Towards an Aesthetic Epistemology: Transforming Thinking through Cybernetic Epistemology and Anthroposophy

TOWARDS AN
AESTHETIC
EPISTEMOLOGY
Transforming Thinking Through
Cybernetic Epistemology And
Anthroposophy
Seth T. Miller
California Institute of Integral Studies
PhD Dissertation Presentation
February 2014

Structure of the Problem: Epistemology
• Every action, every feeling, and every thought arises in the context of an
epistemology, i.e. in the context of implicit functional patterns of
knowledge construction that are largely unconscious.
• We can only escape epistemology by being ignorant of the fact that we
cannot escape epistemology.
• Epistemology is the consequence of habits of distinction.
• How do we get habits of distinction?
• Through a recursion between thinking and being:
• Changing thinking changes being; changing being changes thinking.

• Rather than continue to act out old distinctions and thus ways of being,
many of the world’s complex problems, as well as individual problems, call
for solutions of a higher-order level. Such solutions do not re-instance the
contexts that generate the problem in the first place, but are designed
specifically to change those contexts so that the problem can no longer
continue to be generated. Higher-order solutions remove the conditions
of generation of the problem.
February, 2014

Towards an Aesthetic Epistemology, by Seth T. Miller

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Goals of the exploration:
• To illuminate higher-order structures at work in epistemology in
order to give a theoretical context for how we can change how our
knowing occurs, thus changing how we are in the world.
• To reveal structural links between epistemology and ontology.
• To explore how such links can be utilized as the basis for conscious
participation in transformative processes.
• To create concepts that can address how transformative processes
are transformative.
• To invite readers to participate in the process of making distinctions
newly, to enter creatively into the recursive functional link between
knowing and being, and to experience the content not only as a set
of thoughts, but as a prescription for how to think transformatively.

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Context for the exploration
The large-scale topic is a theoretical exploration of potential meeting
points, congruencies, and suggestive complementarities between:

•Anthroposophy (specifically its epistemology)
•Cybernetic Epistemology (second-order cybernetics)
•Eugene Gendlin’s philosophy of the implicit

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More specifically, it is an exploration of:
• The difference between levels of order and the recursion between them, and how this
recursion is transformative
• The recursive link between methods and contents, between process and product,
between thinking and thoughts
• The nature of thinking:
•
•
•
•
•

Ideas about what constitutes mind, specifically in terms of its patterning (Bateson)
The role of distinction in thinking (Spencer-Brown)
The phenomenological process of thinking (Gendlin)
What happens when thinking becomes recursive and what that means
How the process of thinking changes when it becomes explicitly connected with our feeling
life (Steiner)

• The nature of logic in relation to thinking, and different kinds of logic
• A theoretical foundation for the possibility of creating new sensory organs based on

the integration of thinking and feeling capacities that operate at a higher -level of order
than our physical sense organs
• The way in which feeling-imbued thinking can become an aesthetic epistemology (not
an epistemology of aesthetics)
• The link between all of the above and esoteric practices and wisdom (specifically
anthroposophy)

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Personal Background
• As a philosophy major, I always had a personal interest in the big
picture, in patterns, and in transformation
• I have been involved with anthroposophy since 1999, having taken
Dennis Klocek’s course in Goethean/Consciousness Studies
• 6 years of teaching physics, math, philosophy, projective geometry,
and other subjects in Waldorf high schools
• Discovered the work of Eugene Gendlin via focusing in master’s
program at JFK University
• Introduced to cybernetics and second-order cybernetics in PhD
program at CIIS

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The basic premise of the idea
• I had an undefined, nebulous, but persistent sense that these three
realms were exploring the same basic territory from their own
unique angles, and I wanted to see what would happen if they met
more directly.

• Caveat: I initially had included the realm of alchemy (specifically
spiritual alchemy) before deciding to include Gendlin’s work on the
implicit instead of alchemy. However, alchemy also explores similar
territory and is in large part very aligned with the other domains.

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Methods (in practice)
The work is essentially theoretical, which in my case meant:
• Cycles of reading/thinking/writing/discussing
• Meditatively-oriented practices
• Experiencing the process of thinking, i.e. to think about my own thinking in a
phenomenological way
• How does thinking happen? What is the process like? How does the process of thinking
change when the object of thought changes? How does the object of thought change
when the process of thinking changes?

• Utilizing/embodying a recursive loop across levels of order (process/product) – A
training of my awareness to be sensitive to the properties of its occurring
• Dwelling in an idea, learning its shape, its patterning, its modes of appearing

• Taking ideas into sleep

How did I decide to use these specific methods?
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An important methodological caveat
• The content of the work is about recursion and mutual relations
between process and product.
• Therefore, I felt I had to not only speak about this idea, but put it
into practice.
• I thus took up specific methods of analysis and inquiry that existed
in the major domains of exploration, and applied them to the
content, in an effort to both utilize and demonstrate the recursion
between levels of order.

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Two Complementary Directions of Exploration
• Methodologies  Methods  Topics of Exploration
• A theoretical framework for exploring ideas yields:
• Specific methods for exploration of:
• A particular topic

• Topics of Exploration  Methods  Methodologies
• Exploration of a particular topic suggests:
• Specific methods used to address the topic, which further suggests:
• A larger patterning and ‘way of approach’ that can be applied to other
topics, not just those from which it originated

Both processes occur simultaneously in an inquiry, alternating
complementarily, mutually illuminating each other.
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Methodology (theoretical underpinnings)
Basic hermeneutics with respect to major texts and ideas:
• Anthroposophical writings of Rudolf Steiner (many and various)
• Second-order cybernetics, particularly:
• Gregory Bateson
• Heinz von Foerster
• Francisco Varela
• Humberto Maturana
• George Spencer-Brown
• Also: Louis Kaufmann, Ranulph Glanville

• Eugene Gendlin’s major works:
• Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning
• A Process Model

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Methodology cont.
• Transdisciplinarity: Basarab Nicolescu
• Levels of Reality – mutually constitutive, integrated
• Logic of the included middle (embracing paradox, avoiding duality)

• Creative Inquiry: Alfonso Montuori

• Inquiry as transformative practice, not as a finding of objective facts

• Goethean phenomenology: Goethe and Steiner

• Empirical practice that massages the subject-object boundary
• Makes the whole human being commensurate with the object of perception –
in this case the object of perception is the activity of thinking
• Steiner extended and utilized Goethe’s ideas, connecting them with the
expansion of capacities into the realm of the spiritual (which he connects with
thinking)

• Philosophy of the implicit: Eugene Gendlin

• Direct reference: the wisdom of the becoming of “the body”
• Feeling the vague but precise sense of “the situation”: the “felt sense”
• Practices to explore the felt sense and let it function in the creation and
discovery of new experiencing (“focusing”)
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Conclusions: Basic Compatibilities
• Anthroposophy, cybernetic epistemology, and Eugene Gendlin’s
philosophy of the implicit are indeed compatible.
• Specifically, each deals with the activity of thinking in a process-oriented
way, but from very different contexts:
• Anthroposophy brings a spiritual context (including a spiritually-based
ontology, cosmology, and epistemology). Basic tenet: thinking is spiritual.
• Originating in the early decades of 20th Century Germany/Europe

• Cybernetic epistemology brings a very modern context closely associated with
constructivism (even radical constructivism), logic, systems-theories, and
relations between biology and cognition. Basic tenet: the observer is part of
the observed system; distinction is fundamental.
• Originating in 1960’s-70’s in America

• The philosophy of the implicit brings the phenomenological context of the
living organism in relation to concept formation. Basic tenet: concepts are an
expression of the intricate, more-than-conceptual way of living in a situation.
• Originating in 1960’s in America
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Conclusions: The Fundamental Pattern
• A basic pattern: q (The “fundamental pattern” – Theta)
• This pattern is the distinction between levels of order (product/process,
what/how, content/method, thought/thinking, the “it”/process leading to
the “it”… generically expressed as: N/N+1) and:
• The recursion between levels of order
• Level N+1 is the process out of which the content at level N arises, so we have the
directionality from N+1  N
• However, this movement from process  product is not the only way that these
two levels can relate. Level N can change level N+1, when level N+1 is reflexively
open with respect to level N. The product can change the process: N  N+1.
So: each level modifies the conditions of realization of the other.
• This obviously doesn’t work with all processes. The production of a physical
widget doesn’t change the processes of its production.
• But some processes are or can become specifically sensitive to what they produce,
so that the process is open to change by virtue of what it yields. The most
important process of this type is thinking
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Conclusions: More about q
• It is a way of describing the activity of thinking when it becomes
recursive, taking itself as its own object
• It reveals that epistemology and ontology (knowing and being) are
recursively connected:
• How we distinguish structures what becomes distinct for us
• What we distinguish structures how future patterns of distinction are likely
to occur (or, equally, not occur)

• It is a metapattern – a pattern of patterns, or a higher-order
pattern. As such, it finds differentiated expression in many lowerorder patterns, unifying them at the higher level.

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Conclusions: Thinking and Distinction
• Thinking is the activity of distinction; distinction is the activity of thinking.
• This is a very broad claim about the nature of cognition. I am claiming
that systems which are constituted so as to be able to make functional
differentiations through the realization of their activity demonstrate the
most essential aspect of thinking.

• We can call such systems beings. I will continue with the term system to
emphasize that the concepts here apply very broadly and fundamentally, but
every time I say “system” read it also as “being.”

• Every next action of a system that could be otherwise because of a

distinction made by the system involves cognition.
• Distinction makes specific, limited options for next steps available to the
system. This is the basic underlying requirement for all types of evolution
and development.
• Importantly, for evolution and development to occur requires that the
consequences of the making of a distinction be relevant to the potential
next steps of the system making the distinction. Distinction must be
recursive – the system must be sensitive to the distinctions it makes for
those distinctions to be relevant for its potential next steps.
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Conclusions: Sense-organ creation
• The way a system becomes recursively sensitive to the distinctions
it makes is the basis for the forming of a sense-organ.

• A sense-organ is formed by functionally closing the loop between
the system's ability to distinguish and its sensitivity to the
consequences of the distinctions it makes.

• This recursion is an example of

the pattern q: a process that yields
a content which changes the process.

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Conclusions: Sense-organs, cont.
• Distinction affords the possibility of sensation. Every distinction creates
the potential for sensitivity to the domain of differences specific to that
distinction, not just to the single distinction itself.
• No sensation without distinction. (Direction: explication)
• Sensation is a way to make distinctions relevant.

• Sensation affords the possibility of new or changed distinctions. Every
sensation has the potential to trigger new distinctions, or changes in the
patterns of distinction already functionally embodied by the system.
• No distinction without sensation. (Direction: implication)
• Distinction is a way to make sensations relevant.

• The closed loop between distinction and sensation is the recursive
foundation for the creation and evolution of a sense-organ.
• A sense-organ is thus an epistemological-ontological recursive unity. The
knowing process and the known are simultaneously, co-dependently
arising. q is a way of describing this at the pattern-level.
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Conclusions: Non-physical sense organs
• We often think of sense-organs as a mostly passive receptors for
differences in the physical environment. This is wrong in two
senses:
• Sense organs are not passive, but arise within (and require) recursion with
the act of distinction. Changes of distinction change sensing.
• Sense organs do not have to be sensitive only to differences in the physical
world. They are sensitive to whatever domain of differences is brought
forth by the act of distinction. (Second-order cybernetics: draw a
distinction; know a world.)
• Distinction is not a physical event; rather, physical events are distinctions. That is,
distinction is more primary than the physical.
• Indeed, it is the way a system makes distinctions that form the basis for whether
or not what it senses is made relevant as physical or not. The distinction between
physical and non-physical is a very high-level distinction, not a primary one. We
have to see how the distinctions form relevantly, not project distinctions “back”
as if what they distinguish were somehow already always there independently of
the distinguishing process. We must include the process of observing in the
observed result.
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Conclusions: Non-physical sense organs, cont.
• We can thus speak of non-physical sense organs, which are the result of
distinctions that yield to sensation a domain of differences not necessarily
or explicitly physical, but still within the realm of experience, considered
in the broadest possible sense.
• Just as physical sense organs are sensitive to differences in the physical
realm, non-physical sense organs are sensitive to differences in the nonphysical realms that they distinguish. For example, once we distinguish
the domain of imaginary numbers from that of the real numbers, that
difference can be functionally utilized in the creation of further
distinctions.
• Distinction brings forth precisely those differences that sensation makes
recursively relevant. Such differences can be of any logical type.
• Distinction is not physical, and the differences distinction yields are also
not physical. Being relations, differences are of a higher logical type, just
as the class of all chairs is not itself a chair.
• Sensation is thus not dependent upon physical differences.

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Conclusions: Reality
• Not all distinctions yield equally relevant sensations. The distinguishing
system cannot determine beforehand or arbitrarily whether a distinction
it makes will be made relevant to it through sensation. The system must
discover whether such relevance occurs through the act of further
distinction.
• “Reality” is whatever resists the distinctions of a system. More precisely,
“reality” arises as patterns of resistance made relevant to a system
through sensation in accordance with the distinctions it makes.
• This resistance happens via the recursive loop between distinction and
sensation. The content of sensation for a system, and thus the possible
patterns of resistance there, can only be discovered, not determined a
priori.
• We can say that “reality” is a form of relevanting relative to the particular
system’s patterns of distinction.
• The system discovers itself newly changed through sensing the relevance
of the distinctions it makes. Thus reality and the self—whatever its
form—co-dependently arise.
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Conclusions: A peculiar sense organ
• Aesthetic epistemology is a way of knowing about our knowing. It relies
upon the building and utilization of a specific type of non-physical sense
organ.
• Every sense organ is keyed to the realm of differences made available to it
through the distinctions with which it is recursively linked. However, in
almost all cases this recursive link between distinctions and the activity of
the corresponding sense organ is not itself the subject of distinction. In
such cases the system is not aware of how it senses (the process of
sensing), only that it senses (the contents of sensation).
• Aesthetic epistemology focuses on the unique case when a system
recursively distinguishes (higher-order, N+1) the recursive link between
distinction and sensation (lower-order, N), bringing forth the domain of
differences of distinction as the basis for its particular realm of sensation.
• Aesthetic epistemology utilizes a sense organ created out of the domain
of differences brought forth through the distinguishing of distinction.

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Conclusions: Distinguishing Distinction
• The question of aesthetic epistemology is: How am I distinguishing?
• To ask this question is to invite new distinctions about the process of
distinguishing.
• The domain of differences brought forth through this higher-order
recursion becomes a way of facilitating changes in how we distinguish.
• Because every act, every feeling, and every thought involves distinction at
some level, changing how we distinguish (and therefore what we
distinguish) is very potent.
• Aesthetic epistemology is the study of how our distinctions can change
when we distinguish our distinction.
• This is the process of the making and subsequent crossing of a boundary
between levels of order (N and N+1). Through an act of distinction we
make the boundary that we then cross in order to discover how that
crossing changes our distinguishing.
• This process does not replace other types of cognition, but is in addition
to them. It can take place as a higher-level form of cognition within
cognition.
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Conclusions: Aesthetic Epistemology
• Why is this recursive process, which may seem very oriented
towards logic and abstraction, aesthetic?
• The domain of differences that this process yields are not only cognitive or
conceptual in nature, although they are that too. They are differences that
are felt. Aesthetic epistemology is feeling our thinking as well as a feelingthinking.
• The practice of aesthetic epistemology generates domains of new possible
felt experiences that are not explainable only in already-existing terms.
Aesthetic epistemology is not reductive, but generative. It modifies old
terms, connects terms together newly, and creates completely new terms
organically in order to become commensurate with the new experiences.
This is precisely the same process at work in the creation of poetry and
many other forms of artistic expression.
• It is recognized that the process of generating new terms changes the
experiences that those terms were supposed to explicate. Indeed, it
utilizes this relation as the basis for further transformation.

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Importance of the Work
• Shows compatibilities between anthroposophy, second-order cybernetics,
and the philosophy of the implicit. This illuminates potential avenues for
continued exploration and mutual fructification between these realms,
which have heretofore not been explicitly connected.
• For anthroposophy, it provides a philosophical foundation for how we can
possibly conceive of spiritual sense organs that do not require the
ontological assumptions of Steiner, while at the same time supporting his
basic project.
• It fulfills a need to connect anthroposophical ideas with current scientific
and philosophical ideas, to keep anthroposophy from becoming dogmatic.
• It demonstrates how it is possible to utilize esoteric practices as an active
part of academic research, rather than only as an object of research.
• It indicates a way to avoid dualisms and fundamentalisms of all types
through utilization of the fundamental pattern q.
• It gives an outline of transformative indications that, if followed, can yield
new domains of experiencing. In this sense it is “testable” in the
experience of the reader.
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Potential Applications
• Aesthetic epistemology can be applied to any problem in
experience that seems intractable, too complex, too subtle, or too
undefined to admit of any solution.
• It can help clarify patterns of problem-construction by revealing associated
epistemological assumptions.
• It can help bring forth alternative distinctions and different ways of
knowing in relation to a problem.
• It provides a phenomenologically-sensitive context for evaluating different
potential solutions to problems through utilization of the recursive
interaction between distinction and sensation.

• It adds a unique perspective to current debates in anthroposophy,
cybernetic epistemology, and the philosophy of the implicit.

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Directions for Future Research
The ideas in the dissertation are essentially outlines only. There are many
areas that can be explored further or more deeply:
• Theoretical directions:
• Fleshing out more directly a way of thinking about the “spiritual” that avoids
many of the ontological assumptions and confusions that normally attend that
distinction.
• Anthroposophical connections:
• The nature of spiritual beings
• Cosmic involution-evolution
• The future of anthroposophy

• Connecting principles of aesthetic epistemology more directly and closely with
recent research in cognitive science, biology, philosophy of mind, and
consciousness studies, for example, Hofstadter and Sander’s claim that
thinking is analogy.
• Connecting principles of aesthetic epistemology more deeply with the specific
elements of Eugene Gendlin’s philosophy of the implicit, such as his stages I-VIII
in A Process Model and ideas in Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning such as
recognition, explication, metaphor, comprehension, relevance, circumlocution,
symbolization, “instance of itself” and so forth.
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Directions for Future Research, cont.
• Practical directions:
• Exploring ways of making the principles and practices associated with
aesthetic epistemology more easily communicated.
• Exploring new realms of application for aesthetic epistemology and
experimentally demonstrating its use there.

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Finis

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Towards an Aesthetic Epistemology: Transforming Thinking through Cybernetic Epistemology and Anthroposophy

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