The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Epistemology Since Kant

[ 1 ] All epistemologists since Kant have been more or less influenced by the erroneous formulation of his question. For Kant, the view that all objects given to us are our mental pictures (Vorstellungen) arises as the result of his a priority. Since Kant, this view has been made into the basic principle and starting point of almost every epistemological system. The one and only thing of which we can be immediately and directly certain, it is said, is the principle that we have a knowledge of our mental pictures; this has become the almost universally recognized conviction of philosophers. Already as early as 1792, G.E. Schulze maintains in his Aenesidemus that all our knowledge is mere mental pictures and that we can never go beyond our mental pictures. Schopenhauer, with all his characteristic philosophical fervor, propounds the view that the lasting achievement of Kantian philosophy is the view that the world is “my mental picture.” Eduard von Hartmann finds this principle so incontestable that, in his book Critical Foundations of Transcendental Realism, he reckons only with readers who have critically freed themselves from naively confusing their perceptual picture with the thing-in-itself, and who have proven to themselves the absolute difference between a perceptible object — which through the act of mental picturing presents itself as a subjective, ideal content of consciousness — and a thing which exists in and for itself, independent of the act of mental picturing and not dependent upon the form of human consciousness; i.e., he reckons only with readers who are utterly convinced that the totality of what is directly given us is mental pictures, (Critical Foundations, Preface, p. 10) To be sure, Hartmann does seek in his last epistemological publication also to give some foundation to his view. We will show later on what position an epistemology without preconceptions must take toward such a foundation. Otto Liebmann states as the sacrosanct highest principle of all epistemology: "Consciousness cannot go beyond itself. (Contribution to Analysis, p. 28ff.) The judgment that the most immediate primal truth is that “all our knowing encompasses at first only our mental pictures” was called “the positivistic principle of knowledge” by Volkelt, and he considers an epistemology to be “eminently critical only if it puts this principle in the forefront as the only thing certain from the very beginning of philosophizing and then thinks it through consistently.” (Kant's Epistemology, §1) With other philosophers one finds still other assertions placed in the forefront of epistemology; for example, the assertion that the actual problem for epistemology consists in the question of the relationship between thinking and being and of the possibility of a mediation between them, (Domer, Human Knowing) or also in the question: How does what exists become conscious? (Rehmke), and so on. Kirchmann takes his start from two epistemological axioms: “What is perceived exists” and “contradiction does not exist” (Theory of Knowledge). According to E. L. Fischer, knowledge consists in knowing something factual, real (Basic Questions, p. 385), and he does not examine this dogma any more than Göring does, who maintains something similar: “To know always means to know something which exists; that is a fact which neither scepticism nor Kantian criticalism can deny” (System, p. 257). These last two simply decree, “that is knowing,” without asking by what right they do this.

[ 2 ] Even if these different assertions were correct or would lead to correct formulations of the problem, the place to discuss them is certainly not at the beginning of epistemology. For, as quite definite insights, they all stand already inside the region of knowledge. If I say that my knowing extends at first only as far as my mental pictures, that is after all a quite definite judgment of knowledge. With this proposition I add to the world given to me a predicate: namely, existence in the form of mental pictures. But how, before all knowing, am I supposed to know that the things given to me are mental pictures?

[ 3 ] We can best convince ourselves of the correctness of the assertion that this proposition cannot be placed in the forefront of epistemology if we trace the path the human spirit must take in order to arrive at this proposition. This proposition has become almost an integral part of the entire modem scientific consciousness. The considerations that have impelled modem consciousness to this view are presented, systematically, and with considerable completeness, in the first section of Eduard von Hartmann's book The Basic Problem of Epistemology. What is brought forward in that book can therefore serve as a kind of guideline for someone who sets himself the task of discussing all the reasons that can lead to the above assumption. These reasons are physical, psycho-physical, physiological, and actual philosophical ones.

[ 4 ] Through observation of those phenomena which occur around us when we have a sensation of sound, for example, the physicist arrives at the conclusion that there is nothing in these phenomena that bears even the slightest resemblance to what we perceive directly as sound. Outside, in the space surrounding us, only longitudinal vibrations of material bodies and of the air are to be found. From this is concluded that what we call sound or tone in ordinary life is merely our subjective reaction to that wave motion. In the same way one finds light, color, or warmth to be something purely subjective. The phenomena of color-diffraction, refraction, interference, and polarization teach us that, in the space outside us, corresponding to the qualities of sensation mentioned above, there are certain transverse vibrations that we feel we must ascribe partly to material bodies and partly to an immeasurably fine elastic fluid, the ether. Furthermore, the physicist sees himself compelled, because of certain phenomena in the world of material bodies, to give up any belief in the continuity of objects in space, and to trace these objects back to systems of minutest parts (molecules, atoms) whose sizes, relative to their distances from each other, are immeasurably small. From this is deduced that all interaction of bodies occurs across empty space and is therefore a true actio in distans. Physics believes itself justified in assuming that the working of material bodies upon our sense of touch and warmth does not occur through direct touching, because of course there must be a certain distance, however small, between the skin touching the material body and this body itself. It supposedly follows from this that what we sense, for example, as the hardness or warmth of material bodies is only the reaction of the nerve-endings in our organs of touch and warmth to the molecular forces working from material bodies across empty space.

[ 5 ] Complementing these considerations of the physicist are those of the psycho-physicist which find expression in the doctrine of specific sense energies. J. Müller has shown that each sense can be affected only in its own characteristic way, in a way determined by its organization, and that it always reacts in the same way to whatever outer impression is applied to it. If the optic nerve is stimulated, we sense light, no matter whether it is pressure, electric current, or light that affects the nerve. On the other hand the same outer occurrences give rise to entirely different sensations depending upon which sense perceives them. From this one concluded that there is only one kind of process in the outer world—namely, motion—and that essentially the manifold nature of the world perceived by us is a reaction of our senses to this process. According to this view we do not perceive the outer world as such, but merely the subjective sensations evoked in us by it

[ 6 ] To the considerations of physics are added those of physiology as well. The former studies the phenomena occurring outside our organism that correspond to our perceptions; the latter seeks to investigate the processes occurring in man's own body while a certain sense impression is being evoked in us. Physiology teaches that the epidermis is entirely insensitive to the stimuli of the outer world. Thus, for example, in order for the nerves connected with our sense of touch on the periphery of the body to be affected by something working in from the outer world, the process of vibration lying outside our body must first be transmitted through the epidermis. In the case of the senses of hearing and sight, the outer process of motion is further changed by a series of organs in our instruments of sense before it arrives at the nerve. This affecting of the peripheral organs must now be conducted by the nerve to the central organ, and only here can that process first occur by which, on the basis of purely mechanical processes in the brain, the sensation is produced. It is clear that through these transformations which the stimulus affecting the sense organs undergoes, this stimulus is so utterly changed that any trace of similarity between what first affected the senses and the sensation Anally arising in consciousness must be wiped out. Hartmann expresses the results of these reflections in the following words: “This content of consciousness consists primarily of sensations, which are the soul's reflex reaction to conditions of motion in its highest brain center, but which bear not the slightest resemblance to the molecular conditions of motion that cause them.”

[ 7 ] Whoever follows this line of thought completely to its conclusion must acknowledge that, if it is correct, then not even the slightest residue of what one can call outer existence would be contained within the content of our consciousness.

[ 8 ] Hartmann adds to the physical and physiological objections against so-called “naive realism” still others that he calls philosophical in the actual sense. When we investigate these first two objections logically, we notice that basically we can come to the above results only by taking our start from existence and from the intercommunication of outer things as ordinary naive consciousness assumes them to be, and if we then investigate how, given our organization, the outer world can come into our consciousness. We have seen that all trace of any such outer world is lost on the way from the sense impression to entry into consciousness and that nothing remains behind in our consciousness except our mental pictures. We must therefore assume that the picture of the outer world that we really have is built up by the soul on the basis of materials consisting of sensations. First of all, out of the sensations of the sense of sight and the sense of touch, a spatial world picture is constructed, into which the sensations of the other senses are then inserted. When we see ourselves compelled to think of a particular complex of sensations as connected, we come then to the concept of substance, which we regard as the bearer of the sensations. If we notice with a substance that sensations of one kind disappear and others arise, we then ascribe this to a change in the phenomenal world brought about by the law of causality. According to this view, our whole world picture is composed of a subjective content of sensations ordered by our own soul activity. Hartmann says: “What the subject perceives is therefore only modifications of his own psychic states and nothing more.” (Basic Problem, p. 37)

[ 9 ] Let us now ask ourselves: How do we arrive at a conviction of this sort? The skeleton of the above line of thought is: If an outer world exists, it is not perceived by us as such, but is transformed by our organization into a world of mental pictures. We have to do here with a presupposition which, taken to its conclusion, cancels itself out. But is this line of thought able to establish any conviction at all? Are we justified in regarding the given world picture as a subjective content of mental pictures simply because the assumptions of naive consciousness, strictly thought through, lead to this view? Our aim after all is to prove that these assumptions themselves are invalid. For Hartmann to be right it would have to be possible that an assertion prove incorrect and yet the result to which it leads be correct. This can perhaps occur somewhere or other, but then the result can never be regarded as having been proven out of that assertion.

[ 10 ] Naive realism is the name usually given to the world view that accepts the reality of the directly given world picture as unquestionable and self-evident The opposing view, on the other hand, which considers this world picture to be merely the content of our consciousness, is called transcendental idealism. We can therefore sum up the results of the above considerations in these words: Transcendental idealism proves its correctness by operating with the instruments of naive realism that it hopes to refute. It is right if naive realism is wrong; but the wrongness is proven only with the help of the wrong view itself. For the person who sees this there is nothing else to do but leave the path taken here in order to arrive at a world view, and strike out on another. But should this happen at random, by trial and error, until by some chance we find the right path? Eduard von Hartmann in any case is of this opinion when he believes he has established the validity of his epistemological standpoint through the fact that it explains the phenomena of the world, whereas the others do not. In this thinker's view the individual world views are engaged in a kind of struggle for existence, and the one that gives the best account of itself will finally be accepted as the victor. But such a procedure right away seems impermissible through the fact that there could very well be several hypotheses that lead to an explanation of world phenomena in equally satisfying ways. Therefore we would rather hold onto the above train of thought, which is supposed to refute naive realism, and examine it to see where its defects actually lie. Naive realism, after all, is the view from which everyone takes his start. For that very reason it commends itself as the place to begin our corrections. When we have seen why the above train of thought has to be defective, we will then be guided onto the right path with far more certainty than if we simply seek such a path at random.

[ 11 ] The subjectivism sketched out above is based on a thinking treatment of certain facts. It therefore presupposes that, from a factual starting point, through consistent thinking (logical combination of particular observations), correct convictions can be achieved. Our right to use thinking in this way, however, is not examined by this standpoint. And therein lies its weakness. Whereas naive realism takes its start from the unexamined assumption that the content of experience we perceive has objective reality, the standpoint characterized above takes its start from the equally unexamined conviction that by using thinking one can arrive at scientifically valid convictions. In contrast to naive realism one can call this standpoint naive rationalism. In order to justify this terminology let us insert here a brief remark about the concept “naive.” A. Döring, in his essay “On the Concept of Naive Realism,” (Philosophical Quarterly, vol. XXVI, p. 390, Heidelberg, 1890) attempts to deHne this concept more exactly. He says of it: “The concept of naivete represents just about zero on the scale of reflection about one's own behavior. As far as content goes, naivete can definitely hit upon the correct thing, for it is indeed without reflection—and just because of this it is without criticality, it is uncritical—but this lack of reflection and criticality excludes only the objective certainty about what is correct; it includes the possibility and danger of making mistakes, but not at all the necessity of doing so. There is a naivete of feeling and of will, as well as of mental picturing and thinking in the broadest sense of the latter word, and furthermore a naiveté in expressing these inner states instead of repressing or modifying them through consideration and reflection. Naiveté is not, at least consciously, influenced by tradition, education, or rules; in every area it is what its root word ‘nativus’ expresses: the unconscious, impulsive, instinctive, daimonic.” Taking our start from these statements let us grasp the concept “naive still more precisely. In every activity we carry out, two things come into consideration: the activity itself and knowledge of the laws inherent in it We can be completely absorbed in the former without asking about the latter. This is the case with the artist who does not know, in a reflective way, the laws by which he creates, but rather exercises them out of feeling and sensitivity. We call him naive. But there is a kind of self-observation that asks about the laws inherent in what it does, and exchanges the naivete just described for the consciousness that it knows exactly the scope and justification of what it carries out. Let us call this critical We believe that this formulation best expresses the sense of this concept as it has established itself in philosophy, more or less consciously, since Kant According to it critical reflectivity is the opposite of naiveté. We call a procedure critical that takes hold of the laws of its own activity in order to learn to know their trustworthiness and limits. Epistemology can only be a critical science, however. Its object, in fact, is an eminently subjective activity of man: knowing, and what it wants to explain is the laws inherent in knowing. All naiveté must therefore be excluded from this science. It must see its strength precisely in the fact that it does carry out what many practically oriented spirits pride themselves on never having done; namely, “thinking about thinking.”