The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity: A Modern Philosophy of Life Developed by Scientific MethodsSteiner, Rudolf
Religion
The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity: A Modern Philosophy of Life Developed by Scientific Methods
Steiner, Rudolf
Anthroposophy; Free will and determinism; Knowledge, Theory of; Life
The most difficult to drive from the field are the so-called
physiological proofs of the subjectivity of our percepts. When I
exert pressure on the skin of my body, I experience it as a pressure
sensation. This same pressure can be sensed as light by the eye,
as sound by the ear. I experience an electrical shock by the eye
as light, by the ear as sound, by the nerves of the skin as touch,
and by the nose as a smell of phosphorus. What follows from these
facts? Only this: I experience an electrical shock, or, as the case
may be, a pressure followed by a light, or a sound, or, it may be,
a certain smell, etc. If there were no eye present, then no light
quality would accompany the perception of the mechanical vibrations in
my environment; without the presence of the ear, no sound, etc. But
what right have we to say that in the absence of sense-organs the
whole process would not exist at all? All those who, from the fact
that an electrical process causes a sensation of light in the eye,
conclude that what we sense as light is only a mechanical process of
motion, forget that they are only arguing from one percept to another,
and not at all to something altogether transcending percepts. Just as
we can say that the eye perceives a mechanical process of motion in
its surroundings as light, so we can affirm that every change in an
object, determined by natural law, is perceived by us as a process of
motion. If I draw twelve pictures of a horse on the circumference of
a rotating disc, reproducing exactly the positions which the horse's
body successively assumes in movement, I can, by rotating the disc,
produce the illusion of movement. I need only look through an opening
in such a way that, at regular intervals, I perceive the successive
positions of the horse. I perceive, not separate pictures of twelve
horses, but one picture of a single galloping horse.
The above-mentioned physiological facts cannot, therefore, throw
any light on the relation of percept to idea. Hence, we must seek a
relation some other way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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