TOWARD AN AESTHETIC EPISTEMOLOGY: TRANSFORMING THINKING THROUGH CYBERNETIC EPISTEMOLOGY AND ANTHROPOSOPHY By Seth T. Miller A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the California Institute of Integral Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Transformative Studies California Institute of Integral Studies San Francisco, CA 2014 I certify that I have read TOWARD AN AESTHETIC EPISTEMOLOGY: TRANSFORMING THINKING THROUGH CYBERNETIC EPISTEMOLOGY AND ANTHROPOSOPHY by Seth T. Miller, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctorate of Philosophy in Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Craig Chalquist, PhD, Chair Department Chair and Professor, East-West Psychology California Institute of Integral Studies Robert McDermott, PhD Department Chair and Professor, Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness California Institute of Integral Studies Søren Brier, PhD Professor, Department of International Business Communication Copenhagen Business School © 2014 Seth T. Miller Seth Miller 2541 SE 75th Ave Portland, OR 97206 2/14/2014 Bradford Keeney, PhD Dear Bradford, I am completing a doctoral dissertation at the California Institute of Integral Studies entitled “Toward an Aesthetic Epistemology: Transforming Thinking Through Cybernetic Epistemology and Anthroposophy.” I would like your permission to reprint in my dissertation the following article, in full: Miller, S. T. (2011). An esoteric guide to Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form. Circulus: Journal for Creative Transformation, 1(1), 105–159. The requested permission extends to any future revisions and editions of my dissertation, including non-exclusive world rights in all languages, and to the prospective publication of my dissertation by ProQuest through its UMI® Dissertation Publishing business. ProQuest may produce and sell copies of my dissertation on demand and may make my dissertation available for free internet download at my request. These rights will in no way restrict republication of the material in any other form by you or by others authorized by you. Your signing of this letter will also confirm that you own [or your company owns] the copyright to the above-described material. If these arrangements meet with your approval, please sign this letter where indicated below and return it to me. Thank you very much. Sincerely, Seth Miller PERMISSION GRANTED FOR THE USE REQUESTED ABOVE: __________________________ Bradford Keeney, PhD Date: 2/16/2014 v Seth T. Miller California Institute of Integral Studies, 2014 Craig Chalquist, PhD., Committee Chair TOWARD AN AESTHETIC EPISTEMOLOGY: TRANSFORMING THINKING THROUGH CYBERNETIC EPISTEMOLOGY AND ANTHROPOSOPHY ABSTRACT The complexity, subtlety, interlinking, and scale of many problems faced individually and collectively in today’s rapidly changing world requires an epistemology—a way of thinking about our knowing—capable of facilitating new kinds of responses that avoid recapitulation of old ways of thinking and living. Epistemology, which implicitly provides the basis for engagement with the world via the fundamental act of distinction, must therefore be included as a central facet of any practical attempts at self/world transformation. We need to change how we think, not just what we think. The new epistemology needs to be of a higher order than the source of the problems we face. This theoretical, transdisciplinary dissertation argues that such a new epistemology needs to be recursive and process-oriented. This means that the thoughts about thinking that it produces must explicitly follow the patterns of thinking by which those thoughts are generated. The new epistemology is therefore also phenomenological, requiring the development of a reflexivity in thinking that recursively links across two levels of order—between content and process. The result is an epistemology that is of (and for) the whole human being. vi It is an enacted (will-imbued) and aesthetic (feeling-permeated) epistemology (thinking-penetrated) that is sensitive to and integrative of material, soul, and spiritual aspects of ourselves and our world. I call this kind of epistemology aesthetic, because its primary characteristic is found in the phenomenological, mutually fructifying and transformative marriage between the capacity for thinking and the capacity for feeling. Its foundations are brought forward through the confluence of multiple domains: cybernetic epistemology, the esoteric epistemology of anthroposophy (the spiritual science of Rudolf Steiner), and the philosophy of the implicit as developed by Eugene Gendlin. The practice of aesthetic epistemology opens new phenomenal domains of experience, shedding light on relations between ontology and epistemology, mind and body, logic and thinking, as well as on the formation (and transformation) of identity, the immanence of thinking in world-processes, the existence of different types of logic, and the nature of beings, of objects, and most importantly of thinking itself and its relationship to spirit. Keywords: anthroposophy, autopoiesis, cognition, cybernetic epistemology, distinction, epistemology, esotericism, logic, recursion, Rudolf Steiner, second-order cybernetics, spirituality, thinking vii Acknowledgements The seed for this dissertation came to me as a feeling of stepping toward a newly perceived horizon on my meeting with cybernetic epistemology, which I was amazed to only have encountered at the PhD level. My heartfelt thanks and appreciation go to Bradford Keeney for drawing its distinctions performatively with life and spirit—as it should be. This work owes much of its existence to the numerous stimulating conversations I had with Jeff Falzone over Facebook, which is apparently good for something other than procrastinating. His serious playfulness is matched only by his command of both anthroposophy and the work of Eugene Gendlin, and I have no doubt that he can get a felt-sense of the role he played in bringing forth the ideas presented here. I honestly can’t think of anyone better suited to converse with about them—so if, dear reader, you find yourself in confusion, I direct you to him. I would not have survived this process without the great help and support given by members of my PhD cohort at CIIS. Monthly Skype meetings with Don Arispe, Nancy Kresin-Price, Lisa Kendall, Maureen Dolan, and Charles Silverstein (and occasionally a few others) in particular have kept me focused on the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m proud to have you as life-long friends. It takes a special kind of person to deal with three such diverse realms as anthroposophy, cybernetic epistemology, and process-philosophy, and I am lucky to have three of them on my committee. My deep thanks go Craig Chalquist, Robert McDermott, and Søren Brier, whose many helpful comments and suggestions have helped make this work much better. I am also grateful to Rudolf Steiner, Eugene Gendlin, and Dennis Klocek—not just for their inspiring ideas, but for enacting them in a way that exemplifies the principles put forth in this dissertation. Finally, but most importantly, my gratitude goes to my wife, Josette, who supported me throughout the process even when I didn’t know where it was going or when I would get there. Her faith in me means the world. viii Dedication This work is dedicated to the Divine Sophia, the deep wisdom of and for the evolving human being. The innermost being of the world awakens in my thinking. My thinking sleeps into the outer being of the world. The World Soul dreams in my feelings. My feelings dream into the Soul of the World. The outermost being of the world sleeps in my willing. My will awakens in the innermost being of the world. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ....................................................................................................................v Acknowledgements ............................................................................................... vii Dedication ............................................................................................................ viii List of Tables ......................................................................................................... xi List of Figures ....................................................................................................... xii A Big Picture............................................................................................................1 Introductory Context .........................................................................................4 Why Anthroposophy? .......................................................................................8 Why Cybernetic Epistemology? .....................................................................15 The Need for a Transdisciplinary Approach—A Frame for Frames .....................20 Distilled Recapitulation ..................................................................................26 Conclusions .....................................................................................................27 Theoretical Tools ...................................................................................................35 A Preliminary Note Concerning First and Second Orders .............................37 Anthroposophic Considerations ......................................................................45 Goethean beholding.. .................................................................................47