Replies

Jace, a beautiful post! Are you familiar with the work of Timothy Eastman and Michael Epperson? Eastman’s book Untying the Gordian Knot is worth the read, as is Epperson’s Foundations of a Relational Realism and Quantum Mechanics and the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.

All three texts are right up your alley!

Dr. Davis

Excellent, Jace!

Thanks for sharing.

Dr. Davis

Jason,

A great question on a complex and essential dimension of Whitehead’s thought. A few quick comments:

In the first place, Jay McDaniel is correct. God does not “create” eternal objects, rather they belong to the nature of God primordially (eternally). In fact, Whitehead says this plainly: “[God] does not create eternal objects; for [God’s] nature requires them in the same degree that they require [God]” (notice the mutuality involved here too). I think it might help to make a distinction between eternal objects being “created” and eternal objects being “exemplified.” If Pure Potentiality were created (meaning there was a time it was not), it would still have been *possible* to be crated; thus, we are still in a real of possibility as being the presupposed context of any and all “creation.” Rather than being created, eternal objects are exemplified in actuality in novel ways such that a particular constellation of possibly can be exemplified for the first time, but its exemplification did not bring it into being as a possibility.

Cheers,

Dr. Davis

Elvi,

A wonderful post! And thank you for bring Suzanne Langer in the conversation. You are certainly right that art encompasses much more than just music. Your example of color reminds me of a quote by the theoretical physicist, Steven Weinberg:

“I have to admit that sometimes nature seems more beautiful than strictly
necessary. Outside the window of my home office there is a hackberry tree,
visited frequently by a convocation of politic birds: blue jay, yellow throated vireos, and, loveliest of all, an occasional red cardinal. Although I
understand pretty well how brightly colored feathers evolved out of a competition for mates, it is almost irresistible to imagine that all this beauty was somehow laid on for our benefit.”

One notices above the deeply anthropocentric ending of Weinberg’s statement. It need not be the case that such colorful beauty is for human beings alone, but for any and all creatures (intelligent or otherwise) able to intuit and perceive it. On Whitehead’s scheme the artistic/aesthetic sense belongs to nature at its depths and its heights. Indeed, the overall drive of the universe can be understood to be “directed toward the production of beauty.” The universe as ART.

Cheers,

Dr. Davis

Charles,

Your post was a joy to read–and right up my alley in terms of its intuitions and conclusions. Eternal objects are indeed righty seen as part of ultimacy in Whitehead’s scheme of thought. In my recent book, Mind, Value and Cosmos, I give some sustained attention the status of possibly, arguing for their utter indispensability–even for God (after all, if God is actual, then God is also possible, and we must do something with God’s possibilities). You are right to not highlight possibility alone as ultimate reality–since any status of ultimacy in Whitehead is always mutually entangled with other ultimacies. As you mention: Actual entities, Creativity, God and eternal objects all presuppose each other and are “mutually immanent.” Eg. regarding God and eternal objects, Whitehead insists that “God requires eternal objects in the same sense that eternal objects required God.” So yes, while I have not problem insisting that possibility is ultimate–it is only so in abstraction from its reliance upon all ultimates and their reliance on possibility. Again my playful way of putting it in Whitehead is the “ultimacy of relationality”–the way in which all ultimate are reciprocally supportive of each other–even in the life of God.

Thanks too for the Shaviro link. If you have some time, check out the Auxier and Herstein optional reading on possibility. I find their treatment fair and rigorous.

Cheers,

Andrew

Great discuss here!

A quick response for now: Griffin’s work in Parapsychology, Philosophy and Spirituality and more recently in James and Whitehead on Life After Death treats channeling in part–and a part of wider paranormal and postmortem investigations. Assuming there veracity of such phenomena, what kind of metaphysics needs to be in place? Griffin argues that Whitehead’s metaphysics is up to the task.

A recent example of a popular medium is Tyler Henry. See the Netflix series called “Life After Death with Tyler Henry” which raises a host of questions, not least those metaphysical.

Best,

Dr. Davis

Leslie,

Excellent! You’re right to see important implications harboring in Whitehead’s understanding of our inheritance of our immediate past. Whitehead would indeed contribute positively to discussions in disability and theology. To my knowledge, I don’t think his vision has been applied to this growing literature.

Perhaps a paper topic to pursue!

Best,

Dr. Davis

Gardiner,

A great post! I’m very glad that Whitehead’s aeronautical metaphor offers you clarity as to his philosophical method; indeed, what he calls the “true method of discovery.” While he doesn’t himself name “retrospective induction”–I find this to be a helpful designation of his empirical, yet deeply imaginative, method.

Best,

Dr. Davis

Jace, a truly beautiful and thoughtful post. My favorite line is the last, re.: the creation of “a subject-object felt movement of gratitude for and wonder as to how one could even exist.”

Yes, yes, yes. A wonder and gratitude for being and becoming as wrapped up in the self. Ontological gratitude–as I like to call it.

“Philosophy begins in wonder and when philosophical thought has done its best, the wonder remains.” (paraphrasing Whitehead)

Dr. Davis

Great post, Elvi! It is certainly baffling and beautiful to learn about how it is other animals/beings perceive and navigate the world. You rightly point to the difficulty involved in imaginatively extending our experience “down” to these unique forms of encountering the world. It must be done skillfully and carefully. For Whitehead, these different ways of encountering the world must ultimately jive with the conceptual scheme that he has developed. Yes, it interesting to note also that the revitalization of “animism” as held and practiced across many indigenous cultures has included Whitehead’s panexperientialism and other forms of panpsychism in the current discussion.

Best,

Dr. Davis

Right you are, Rolla!

Dr. Davis

Charles,

Great post and questions. Breifly, I’m a fan of Whitehead’s eternal objects. In part, my understanding of Hartshorne’s and others criticism surround the importance of saying that truly novel possibilities can come into being that were *not* prefigured eternally in Whitehead’s platonic-like realm. They argue against this prefiguring as being inconsistent with the true novelty that undergirds Whitehead’s philosophy. Of course, Hartshorne too held to a robust affirmation of possibility as well, but in such a way that true novelty of possibility is stressed. However, a truly novel possibility is *still* a possibility. Thus, I like to envision not a realm of utterly detailed prefigured possibilities, but a vague realm of universal potency which is the condition for the detailed development of novel possibilities and eternal objects. I think this is consistent with Whitehead’s thought–without being overly Platonic (a point we will touch on next class).

I know Hartshorne, Griffin and others criticize Whitehead for being inconsistent with respect to God as a single everlasting event which (they say) appears to contradict Whitehead’s dictum that God is not the “great exception,” and instead opt for an everlasting series of divine events of experience. While Whitehead acknowledge difficulty here in conversation with A.H. Johnson, I tend to follow Roland Faber, Lewis Ford and Marjorie Suchocki in affirming no utter contradiction. God as “chief exemplification” is unique–and that’s what “chief” assumes. And I think Whitehead can hold to this without inconsistency. God is *not* like every other occasion and this is not what “chief exemplification” should imply. Whitehead knows of God’s utter uniqueness which is most pronounced in the fact that God moves conversely to every event–divine concrescence beginning always with the mental pole and then the physical poll in contradistinction to all worldly processes.

Best,

Dr. Davis

Charles,

A wonderful post and analysis of Value in Whitehead. You’ve anticipated the direction of our next readings and sessions directly.

More soon.

Dr. Davis

Right you are, Thomas.

There’s an inescapable anthropocentrism involved in Whitehead’s “radical empiricism,” but it is not naively so–as you suggest. We are not projecting *human experience* on nature, but asking what the nature and character of the rest of the world must be like, given that we are experiencing in it. “Experience” is thus not a human category, but a much wider natural category of which we are an amplified exemplifications. The volume is turned up in us, but never wholly absent across nature.

Best,

Dr. Davis

Friends,

A great conversation here on an essential dimension of Whitehead’s thought. According to Victor Lowe, longtime biographer of Whitehead, Whitehead himself was unhappy when students (including Lowe) would use “panpsychism” for his view.

“Mind” and “experience” do not require consciousness for Whitehead and many discussions of “panpsychism” tend to overly use “consciousness” as a category spread throughout nature. Experience is the more fundamental category applicable to nature. In another post, Charles used “omnisentience” which I think is also a great way of expressing Whitehead’s vision. “Sentience” would, of course, have to be qualified.

Best,

Dr. Davis