Slashdot Mirror

I've never seen anyone seriously argue that the woman depicted in the Mona Lisa (if it is actually a woman, there is considerable debate on that point) is attractive. Which has very little to do with how significant a painting is judged to be. If it did, Alberto Vargas would be listed as one of the greatest masters of western art. http://fineart.elib.com/fineart.php?prev=Ethnicity/Peruvian-American&dir=Site_index%2FPeruvian-American%2FVargas

>> spoken in 1919:

At the present time the Earth is going through its Fourth Round, and
this is the mineral. During this time it is the task of mankind to work
upon the mineral kingdom... We are now in the midst of this activity,
and in the course of the next epochs, THE EARTH WILL HAVE TO BECOME
COMPLETELY TRANSFORMED, SO THAT EVENTUALLY THERE WILL BE
NO SINGLE ATOM ON THE EARTH THAT HAS NOT BEEN WORKED ON BY MAN.
In earlier times these atoms became more and more solidified; now however
they are becoming increasingly separated. Radio-activity did not exist in
earlier times and could not therefore be discovered. It has only existed
for a few thousand years, because now the atoms split up more and more.

(Foundations of Esotericism, Oct.5-1905, Rudolf Steiner Press, pp.66-67)

"Just as the eye percieves colours and the ear sounds,
so thinking percieves ideas; it is an organ of perception. "

(Goethean Science)

| THE SUDDEN FLASH OF INSIGHT OCCURS WHEN solvers engage distinct
| neural and cognitive processes that allow them to see connections
| that previously eluded them.

maybe its the other way around -- perhaps the distinct neural
processes occur when one has the flash of insight.

(but anyone who starts with the kantian presuppositions
must reject that idea).

regards,
john

What people know, they pass their own judgment on
and do not permit it to exercise such an authority.
What they do not know they accept on authority.

(Rudolf Steiner, Warmth Course - Lecture IV)

--

The physicist announces that he explains all phenomena by means
of purely mechanical facts. This causes people to say, "Well,
there are only mechanical facts in space. Life must be a mechanical
thing, soul phenomena must be mechanical and spiritual things must
be mechanical." 'Exact sciences' will not admit the possibility of
a spiritual foundation for the world. And 'exact science' works as
an especially powerful authority because they are not familiar with
it. What people know, they pass their own judgment on and do not
permit it to exercise such an authority. What they do not know they
accept on authority. If more were done to popularize the so-called
'rigidly exact science,' the authority of some of those who sit
entrenched in possession of this exact science would practically
disappear.

(Rudolf Steiner, Warmth Course, Lecture IV,
Stuttgart, March 4th, 1920)

Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world.
For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of
thoughts about the phenomena of the world.

Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter or material
processes. But, in doing so, it is already confronted by two different
sets of facts: the material world, and the thoughts about it.

The materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding
them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes
place in the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place in
the animal organs. Just as he attributes mechanical and organic
effects to matter, so he credits matter in certain circumstances with
the capacity to think.

He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from
one place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to matter
instead of to himself.

And thus he is back again at his starting point. How does matter come
to think about its own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with
itself and content just to exist?

The materialist has turned his attention away from the definite
subject, his own I, and has arrived at an image of something quite
vague and indefinite. Here the old riddle meets him again. The
materialistic conception cannot solve the problem; it can only shift
it from one place to another.

(Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter 2)

i've always felt it is better to go back to the ORIGINAL documents
than to read commentary ABOUT them. in addition to Darwin, there was
also Haeckel, Kant, and Steiner -- who were certainly some of darwin's
most significant fellow researchers in the area. here's a experpted chapter from
one of Darwins contemporaries circa 1886:

The TYPUS in Organic Nature

Above all, one has committed a serious error in this. One believed that the method of inorganic science should simply be taken over into the realm of organisms. One considered the method employed here to be altogether the only scientific one, and thought that for "organics" to be scientifically possible, it would have to be so in exactly the same sense in which physics is, for example. The possibility was forgotten, however, that perhaps the concept of what is scientific is much broader than "the explanation of the world according to the laws of the physical world." Even today one has not yet penetrated through to this knowledge. Instead of investigating what it is that makes the approach of the inorganic sciences scientific, and of then seeing a method that can be applied to the world of living things while adhering to the requirements that result from this investigation, one simply declared that the laws gained upon this lower stage of existence are universal.

Above all, however, one should investigate what the basis is for any scientific thinking. We have done this in our study. In the preceding chapter we have also recognized that inorganic lawfulness is not the only one in existence but is only a special case of all possible lawfulness in general. The method of physics is simply one particular case of a general scientific way of investigation in which the nature of the pertinent objects and the region this science serves are taken into consideration. If this method is extended into the organic, one obliterates the specific nature of the organic. Instead of investigating the organic in accordance with its nature, one forces upon it a lawfulness alien to it. In this way, however, by denying the organic, one will never come to know it. Such scientific conduct simply repeats, upon a higher level, what it has gained upon a lower one; and although it believes that it is bringing the higher form of existence under laws established elsewhere, this form slips away from it in its efforts, -because such scientific conduct does not know how to grasp and deal with this form in its particular nature.

All this comes from the erroneous view that the method of a science is extraneous to its objects of study, that it is not determined by these objects but rather by our own nature. It is believed that one must think in a particular way about objects, that one must indeed think about all objects -- throughout the entire universe -- in the same way. Investigations are undertaken that are supposed to show that, due to the nature of our spirit, we can think only inductively or deductively, etc.

In doing so, however, one overlooks the fact that the objects perhaps will not tolerate the way of looking at them that we want to apply to them.

A look at the views of Haeckel, who is certainly the most significant of the natural-scientific theoreticians of the present day, shows us that the objection we are making to the organic natural science of our day is entirely justified: namely, that it does not carry over into organic nature the principle of scientific contemplation in the absolute sense, but only the principle of inorganic nature.

When he demands of all scientific striving that "the causal interconnections of phenomena become recognized everywhere," when he says that "if psychic mechanics were not so infinitely complex, if we were also able to have a complete overview of the historical development of psychic functions, we would then be able to bring them all into a mathematical soul formula," then one can see clearly from this what he wants: to treat the whole world according to the stereotype of the method of the physical sciences.

This demand, however, does not underlie Darwinism in its original form but only in its present-day interpretation. We have seen that to explain a process in inorganic nature means to show its lawful emergence out of other sense-perceptible realities, to trace it back to objects that, like itself, belong to the sense world. But how does modern organic science employ the principles of adaptation and the struggle for existence (both of which we certainly do not doubt are the expression of facts)? It is believed that one can trace the character of a particular species directly back to the outer conditions in which it lived, in somewhat the same way as the heating of an object is traced back to the rays of the sun falling upon it. One forgets completely that one can never show a species' character, with all its qualities that are full of content, to be the result of these conditions. The conditions may have a determining influence, but they are not a creating cause. We can definitely say that under the influence of certain circumstances a species had to evolve in such a way that one or another organ became particularly developed; what is there as content, however, the specifically organic, cannot be derived from outer conditions. Let us say that an organic entity has the essential characteristics a b c; then, under the influence of certain outer conditions, it has evolved. Through this, its characteristics have taken on the particular form a'b'c'. When we take these influences into account we will then understand that a has evolved into the form of a', b into b', c into c'. But the specific nature of a, b, and c can never arise as the outcome of external conditions.

One must, above all, focus one's thinking on the question: From what do we then derive the content of that general "something" of which we consider the individual organic entity to be a specialized case? We know very well that the specialization comes from external influences. But we must trace the specialized shape itself back to an inner principle. We gain enlightenment as to why just this particular form has evolved when we study a being's environment. But this particular form is, after all, something in and of itself; we see that it possesses certain characteristics. We see what is essential. A content, configurated in itself, confronts the outer phenomenal world, and this content provides us with what we need in tracing those characteristics back to their source. In inorganic nature we perceive a fact and see, in order to explain it, a second, a third fact and so on; and the result is that the first fact appears to us to be the necessary consequence of the other ones. In the organic world this is not so. There, in addition to the facts, we need yet another factor. We must see what works in from outer circumstances as confronted by something that does not passively allow itself to be determined by them but rather determines itself, actively, out of itself, under the influence of the outer circumstances.

But what is that basic factor? It can, after all, be nothing other than what manifests in the particular in the form of the general. In the particular, however, a definite organism always manifests. That basic factor is therefore an organism in the form of the general: a general image of the organism, which comprises within itself all the particular forms of organisms.

Following Goethe's example, let us call this general organism typus. Whatever the word typus might mean etymologically, we are using it in this Goethean sense and never mean anything else by it than what we have indicated. This typus is not developed in all its completeness in any single organism. Only our thinking, in accordance with reason, is able to take possession of it, by drawing it forth, as a general image, from phenomena. The typus is therewith the idea of the organism: the animalness in the animal, the general plant in the specific one.

One should not picture this typus as anything rigid. It has nothing at all to do with what Agassiz, Darwin's most significant opponent, called "an incarnate creative thought of God's." The typus is something altogether fluid, from which all the particular species and genera, which one can regard as subtypes or specialized types, can be derived. The typus does not preclude the theory of evolution. It does not contradict the fact that organic forms evolve out of one another. It is only reason's protest against the view that organic development consists purely in sequential, factual (sense-perceptible) forms. It is what underlies this whole development. It is what establishes the interconnection in all this endless manifoldness. It is the inner aspect of what we experience as the outer forms of living things. The Darwinian theory presupposes the typus.

The typus is the true archetypal organism; according to how it specializes ideally, it is either archetypal plant or archetypal animal. It cannot be any one, sense-perceptibly real living being. What Haeckel or other naturalists regard as the archetypal form is already a particular shape; it is, in fact, the simplest shape of the typus. The fact that in time the typus arises in its simplest form first does not require the forms arising later to be the result of those preceding them in time. AR forms result as a consequence of the typus; the first as well as the last are manifestations of it. We must take it as the basis of a true organic science and not simply undertake to derive the individual animal and plant species out of one another. The typus runs like a red thread through all the developmental stages of the organic world. We must hold onto it and then with it travel through this great realm of many forms. Then this realm will become understandable to us. Otherwise it falls apart for us, just as the rest of the world of experience does, into an unconnected mass of particulars. In fact, even when we believe that we are leading what is later, more complicated, more compound, back to a previous simpler form and that in the latter we have something original, even then we are deceiving ourselves, for we have only derived a specific form from a specific form.

Friedrich Theodor Vischer once said of the Darwinian theory that it necessitates a revision of our concept of time. We have now arrived at a point that makes evident to us in what sense such a revision would have to occur. It would have to show that deriving something later out of something earlier is no explanation, that what is first in time is not first in principle. All deriving has to do with principles, and at best it could be shown which factors were at work such that one species of beings evolved before another one in time.

The typus plays the same role in the organic world as natural law does in the inorganic. Just as natural law provides us with the possibility of recognizing each individual occurrence as a part of one great whole, so the typus puts us in a position to regard the individual organism as a particular form of the archetypal form.

http://wn.elib.com/Steiner/Books/GA002/English/GA0 02_index.html

--

best regards,

john

i've always felt it is better to go back to the ORIGINAL documents
than to read commentary ABOUT them. in addition to Darwin, there was
also Haeckel, Kant, and Steiner -- who were certainly some of darwin's
most significant fellow researchers in the area. here's a experpted chapter from
one of Darwins contemporaries circa 1886:

The TYPUS in Organic Nature

Above all, one has committed a serious error in this. One believed that the method of inorganic science should simply be taken over into the realm of organisms. One considered the method employed here to be altogether the only scientific one, and thought that for "organics" to be scientifically possible, it would have to be so in exactly the same sense in which physics is, for example. The possibility was forgotten, however, that perhaps the concept of what is scientific is much broader than "the explanation of the world according to the laws of the physical world." Even today one has not yet penetrated through to this knowledge. Instead of investigating what it is that makes the approach of the inorganic sciences scientific, and of then seeing a method that can be applied to the world of living things while adhering to the requirements that result from this investigation, one simply declared that the laws gained upon this lower stage of existence are universal.

Above all, however, one should investigate what the basis is for any scientific thinking. We have done this in our study. In the preceding chapter we have also recognized that inorganic lawfulness is not the only one in existence but is only a special case of all possible lawfulness in general. The method of physics is simply one particular case of a general scientific way of investigation in which the nature of the pertinent objects and the region this science serves are taken into consideration. If this method is extended into the organic, one obliterates the specific nature of the organic. Instead of investigating the organic in accordance with its nature, one forces upon it a lawfulness alien to it. In this way, however, by denying the organic, one will never come to know it. Such scientific conduct simply repeats, upon a higher level, what it has gained upon a lower one; and although it believes that it is bringing the higher form of existence under laws established elsewhere, this form slips away from it in its efforts, -because such scientific conduct does not know how to grasp and deal with this form in its particular nature.

All this comes from the erroneous view that the method of a science is extraneous to its objects of study, that it is not determined by these objects but rather by our own nature. It is believed that one must think in a particular way about objects, that one must indeed think about all objects -- throughout the entire universe -- in the same way. Investigations are undertaken that are supposed to show that, due to the nature of our spirit, we can think only inductively or deductively, etc.

In doing so, however, one overlooks the fact that the objects perhaps will not tolerate the way of looking at them that we want to apply to them.

A look at the views of Haeckel, who is certainly the most significant of the natural-scientific theoreticians of the present day, shows us that the objection we are making to the organic natural science of our day is entirely justified: namely, that it does not carry over into organic nature the principle of scientific contemplation in the absolute sense, but only the principle of inorganic nature.

When he demands of all scientific striving that "the causal interconnections of phenomena become recognized everywhere," when he says that "if psychic mechanics were not so infinitely complex, if we were also able to have a complete overview of the historical development of psychic functions, we would then be able to bring them all into a mathematical soul formula," then one can see clearly from this what he wants: to treat the whole world according to the stereotype of the method of the physical sciences.

This demand, however, does not underlie Darwinism in its original form but only in its present-day interpretation. We have seen that to explain a process in inorganic nature means to show its lawful emergence out of other sense-perceptible realities, to trace it back to objects that, like itself, belong to the sense world. But how does modern organic science employ the principles of adaptation and the struggle for existence (both of which we certainly do not doubt are the expression of facts)? It is believed that one can trace the character of a particular species directly back to the outer conditions in which it lived, in somewhat the same way as the heating of an object is traced back to the rays of the sun falling upon it. One forgets completely that one can never show a species' character, with all its qualities that are full of content, to be the result of these conditions. The conditions may have a determining influence, but they are not a creating cause. We can definitely say that under the influence of certain circumstances a species had to evolve in such a way that one or another organ became particularly developed; what is there as content, however, the specifically organic, cannot be derived from outer conditions. Let us say that an organic entity has the essential characteristics a b c; then, under the influence of certain outer conditions, it has evolved. Through this, its characteristics have taken on the particular form a'b'c'. When we take these influences into account we will then understand that a has evolved into the form of a', b into b', c into c'. But the specific nature of a, b, and c can never arise as the outcome of external conditions.

One must, above all, focus one's thinking on the question: From what do we then derive the content of that general "something" of which we consider the individual organic entity to be a specialized case? We know very well that the specialization comes from external influences. But we must trace the specialized shape itself back to an inner principle. We gain enlightenment as to why just this particular form has evolved when we study a being's environment. But this particular form is, after all, something in and of itself; we see that it possesses certain characteristics. We see what is essential. A content, configurated in itself, confronts the outer phenomenal world, and this content provides us with what we need in tracing those characteristics back to their source. In inorganic nature we perceive a fact and see, in order to explain it, a second, a third fact and so on; and the result is that the first fact appears to us to be the necessary consequence of the other ones. In the organic world this is not so. There, in addition to the facts, we need yet another factor. We must see what works in from outer circumstances as confronted by something that does not passively allow itself to be determined by them but rather determines itself, actively, out of itself, under the influence of the outer circumstances.

But what is that basic factor? It can, after all, be nothing other than what manifests in the particular in the form of the general. In the particular, however, a definite organism always manifests. That basic factor is therefore an organism in the form of the general: a general image of the organism, which comprises within itself all the particular forms of organisms.

Following Goethe's example, let us call this general organism typus. Whatever the word typus might mean etymologically, we are using it in this Goethean sense and never mean anything else by it than what we have indicated. This typus is not developed in all its completeness in any single organism. Only our thinking, in accordance with reason, is able to take possession of it, by drawing it forth, as a general image, from phenomena. The typus is therewith the idea of the organism: the animalness in the animal, the general plant in the specific one.

One should not picture this typus as anything rigid. It has nothing at all to do with what Agassiz, Darwin's most significant opponent, called "an incarnate creative thought of God's." The typus is something altogether fluid, from which all the particular species and genera, which one can regard as subtypes or specialized types, can be derived. The typus does not preclude the theory of evolution. It does not contradict the fact that organic forms evolve out of one another. It is only reason's protest against the view that organic development consists purely in sequential, factual (sense-perceptible) forms. It is what underlies this whole development. It is what establishes the interconnection in all this endless manifoldness. It is the inner aspect of what we experience as the outer forms of living things. The Darwinian theory presupposes the typus.

The typus is the true archetypal organism; according to how it specializes ideally, it is either archetypal plant or archetypal animal. It cannot be any one, sense-perceptibly real living being. What Haeckel or other naturalists regard as the archetypal form is already a particular shape; it is, in fact, the simplest shape of the typus. The fact that in time the typus arises in its simplest form first does not require the forms arising later to be the result of those preceding them in time. AR forms result as a consequence of the typus; the first as well as the last are manifestations of it. We must take it as the basis of a true organic science and not simply undertake to derive the individual animal and plant species out of one another. The typus runs like a red thread through all the developmental stages of the organic world. We must hold onto it and then with it travel through this great realm of many forms. Then this realm will become understandable to us. Otherwise it falls apart for us, just as the rest of the world of experience does, into an unconnected mass of particulars. In fact, even when we believe that we are leading what is later, more complicated, more compound, back to a previous simpler form and that in the latter we have something original, even then we are deceiving ourselves, for we have only derived a specific form from a specific form.

Friedrich Theodor Vischer once said of the Darwinian theory that it necessitates a revision of our concept of time. We have now arrived at a point that makes evident to us in what sense such a revision would have to occur. It would have to show that deriving something later out of something earlier is no explanation, that what is first in time is not first in principle. All deriving has to do with principles, and at best it could be shown which factors were at work such that one species of beings evolved before another one in time.

The typus plays the same role in the organic world as natural law does in the inorganic. Just as natural law provides us with the possibility of recognizing each individual occurrence as a part of one great whole, so the typus puts us in a position to regard the individual organism as a particular form of the archetypal form.

http://wn.elib.com/Steiner/Books/GA002/English/GA0 02_index.html

--

best regards,

john

the brain is the substrate into which consciousness acts.

cryonics has a religious belief that our sense of Self in somehow built-up from the interaction of matter amongst itself.

however --

Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world.
For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of
thoughts about the phenomena of the world.

Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter or material processes.
But, in doing so, it is already confronted by two different sets of
facts: the material world, and the thoughts about it.

The materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding
them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes
place in the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place
in the animal organs.

Just as he attributes mechanical and organic effects to matter,
so he credits matter in certain circumstances with the capacity
to think.

He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem
from one place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to
matter instead of to himself.

And thus he is back again at his starting point.
How does matter come to think about its own nature?
Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and content
just to exist?

The materialist has turned his attention away
from the definite subject, his own I, and
has arrived at an image of something quite vague
and indefinite. Here the old riddle meets him again.

The materialistic conception cannot solve the problem;
it can only shift it from one place to another.

(Rudolf Steiner, Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter 2)

best regards,

john.

It would be regarded as quite out of the question to study the movements
of a magnet-needle on the Earth's surface in such a way as to try to
explain these movements solely out of what can be observed within the
space occupied by the needle. The movements of the magnet-needle are, as
you know, brought into connection with the magnetism of the Earth. We
connect the momentary direction of the needle with the direction of the
Earth's magnetism, that is, with the line of direction which can be
drawn between the north and south magnetic poles of the Earth. When it
is a question of explaining the phenomena presented by the magnetic
needle, we go out of the region of the needle itself and try to enter,
with the facts that have been collected towards an explanation, into the
totality which alone affords the opportunity to explain phenomena, the
manifestations of which belong to this totality. This rule of method is
certainly observed in regard to some phenomena, - to those, I should
say, the significance of which is fairly obvious. But it is not observed
when it is a question of explaining and understanding more complicated
phenomena.

Just as it is impossible to explain the phenomena of the magnetic needle
from the needle itself, it is equally and fundamentally impossible to
explain the phenomena relating to the organism from out of the organism
itself, or from connections which do not belong to a totality, to a
whole. And just for this reason, because there is so little inclination
to reach the realm of totalities in order to find explanations, we
arrive at those results put forward by the modern scientific method in
which the wider connections are almost entirely left out of the picture.
This method encloses the phenomena, whatever they may be, within the
field of vision of the microscope; while the celestial phenomena are
restricted to what is observable externally, with the help of
instruments. In seeking for explanations, no attempt is made to consider
the necessity of reaching out to the surrounding totality within which a
phenomenon is localised...

(Rudolf Steiner, Lecture Lecture X, January 10th, 1921)
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/Em bryonicCosmo.html

--

Suppose someone looks at the needle of a compass, finds it pointing from
South to North, from North to South, and then decides that the forces
that set the needle in the North-South direction lie in the needle
itself. He would certainly not be considered a physicist today. A
physicist brings the needle of the compass into connection with what is
called earthly magnetism. No matter what theories people evolve, it is
simply impossible to attribute the direction of the needle to forces
lying within the needle itself. It must be brought into relation with
the universe.

In studying organic life today, the relationship of the organic to the
universe is usually regarded as quite secondary. But suppose it were
indeed true that merely on account of their different positions the
liver and the brain are actually related quite differently to universal
forces outside the human being. In that case we could never arrive at an
explanation of the human being by way of pure empiricism. An explanation
is possible only if we are able to say what part the whole universe
plays in molding the brain and the liver, in the same sense as the earth
plays its part in the direction taken by the needle in the compass.

Suppose we are tracing back the stream of heredity. We begin with the
ancestors, pass on to the present generation, and then to the offspring,
both in the case of animals and of human beings. We take into account
what we find -- as naturally we must -- but we reckon merely with
processes observed to lie immediately within the human being. It hardly
ever occurs to us to ask whether under certain conditions in the human
organism it is possible for universal forces to work in the most varied
ways upon the fertilized germ. Nor do we ask: Is it perhaps impossible
to explain the formation of the fertilized germ cell if we remain within
the confines of the human being himself? Must we not relate this germ
cell to the whole universe?

In orthodox science today, the forces that work in from the universe are
considered secondary. To a certain limited extent they are taken into
consideration, but they are always secondary. And now you may say: "Yes,
but modern science leads us to a point where such questions no longer
arise. It is antiquated to relate the human organs to the universe!" In
the way in which this is often done, it is antiquated, but the fact that
generally such questions do not arise today is due entirely to our
scientific education. Our education in science confines us to this
purely sense-oriented empirical mode of research, and we never come to
the point of raising questions such as I have posed hypothetically by
way of introduction. But the extent to which man is able to advance in
knowledge and action in every sphere of life depends upon raising
questions. Where questions never arise, a person is living in a kind of
scientific fog. Such an individual is himself dimming his free outlook
upon reality, and it is only when things no longer fit into his scheme
of thought that he begins to realize the limitations of his conceptions.

http://wn.elib.com/Steiner/Medicine/19221026p01.ht ml

--

Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world.
For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation
of thoughts about the phenomena of the world.

Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter or material processes.
But, in doing so, it is already confronted by two different sets of facts:
the material world, and the thoughts about it.

The materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding
them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes place
in the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place in the animal
organs.

Just as he attributes mechanical and organic effects to matter, so he
credits matter in certain circumstances with the capacity to think.

He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from
one place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to matter
instead of to himself.

And thus he is back again at his starting point. How does matter come
to think about its own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with
itself and content just to exist?

The materialist has turned his attention away from the definite subject,
his own I, and has arrived at an image of something quite vague and
indefinite. Here the old riddle meets him again.

The materialistic conception cannot solve the problem;
it can only shift it from one place to another.

(Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter 2)
http://www.elib.com/Steiner/Books/GA004/TPOF/pofc2 . tml

| Brooks, on the other hand, is sure that these machines are on the
| right track. In a sense, he makes it easier for his robots to catch up
| with humans by lowering the bar. On the back of the book, Brooks
| ladles out the schmaltz and proclaims, "We are machines, as are our
| spouses, our children and our dogs... I believe myself and my children
| all to be mere machines." That is, we're all just a slightly more
| involved collection of simple neurons that don't do much more than the
| balance mechanism of Genghis. You may think that you're deeply in love
| with the City of Florence, the ideal of democratic discourse, that
| raven-haired beauty three rows up, puppy dogs, or rainy nights cuddled
| under warm blankets, but according to the Brooks paradigm, you're just
| a bunch of AFSMs passing numbers back and forth.

in combating the concept of free will. The germs of all the relevant
arguments are to be found as early as Spinoza. All that he brought forward
in clear and simple language against the idea of freedom has since been
repeated times without number, but as a rule enveloped in the most
hair-splitting theoretical doctrines, so that it is difficult to recognize
the straightforward train of thought which is all that matters. Spinoza
writes in a letter of October or November, 1674:

I call a thing free which exists and acts from the pure necessity
of its nature, and I call that unfree, of which the being and
action are precisely and fixedly determined by something else.
Thus, for example, God, though necessary, is free because he
exists only through the necessity of his own nature. Similarly,
God cognizes himself and all else freely, because it follows
solely from the necessity of his nature that he cognizes all. You
see, therefore, that for me freedom consists not in free decision,
but in free necessity.

But let us come down to created things which are all
determined by external causes to exist and to act in a fixed and
definite manner. To perceive this more clearly, let us imagine
a perfectly simple case. A stone, for example, receives from an
external cause acting upon it a certan quantity of motion, by
reason of which it necessarily continues to move, after the
impact of the external cause has ceased. The continued motion
of the stone is due to compulsion, not to the necessity of its
own nature, because it requires to be defined by the thrust of
an external cause. What is true here for the stone is true also
for every other particular thing, however complicated and
many-sided it may be, namely, that everything is necessarily
determined by external causes to exist and to act in a fixed and
definite manner.

Now, please, suppose that this stone during its motion thinks and
knows that it is striving to the best of its ability to continue in
motion. This stone, which is conscious only of its striving and is
by no neans indifferent, will believe that it is absolutely free, and
that it continues in motion for no other reason than its own will to
continue. But this is just the human freedom that everybody claims
to possess and which consists in nothing but this, that men are
conscious of their desires, but ignorant of the causes by which they
are determined. Thus the child believes that he desires milk of
his own free will, the angry boy regards his desire for vengeance
as free, and the coward his desire for flight. Again, the drunken
man believes that he says of his own free will what, sober
again, he would fain have left unsaid, and as this prejudice is
innate in all men, it is difficult to free oneself from it. For,
although experience teaches us often enough that man least of
all can temper his desires, and that, moved by conflicting passions,
he sees the better and pursues the worse, yet he considers
himself free because there are some things which he desires
less strongly, and some desires which he can easily inhibit
through the recollection of something else which it is often
possible to recall.

Because this view is so clearly and definitely expressed it is easy to
detect the fundamental error that it contains. The same necessity by which
a stone makes a definite movement as the result of an impact, is said to
compel a man to carry out an action when impelled thereto by any reason.
It is only because man is conscious of his action that he thinks himself
to be its originator. But in doing so he overlooks the fact that he is
driven by a cause which he cannot help obeying. The error in this train of
thought is soon discovered. Spinoza, and all who think like him, overlook
the fact that man not only is conscious of his action, but also may become
conscious of the causes which guide him. Nobody will deny that the child
is unfree when he desires milk, or the drunken man when he says things
which he later regrets. Neither knows anything of the causes, working in
the depths of their organisms, which exercise irresistible control over
them. But is it justifiable to lump together actions of this kind with
those in which a man is conscious not only of his actions but also of the
reasons which cause him to act? Are the actions of men really all of one
kind? Should the act of a soldier on the field of battle, of the
scientific researcher in his laboratory, of the statesman in the most
complicated diplomatic negotiations, be placed scientifically on the same
level with that of the child when it desires milk: It is no doubt true
that it is best to seek the solution of a problem where the conditions are
sinmplest. But inability to discrinminate has before now caused endless
confusion. There is, after all, a profound difference between knowing why
I am acting and not knowing it. At first sight this seems a self-evident
truth. And yet the opponents of freedom never ask themselves whether a
motive of action which I recognize and see through, is to be regarded as
compulsory for me in the same sense as the organic process which causes
the child to cry for milk...

(Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter 1, 1895)

Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world. For
every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of thoughts
about the phenomena of the world. Materialism thus begins with the thought
of matter or material processes. But, in doing so, it is already
confronted by two different sets of facts: the material world, and the
thoughts about it. The materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible
by regarding them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking
takes place in the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place
in the animal organs. Just as he attributes mechanical and organic effects
to matter, so he credits matter in certain circumstances with the capacity
to think. He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the
problem from one place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to
matter instead of to himself. And thus he is back again at his starting
point. How does matter come to think about its own nature? Why is it not
simply satisfied with itself and content just to exist? The materialist
has turned his attention away from the definite subject, his own I, and
has arrived at an image of something quite vague and indefinite. Here the
old riddle meets him again. The materialistic conception cannot solve the
problem; it can only shift it from one place to another.

(Ibid, Chapter 2)