Andrew Davis
Eric, great comments (and funny too).
Making a distinction between possibilities and ideas in interesting, indeed, and I welcome the class to consider your post in light of Whitehead’s thinking concerning eternal objects.
Briefly, It seems to me that possibilities are the content of ideas. An idea, we might say, is a thought of X, with X being a possibility (or constellation of possibilities). It may not be possible now given your age, and our lack of scientific/technological capacity, for you to go to Mars and back (wouldn’t that be wild!), but it is not impossible in principle. Ideas can transcend our temporal limitations; we can grasp a scenario where you in fact could if many factors were different. We are bound by actuality, but possibility in the form of ideas goes beyond. Ideas are possibilities, but not all ideas are possible…yet.
As for your challenge, the possibility of having ideas or being possible is not something that depends upon our thinking it in the least. But I suppose your are talking about a future possibility from the perspective of the present. In this case, there is no access to possibilities without thought. Ideas as a form of thought are entertainments of the possible.
Eternal objects are not just “out there,” but “in here too” as the ingressive preconditions of becoming. Remember the objective (public) and subjective distinction (private) that Whitehead makes with respect to eternal objects. The content again of ideas is eternal objects: a composer having an idea for a new symphony for example. Whitehead: but everywhere hovering around the composer are “infinitudes of possibility–the other way this vastness might be expressed.”
Curious to hear your follow up.
Dr. D
Doug, great questions here.
1. Eternal object extend into the past, yes, but in the sense that their exemplification in past process is inherited as “objectively immortal” in present and future process (and might even be reproduced!).
2. For Whitehead not all perception is through our senses. In fact there is a more fundamental mode of non-sensuous perception: causal efficacy. Causal efficacy is our wider relational feeling of emerging out of the vastness of the world itself. It is below and beyond the delimitations of our senses which emerge out of it. There are domains in causal efficacy that cannot be recognized (or are ignored) by our senses, but at times such domains (value, God, etc…) might rise to sense experience. See Whitehead’s great book Symbolism for his discussion of these modes of perception and their integration. See also Buchanan’s book Processing Reality for a great discussion of these distinctions with respect to religious/mystical/psychedelic experience etc. You ask: is not a “subjective eternal object of emotion causal efficacy with objective immortality?” In a sense, yes. All that is achieved in psycho-physical experience is objectively immortal.
3. “escaping anthropomorphism and solipsism completely is not possible?” Well, we cannot escape being human and we struggle to properly incorporate the universe into our humanity and our humanity into the universe. There is not escape from this. But I don’t see how solipsism is a part of the equation since we emerge out of the world of relations, we don’t cognitively produce the world of relations from our subjective standpoint. This again is Whitehead inversion of the Kantian frame of mind. We can know there is an external world (as presupposed in our practice).
Best,
DR. D
Dennis, profound indeed! Glad to have “upped” your opinion of Norm. It’s an important exchange, certainly.
Cheers,
Dr. D
Great comment, Kathleen! Yes, this is tough to imagine. Indeed, for the Whitehead there is no empty space; rather, space is the a result of the co-occurrence of parallel occasion which do not prehend each other because they happen at the same time. He speaks of the resulting “elbow room” in the unversed. But it is certainty not empty, but utterly active. Your comment is about “extensive connection” brings to mind Whitehead’s “extensive continuum” or the platonic Receptacle as the widest relational medium (“the foster mother of all becoming” as he puts it) out of which all emerges.
Hope that helps in part.
Cheers,
Dr. Davis
Olivia, great post!
I must share the following recorded statement from Whitehead’s wife Evelyn from Lucien Price’s Dialogues:
” ‘Dog’s’ said Mrs. Whitehead, ‘are far more moral than human beings; they are more self-effacing and more self-sacrificing. Watch a dog try to help someone he loves; the beast puts us to shame. ”
True as this is, we would not generally say we should replicate the “morality” of animal nature. Although we often fail, yes, we are called beyond the instinctual animality of our ancestry. As I quoted Kushner in class: “The difference between humans an animals is that we have the abilty to say no to instinct upon moral grounds.” I don’t take this to be an absolute statement, but there is something unique about our preoccupations with morality and religion. We can be put to shame by the love and goodness we find in dogs etc. It’s a reminder that we can be better than we currently are.
As for fate: yes, not determined fate per say in Whitehead (if that means as settled future). I like how you put it: “many possible destinies / many possible fates. There is no singular Fate but rather fates … or possibilities with regard to eternal objects / pure potentials.” In the same way, there are many beginning and endings but never absolute Beginnings and Endings.
Cheers,
Dr. D
Gents, a great discussion ensuing here!
Dennis, your are right that “nonliving” entities have a mental pole, but as to why this should bother us, I’m not so sure. Also, Whitehead admits that drawing a strong distinction between living and nonliving is rather challenging. Also, the relationship between life and mind is curious. Do they require each other in some sense? Whitehead for example speaks of “the root principles of life [which] are, in some lowly form, exemplified in all types of physical existence.” Mind too is exemplified in all typos of physical existence to some extent. Keven also makes an essential correlation (as does Whitehead) between the activity of mentality with respect to possibly. Wherever possibilities collapse into actuality, the functioning of mentality (mental poles) is present and active. Possibly and mentality cannot be torn apart, either for actual entities and (as we will see in our next session) even for the supreme actual entity, namely, God. Life, Mind, Possibility and–we must add–value. These are some of the necessary ontological domains of Whitehead’s universe.
Cheers,
Dr. D
Christ, Love it! This is precisely the “imaginative [mathematical] generalization” that forms the backdrop of our course. You speak of a unbelievably vast spectrum of values and God’s ability to incorporate all such values (which we will come to in our next session). Bernardo Loomer spoke of God’s “Size” to indicate the divine abilty to incorporate the vast contradictory values and achievements of the evolutionary process (From Dinos to Nazi’s) without destruction. Your comments as to divine transcendence and locus also reminded me of A.H. Johnson question to Whitehead as to whether “it was possible to indicate God’s locus:”
“Whitehead replied, that in respect to the world, God is everywhere. Yet he is a distinct entity. The world (i.e., the events in it) has a (specific) locus wit respect to him, but he has no locus with respect to the world. This is the basis for the distinction between finite and infinite. God and the world have the same [general] locus. It is a matter of which you pick out as occupying the locus…”
Cheers,
Dr. D
Friends, this is perhaps the riches discussion so far. Well done, indeed!
Penrose & Hammeroff’s Orch-OR proposal is a positive nod to Whitehead, certainly. Yet, as was mentioned by Kevin, language becomes an issue here. Their naming of a “conscious Whitehead-like ‘occasion’ of experience” may misunderstand Whitehead (since many do think he says “consciousness” goes all the way down), or they may just be using “consciousness” as a synonym for “experience”–which is unwise! As Kevin emphasized, consciousness is a late evolutionary achievement out of primal experience, but in truth, we do not know when it is that “consciousness” as such dons, and it may be that it goes further down than we think. Part of the issue is also our assumption that “consciousness” means “meta-consciousness” or the consciousness that we are in fact conscious. It certainly does on our level, but likely dissipates as we descend nature. In any case, Whitehead gives us grounds for asking not only “What is it like to be a bat?” (Nagel), but what is it like to be an “occasion of experience?” In the end it is like something and not nothing. There is a experiential perspective there, but it will not be conscious and certainly not meta-conscious.
Dennis asks: “Has the development of consciousness similar to what we have enjoyed occurred on other planets?” In a panexperientialist framework experience and mind are the ingredients of evolution, so certainly there is experience beyond earth. As for the rise of experience to consciousness akin to our own, this is also likely from my perspective given that evolution involves the complexification of experience. Thus, where conditions are ripe, we should expect to find consciousness of a kind, yes. Early on, Hartshorne recognized, that a panpsychist or panexperientialist view “implies the eternal existence of finite minds of some kind in the universe.” It is noteworthy that he follows this statement insisting that one the many ways this might be verified is “by the discovery of other inhabited planets.” Griffin too offers some wider insight:
“[O]n other planets with the conditions for life to emerge and to evolve for many billions of years, we should expect there to be some with creatures that, no matter how different in physical constitution and appearance, would share some of our capacities, such as those for mathematics, music and morality, or, more generally, truth, beauty and goodness.”
Note those stubborn values again: Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.
Cheers to all,
Dr. D
Tom, a fantastic and personal contextualization of our themes. I’m glad my chapter on eternal objects aided your understanding and I certain agree with Auxier and Herstein about the indispensably of possibly to Whitehead’s thought. I tried to emphasize this last night (at least in part). As Auxier and Herstein indicate, some have wanted to get rid of eternal objects because they feel they are extra-natural and thereby compromise a true “naturalism” (whatever that is). This is far from the truth in my perspective. Every philosophy must wrestle with the possible as a presupposition and Whitehead faces the riddles of the possible head on. Other’s don’t like eternal objects because the don’t like “God” which, at least for Whitehead (but also for much of the tradition), is the eternal contextualization and evaluation of the possible. Can possibilities just float in a void? Not for Whitehead: a supreme non-temporal actual entity (at least in part) is required for coherence. More on this next session.
Cheers,
Dr. Davis
Joel, a great reflection elaborating the insight of Watt’s and Jesus!
There is something profound there to be sure, namely, that what the world produces has to be related to what the world is. Cause is related to effect. There is a strand of philosophical thinking (and philosophical theology) that asserts that the final nature of the universe cannot be anything less than what it has produced such that notions of experience, mind, value have a kind of ultimacy to them. E.g., the mindless cannot produce the mindfull. In an evolutionary frame, moreover, we might say that the universe or God is in the business of drawing the world to be more like itself (imago dei). Is this why we are experiencing and valuing being of a peculiar kind? It’s a fun question.
Cheers,
Dr. D
Friends, a rich discussion here.
I certainly see how the language of “common sense” can be misleading. Another way to understand this is that Whitehead insists that our philosophical data has to be what we inevitably presuppose in the practice of our lives. Philosophy deals in presuppositions and this is a pragmatic principle: “We must bow to those presumptions which, in despite of criticism, we still employ for the regulation of our lives”. ‘Such presumptions’, Whitehead adds, ‘are imperative in experience.’ We face certain “presumptive imperatives” (as I like to call them) that we cannot escape and it is in this sense that Whitehead speaks of “common sense” since it tends to tracks these preemptions: experience, an external world, freedom, causality, induction, value, etc. These are all arguably commonsense notions that we assume even if our theory denies them. Moreover, if our theory denies them, we have committed what Whitehead describes as “negations of what in practice are presupposed”–a kind of performative contradiction. Hope this helps for now.
Dr. D
Tom and Tony, great comments.
Not heresy at all, Tom! Whitehead in no way intended to offer a final model after which nothing more adequate would emerge. I take your point about the “phases” of an actual entity which are interpretive yes. Our language of inheritance, reception, anticipation are simplifications of these phases which are in no way clear and distinct in the emergence of quantum of space-time (the becoming of an actual entity). We don’t want to reify these phases or the exact duration of an event, true. Nevertheless, an event “takes place” and has an effect (efficient and final) at levels of both concrescence (intra/micro) and transition (inter/macro). Events take place and are of different durations, and they do so down in nature. We stretch our imaginations and language at the lowest level of ontology where, at least for Whitehead, lowly experiential events constitute the final level. Just a model, yes, but an increasingly powerful one as witnessed by the increased attention to panexperientialism/panpsychism, among other important notions.
Cheers,
Dr. D
Eric, great post here.
Breifly to your points:
1. Are we free? It is certainly the case that we are bound to social conditioning and social expectations. We are even “generally determined” to some extent. But the key word here is “generally,” not fully determined. The power of the past is strong and the power of the environment does tend to canalize our choices to convene with this power, but there always remains the slice of self-determination for Whitehead which is our ability to break the power of the past so that things can be different and novelty occur. If there is space of freedom, it remains hard to account for the radical novelty which has occurred in evolution and human existence. We retain the power to break the past and I would argue that despite the weight of our past and our surrounding environments, we assume that most of our choices could have been different. This “could have been different” is that slice of self-determination.
2. Do actual entities exist? Great question. Whitehead even states at one point that actual entities never really are because as soon as the exist (becoming a “being”) they past into the past as objectively immortal. But there is another important definition of “being” or “existence” that Whitehead takes from Plato: to be is to have power (or to have an influence). Under this definition, actual entities certainly exist because they influence all. To be is to have an affect beyond oneself.
3. What is an environment? There is a deep sense in which an environment is, yes, environ-MENTAL–or experiential. Experience is everywhere, but this does not mean that everything has the kind of unified experience that is productive of experience like our own. As mention in class, I remain fully open to experience beyond and below us–Whitehead did too–but we have to be careful how we express this to avoid being “anthropo-something.” Whitehead even speculates that the nebula may be “sentient entities and what we can see of them are their bodies.” Rupert Sheldrake and others speak of a kind of unified experiencing of the sun, and other speak of the entire earth as an experiential entity: GAIA. Who’s to say. Whitehead’s vision allows for unbelievably vast spectra of sentience, experience, and mind in nature.
Cheers,
Dr. D
Jeremy, yes, excellent. It is a statement of not “a being that becomes,” but a (as I like to put it) a “becoming into being!” Your statement about the rock reminds me of another important fallacy Whitehead encourages us to avoided: the “fallacy of simple location”–the critique of the notion that we can locate concrete particulars in clearly definite portions of space and time, e.g, “there” and “now.” Such an approach works at high levels, but becomes problematic at low levels of nature.
Best,
Dr. D
Bill, I’m sure (I would hope!) you can find Roy’s book for cheaper. Thanks for this other resource too which I was not familiar with. Process “approaches” in psychology tend to be wider than Whitehead’s work, but it does look like he receive some mention in this text. Looks good overall.
Best,
Dr. D