Replies

Randall,
You are right that actual occasion is another name for actual entity.

Process can refer to a single actual entity or the successive flow of actual entities. The sense in which process refers only to an individual ae is that the ae is self-creative. There is an internal process of self-creativity which constitutes the individual aesthetic. It is a quantum event which cannot be subdivided. The inner process occurs all at once or not at all. A bit paradoxical, I agree.
But an actual entity CREATES both space and time. It is a spatial/temporal event of self-creativity. There is no space or time apart from the events. That is something Einstein realized Newton was wrong about. Newton thought space and time were absolute–God’s sense organs, within which events occurred. Einstein saw that events constitute space and time. Whitehead agreed but spoke of the quantum events he called actual entities

HOWEVER it is also the case that most a.e.s are dominated by their “physical” while a few–or conscious reflective moments like doing philosophy–are dominated by their prehension of possibilities.

George,
Thanks for this helpful comment. You are right that for Whitehead process AND subjectivity go all the way down. So does agency, the power to choose between two or more possibilities.
You seem to separate physical and subjective aspect of nature in re actual entities. Whitehead speculates that actual entities FEEL both the physical energy of world and possibilities arising from that world. So he invites us to see the world as both NOT dualistic but both physical and subjective.
David Griffin, in response to Descartes’ dualism, proposed a HIERARCHICAL DUALISM. That is,
some structures (i.e. biological organisms) work to create more complex levels of experience than that of the atoms and molecules of which they are composed. The more complex the organism the more complex the experience it can organize—including consciousness.

However, most physical structures, like rocks, do not do this. rocks seem to have no experience more complex than that of the individual atoms and molecules of which they are composed. Hence rocks have no center feelings of desire, pain, or pleasure.
So, functionally, we get the kind of dualism Descartes pointed to, without the ontological dualism which leaves the physical world–including our own bodies–totally devoid of experience.

Mountains are worth considering. A mountain has a lot of dead rock.I wouldn’t think a mountain is likely to have any unified central experience. But it also likely to be composed of lots living cells and worms, trees, bushes, and other complex organisms which will certainly be organically connected in very complex ways.

We can’t deal with all of this, but we will get started exploring it this next Wednesday.

Thanks for your thoughtful and informed contributions.
Bob

Monty, I tried to reply to your question a few days ago, but made some technical error and lost it.

I will say that in 1981, at my first philosophy conference as a new college teacher, I made a reference to Whitehead in a conversation. Afterward a senior philosopher pulled me aside and gently warned me not to cite Whitehead if I wanted to be taken seriously. 🙁

Process theology has received attention in many Christian and other circles, including seminaries.My book Process Theology: A Basic Introduction has been translated into Korean, and into Brazilian Portuguese. I’m told that it is required reading in many seminaries in Brazil. Surprise to me. However, philosophy departments in the West have not. It was clear that John Cobb was always deeply frustrated by this.

However, you have heard Jay say that Whitehead’s philosophy has become very influential in China. My impression is that after the cultural revolution Chinese universities were allowed to invite leading Western scholars to speak there, they were mainly offered DECONSTRUCTIVE Postmodernism. But Chinese scholars rejected it, feeling the cultural revolution had been far more deconstruction that they wanted.
However, David Griffin seized the moment and began his series of books on Whitehead’s philosophy as CONSTRUCTIVE Postmodernism. Chinese scholars embraced it enthusiastically. About 2004 or 7, Jay and I went to China to each the Summer Process Academy, sponsored by the INSTITUTE FOR THE POSTMODERN DEVELOPMENT OF CHINA, led by Wang Zhihe and Fan Meijun, who still lead it. Jay and I took turns for a several summers leading these summer academies at universities all up and down the coast of China, from far north to far south. each academy was connected to a conference at the sponsoring university, on a topic of the university’s choice. Constructive Postmodernism and…. topics ranging from Education to philosophy, systems theory, to Economics and even the future of Mongolian Nomads.

Jay has been more involved than I have in recent years. Mei and Zhihe have offered amazing leadership. Other proceeds scholars have also played significant roles in the academies and conferences.
John Cobb is highly revered in China and Korea.

Also, Jay McDaniel has been of great importance in nurturing the expansion of the process community beyond the b bounds of the academy and Whitehead scholars into art, music, food, politics, and more.

However

Let me quote Process and Reality, p. 18.
“‘Actual entities’–also termed ‘actual occasions’–are the final real things of which the world is made up. There is no going behind actual entities to find anything more real.” …. (actual entities differ in some respects, but) “The final facts are, all alike, actual entities; and these act; emotes are drops of experience, complex and interdependent.

So, of course it is true that Whitehead’s vision, like Newton’s and Einstein’s is a model, and Whitehead certainly hoped that we would continue to improve our understanding. But within the model, if we ask whether an actual entity, on Whitehead’s model, is “real” just ask yourself if your own experience is real. A single moment of your personal experience, like the moment of pain Christie felt with the tack, is an actual entity. Is it real? Yes, surely, But, of course, words are not the realities to which they point, so the name “actual entity”, as George says, is a model, not an actual entity.

Monty,
Thanks. My wife, Barbara andI live in Rogers Park, just north of Loyola. I attend the Unitarian Church of Evanston. So, we are in the same part of the world.
Also, I first encountered process thought in my M.A. in Christian Theology at the U of C Div School (class of 75). After finishing my M.A., after Barbara and I both finished our M.A.s there we decided to have a baby. While we did that I went across the street to CTS (You’ll remember the bookstore there) where I spent a year studying Process & Reality and Henry Nelson Wieman. Then did my PhD at Northwestern U. and Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary.
I’m interested that our class includes a couple of other Div School alumni
That is unusual. Usually it is a bunch of Claremont grads.

I look forward to meeting you in the class.
Bob

Nelson, Yes. These are separate tasks. The March 8 date is for a relatively small project to complete the requirements for this specific course. The Nov. 19 deadline if for larger capstone project for the certificate program as a whole. Is that clear?