Páll Skúlason

What are the three main aspects of the living creature?
Activity (creativity), passivity (receptivity) and synthesis - deliberation and planning.

What distinguishes the human animal from other living creatures?
Highly developed brain, high capacity for synthesis.

What are the main characteristics of the human reason?
Planning, abstract thought, logical deduction, decision making, flexibility, (?) non-instrumental reflection.

What characterizes the subjective view of nature?
Nature as external to mind - an object for us. Nature as source of values, subject as passive. [EXPAND]

How is the distinction between nature and culture conceived according to the subjective view?
Culture is man's capacity to transcend nature: nature is body, the objective, while culture is spirit or soul, the essence of the subject. Culture seems to hold a strange non-natural status on this account.

What characterizes the practical view of nature?
We struggle with nature, we seek to exploit it. Nature is the origin of worldly values, human as creative origin of intellectual and moral values. [EXPAND]

How is the distinction between nature and culture conceived according to the practical view?
Nature as enemy. Culture as a technical construction

What characterizes the moral view of nature?
We need to reconcile ourselves with nature, nature as origin of moral values. [EXPAND]

How is the distinction between nature and culture conceived according to the moral view?
Nature as foundation for human life, persisting independently of it. Culture as a human cultivation of nature. Culture proximately dependent upon humanity.

In what sense can Askja be said to be a symbol of the earth?
Askja is a remote space of wilderness. Barren and hostile, it symbolises the independence of the earth from humanity, its implacable longevity. Skulason (2008) writes that it represents: “objective reality, independent of all thought, belief and expression, independent of human existence”.

Skulason writes that coming to Askja was like realising for the first time his status as an earthling, recognising the earth as the fundamental premise for his existence, for all thought. Here we talk of earth not as determinate concept, but as the indeterminable exteriority, the precondition for all conceptualising. Askja reminds us how all human totalities are dependent upon this non-human totality, the totality of Nature.

What characterizes the relationship between the mind and the world?
Skúlason: uncertainty, insecurity, which arises from the doubts and ambiguity at the fringes of conceptual thought. Skúlason seems to take consciousness to extend beyond conceptual thought.

Why may it be dangerous to view nature as a mechanical system?
To do so may be to rashly reify our self-constructed interpretative systems, to regard nature as intrinsically intelligible according to our conceptual frameworks. It is to take the constitution of nature to be conceptual, so to open up the possibility of a theory of everything which captures the essence of nature. This is an optimistic - perhaps idealistic - assumption.

I wonder if the most dangerous result of this approach is the heady sense of intellectual optimism that results. If the whole of nature can be subsumed within the sphere of rational frameworks, then all otherness can be reduced to the same. Normativity seems to vanish in a mechanistic system,  intellectual and moral values become a mere epiphenomenon. But in this case, we have forgotten about ourselves as creators of the system, who could not do so without some kind of normative motivation in the first place. So system thinking can lead to the neglect of subjectivity. [ I want to think this through further, perhaps re-read Husserl on the mathematisaiton of nature... ]

How do we distinguish between worldly, mental and moral values?
Worldly values: economic, political - external
Mental values: games, science, art - internal
Moral values: justice, love, freedom, good judgement - inter-subjective

What is meant by a spiritual understanding of nature?
This is highly debated. In many cases I worry that 'spiritual' is a not helpful word because of its mystical and religious connotations. The more palatable sense which spiritual invokes is the one 'not concerned with material values or pursuits'; an understanding that is more than just instrumental or pragmatic. One which incorporates what Skúlason refers to as mental and moral values, those initiating values that direct our instrumental endeavours. A spiritual understanding of nature may be somewhat non-cognitive, grounded in intuitions, emotions, and lived-experiences, such as the enounter with Askja.

What is involved in the experience of the “numinous”?
Writes Skúlason: 'the experience of the numinous... is an experience that does not fit into any system of ideas but shows the superficiality and smallness of all such systems.' He takes it to be a pre-intellectual or non-cognitive experience of the absolute exteriority of nature (Hegelian sense). The experience of the numinous is awe-inspiring, overwhelming, even terrifying. Skúlason takes his encounter with Askja to be an example of the experience of the numinious.

What of the origin of this experience? Skúlason understands it as a basic intuition which can be brought about by special types of experience, bearing a similar status, perhaps, to Kant's a priori intuitions.

References:
Skúlason, P. (2008) 'On the Spiritual Understanding of Nature', (unpublished?)