The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. Are There Limits to Cognition?

[ 1 ] We have established that the elements for explaining reality are to be taken from the two spheres: perception and thought. As we have seen, our organization means that the full, total reality, including our own subject, initially appears to us as a duality. Cognition overcomes this duality by assembling the whole thing from the two elements of reality: perception and the concept developed through thinking. Let us call the way in which the world confronts us before it has gained its proper form through cognition the world of appearance in contrast to the entity composed of perception and concept. Then we can say: The world is given to us as a duality (dualistic), and cognition processes it into unity (monistic). A philosophy based on this fundamental principle can be described as monistic philosophy or monism. It is contrasted with the two-world theory or dualism. The latter does not assume two sides of the unified reality that are merely kept apart by our organization, but two absolutely different worlds. It then seeks explanatory principles for one world in the other.

[ 2 ] Dualism is based on a false conception of what we call cognition. It separates the whole of existence into two domains, each of which has its own laws, and leaves these domains externally opposed to each other

[ 3 ] The distinction between the object of perception and the "thing in itself", which was introduced into science by Kant and has not been removed to this day, arises from such dualism. According to our explanations, it is in the nature of our mental organization that a particular thing can only be given as perception. Thinking then overcomes particularization by assigning each perception its lawful place in the world as a whole. As long as the separate parts of the whole of the world are determined as perceptions, we are simply following a law of our subjectivity in the separation. But if we regard the sum of all perceptions as one part and then contrast this with a second part in the "things in themselves", we are philosophizing into the blue. We are then dealing with a mere conceptual game. We construct an artificial contrast, but cannot gain any content for the second part of it, because such a content can only be drawn from perception for a particular thing.

[ 4 ] Any kind of being that is assumed to exist outside the realm of perception and concept is to be relegated to the sphere of unjustified hypotheses. The "thing in itself" belongs to this category. It is only natural that the dualistic thinker cannot find the connection between the hypothetically assumed world principle and the experientially given. A content can only be gained for the hypothetical world principle if it is borrowed from the world of experience and this fact is ignored. Otherwise it remains an empty concept, a non-concept that only has the form of a concept. The dualistic thinker then usually claims that the content of this concept is inaccessible to our cognition; we can only know that such a content exists, not what exists. In both cases, overcoming dualism is impossible. If one brings a few abstract elements of the world of experience into the concept of the thing in itself, then it remains impossible to attribute the rich concrete life of experience to a few properties that are themselves only taken from this perception. Du Bois-Reymond thinks that the imperceptible atoms of matter generate sensation and feeling through their position and movement, and then comes to the conclusion: We can never arrive at a satisfactory explanation of how matter and motion produce sensation and feeling, for "it is quite and for ever incomprehensible that a number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, etc., atoms should not be indifferent to each other. atoms should not be indifferent to how they lie and move, how they lay and moved, how they will lie and move. It is in no way comprehensible how consciousness could arise from their interaction". This conclusion is characteristic of the entire school of thought. From the rich world of perceptions is separated: Position and movement. These are transferred to the imaginary world of atoms. Then comes the astonishment that concrete life cannot be developed out of this self-made principle borrowed from the world of perception.

[ 5 ] It follows from the definition of his principle given above that the dualist, who works with a completely empty concept of the "in itself", cannot arrive at any explanation of the world.

[ 6 ] In any case, the dualist is forced to set insurmountable limits to our cognitive capacity. The adherent of a monistic worldview knows that everything he needs to explain a given phenomenon of the world must lie in the realm of the ultimate. What prevents him from arriving at this can only be accidental temporal or spatial barriers or deficiencies in his organization. And not the human organization in general, but only its particular individual organization.

[ 7 ] It follows from the concept of cognition, as we have defined it, that we cannot speak of limits to cognition. Cognition is not a general world affair, but a business that man has to settle with himself. Things do not demand an explanation. They exist and interact according to the laws that can be discovered through thinking. They exist in inseparable unity with these laws. Our ego confronts them and initially only grasps what we have described as perception. But the power to find the other part of reality is found within this ego. Only when the ego has united the two elements of reality, which are inseparably connected in the world, has the satisfaction of cognition occurred: the ego has arrived at reality again.

[ 8 ] The preconditions for the emergence of cognition are therefore by and for the ego. The latter poses the questions of cognition to itself. It takes them from the element of thinking, which is completely clear and transparent in itself. If we ask ourselves questions that we cannot answer, the content of the question cannot be clear and distinct in all its parts. It is not the world that asks us questions, but we ask them ourselves.

[ 9 ] I can imagine that I lack any possibility of answering a question that I find written down somewhere without knowing the sphere from which the content of the question is taken.

[ 10 ] Our cognition involves questions that are posed to us by the fact that a sphere of perception conditioned by place, time and subjective organization is confronted by a sphere of concepts pointing to the universality of the world. My task consists in balancing these two spheres, which are well known to me. There can be no talk of a limit to cognition. This or that can remain unexplained at any given time because we are prevented by the scene of life from perceiving the things that are involved. But what is not found today may be found tomorrow. The barriers caused by this are only temporary and can be overcome with the progression of perception and thought.

[ 11 ] Dualism makes the mistake of transferring the opposition of object and subject, which only has meaning within the realm of perception, to purely imagined entities outside of it. But since the things separated within the perceptual horizon are only separate as long as the perceiver abstains from thinking, which abolishes all separation and allows it to be recognized as merely subjectively conditioned, the dualist transfers determinations to entities behind the perceptions, which themselves have no absolute, but only a relative validity for them. He thus breaks down the two factors relevant to the process of cognition, perception and concept, into four: 1. the object in itself; 2. the perception that the subject has of the object; 3. the subject; 4. the concept that relates the perception to the object in itself. The relationship between the object and the subject is a real one; the subject is really (dynamically) influenced by the object. This real process should not fall into our consciousness. But it is supposed to produce a counter-effect in the subject to the effect emanating from the object. The result of this counter-effect should be perception. This only falls into consciousness. The object has an objective reality (independent of the subject), the perception a subjective reality. This subjective reality relates the subject to the object. The latter relationship is an ideal one. Dualism thus splits the process of cognition into two parts. One part, the creation of the object of perception from the "thing in itself", takes place outside, the other, the connection of perception with the concept and its relation to the object, within consciousness. Under these conditions, it is clear that the dualist believes to gain in his concepts only subjective representations of what lies before his consciousness. The objectively real process in the subject, through which perception comes about, and all the more the objective relationships of the "things in themselves" remain directly unrecognizable for such a dualist; in his opinion, man can only obtain conceptual representations for the objectively real. The unifying bond of things, which connects them among themselves and objectively with our individual spirit (as a "thing in itself"), lies beyond consciousness in a being in itself, of which we could also only have a conceptual representative in our consciousness.

[ 12 ] Dualism believes that the whole world evaporates into an abstract conceptual scheme if it does not establish real connections alongside the conceptual connections of the objects. In other words: for the dualist, the ideal principles that can be found through thinking appear too airy, and he still seeks real principles that can support them.

[ 13 ] Let us take a closer look at these real principles. The naive person (naive realist) regards the objects of external experience as realities. The fact that he can grasp these things with his hands and see them with his eyes is regarded by him as evidence of reality. "Nothing exists that cannot be perceived" is virtually the first axiom of the naive person, which is just as well recognized in its inversion: "Everything that can be perceived exists." The best proof of this assertion is the naive person's belief in immortality and spirits. They imagine the soul as subtle sensual matter that can even become visible to ordinary people under special conditions (naive belief in ghosts).

[ 14 ] For the naive realist, everything else, namely the world of ideas, is unreal, "merely ideal" in comparison to this real world. What we think in addition to the objects is merely thought about the things. Thought adds nothing real to perception.

[ 15 ] But it is not only with regard to the existence of things that the naive person considers sense perception to be the only testimony to reality, but also with regard to events. In his view, one thing can only have an effect on another if a force available for sensory perception emanates from the one and grips the other. The older physics believed that very fine substances emanate from the bodies and penetrate the soul through our sensory organs. The real seeing of these substances is only impossible because of the coarseness of our senses in relation to the fineness of these substances. In principle, these substances were conceded reality for the same reason that objects of the sensory world are conceded reality, namely because of their form of being, which was thought to be analogous to that of sensory reality.

[ 16 ] The intrinsic essence of the ideal experience is not regarded by the naive consciousness as real in the same sense as the sensory experience. An object grasped in the "mere idea" is regarded as a mere chimera until the conviction of reality can be delivered through sensory perception. To put it briefly, the naive person demands the real testimony of the senses in addition to the ideal testimony of his thinking. In this need of naive man lies the reason for the emergence of primitive forms of belief in revelation. The God who is given through thinking always remains only a "thought" God to the naive consciousness. The naive consciousness demands manifestation through means that are accessible to sensory perception. The God must appear in the flesh, and one wants to place little value on the testimony of thought, only, for example, on the fact that divinity is proven through the sensually ascertainable transformation of water into wine.

[ 17 ] The naive person also imagines cognition itself as a process analogous to sensory processes. Things make an impression in the soul, or they send out images that penetrate through the senses and so on.

[ 18 ] That which the naive person can perceive with the senses, he considers to be real, and that of which he has no such perception (God, soul, cognition, etc.), he imagines to be analogous to what he perceives.

[ 19 ] If naive realism wants to establish a science, it can only see such a science in an exact description of the content of perception. The concepts are only a means to an end. They are there to create ideal counter-images for the perceptions. They mean nothing for the things themselves. For the naive realist, only the tulip individuals that are seen or can be seen are considered real; the one idea of the tulip is considered an abstraction, an unreal mental image that the soul has assembled from the characteristics common to all tulips.

[ 20 ] Naïve realism with its principle of the reality of everything perceived is refuted by experience, which teaches that the content of perceptions is of a transitory nature. The tulip that I see is real today; after a year it will have disappeared into nothingness. What has survived is the genus tulip. For naive realism, however, this genus is "only" an idea, not a reality. Thus, this worldview sees itself in a position to see its realities come and disappear, while what it considers to be unreal asserts itself against the real. Naive realism must therefore accept something ideal in addition to perceptions. It must take into itself entities that it cannot perceive with the senses. It comes to terms with itself by thinking their form of existence analogous to that of the sense objects. Such hypothetically assumed realities are the invisible forces through which the sensually perceptible things interact. Such a thing is heredity, which continues beyond the individual, and which is the reason why a new one develops from the individual, which is similar to it, whereby the species is preserved. Such a thing is the life principle that permeates the organic body, the soul, for which one always finds a concept in naive consciousness formed by analogy with sense realities, and is finally the divine essence of naive man. This divine essence is thought to be effective in a way that corresponds entirely to what can be perceived as the mode of action of man himself: anthropomorphic.

[ 21 ] Modern physics attributes sensory perceptions to processes of the smallest parts of bodies and an infinitely fine substance, the ether or something similar. What we perceive as heat, for example, is the movement of its parts within the space occupied by the body that causes the heat. Here again, the imperceptible is conceived in analogy with the perceptible. In this sense, the sensory analog of the term "body" is, for example, the interior of a room closed on all sides, in which elastic spheres move in all directions, colliding with each other, bouncing against and off the walls and so on.

[ 22 ] Without such assumptions, naïve realism would see the world as a disjointed aggregate of perceptions without mutual relationships that does not coalesce into a unity. It is clear, however, that naive realism can only arrive at this assumption through an inconsistency. If it wants to remain true to its principle that only what is perceived is real, then it cannot assume anything real where it perceives nothing. The imperceptible forces that act from the perceptible things are actually unjustified hypotheses from the standpoint of naive realism. And because it knows of no other realities, it endows its hypothetical forces with perceptual content. He thus applies a form of being (perceptual existence) to an area where he lacks the means that alone can make a statement about this form of being: sensory perception.

[ 23 ] This inherently contradictory worldview leads to metaphysical realism. In addition to the perceptible reality, it constructs an imperceptible one, which it thinks is analogous to the first. Metaphysical realism is therefore necessarily dualism.

[ 24 ] Where metaphysical realism notices a relationship between perceptible things (approach through movement, becoming aware of an objective, etc.), it posits a reality. However, the relationship he notices can only be expressed by thinking, not perceived. The ideal relationship is arbitrarily made into something similar to the perceptible. Thus, for this school of thought, the real world is composed of the objects of perception, which are in eternal becoming, coming and disappearing, and of the imperceptible forces by which the objects of perception are produced and which are the permanent things.

[ 25 ] Metaphysical realism is a contradictory mixture of naive realism and idealism. Its hypothetical powers are imperceptible entities with perceptual qualities, and it has decided to admit, in addition to the realm of the world for whose form of existence it has a means of knowledge in perception, a realm in which this means fails and which can only be determined by thinking. At the same time, however, he cannot also decide to recognize the form of being that thinking conveys to him, the concept (the idea), as an equally valid factor alongside perception. If we want to avoid the contradiction of imperceptible perception, we must concede that for us there is no other form of existence for the relationships between perceptions mediated by thinking than that of the concept. The world presents itself as the sum of perceptions and their conceptual (ideal) references if we throw out the unjustified component of metaphysical realism. Thus metaphysical realism leads to a worldview that demands the principle of perceptibility for perception and conceivability for the relationships between perceptions. This worldview cannot accept a third realm alongside the perceptual and conceptual world, for which both principles, the so-called real principle and the ideal principle, are valid at the same time.

[ 26 ] If metaphysical realism asserts that, in addition to the ideal relationship between the object of perception and its subject of perception, there must also be a real relationship between the "thing in itself" of perception and the "thing in itself" of the perceptible subject (the so-called individual spirit), then this assertion is based on the false assumption of a non-perceptible process of being analogous to the processes of the sense world. Furthermore, when metaphysical realism says: With my perceptual world I come into a conscious-ideal relationship; with the real world, however, I can only come into a dynamic (force) relationship, - it commits no less the error already criticized. We can only speak of a relation of forces within the world of perception (the realm of the sense of touch), but not outside it.

[ 27 ] We want to call the world view characterized above, into which metaphysical realism ultimately leads when it sheds its contradictory elements, monism, because it unites one-sided realism with idealism into a higher unity.

[ 28 ] For naïve realism, the real world is a sum of perceptual objects; for metaphysical realism, in addition to perceptions, the imperceptible forces also have reality; monism replaces forces with ideal connections, which it gains through its thinking. Such connections, however, are the laws of nature. A law of nature is nothing other than the conceptual expression for the connection between certain perceptions.

[ 29 ] Monism is not in a position to ask for other principles of explanation of reality apart from perception and concept. It knows that there is no reason to do so in the whole realm of reality. He sees in the perceptual world, as it is immediately available to perception, a half-reality; in the union of this with the conceptual world he finds the full reality. The metaphysical realist can object to the supporter of monism: It may be that for your organization your cognition is perfect in itself, that no link is missing; but you do not know how the world is reflected in an intelligence that is organized differently from yours. The answer of monism will be: If there are intelligences other than human intelligences, if their perceptions have a different form than ours, then only that which comes to me from them through perception and conception has meaning for me. Through my perception, and indeed through this specific human perception, I am confronted with the object as subject. The connection between things is thus interrupted. The subject re-establishes this connection through thinking and has thus reintegrated itself into the world as a whole. Since it is only through our subject that this whole appears to be severed at the point between our perception and our concept, true knowledge is also given in the unification of these two. For beings with a different perceptual world (for example, with twice the number of sense organs), the connection would appear to be interrupted at a different point, and the restoration would therefore also have to have a form specific to these beings. Only for naive and metaphysical realism, both of which see in the content of the soul only an ideal representation of the world, does the question of the limit of cognition exist. For them, that which is outside the subject is an absolute, something that rests in itself, and the content of the subject is an image of it that stands absolutely outside this absolute. The perfection of cognition is based on the greater or lesser similarity of the image to the absolute object. A being in which the number of senses is smaller than in man will perceive less of the world, one in which it is greater will perceive more. The former will therefore have a more imperfect cognition than the latter.

[ 30 ] For monism, the situation is different. The form is determined by the organization of the perceiving being, where the world context appears torn apart into subject and object. The object is not an absolute, but only a relative one in relation to this particular subject. The bridging of the opposition can therefore only happen again in the very specific way that is peculiar to the human subject. As soon as the ego, which is separated from the world in perception, is reintegrated into the world context in thinking observation, then all further questioning, which was only a consequence of the separation, ceases.

[ 31 ] A different kind of being would have a different kind of cognition. Ours is sufficient to answer the questions posed by our own being.

[ 32 ] Metaphysical realism must ask: By what is that which is given as perception given; by what is the subject affected?

[ 33 ] For monism, perception is determined by the subject. At the same time, however, the subject has in thinking the means to abolish the determination caused by itself.

[ 34 ] Metaphysical realism faces a further difficulty if it wants to explain the similarity of the world views of different human individuals. It must ask itself: How is it that the world view that I construct from my subjectively determined perception and my concepts is the same as that which another human individual constructs from the same two subjective factors? How can I even draw conclusions from my subjective world view to that of another person? The metaphysical realist believes that he can deduce the similarity of their subjective world views from the fact that people practically come to terms with each other. From the similarity of these world views, he then further infers the sameness of the individual spirits underlying the individual human subjects of perception or the "I in itself" underlying the subjects.

[ 35 ] This conclusion is thus one from a sum of effects to the character of the underlying causes. We believe that we can recognize the facts from a sufficiently large number of cases in such a way that we know how the inferred causes will behave in other cases. We call such an inference an inductive inference. We shall find ourselves obliged to modify the results of such an inference if something unexpected turns up in a further observation, because the character of the result is determined only by the individual form of the observations made. This conditional knowledge of causes, however, is completely sufficient for practical life, claims the metaphysical realist.

[ 36 ] Inductive reasoning is the methodological basis of modern metaphysical realism. There was a time when it was believed that something could be developed from concepts that was no longer a concept. It was believed that the metaphysical real beings that metaphysical realism requires could be recognized from the concepts. Today, this kind of philosophizing is a thing of the past. Instead, however, one believes that from a sufficiently large number of facts of perception one can deduce the character of the thing in itself that underlies these facts. As in the past from the concept, so today we believe we can develop the metaphysical from the perceptions. Since we have the concepts before us in transparent clarity, we believe that we can also deduce the metaphysical from them with absolute certainty. The perceptions are not equally transparent. Each subsequent one presents itself somewhat differently from the previous ones of the same kind. Basically, therefore, what is deduced from the previous ones is modified somewhat by each subsequent one. The form that is obtained in this way for the metaphysical can therefore only be called a relatively correct one; it is subject to correction by future cases. The metaphysics of Eduard von Hartmann, whose motto on the title page of his first major work is: "Spekulative Resultate nach induktiv naturwissenschaftlicher Methode. "

[ 37 ] The form that the metaphysical realist currently gives to his things in themselves is one obtained through inductive conclusions. He is convinced of the existence of an objectively real context of the world in addition to the "subjective" one recognizable through perception and concept through considerations about the process of cognition. He believes that he can determine the nature of this objective reality through inductive conclusions from his perceptions.

Addition to the new edition (1918)

[ 38 ] For the unbiased observation of experience in perception and concept, as has been attempted to be described in the preceding remarks, certain ideas that arise on the ground of the observation of nature will always be disturbing. One says to oneself, standing on this ground, that colors from red to violet are perceived by the eye in the light spectrum. But beyond the violet there are forces in the radiation space of the spectrum to which no color perception of the eye corresponds, but a chemical effect; likewise, beyond the limit of red effectiveness there are radiations that have only thermal effects. Considerations directed towards such and similar phenomena lead to the view that the scope of the human world of perception is determined by the scope of man's senses, and that he would have a completely different world before him if he had other senses in addition to his own, or if he had other senses at all. Whoever indulges in the extravagant fantasies to which, in this direction, the brilliant discoveries of recent natural science in particular offer a quite seductive inducement, may well come to the conclusion: Only that which is capable of acting on the senses formed out of his organization falls into man's field of observation. He has no right to regard what he perceives, limited by his organization, as somehow decisive for reality. Every new sense would have to present him with a different picture of reality. - All this is, within the appropriate limits, a perfectly justified opinion. But if someone allows himself to be misled by this opinion in the unbiased observation of the relationship between perception and concept asserted in these explanations, he obstructs the path to a world and human knowledge rooted in reality. Experiencing the essence of thought, i.e. the active elaboration of the conceptual world, is something quite different from experiencing something perceptible through the senses. Whatever senses man might still have: none would give him a reality if he did not think through what he perceives through them with concepts; and every sense of whatever kind, thus penetrated, gives man the possibility of living within reality. The fantasy of the possible completely different perceptual image with other senses has nothing to do with the question of how man stands in the real world. One must realize that every perceptual image receives its form from the organization of the perceiving being, but that the perceptual image permeated by the experienced thinking observation leads the human being into reality. It is not the fantastic imagination of how a world should look different to others than the human senses that can cause man to seek knowledge about his relationship to the world, but the insight that each perception only gives a part of the reality it contains, that it therefore leads away from its own reality. This insight is then accompanied by the other insight that thinking leads into the part of reality hidden by the perception itself. The unbiased observation of the relationship described here between perception and the concept developed by thinking can also be disturbed if, in the field of physical experience, the necessity arises to speak not at all of directly vividly perceptible elements, but of non-visible quantities such as electric or magnetic lines of force and so on. It can appear as if the elements of reality that physics speaks of have nothing to do with either the perceptible or the concept developed in active thinking. But such an opinion is based on self-deception. First of all, it is important that everything worked out in physics, insofar as it does not represent unjustified hypotheses that should remain excluded, is gained through perception and concept. What appears to be non-visual content is in fact placed in the field in which the perceptions lie by the physicist's correct cognitive instinct, and it is thought of in terms with which one operates in this field. The strengths of force in the electric and magnetic fields and so on are, by their very nature, not obtained by any other process of cognition than that which takes place between perception and concept. - An increase or a different organization of the human senses would result in a different image of perception, an enrichment or a different organization of human experience; but real knowledge would also have to be gained through the interaction of concept and perception. The deepening of cognition depends on the powers of intuition (see page 95) that manifest themselves in thinking. In the experience that takes shape in thinking, this intuition can delve into deeper or less deep undergrounds of reality. By expanding the perceptual image, this immersion can receive stimuli and in this way be indirectly promoted. However, never should diving into the depths, as the attainment of reality, be confused with the confrontation of a wider or narrower perceptual image, in which always only half a reality, as it is conditioned by the cognitive organization, is present. He who does not lose himself in abstractions will see how the fact also comes into consideration for the knowledge of the human being that for physics in the field of perception elements must be explored for which a sense is not directly attuned as for color or sound. The concrete nature of man is not only determined by that which he confronts as direct perception through his organization, but also by the fact that he excludes others from this direct perception. Just as the unconscious state of sleep is necessary to life alongside the conscious state of wakefulness, so the self-experience of man is necessarily surrounded by a - much larger even - circle of non-sensually perceptible elements in the field from which the sensory perceptions originate. All this is already indirectly expressed in the original presentation of this writing. The author has added this expansion of the content here because he has found that some readers have not read carefully enough. - It should also be borne in mind that the idea of perception, as it is developed in this paper, must not be confused with that of external sense-perception, which is only a special case of it. It will be seen from what has already been said, but even more so from what will be said later, that here everything that approaches man sensually and spiritually is understood as perception before it is grasped by the actively developed concept. In order to have perceptions of a mental or spiritual nature, senses of the usual kind are not necessary. One could say that such an extension of the usual use of language is inadmissible. But it is absolutely necessary if one does not want to be fettered in certain areas by the use of language in the expansion of knowledge. Whoever speaks of perception only in the sense of sensory perception does not arrive at a concept that is useful for knowledge, even through this sensory perception. One must sometimes extend a concept so that it receives its appropriate meaning in a narrower field. One must also sometimes add something else to what is first thought in a concept, so that what is thought in this way finds its justification or also justification. Thus on page 107 of this book we find the following statement: "The concept is therefore an individualized concept." It was objected to me that this was an unusual use of the word. But this use of words is necessary if we want to understand what imagination actually is. What would happen to the progress of knowledge if the objection was made to everyone who is put in the position of having to correct concepts: "That is an unusual use of words."