It is very difficult, if not impossible, for us to work with pure concepts. We are forever representing concepts for ourselves with the help of our imaginations, and therefore rely on the brain when working with them. Even the most abstract of concepts -- energy, mass, matter, gravity -- evoke in us visual, tactile, or auditory images that may have very little to do with the concept per se, but which provide a kind of symbol or analogy that makes the concept easier to work with. Even concepts to which we can attach no perceptual manifestation -- mind itself, for example -- may be connected to a picture of the word “mind,” the sound of a voice saying it, etc. Hence it may be found that one who attempts to think with pure concepts can not do so without the help of the imagination and thus the brain. This imaginative representation of concepts nevertheless is no cause to cast doubt on the mind’s ability to perceive concepts without the brain’s involvement.

My characterisation of concepts, then, is similar to Plato’s notion of eternal, unmanifest forms that are accessible only to the mind. Yet my objective idealism differs from Plato’s idealism in two primary ways. First, sense-perceptible reality is not an imperfect “copy” of ideal forms or concepts, since the concept cannot be said to exist at all in the physical world. Second, the component perceptions that we experience through our brains and sense organs belong to that same spiritual, conceptual world, only they are experienced as “given” rather than something to be “grasped” through thinking activity. Because sense-perceptions are accorded this level of reality here, an orientation towards them different from that advocated by Plato becomes possible. In Plato’s philosophy, the illusory character of the sense-world vis-á-vis the spiritual world demanded that the truth-seeker withdraw from the sensory and attempt to pursue pure contemplation of the Forms; whereas the objective idealism presented here imputes to the sense-perceptible a reality equal in kind to that of conceptual and the imaginative. Illusion enters into the picture only where given percepts are married to the wrong concepts by faulty thinking.

It is important that we make a distinction here between what Barfield calls the “net given” and the “specious given.” The net given refers to sense experience in its pure form, that is, what the senses would give us if we did not constantly combine this data with thinking and concepts. The specious given, on the other hand, is what we normally think of as “given”; for it is demonstrably the case that all the perceptions of our normal, waking life are inextricably involved with conceptions. Even when faced with sensation totally novel and alien to us, we are still apt to think of these as “outside us” or “hallucinatory,” “patterned” or “chaotic,” etc. The net given, though of necessity real, is (almost) never experienced as such; it is always already the specious given by the time it enters consciousness. And so it is that we do not feel that we can be entirely objective about these perceptions.

Errors and Illusions in Perception and Conception

Among the objections that could be brought against my line of thinking, most compelling are those that point to the many errors and illusions that attend both perceptions and conceptions. These problems are addressed in Steiner’s works, and I draw upon his solutions here.

If our perceptions are, as I have been suggesting, direct and unmediated apart from the framing that the brain and sense organs give them, then we must somehow account for the countless errors to which we are prone when perceiving, not to mention the variation caused by differences inherent in the sense organs themselves. For example, I may be looking at a flower and I see that it is blue; towards evening, I look at it again, and in the different light, it appears violet. My colourblind friend looks at it and sees grey. If these perceptions are supposed to be “direct” in each case, how is it that all this variety arises?

The answer is really quite simple. In each case, the colour seen is real. What have changed are the number and kind of neuronal gates that have opened. The changed light, in its physical manifestation, causes a variable reaction in the physical sense apparatus, and I perceive a different colour as a result of it. In the case of my colourblind friend, who lacks neurons that open to the spiritual realities of blue and violet, he sees the spiritual reality of grey by virtue of those gates which open in response to other wavelengths of light reflected by the flower. In each case, no real “error” or “illusion” has occurred. Errors come into play when incorrect concepts are connected to the percepts. Very basic among these is the concept of consistency as applied to the sense world. We may have the idea that an object must appear the same under all circumstances, or for all sense-organs of a similar kind, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. Neither the concept, “consistency,” nor the perceptions themselves are illusory; illusion arises from the inappropriate connection of the two.

Still, we must be able to attribute to an object a real colour, given the epistemological structure represented in Figure 2. There has to by a limited number of openings into the spiritual that a flower produced by virtue of its interaction with a given light source. the possible cases are represented in the following diagram.

Figure 5. Perception of a Flower Petal

Complex though this diagram is, it is highly simplified; we should imagine many more gates opening, each corresponding to particular wavelengths. But let us suppose that it illustrates a petal responding to a complete spectrum of light. It opens to the world of spiritual colour -- actual qualia rather than wavelength -- according to the potentials embedded in it by virtue of its being condensed spirit (i.e., by having a certain chemical composition). Through these openings, and the complementary openings created by reflected light interacting with particular neurons, a mind is able to perceive through its eyes all the visual-spectrum colours revealed through the petal. Some infrared light interacts with tactile/warmth neurons as well, and a miniscule amount of heat reaches the mind from the petal.

A number of things could alter this state of affairs without altering the ontological status of the situation. A restricted number of photon wavelengths will open fewer gates in the petal, thus altering perception for the mind; the brain/organs could be less responsive, thus altering perception. The amount of “pressure” exerted by the mind on the neural gates may also change; colour may actually change according to how sensitive I have made myself towards it (e.g. through artistic training) and how much attention I am paying to it. I may not notice for years a slight change in hue or tone where a patch of my white wall has been repaired, but one day when I am actually looking for such inconsistencies, it may appear all too obvious. Each of these experiences is just as real any other occurring under different circumstances. In fact, to claim that one case is illusory whereas another is not is to give in to the basic illusion of constancy in the sense world.

A little reflection should convince anyone that most, if not all, cases of conceptual error arise from the misapplication of a concept to a set of perceptions. For example, one might connect the concept “bent” to the concept “spoon” when one sees a spoon half-submerged in water and apparently bent. Neither the perception nor the concept can be said to be erroneous; it is only the mind’s conjunction of the two in this case that is erroneous. This is important because it secures, to some extent, the objective quality of concepts. For it concepts exist independently of any particular mind -- indeed, if they are “pure” in the sense of Platonic forms -we should expect them to be true, or true to their perceptual complements, at any rate. But to reiterate, the ontological status of concepts here is different from that suggested in Platonic philosophy.

The Generation of Concepts

If we follow through with our consideration thus far, we are led to the idea that concept and percept ultimately form a whole that is, for human beings, experienced as separate by virtue of our organization.

Figure 6. Concepts and Percepts as part of a Whole

Of course, not every concept has a corresponding percept. Such is the case with highly abstract concepts such as history, matter, karma, etc. But it would appear that all percepts are the complement of one or more concepts. The perceptions we have when looking to the right or left of this body of text, for example, complement the concepts white, margin, flat, paper, etc.

It may trouble the reader that concepts such as paper and margin have existed only for as long as human beings have been making and writing on paper. How, then, can such concepts exist apart from particular minds? Surely at the genesis of these concepts in the mind of paper’s inventor, they existed in one particular mind only. Or must we speculate that they existed from all eternity, but were first apprehended by the inventor of paper? If we want to entertain this idea, then we would have to suppose that the concepts for automobiles, banks, press-on fingernails, and hula-hoops have also always existed, just waiting for some creature to grasp them and work to make them manifest for others. I am sure that I am not the only one who finds this idea preposterous.

It is only when we want to treat concepts as eternal, Platonic ideas that we are led to such absurdities, however. We should instead suppose that the mind is (as) capable of generating new concepts as it is of perceiving them. The mental world is, after all, not restricted by physical laws such as the conservation of energy; new concepts may appear ex nihilo, and existing concepts should be capable of change. In the latter case, we might look to the concepts of the bank as something that has undergone an evolution in the past hundred years. Other concepts may undergo a kind of “speciation” whereby one becomes two or more distinct concepts. In fact, it is probably more realistic to think of the conceptual realm as fluid, in motion, so that although concepts may be distinct, they are by no means entirely divided from each other.

Although I have suggested that human minds should be credited with creating new concepts, it should not be forgotten that these always arise as a synthesis of preexistent concepts. If this were not the case, we could postulate that each mind’s conceptual world is its own creation and thus purely subjective. But this does not accord with experience. We are continually grasping ideas that we experience as preexistent. This is especially the case when we are learning about something from someone else. And when we are inventing, we begin with basic, given concepts and create with these. For example, the inventor of paper began with a number of givens: flat, smooth surfaces; tree bark and/or clay tablets; writing; transportability; and so on. We nevertheless cannot reduce the concept of paper to these elements, for paper constitutes a whole idea unto itself.