I think that we are dealing with a clash of two basic belief systems. There are those who believe that soul and spirit, if they mean anything at all, are produced by bodily processes, and those of us who believe spirit to be primary.

   The two belief systems are not on equal footing. One fits the evidence while the other conflicts with it. You’re free to believe whatever you’d like, of course, but don’t kid yourself. You believe this stuff about in spite of the evidence rather than because of it. If you care about truth, it behooves you to pay attention to what the evidence is telling you. If you don’t care about the truth, then have a ball. Be like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland and believe six impossible things before breakfast each day.

   I enjoy participating here because of the polarized viewpoints. I can post here safe in the knowledge that my views will be challenged.

   Indeed you can.🙂

6. Charlie,

   Any comments regarding the appallingly racist Steiner quotes I posted above and his racist drawing?

7. keiths:
   I don’t know if you believe that stuff, Charlie. You didn’t reject it at the time I quoted it, but of course that doesn’t mean that you actually believe it. Let me ask now: Do you think Steiner is right? Does his usage of the various esoteric terms match your own? And if you do believe him, why? How confident are you about his correctness? Do you think that besides being true, his claims are justified inferences from the available evidence? And do you assert that nothing he says here goes beyond what the evidence supports?

   I give Steiner credit for hisimagination, but boy oh boy does he need to work on the ‘justified by evidence’ part.

   I presume you start from the assumption that the whole idea of the Christian story and Christ as a spiritual being is rubbish. So, it doesn’t surprise me that you would think Steiner was spouting horseshit.

   From the point of view of the human being as having the four lower principles as in the ‘jolly drawing of a house’ above, what Steiner says is quite believable, so long as one doesn’t approach it with the belief that the physical is the be all and end all.

   I believe that the fourfold lower nature of the human being is a fairly accurate description and so from that position I recognize the following:

   In sleep and death, the changing relationship can be observed between the physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. During sleep the astral body and ego are less connected to the physical and etheric bodies and thus our consciousness is dimmed. During death the initial separation occurs at the level between the physical and etheric bodies. Thus, life no longer permeates the physical body. We observe the effects of the changing relationship between the four principles.

   Neither strong antipathetic feelings nor uncritical acceptance are helpful when attempting to gain an understanding.

8. keiths: Any comments regarding the appallingly racist Steiner quotes I posted above and his racist drawing?

   Haven’t you noticed yet that Charlie deals with comments in the order they are posted, going at a leisurely pace? Answers to your “racist drawing” post are expected to arrive somewhere in January 2023 😉

9. Haha. “Your post is important to us. Please stay online; your post will be answered in the order it was received.”

10. Actually, Charlie does make exceptions. I hope he’ll do so in this case.

    Charlie,

    Please move this comment to the front of your queue.

    Thanks.

11. CharlieM:

    I presume you start from the assumption that the whole idea of the Christian story and Christ as a spiritual being is rubbish. So, it doesn’t surprise me that you would think Steiner was spouting horseshit.

    It’s true that I am not a Christian, though I was raised as one and thus find it easy to take a Christian position for the sake of argument. Even from a standard Christian perspective, what Steiner says is made-up horseshit. Also, my atheism does not preclude criticism of Steiner, just as your Steinerism does not preclude criticism of my atheism or my physicalism.

    From the point of view of the human being as having the four lower principles as in the ‘jolly drawing of a house’ above, what Steiner says is quite believable, so long as one doesn’t approach it with the belief that the physical is the be all and end all.

    If by ‘believable’ you mean ‘capable of being believed by at least someone‘, then yes, that passage is believable. You and your fellow Steinerites are proof of that. If by ‘believable’ you mean ‘reasonable and supported by evidence’, however, then no, that passage is not believable. It is unevidenced horseshit, as this excerpt vividly demonstrates:

    In order to understand the true being of Christ, we must go far back into the history of the development of the earth and of mankind. Before the earth became Earth, it was the old Moon, and the present moon is only a fragment of the old Moon. Before the Earth was Moon, it was Sun, and at a still earlier stage it was Saturn. We should bear in mind that milliards of years ago there existed in the cosmic spaces a heavenly body, Saturn. Also planets develop through different incarnations: Before the Earth was EARTH, it existed as Saturn, Sun and Moon.

    How could anyone reasonably believe what Steiner is saying here? Where is the evidence that “planets develop through different incarnations”, and that the Earth used to exist as Saturn, Sun, and Moon?

    You state that “neither strong antipathetic feelings nor uncritical acceptance are helpful when attempting to gain an understanding”. How is your acceptance of the above anything BUT uncritical? Do you accept it merely because it’s the product of St. Rudolf’s “clairvoyant investigations” and it resonates with you? If so, that’s the epitome of uncritical acceptance. If you believe it for other reasons, what are they?

    It might be helpful if you were to lay out the actual criteria you applied in deciding whether that passage — that specific passage — was true. I am genuinely curious, because it doesn’t seem believable at all to me (in the second sense of ‘believable’, above).

    In sleep and death, the changing relationship can be observed between the physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. During sleep the astral body and ego are less connected to the physical and etheric bodies and thus our consciousness is dimmed. During death the initial separation occurs at the level between the physical and etheric bodies. Thus, life no longer permeates the physical body. We observe the effects of the changing relationship between the four principles.

    That is a just-so story. It posits superfluous, unevidenced entities, and it conflicts with the evidence. Why on earth would you prefer it over the physicalist view, which fits the evidence and is much more streamlined and elegant?

    Neither strong antipathetic feelings nor uncritical acceptance are helpful when attempting to gain an understanding.

    Uncritical acceptance certainly isn’t helpful. “Strong antipathetic feelings” can be a problem if they interfere with a person’s ability to think rationally. Otherwise they are not.They certainly don’t disqualify a person from criticizing the object of their antipathy. I feel a strong antipathy toward Donald Trump, but I am quite capable of criticizing him objectively and rationally.

    In any case, I first encountered Steiner before I knew who he was, what he preached, and how he claimed to acquire his knowledge. My feelings toward him were neutral at that point. It was only after exposure to his writings that I recognized him as a horseshit-spouting crackpot.

12. Corneel:
    CharlieM,

    I asked:

    “And how has that feedback and constructive criticism affected your thinking since the last few times this same topic was discussed? I see no mention at all of any of the points that were previously raised by your various interlocutors. Did you truly ponder those?”

    Your answer appears to be completely unresponsive. You have just repeated all your golden oldies at me. Many TSZ participants have invested valuable time in addressing those points already and I have nothing new to add so I have no interest in discussing those old chestnuts again. Please, visit the previous exchanges I linked to and try to identify and address the criticisms raised there so we can move this discussion on.

    I’ll have another look at the links you provided.

    You linked to a post by Allan Miller where he said I “retreat too easily behind Zen gobbledegook”. If I do it’s not intentional. I try to be clear in what I say.

    I wrote:

    Our language is biased toward the physical world of the senses and this limits it.

    Allan replied:

    That’s a curious state of affairs, isn’t it, for a product not of the physical but of the ineffable Mind? You’d think if minds were nonphysical they’d have less trouble getting these concepts across!

    I answered this here.

    In addition to my reply linked above, I can only say that it is through the world of our senses that we become aware in the first place, so it is natural that our concepts relate to that world.

    Allan then continued a discussion we were having about midges. He talks of midgessence

    Allan wrote previously:

    Every midge acts in a similar manner. But only the females. And there are some 400 distinct species, I understand.

    To me this demonstrates that midges are still at an evolutionary stage of the group level. They have not reached the same evolutionary stage of individuality attained by humans.

    Allan continued:

    Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to identify the thing that isn’t physics or chemistry that determines these broadly consistent behaviours – that ‘knows’ it is operating a female, has a food source nearby, and can somehow seize control of the midge guidance system, hook up to wings and biting equipment and produce the necessary result: a fed female. And, why is it necessary? What does the Wisdom of Nature get out of the midge line continuing?

    That would not be my task as this does not conform to my understanding of life.

    There is nothing wrong or inaccurate about describing living activity in terms of physics and chemistry. The only problem with it is that it’s incomplete. Organisms behave in a way that uses physics and chemistry. But this does not mean that organizing principles can be explained by physics and chemistry. The construction and use of the vehicles we travel in can be explained in terms of physics and chemistry, but that doesn’t take into account the thoughts of the inventors and designers of said vehicles.

    Allan talks of the wisdom of nature in such an abstract way, and I’m not sure, but maybe this is because of the way I have used the term which may have been misleading.

    The wisdom in our vehicles is in human minds and not in the vehicles themselves. Or I could put it that the wisdom within vehicles is human wisdom. It is extrinsic. The wisdom found in midges lies within the midges themselves. But this wisdom is not consciously within the individual midges. It is intrinsic to the group. It is only in higher animals and humans that wisdom can be said to operate at the level of the individual.

    And, with us, the wisdom of, say, our bodily fluid or heart regulation in everyday life, is not a conscious wisdom possessed by us as individuals. Breathing is a process where we begin to show a level of conscious control.

    I’ll continue my replies to Corneel’s post later.

13. Corneel,

    The second link you asked me to revisit can be found here.

    From this post:

    CharlieM: […] the Goethean method as furthered by Steiner opens the door to investigating the soul and the spirit. This is a major aspect of the complimentary nature of Goethean science. Conventional science should, justifiably, remain silent on these things, But Goethean science, in the spirit of scientific investigation can legitimately study this area.

    Corneel: That is indeed the synthesis between science and spirituality that Rudolf Steiner envisioned. Let me know when this research program becomes productive. So far it hasn’t.

    What research have you done to be able to claim that Steiner’s research has been unproductive?

    Further to my short reply at the time, here are a few links to projects inspired by Steiner’s research:

    Education and social care methods “here, here, and here

    In the field of medicine Ita Wegman collaborated with Steiner in his research. She wrote books, opened a clinic and a research laboratory, and founded a home for mentally handicapped children among other things.

    It doesn’t matter if you believe these endeavours to be a waste of time, you cannot claim that they aren’t producing anything.

14. CharlieM:

    Organisms behave in a way that uses physics and chemistry.

    Organisms behave in a way that is determined by physics and chemistry. Physical laws aren’t voluntary, and organisms can’t opt out of them. Every particle in our bodies is governed by physical law and nothing else. There is no way for an immaterial soul, immaterial mind, ‘astral body’, etc. to “reach in” and influence our behavior, because that behavior is already fully determined by the laws of physics.*

    If there actually were an immaterial soul, it would be feckless. Any decisions it made would be unenforceable, because the body would just go on doing what it was already going to do, as dictated by the laws of physics.

    You have acknowledged that “living systems do not break or contradict the laws of physics.” Yet you don’t seem to have realized that this leaves no room for an immaterial entity to control or even to influence the body.

    * I am neglecting quantum indeterminacy here for simplicity’s sake, but even when it is accounted for, my point remains the same: there is no way for an immaterial entity to “reach in” and influence our behavior. Physical law offers no such opportunity.

15. CharlieM:

    Organisms behave in a way that uses physics and chemistry. But this does not mean that organizing principles can be explained by physics and chemistry. The construction and use of the vehicles we travel in can be explained in terms of physics and chemistry, but that doesn’t take into account the thoughts of the inventors and designers of said vehicles.

    After it rolls off the assembly line, nothing a car’s designers think or say can alter its behavior (unless there’s a recall, I suppose). It operates according to the laws of physics and nothing else. The designers’ thoughts aren’t reaching in and altering the behavior of its particles. Any ‘organizing principle’ employed by the designers had its effects in the past, when design was underway. In the present, the car doesn’t “care” about that organizing principle; it just blindly follows physical law.

    Also, the design process itself is a physical process involving the physical brain. The ‘organizing principle’ isn’t some nonphysical entity reaching in and altering the behavior of the particles in the designers’ brains. No such entity is possible, as explained above.

16. Charlie,

    I’d like to echo Corneel’s complaint. Your replies are typically unresponsive to the points we raise. Most of the time you simply restate your beliefs without actually addressing our arguments.

    Several commenters (including me) have described to you in detail why the immaterial entities you invoke don’t make sense. I have done so again in my last two comments. If you disagree with us, that’s fine, but please grant us the courtesy of explaining specifically where and how you think our arguments fail.

    Here’s an example of how that might look:

    keiths,

    You’ve asserted that our behavior is fully determined by the laws of physics. That cannot be true, because [lists reasons]. Your mistake was in thinking that X implies Y. In reality, X only implies Z. Here’s why: If X implied Y, then V would be true. Yet we already know from observation that V is false…

    If you can’t spot a flaw in someone’s argument, that’s fine too. Just tell them that. If you aren’t yet ready to concede the point, just say something like “That’s a strong argument, but I’d like to think about it some more.”

    But whatever you do, you must never, ever criticize Rudolf Steiner. Understood?

17. Corneel:

    That is indeed the synthesis between science and spirituality that Rudolf Steiner envisioned. Let me know when this research program becomes productive. So far it hasn’t.

    CharlieM:

    It doesn’t matter if you believe these endeavours to be a waste of time, you cannot claim that they aren’t producing anything.

    I believe Corneel was referring to Steinerism’s anemic production of scientific advances, not its prodigious production of anthroposophical effluent.

    An effluent sample:

    For, what is the common belief about the nature of the human heart? It is regarded as a kind of Pump, to send the blood into the various organs. There have been intricate mechanical analogies, in explanation of the heart’s action — analogies totally at variance with embryology, be it noted! — but no one has begun to doubt the mechanical explanation, or to test it, at least in orthodox scientific circles…

    The most important fact about the heart is that its activity is not a cause but an effect…

    The heart originates as a “damming up” organ (Stauorgan) between the lower activities of the organism, the intake and working up of food, and the upper activities, the lowest of which is the respiratory. A damming up organ is inserted and its action is therefore a product of the interplay between the liquefied foodstuffs and the air absorbed from the outside. All that can be observed in the heart must be looked upon as an effect, not a cause, as a mechanical effect, to begin with…

    The content of this article [by Dr. Karl Schmidt] is comparatively small, but it proves that his medical practice had enlightened the author on the fact that the heart in no way resembled the ordinary pump but rather must be considered a dam-like organ. Schmidt compares cardiac action to that of the hydraulic ram, set in motion by the currents. This is the kernel of truth in his work…

    For what is the heart after all? It is a sense organ, and even if its sensory function is not directly present in the consciousness, if its processes are subconscious, nevertheless it serves to enable the “upper” activities to feel and perceive the “lower.” As you perceive external colours through your eyes, so do you perceive, dimly and subconsciously through your heart, what goes on in the lower abdomen. The heart is an organ for inner perception.

18. More from your second link:

    Corneel

    CharlieM: Would you agree that Newton set up an artificial experiment and in doing so virtually ignored the dark spectrum?

    Corneel: Yes, that is the point of most experiments: to isolate the phenomenon you are interested in and remove disturbances by nuissance factors. The subtracted primaries in the inverted spectrum are certainly very cool, but history vindicated Newton’s description of the underlying physics, not Goethe’s.

    Once again: darkness is the absence of light: There is no such thing as skotons

    I can think of photons as the smallest ‘particles’ of light because light has a point-like radiating quality. To propose ‘skotons’ as the smallest ‘particles’ of darkness could only come from a misunderstanding of the nature of darkness.

    Darkness has a peripheral plane-like quality which means that its source cannot be located and given a relative position in the way that light can. It is all-encompassing. And if you think it has a purely negative quality you might want to consider dark energy or the zero-point energy of a vacuum which has field-like qualities.

    Neither pure light nor pure darkness will produce colours. We only perceive colour through the interaction of light and darkness.

    Newton included all that is required to obtain colours. The darkness of the room, the light from the sun, a prism to produce a refracted image, and his eyes. By this means he produced edge spectra. Then he had to make adjustments to get the edge spectra to overlap which produced the neat and tidy rainbow effect.

    Instead of setting up artificial experiments, Goethe observed nature as he saw it. The colours of sunsets, snow on distant mountains, the colours produced by light through semi-opaque liquids, that sort of thing. He reasoned that colours are an effect and not a primary phenomenon.

19. Corneel, your third link was to a post by Kantian Naturalist which I replied to here and nobody else responded in that thread. Feel free to comment on that post of mine.

    I’m out of time for the moment.

20. Corneel:
    And to prevent this from disappearing out of sight:

    “CharlieM: keiths: Do the physical, etheric, and astral interact with each other? I infer that your answer is yes, based on what you’ve written elsewhere, but I just want to confirm that with you.

    CharlieM: Yes.”

    Corneel: How do the physical, etheric, and astral interact?

    Here is how I understand things to be:

    Think of iron filings in relation to a magnet. Iron filings align with the magnetic field. The etheric and physical have a similar, but more dynamic and intimate relationship.

    Both the etheric and electromagnetic fields are extrasensory with respect to awareness through the five regular senses. Normally we become aware of them only through their effects.

    Formative processes are in evidence from the lowest level. For example, protein dynamics including protein folding is the result of matter aligning with the etheric. DNA is not a producer of form. DNA itself is the product of the etheric form building activity. The etheric does not produce the activity, it is the activity.

    The astral is the seat of the emotions. Emotional states affect the body processes. Fear or excitement will stimulate adrenalin production and hence in increased heart rate. Although it isn’t all unidirectional. Physical substances can have dramatic effects on our emotional states.

    The nervous system is the physical expression of the astral ‘body’.

    I would like to stress that I do not intend this to be taken as the laying down of facts. It is my personal understanding of living processes.

21. Alan Fox: CharlieM: …Steiner was using flowery language…

    Alan Fox: Steiner grew up in Austria, presumably speaking German as a first language. Did he later write or lecture in English or are the quoted texts translations?

    As far as I know, Steiner wasn’t fluent in English and only wrote and lectured in German. So, the quoted texts are either translations of his written words or translations of transcripts recorded during his lectures.

22. keiths:
    CharlieM,

    You are tying yourself in knots defending Steiner’s racist and patently idiotic statement regarding black people. If that passage had been written not by Steiner but by L. Ron Hubbard, would you be falling all over yourself trying to defend it (and Hubbard)? It’s pretty clear that you would not. That’s a sign that what you are engaged in is not a search for truth, but rather a blind defense of the dogma bequeathed to you by your Dear Leader, St. Rudolf the “Clairvoyant Investigator”.

    It isn’t too late to make your escape from Steiner’s prison of belief. If you care enough about the truth to do so, that is.

    I am trying to understand if there is any truth to these teachings of Steiner without letting my emotions get in the way of this obviously emotive subject. I’ll expand on this as I reply to subsequent posts you have made.

23. keiths:
    CharlieM, to Corneel: I am a unity, an individual. My bones and muscles are aspects of this unity. This does not mean that they don’t interact with each other.

    keiths: Charlie, you seem unable to reach a consistent position on whether “aspects of a unity” interact with each other. From the 2021 comment of yours to which Corneel linked:

    “Midgematter” and “Midgessence” do not interact with each other because they are just two aspects of a unity.

    Which is it? Can “aspects of a unity” interact, or not?

    Sorry I’ve been a bit careless in how I’ve read Allan Miller.

    In my understanding, the essence of a midge is made up of physical, etheric and astral bodies. We might say there is interaction between these three principles, but it would be meaningless to say that the essence interacts with any of its aspects. I’m not even sure if talking about interaction between the three aspects is the best way to describe the reality of the situation as I see it.

    More later.

24. CharlieM,

    Thanks for the detailed answers. I certainly appreciate the effort. However, to prevent this discussion from sprawling out, I’ll restrict myself to the parts that I deem relevant to your current OP.

    I linked to three comments that were relevant to the matter in the OP:
    1) Allan asking for a detailed account how “midgessence” (=midge etheric body + midge astral body) influences the behaviour of midges
    2) Me at the conclusion of a long discussion about “pure thinking” where I ask why “self” is dependent on brain activity to learn about the physical world
    3) KN pointing out that you have ignored the question of causal interaction between “soul” and “spirit” and neurophysiology

    You may or may not have noticed that these comments all share a common theme: They all ask for an explanation of how the immaterial “etheric” and “astral” bodies in their various guises interact with physical processes. Please note that keiths has picked up on the same issue in this very thread; It’s a criticism that is raised all of the time by various commenters.

    I have (tried to) read all your responses to all relevant comments. In response to Allan you have evaded to answer claiming that providing such an explanation would not be your task. I cannot find an answer to the relevant parts in my comment (I suppose you missed that those were the ones I considered important, my bad). Finally, in response to KN you refer to a familiar answer:

    Such causal interactions within a person only become a problem when things are viewed as separate entities. But we are unified beings.

    which is similar to your claim that the physical and the etheric / astral bodies do not interact because they are “aspects of a unity”. A claim you have contradicted earlier in this thread and are still contradicting in this thread:

    In my understanding, the essence of a midge is made up of physical, etheric and astral bodies. We might say there is interaction between these three principles, but it would be meaningless to say that the essence interacts with any of its aspects. I’m not even sure if talking about interaction between the three aspects is the best way to describe the reality of the situation as I see it.

    Clear as mud. Regardless that you now doubt that “interaction” is the best way to describe how the etheric and astral bodies affect physical processes, a few comment previously you actually have tried explaining how the interaction between the etheric and physical body takes place:

    Think of iron filings in relation to a magnet. Iron filings align with the magnetic field. The etheric and physical have a similar, but more dynamic and intimate relationship.

    Looks like an interaction to me.

    Formative processes are in evidence from the lowest level. For example, protein dynamics including protein folding is the result of matter aligning with the etheric. DNA is not a producer of form. DNA itself is the product of the etheric form building activity. The etheric does not produce the activity, it is the activity.

    This looks a bit like an explanation, but it 1) fails to explain how an unfolded polypeptide “aligns” to the formative field into its specific form and 2) completely ignores that a far more detailed explanation already exists: protein folding is the result of hydrogen bonds, van der Waals forces and covalent bonding guiding a polypeptide into a thermodynamically favorable conformation. That is why mutations in the DNA coding sequence that result in changes to the amino acid sequence have the potential to result in a different three-dimensional structure.

    tl;dr: you are persistently failing in providing a description of the causal interaction between the physical, etheric and astral bodies, despite repeated requests. You never spontaneously bring up and compare competing standard explanations, even though most commenters here are familiar with those from high school science classes. You never spontaneously address previous criticisms in your OPs, even though some are repeatedly brought up.

25. CharlieM:

    I am trying to understand if there is any truth to these teachings of Steiner without letting my emotions get in the way of this obviously emotive subject.

    The Hubbard test I described above might be helpful. If you find yourself defending a Steiner quote that you wouldn’t be defending had it come from L. Ron Hubbard, then your emotions are probably getting in the way.

    If all of those racist claims had come from L Ron Hubbard, not Steiner, I have a hard time believing that you wouldn’t have rejected them already.

26. keiths: There’s a similar inconsistency between what you are saying now — about how the physical, ‘etheric’, and ‘astral’ interact with each other — and what you said a couple of weeks ago:

    “keiths, to Steve:

    That doesn’t fit the evidence. If an immaterial soul were calling the shots, then our decision-making wouldn’t be affected by physical factors such as intoxicants or brain damage. Yet we know that human decisions can be profoundly affected by those things. This makes perfect sense if decision-making is a physical process, but it clashes with the notion that an immaterial soul is in charge. Your position isn’t tenable.

    CharlieM:

    It doesn’t fit the evidence only if you regard the immaterial soul and body as separate entities working on each other in an external way and not as two aspects of a unified whole.”

    keiths: You’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. If you affirm the ability of the immaterial soul to interact with the physical body, then your position is vulnerable to the same criticism I leveled at Steve’s. If on the other hand you deny the soul’s ability to interact with the body, then you’ve rendered the soul superfluous. It has no function and therefore serves no explanatory purpose.

    There is a simple solution, however. Drop the idea of a soul. It makes no sense, and it serves no useful purpose.

    I would like to understand how you distinguish immaterial from material. Do you make any distinction between energy and matter?

    I don’t believe an ‘immaterial soul’, as you put it is calling the shots. The body and soul both affect each other.

27. keiths:
    For folks whose German is rusty, here’s what’s going on in that drawing. The man on the right is “Weiß” — white — with a specially developed “Vorderhirn”, or forebrain. This allows him to lead a “Denkleben”, or “thinking life”. The Asian man in the center — “Gelb” means “yellow” — lacks the well-developed forebrain of the white man, but does have a prominent “Mittelhirn” — middle brain — andthus leads a “Gefühlsleben”, or “emotional life”.The poor black guy on the left — “Schwarz” means “black” —has a specially developed “Hinterhirn”, or posterior brain, but he lacks the white man’s forebrain and the Asian man’s middle brain. He is thus consigned to a “Triebsleben”, or “instinctual life”.

    As if that weren’t bad enough, the arrows sweeping down from “Gelb” to “Braun” (brown) and from “Schwarz” to “Kupferrot” (“copper red”) are a nice racist flourish. You see, when the yellow Asians strayed outside their proper geographic boundaries, they became the brown Malays, and when blacks strayed outside of theirs, they became the “copper red” American Indians.Why are these depicted on the diagram as downward sweeps? Because Malays and American Indians are enfeebled races that cannot survive in their new environments. They are dying breeds.

    That looks pretty racist by our present understanding. But we have to remember how Steiner envisioned the complexities of human evolution.

    He makes a distinction between group souls and individual souls. The above distinctions he would have classed as group soul traits, but as every human is an individual s(he) cannot be defined by the subtle traits of the race they belong to.

    If we consider the proposed human form to consist of physical body, etheric ‘body’, astral ‘body’ and ego, we can look at how these aspects relate to the three races Steiner refers to above. Physically I can recognize the distinction between Africans, Asians and Caucasians. But in relation to the ego alone, differences are at the individual level and distinctions cannot be made according to race. Up to the level of the astral Steiner made racial distinctions but they become less clear cut in progressing from the physical up to the ego.

    Taking thinking, feeling and willing into account, Steiner claimed that the African race tended towards being strong willed, the Asian race tended to have a well-developed feeling life, and the Caucasian race tended to be cold thinkers. In my opinion this would hint at Africans in general to be athletic, Asians to be artistic, and Caucasians to be inventive.

    From this perspective it is no surprise that the industrial revolution occurred primarily in Europe. I look anywhere in the world today and I see the influence of European initiated inventions.

    But, between athletes, poets and technicians I would not consider any one to be generally superior to any other based on their specific abilities.

    I think that in our attempt at achieving equality we would like everyone to be the same. I would prefer if we celebrated our differences.

28. Corneel:
    CharlieM: Corneel: And here am I thinking they do not interact because they are “aspects of a unity”. I guess the field of Goethean science advances rapidly.

    CharlieM: I am a unity, an individual. My bones and muscles are aspects of this unity. This does not mean that they don’t interact with each other.

    Corneel: Quite so. I would go even further and maintain that without some interaction going on there is preciously little uniting them. But you are not arguing against me, but against yourself: I was calling attention to the fact that you are currently contradicting one of your previous claims, to wit that the physical body of a creature cannot be said to interact with its non-tangible “etheric and astral bodies”. Since you appear to have missed what I was getting at, let me quote some of the relevant comments from an exchange with Allan Miller, on the behaviour of midges:

    Here you can be seen circumnavigating a straightforward question from Allan. Note that “midgessence” is the mocking term Allan introduced to describe what you call the “etheric, life body” and “astral body” of a midge:

    “Allan: How could Midgematter interact with a nonphysical Midgessence, even in principle? Makes absolutely no sense to me.

    “Charlie: It makes no sense to you because you are looking for interactions instead of intra-actions. The separation is a concept of your own making. You might as well ask how lightning interacts with the thunderstorm.”

    Corneel: And in the follow-up you explicitly deny interactions occur, because physical, etheric and astral bodies are all aspects of a unity:

    “CharlieM: My comparison of your “Midgematter” and “Midgessence” with thunder and lightning was my attempt to demonstrate our habit of retaining a separation caused by our senses. “Midgematter” and “Midgessence” do not interact with each other because they are just two aspects of a unity.”

    Corneel: That directly contradicts your current position.

    ETA: Ninja’d by keiths. Well, at least that should drive the point home

    There is a misunderstanding here which all came about because I had glossed over the fact that Allan Miller had used the term “nonphysical Midgessence.

    Of course by my understanding the essential nature of a midge consists of physical, etheric and astral ‘bodies’. And all three interact with each other in complex, convoluted ways.

    So, in this respect it would be meaningless to say that “Midgematter” and “Midgessence” interact with each other.

    “Midgessence” = “Midgematter” + “Midgeether” + ““Midgeastrality”; (physical body, life and sentience).

29. keiths: Lest Charlie attempt to argue that the figure isn’t really insulting to non-whites, here are some Steiner quotes that really seal the racist deal. You’ve already seen what he says about black people. Here are his thoughts on the other races:

    Asians are incapable of invention:

    “Some inventions have been made in Asia, but in general inventions, arising through the experience of the outside world — Asians cannot make these. For example, consider the propeller steamship. The Japanese copied the Europeans, and then Japan wanted to go alone. Previously the Europeans were always in charge. Now Japan for once wanted to go alone. English engineers had remained on the coast. Suddenly, the Japanese came out [i.e., they launched a ship], who then brought things to a desperate state, for the whole ship turned constantly in a circle. They did not know how they could control the rotation, how to produce the right locomotion. The Europeans knew this, of course, and they stood grinning broadly on the shore. So this kind independent thinking, which Europeans developed to deal with the outer world, Asians do not have it. The Japanese will therefore work with all European inventions, but the Japanese cannot create something new on their own.”

    Malays are “useless people”, a “dying breed”:

    “The yellow migrate eastward across this region. But if the yellow wander too far to the east, then they turn brown. This is what gave rise to the Malays, who are brown. Why? Yes, why are the Malaysians brown? What does that mean: They are brown? They no longer reflect as much of the light as they did when they were yellow. Having turned brown, through their migration, they are now living in the Sun, and because they are so embedded in their new location, they throw off less light. They take more light into themselves. These brown Malays are expatriate Mongolians, but because the Sun acts differently on them now, they become accustomed to absorbing more light and more heat. But remember that they do not have the nature to do so. They have skeletons that can only absorb a certain degree of heat. They do not have the nature to absorb as much heat as they now take in as Malays. The result is that they start to become useless people, their human bodies begin to die. This is indeed the case in the Malay population. They are dying due to the Sun, they are dying from being too far to the east. So we can say that while the yellow, the Mongols, are people who have full life forces, the Malays are already a dying breed. They die.”

    American Indians are also a dying breed, and “they die from their own nature”:

    “So, if the blacks emigrate to the west, they cannot absorb as much light and heat as they could in their Africa. They come to areas having less light and heat. What is the consequence? Yes, their nature is set up to absorb as much light and heat as possible. Their nature is actually established, thereby making them black. But now, after emigrating, they do not get as much light and heat as they need to be black. Therefore, they become copper [i.e., copper-colored], in other words [they become] American Indians. That comes from the fact that they are forced to throw back some of the light and heat they receive. Hence the shiny copper-Sun coloration. The copper-colored body must send back a bit of light and heat. Copper-colored American Indians cannot endure so much light and heat. Therefore, they die. As Indians in the west, they are a dying breed. They die from their own nature, which gets too little light and heat, which kills the alien [i.e., the immigrant, the outsider]. Their earthly nature gives them an instinctual life. They cannot develop properly in the west, although they still grow strong bones. A lot of ash goes into their bones, but their bones cannot endure these Indian ashes. The bones are terribly strong, but so strong that the whole man is destroyed down to his bones.”

    But thank God for white people:

    “The white race is the future, it is the most spirit-building race.”

    But then he goes and contradicts himself by saying that the concept of race is becoming obsolete. That is the Steiner I prefer.

30. CharlieM: There is a misunderstanding here which all came about because I had glossed over the fact that Allan Miller had used the term “nonphysical Midgessence.

    Of course by my understanding the essential nature of a midge consists of physical, etheric and astral ‘bodies’. And all three interact with each other in complex, convoluted ways.

    So, in this respect it would be meaningless to say that “Midgematter” and “Midgessence” interact with each other.

    Sure, it was Allan who was poorly communicating. You are lagging behind a bit so you probably missed that I found you made a rather similar response to Kantian Naturalist:

    Kantian Naturalist: If soul and spirit don’t emerge from the physical body, then how is the relationship between the neurophysiology and consciousness of perception any less a mystery? You’d still have the problem of causal interaction to deal with.

    Charlie: Such causal interactions within a person only become a problem when things are viewed as separate entities. But we are unified beings.

    You would need to delve into the anthroposophical descriptions of the human being to come to any understanding of the connections between mind and body.

    Here is a rough explanation as I see it. We consist of three aspects, body soul and spirit, but we can also be considered to have a sevenfold makeup, physical, etheric, astral, ego, spirit-self, life-spirit and spirit-man. All of these aspects are interconnected and are meaningless outwith the whole.

    You are switching between saying there are interactions (and failing to explain the nature of these interaction beyond that they are “complex” and “convoluted”) and claiming that interactions do not concern you because “we are unified beings” (and failing to explain what unites these aspects or why we need separate aspects at all).

    Could you please pick one so we do not constantly teeter-totter between both excuses for not-answering?

31. CharlieM:

    I would like to understand how you distinguish immaterial from material. Do you make any distinction between energy and matter?

    We discussed this earlier in the thread. The standard term is ‘immaterial soul’, and I use it for that reason, but in actual usage it means ‘nonphysical soul’. When I say that the immaterial soul doesn’t exist, I mean that we comprise matter and energy and nothing else. We are completely physical. Nonphysical souls, spirits, thetans, astral bodies, etheric bodies, etc. do not exist, and the evidence confirms this.

    I don’t believe an ‘immaterial soul’, as you put it is calling the shots. The body and soul both affect each other.

    By using the phrase ‘calling the shots’, I wasn’t implying that the body doesn’t affect the soul. The common view, which you seem to share, is that it’s a two-way street. I just meant that in the common view, the soul makes the decisions and the body carries out the actions. When I grab a drink from the fridge, it is my body that performs the actions (obviously), but it is my soul that makes the decisions and directs my body to get up, walk to the fridge, open the door, etc.

    Such a soul does not exist. The evidence rules it out.

    You disagree. Several of us have asked you again and again (and again and again), literally for years, to explain how the soul (or etheric body, or astral body, or whatever), which is a nonphysical entity, is able to affect the body, which is a physical entity, and vice-versa. We are still awaiting a response, as Corneel keeps reminding you. Please answer. If you can’t explain how they interact, just say so. But don’t contradict yourself by telling us that they don’t interact when you’ve repeatedly said the opposite, most recently by saying “The body and soul both affect each other.”

    There are other problems with the concept of an immaterial soul, but before we move on to those, would you please address the interaction problem and tell us by what mechanism the immaterial soul affects the physical body, in your view?

32. CharlieM, regarding the racist Steiner quotes I posted:

    That looks pretty racist by our present understanding.

    Those quotes don’t just look racist; they are racist. They were racist in Steiner’s time, too. The only difference is that it’s harder to get away with racism these days.

    I mean, come on, Charlie. Only white people live a “thinking life”? The Japanese can’t innovate? Asians and Africans should stick to their part of the world, and they become “dying breeds” if they have the gall to migrate elsewhere? Those are textbook examples of racist claims.

33. CharlieM:

    Taking thinking, feeling and willing into account, Steiner claimed that the African race tended towards being strong willed, the Asian race tended to have a well-developed feeling life, and the Caucasian race tended to be cold thinkers. In my opinion this would hint at Africans in general to be athletic, Asians to be artistic, and Caucasians to be inventive.

    Yes, that seems to be more or less what Steiner is saying. He isn’t exactly subtle about it, though, so the word “hinting” is a bit of an understatement. Do you believe that he’s correct?

    From this perspective it is no surprise that the industrial revolution occurred primarily in Europe. I look anywhere in the world today and I see the influence of European initiated inventions.

    Therefore it must be due to race? That’s quite an irrational leap.

    A reading recommendation for you: Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.

    The book attempts to explain why Eurasian and North African civilizations have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate primarily in environmental differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops. When cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians (for example, written language or the development among Eurasians of resistance to endemic diseases), he asserts that these advantages occurred because of the influence of geography on societies and cultures (for example, by facilitating commerce and trade between different cultures) and were not inherent in the Eurasian genomes.

34. CharlieM:

    I think that in our attempt at achieving equality we would like everyone to be the same.

    You can celebrate diversity while still decrying racism.

    I would prefer if we celebrated our differences.

    By all means, let’s celebrate our differences. But let’s also make sure that they’re real differences, not the cartoonish and scientifically laughable differences imagined by a 19th century crackpot.

    But then he goes and contradicts himself by saying that the concept of race is becoming obsolete. That is the Steiner I prefer.

    He isn’t contradicting himself. The key word is ‘becoming’. Steiner was clearly a racist, even if he thought that the concept of race would become obsolete in the future. “Those backward blacks will eventually evolve out of it” isn’t exactly an enlightened attitude.

35. As a rough measure of inventiveness, I calculated the number of annual patent applications per capita for the US and Japan, using data from two different sources. The years were 2020 and 2021.

    In both cases Japan had more than twice as many patent applications per capita as the US. Even allowing for differences between the two systems, that’s huge.

    Yet Steiner says

    So this kind of independent thinking, which Europeans developed to deal with the outer world, Asians do not have it. The Japanese will therefore work with all European inventions, but the Japanese cannot create something new on their own.

    Who are you going to believe, Charlie? Steiner, or the evidence?

36. keiths:
    CharlieM: The mind is not bounded by space and time in the same way that the brain is. I do not believe that I perceive the external world through some sort of copy inside my head. In my opinion direct perception involves my mind being in the world rather than the world imprinting itself in my brain.

    keiths: This spectacular illusion shows why the “direct perception” idea cannot be correct. We perceive motion, but we can’t be “directly perceiving” it since it doesn’t actually exist.

    The eyes and brain construct an imperfect neural representation of the figure, and it is this imperfect representation that determines what we see. We perceive indirectly via the faulty representation. We don’t perceive the figure directly.

    I’m really impressed with that seemingly moving image.

    Henri Bortoft discusses optical ‘illusions’ here and continues here.

    The image above demonstrates to me how sense perception alone gives a false impression. Visual sense perception involves the eyes and brain and is thus limited. But there is a higher perception by means of the mind. This is where we might exclaim, “Oh yes, I see it now!”

    Through this higher form of “seeing” I know that the figures in the image are not moving as they appear to be for the senses. I understand the effect of the radiating, bright yellow which swamps the darker colours. It is the movement of this yellow within the figures that give them the appearance of movement. I now see the reality hidden in this optical image. Using my mind, I take the image I see before my and I combine it with the concepts that belong to it. And thus, I arrive at the complete picture.

    As Goethe stressed, we are never satisfied with incompleteness, we strive for wholeness through, “exact sensory imagination”.

37. keiths:
    CharlieM: Thinking and willing affects neuroplasticity. The learning processes of a child will be a determinant of neural connections. Many years ago, after several attempts, I gave up smoking. My brain did not decide to quit smoking, I made that decision, and it took some effort. This process will have resulted in a change in neural connections in my brain.

    That your brain changed during the process is obvious, but the idea that a nonphysical soul or mind was required in order to bring about the changes is incorrect. The brain constantly modifies itself as it operates. No external agent is needed.

    With respect to my brain, I am not an external agent. It is part of my central nervous system, it is part of my body, it is part of me.

    keiths: Any notion of a nonphysical mind/soul runs into the interaction problem: namely, how does something nonphysical affect something that’s physical, and vice-versa? What is the mechanism?That’s why Corneel and I keep pressing you on whether you believe the physical, the ‘etheric’, and the ‘astral’ can interact with each other.

    The same can be said of matter and energy. Energy is nonmaterial but it can interact with matter.

    keiths: The concept of the nonphysical mind/soul is superfluous, and trying to force it into the picture actually creates problems. It’s a non-starter.

    The physical and nonphysical, as you put it, are not isolated entities in the way you imagine them to be. They are just different states of the same entity.

    It is similar to the way ice, water and steam have their own properties, but they are all the same compound.

38. Kantian Naturalist:
    CharlieM: Is it wrong to say that Caucasians generally show a more cold, abstract thinking which has resulted in advancement in technology?

    Kantian Naturalist: It’s factually wrong but more importantly it’s racist bullshit.

    Are you saying that modern universities, technologies and industries weren’t created in Europe? Is this not a fact?

39. keiths:
    Charlie in the OP, paraphrasing Steiner:

    “Anyone who prays to the Father, “thy will be done” precludes egotistical petitionary prayer.”

    Jesus didn’t think so, if you buy the Gospel accounts. Here’s Luke:

    “He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.'”

    Nice gotcha. 🙂

    It looks as if I need to amend my statement. Anyone who prays to the Father, “thy will be done” precludes egotistical petitionary prayer from being granted unless the petition aligns with the divine will.

40. CharlieM:

    I’m really impressed with that seemingly moving image.

    It’s striking, isn’t it? One of the best illusions I’ve ever seen. Here’s a link for readers who haven’t seen the full-speed original:

    Mario illusion

    CharlieM:

    The image above demonstrates to me how sense perception alone gives a false impression. Visual sense perception involves the eyes and brain and is thus limited. But there is a higher perception by means of the mind. This is where we might exclaim, “Oh yes, I see it now!”

    Through this higher form of “seeing” I know that the figures in the image are not moving as they appear to be for the senses. I understand the effect of the radiating, bright yellow which swamps the darker colours. It is the movement of this yellow within the figures that give them the appearance of movement.

    That was my impression too, but I decided to slow it down just to make sure. As you can see below, it turns out that neither the figures nor the colors within the figures are moving. There is no motion whatsoever in that image. It’s an illusion within an illusion.

    I guess your “higher form of seeing” isn’t so high after all. It got fooled by an illusion, just like the “lower” form. So much for direct perception.

    I now see the reality hidden in this optical image.

    No, you didn’t, and neither did I until I slowed it down. Vision is a function of the eyes and the brain, Charlie, and there is no “higher form of seeing” to supplement it. Besides, if we actually did have this higher form of seeing, why would God create us with eyes and a visual system, especially one that’s prone to illusions? Why wouldn’t we just use the higher form all the time?

41. keiths: The eyes and brain construct an imperfect neural representation of the figure, and it is this imperfect representation that determines what we see. We perceive indirectly via the faulty representation. We don’t perceive the figure directly.

    False conclusion. One can look (at first) and then look again. I can see there is no movement in the image with a minute’s concentration.

42. CharlieM: Is it wrong to say that Caucasians generally show a more cold, abstract thinking which has resulted in advancement in technology?

    Depending on what it means, it can be very wrong. Does it mean Caucasians are somehow better abstract thinkers? Does it mean to assert that abstract thinking results in advanced technology? Not too long ago, say until Reconquista, Muslim civilisation was technologically ahead the European civilisation. Where was Caucasian abstract thinking and technological advancement then? Or were Muslims doing the abstract thinking in those times? And what was the Mongol conquest of nearly all Eurasia about? Some brilliant flash of abstract thinking? Or is it pure evil when they are winning, but technological advancement when we are winning?

    But if the statement does not mean much, then its rightness or wrongness is not too important either.

43. Erik:

    False conclusion. One can look (at first) and then look again. I can see there is no movement in the image with a minute’s concentration.

    I seriously doubt that, if you are anything like Charlie and me. We could concentrate and see the that the Mario figures weren’t actually moving, but both of us still perceived movement within the figures. I couldn’t tell that there was no movement until I slowed the video down and checked.

    That shows that we don’t perceive directly. We perceive indirectly via an internal representation, and that representation can be faulty.

    Furthermore, even if you could concentrate and see that there was no movement at all, even within the figures, that wouldn’t change the fact that you perceived motion in the first place and that you’d perceive it again if you stopped concentrating. I can convince myself that there is no motion, but I can’t will the illusion away. I still see motion where there is none. And note that this isn’t an instance where the visual input is fuzzy or distorted; the stimulus is bright and clear, right there on the screen in front of you.

    Your visual system contains motion detectors that work well most of the time, but sometimes they screw up, as they do in the case of this illusion. If you were able to perceive the screen directly, you would not be susceptible to the illusion. You are susceptible, however, and this shows that you are perceiving the screen indirectly, via an internal representation.

44. keiths: Furthermore, even if you could concentrate and see that there was no movement at all, even within the figures, that wouldn’t change the fact that you perceived motion in the first place, and that you’d perceive motion again when you stopped concentrating.

    Of course. Better perception is not effortless. It demands some effort and training.

    Anyway, it should be obvious that there are people with different perceptions, e.g. normal vision versus visually impaired. There’s also supernormal vision.

    Normal people can train their perception with concentration exercises and get some results. The overwhelming majority don’t do it and remain normal.

45. Erik,

    Nothing you just wrote contradicts what I’ve been saying.

    So when you wrote

    False conclusion. One can look (at first) and then look again. I can see there is no movement in the image with a minute’s concentration.

    …you were incorrect. My conclusion was true:

    The eyes and brain construct an imperfect neural representation of the figure, and it is this imperfect representation that determines what we see. We perceive indirectly via the faulty representation. We don’t perceive the figure directly.

46. Coming to 20th and 21st century, the theory of perception has devolved rather than evolved. In medieval times the theory was that perception occurs via a medium. Which is obviously true, e.g. whatever you look at, there is air or some other medium in between, and e.g. mirage is explained by distorted medium. Also, it was believed that comprehension of the medium and other aspects of perception can improve perception towards more “directness” by leaps and bounds in some cases, and there were exercises for that.

    But nowadays what is left of all this is “We don’t perceive directly.” Very sad.

47. Erik: False conclusion. One can look (at first) and then look again. I can see there is no movement in the image with a minute’s concentration.

    Au contraire, you are the one rocking the false conclusion here. keiths is entirely correct that the existence of the illusion demonstrates that what we perceive is a confection, and not “directly experienced”. The fact that you (and I) can, with a bit of concentration, overcome the illusion and recognize that there is no movement does not make the perception of motion go away. And even if you could, it would not refute keiths point.

    Erik: But nowadays what is left of all this is “We don’t perceive directly.” Very sad.

    Very sad if, and only if, you choose to wilfully ignore all that we have learnt about how visual perception works.

48. The Benham top is a color illusion that works even in monochromatic light.

49. Erik:

    Coming to 20th and 21st century, the theory of perception has devolved rather than evolved. In medieval times the theory was that perception occurs via a medium. Which is obviously true, e.g. whatever you look at, there is air or some other medium in between, and e.g. mirage is explained by distorted medium.

    Modern scientists also believe that perception occurs via a medium. As you say, it’s obvious. They also understand that the medium can distort the sensory stimulus passing through it, which is how we get mirages, gravitational lensing, and the cat below. So I’m confused about why you adduced these points in support of your claim that “the theory of perception has devolved rather than evolved”.

    Also, it was believed that comprehension of the medium and other aspects of perception can improve perception towards more “directness” by leaps and bounds in some cases, and there were exercises for that.

    I’m not sure what you mean by “comprehension of the medium”, or “improve perception towards more ‘directness'”, but scientists certainly comprehend media such as air and the vacuum and they understand how these media affect the photons that are traveling through them. As for improving perception via exercises, there’s an entire field of study called “perceptual learning” that includes research on such exercises. So again, I don’t understand why you cited these points in support of your claim.

    Do you have any actual evidence that “the theory of perception has devolved rather than evolved” since medieval times?

50. petrushka:

    The Benham top is a color illusion that works even in monochromatic light.

    Right. So just as it’s possible to perceive motion that isn’t really there, it’s also possible to perceive color that isn’t really there. And contours that aren’t really there. And sounds that aren’t really there.

    CharlieM and Erik — if perception is direct, how do you explain all of these illusions?