Andrew Davis
Bill, great post and you make me want to explore Gendlin’s work.
More work is needed in this area, to be sure. As for some potentially fruitful resources, see below.
Dr. D
Calling all mathematicians!
Chris, should paranormal mediumship be authentic in some cases (a la Griffin’s work), perhaps you can ask Whitehead! I’m kidding of course (at least in part). Is not God the mathematician of a final kind in Whitehead’s universe? Some say no: they remove God and assume mathematics can remain. How can this be? Eternal objects of the objective mathematical kind do not linger in a void.
Kathleen, a wonderful poem, indeed! Thank you for sharing. But need angels be only imaginary? In Religion and the Making, Whitehead says that he is “entirely neutral on the existence of spiritual beings other than God,” adding: “There is not reason why such a question should not be decided on more special evidence, religious or otherwise, provided it is trustworthy.” Thoughts?
Best to all,
DR. D
Absolutely, Kathleen! A great and beautiful passage: You may recall my statement in the preface to my book:
“In addition to being some of the most complex writing of philosophy, Whitehead’s is also some of the most compelling and beautiful. There are times when I simply have to pause in contemplative wonder after reading a particularly moving passage. Those who have walked with Whitehead for some years will understand this sentiment.”
DR. D
Tanks for the link, Doug! God as “possibilitect” is nice, though a bit cumbersome to express! I’ll have a listen. Curious to hear you say more about God BEING the dice! What do you take to be the implications?
Dr. D
Great questions friends and, yes, by all means criticize away! Nevertheless, I do think the Whitehead without God people (see Donald Crosby’s and Frederik Ferre’s work–both great scholars) tend to bend over backwards to make up for the functions that Whitehead’s God performs. A “God-shaped” metaphysical hole (Griffin) is left that requires them to develop a system other than Whitehead’s. That is fine, to be sure, but is it ultimately coherent in accounting for the various metaphysical demands of a process universe? I think not myself. Again, Whitehead brought God in to show that God really “belonged,” not because he needed existential/religious comfort, but because we face truly vexing metaphysical problems. That God must also be relevant to existential and religious interests is arguably part of the data of our experience. Without God there remains finite actual entities, eternal possibly and value, and creativity. As to how these relate and function coherently without the function of God is beyond me. Again though: this is not a classical “God” in the least, but God nonetheless. Final convictions as to the place of God in metaphysics are not bad things as any look to the tradition will show…Its is an odd modern preoccupation with a God-less universe.
Best,
Dr. D
Bill, excellent comments. Here below is the Gandhi & divine persuasion comment I was referencing in Whitehead’s Adventures of Ideas. Curious to hear your thoughts:
“The theme of this chapter can be introduced by directing attention to a contrast. Protestant Christianity, so far as concerns the institutional and dogmatic forms in which it flourished for three hundred years as derived from Luther, Calvin, and the Anglican Settlement, is shewing all the signs of a steady decay. Its dogmas no longer dominate: its divisions no longer interest: its institutions no longer direct the patterns of life. That is one side of the contrast.
The other side is that the religious spirit as an effective element in the affairs of men has just [April, 1931] obtained one of its most signal triumphs. In India the forces of violence and strife, between rulers and people, between races, between religions, between social grades,—forces threatening to overwhelm with violence hundreds of millions of mankind—these forces have for the moment been halted by two men acting with the moral authority of religious conviction, the Mahatma Gandhi and the Viceroy of India [Lord Irwin].
They may fail. More than two thousand years ago, the wisest of men [Plato] proclaimed that the divine persuasion is the foundation of the order of the world, but that it could only produce such a measure of harmony as amid brute forces it was possible to accomplish.This, I suggest, is a plain anticipation by Plato of a doctrine of Grace, seven hundred years before the age of Pelagius and Augustine.
But the dramatic halt effected by Gandhi and the Viceroy, requiring as it does an effective response from uncounted millions in India, in England, in Europe, and America, witnesses that the religious motive, I mean the response to the divine persuasion, still holds its old power, even more than its old power, over the minds and the consciences of men. In this response the protestant populations of the British Empire, and importantly, though more remotely, that of the United States, have sustained their part. We stand at a moment
when the course of history depends upon the calm reasonableness arising from a religious public opinion. An initial triumph has already been gained…”Good eye, Jeremy.
The classical Omni’s are definitely understood differently, especially knowledge and power. We will come to this in session 5 (in part).God is not omniscient in knowing the future as already actual; the future is real as a realm of possibility. This is what God knows “omnisciently,” but this does not entail God can know the future as already actual. Process thinkers argued this is a contradiction.
God is not omnipotent since God cannot determine any action, God only provides the possibilities for action; it is the world that actualizes. To exist is to have power such that power is a relational concept. There is no being that can have all-power. All creative power is shared in Whitehead universe. God’s role is persuasive, not coercive.
Hartshorne I think argues righty that none of these decry divine perfect either since perfect knowledge and perfect power cannot due what is impossible: knowing the future as actual or having all power in a fundamentally creative word.
God is omnipresent as you say: yes, obsoletely.
God is also good for Whitehead: omnibenevolent.
More later…
DR. D
Chris, love the depth of your engagement and your questions:
A few brief responses:
To what extent can the universe be based in/on creativity if all the possibilities already exist in God’s primordial nature? Whitehead insists that in every philosophical system there is an ultimate which is only render actual in its embodiments. Creativity is the formless ultimate (Whitehead’s says it is akin to Aristotle’s prime matter, but utterly active), which is embodied in all becoming actuality and cannot exist outside this embodiment. Finite actual entities embody creativity and so does God, the chief exemplification of creativity in the universe. Creativity requires a medium of actuality (ontological principle). The universe can be based in creativity because nothing is ultimately determinative in these primordial possibilities belonging to God’s nature. God provides, we actualize and this actualization is the expression of creativity. Possibilties are not pre-programed for us, but made relevant to our context of becoming.
Either creativity brings into the world possibilities that never existed before or it doesn’t. There is a problem in saying that “possibilities never existed before” because if this is true, it was possible for them to exist. We still don’t escape the realm of the possible. Hartshorne worried about the point you are making and it may help to say that the realm of possibility, although necessary and unchanging, is also amorphous and, in the process of actualization, comes into more defiant focus. I just don’t see how “possibilities that never existed before” can make sense. These possibilities are there eternally, but it is the context which really make them “possible” for actualization. Thoughts?
If “true” creativity exists, then it is not bound by the view-from-nowhere argument. Its definition is that it comes from nowhere! In the same way that God is the answer, the ground, invoked to explain many aspects of the actual occasion story, couldn’t creativity be a replacement? As mentioned above creativity is formless and not actual for Whitehead; it requires embodiment in actual occasions. In this way, it is not an exception to the ontological principle. Creativity does nothing by itself and it cannot perform the functions Whitehead deems necessary with respect to possibility. These functions are only attributable to “God.” To hark back to Auxier and Herstein: what in the nature of things accounts for distinction between “the was” and the “might have been” and, indeed, “the is, and the may be.” Creativity cannot perform these functions, nor can any finite actual entity. All the primal elements in Whitehead’s system requires each other such that if any drop out, the system dissolves: actual entities, creativity, eternal objects, God are all mutually immanent.
Alas, the debate rages…As for God being possible: yes. If God is actual then God is possible, but it is part of the uniqueness of any affirmation of a necessary reality that the possible and actual are summed up within it: A profound and ancient mystery. Only an actuality can be the ground of the possible–including the possibly of this actuality.
We groan on… 🙂
Dr. D
Evan, et al., a great discuss brewing here and a source of debate among process philosophers/theologians. I attach a recent article to appear in the next issue of Process Studies which directly relates, and in dialogue with some of the questions/figures that Evan cites.
Curious to hear any follow up.
Dr. D
Kevin, great intuition here and I don’t think you are wrong! Although “panentheism” is a wider umbrella, as a contemporary model of the God-World relationship it, arguably, best expresses the profoundly relational vision of Whitehead’s philosophy/theology. God and the world are “mutually immanent” (whitehead’s term) to each other (God in the world and the world in God) and this is precisely what a panentheistic conception allows (as opposed to theistic or pantheistic conceptions). More on this in our final session!
Best,
Dr. D
Charlie,
I’m glad you enjoyed Ch. 12. Yes, the discussion of laws as habit or customs (As Whitehead puts it) is fascinating and a arena of much debate. A recent voice, Lee Smolin, sides with Whitehead on this habitual nature of laws. With respect to the “faith” in order that Whitehead speaks of, it may help to make the distinction between cosmological order (which obtain in our particular cosmic epoch) and metaphysical order which is, in principle, necessary and eternal (would obtain in all possible cosmic epochs, our included). We must have faith in both it seems, but the “laws” we discover in our cosmic epoch, may not be necessary to any and all cosmic epochs. In this way they are contingent.
See Smolin below…fund discussion.
Dr. D
Kevin, great comments. You are drawing the essential correlation between possibility and mentality. For Whitehead, this is an essential metaphysical correlation: where there is possibility, there is mind but it transcends finite mentality too. After all, we would also have to say that where there is infinite and necessary possibility, there is infinite and necessary mind. Did you just prove God, Kevin!!? 🙂
We will come to this next session. Thoughts?
Dr. D