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People often seem to think of the meaning of life as something that life is for, rather than what life is; a destination rather than the journey of life itself. Adherents of Western religions often seem to think of the meaning of life as an ulterior, outside goal to orient their lives to, such as serving God in heaven, or gaining admission to heaven when they die. Something that I very much like about process cosmology is that, at least in my reading of it, it doesn’t think about meaning as something extrinsic to actual entities, and to life; as something adventitious rather than intrinsic to life. Rather, it recognizes that the meaning of being is simply the creative-relational process that is the fundamental nature of being; the journey and adventure of creative self-actualization, of realizing the possibilities of our lives together. It seems to me that from the process perspective life itself, life understood as a social process of value realization, living life to the fullest in terms of embodying and sharing value, is the meaning of life. I much prefer this understanding of the meaning of life as the experience and odyssey of life itself, and maximizing its richness and intensity, to the conventional and religious concept of meaning as another shore to be reached. As Siddhārtha Gautama taught, and I think as process also teaches, we’re already on the other shore, we just don’t realize it.

(If I haven’t articulated my process take on the question of the meaning of life well enough, here’s a quote from a television adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles that sums it up nicely. When asked what his people thought the meaning and secret of life is the Martian replied: “Secret …. There is no secret. Anyone with eyes can see the way to live …. By watching life, observing nature, and cooperating with it. Making common cause with the process of existence …. By living life for itself, don’t you see? Deriving pleasure from the gift of pure being.”)

Thank you.

Thank you.

I’m very happy that the thoughts I’ve shared have had some value for you. And thank you for sharing about the part that panexperientialism is playing in your own ongoing adventure of ideas.

As I’ve said elsewhere, I think that both individualism (which among other ways manifests in the personal survival-promoting lack of “concern for the vulnerable” that you focus on, and in human egoism and privatism) and the interconnectedness, interdependence, sociality, and indeed compassion that can also be found in the world apart from human beings, derive from what the the process ontological perspective identifies as the ontologically fundamental mode of being of all entities: a process of interrelational self-actualization, of the interrelational production of individual entities that are unifications of the universe. Both individualism, including the behavior of individualistic self-preservation with its nonconcern for the vulnerable that’s exhibited by other creatures; and the social-relationality exhibited by various other species, reflect, are the two faces of a creative process that’s about both differentiation and unification, self- and inter-creativity, self-actualization and self-contribution to the creative process and diversity of a creative universe. The survivalist selfishness of living creatures doesn’t really argue against the creative-organic interdependence of the world and finding a basis for a concern for the vulnerable in it, rather it’s only one side of the world’s ontological process; to think that it refutes the social-relational side of the process is to be excessively one-sided. Well, that’s my two cents.

PS I’ll add another thought, which will no doubt sound far-out to anyone who doesn’t subscribe to panpsychism or panexperientialism, but I’ll offer it anyway. I would suggest that if you want to find biological examples of concern for the vulnerable in the nonhuman world perhaps don’t only look at the interactions of individual animals, but also look at the interactions within them, the interactions of the entities that they’re composed of. A living organism comprises many different actual entities that in fact work together cooperatively; and from a panexperientialist perspective with relational concern, even arguably with concern for the greater good of the whole organism. Take, for instance, the immune system, and its white blood cells, which protect the otherwise vulnerable body from the harm that might be caused by infections. Perhaps here we have a prime biological example of entities acting out of concern for and protecting the vulnerable. I know, that probably sounds crazy to you, but try to remember that panpsychism is not a perspective that is only held by intellectually slack fringe New-Agers. For instance, there’s a kind of panpsychism that’s grown out of some of the thinking of Bertrand Russell (one of your fellow skeptics); and other first-rate minds such as William James, Wilhelm Wundt, Arthur Eddington, Galen Strawson, and Roger Penrose (in his case his panpsychism only covers biological entities such as cells and neurons) have all formulated and adhered to forms of panpsychism. Yes, panpsychism can be an intellectually respectable theory. Of course that doesn’t mean that it’s true, but it does mean that it shouldn’t be rejected out of hand.

“In my understanding we have lost the ability to completely interact with the magic of the world”, when I read this I immediately thought of David Ray Griffin’s book Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism, which as the title would suggest goes into detail about how process ontology and cosmology can serve as a naturalistic basis for a rediscovery and appreciation of the magic and wonder in the world—nonsupernatural magic, but magic nonetheless. I recommend his book to everyone here.

I endeavor to. I try to always orient my thinking, attitudes, and priorities by fundamental process insights and values such as universal relativity, and the humanism and self-realizationism that to my mind can be grounded in process ontology. And in various ways, such as vegetarianism, I try to practice ethics that are consistent with the interconnectedness of, and the embodiment of value by all entities. But it’s challenging, especially in our society which is deeply geared toward individualism and materialism. I certainly don’t claim that my life is a stellar example of applied process thought. I admittedly fall pretty far short of that.

Yes, the problem with the word “hierarchy” is that it does seem to inescapably invoke anti-democratic superior-inferior, dominant-subordinate thinking and categorization. Even if we try to repurpose the term to merely refer to an innocent gradation of complexity the vexing problem persists, because entities of a higher degree of complexity would then seem to claim priority over less complex entities, and would seem to be privileged to exercise domination over less complex entities (for instance we human beings take ourselves to be privileged to exercise domination over, and to seek to eradicate the Covid-19 virus through vaccination against it because viruses are less complex entities and we therefore regard our well-being as humans to enjoy a higher priority). Unless we’re prepared to take the radically equalitarian perspective that the tics and fleas that can destroy the quality of life of our beloved dogs, and the germs that make our children sick and threaten their lives are not lower life-forms, and are entitled to equal moral standing and nonharm, we need to figure out some way of coming to terms with hierarchism. The best way that I’ve been able to come up with thus far is to adopt Riane Eisler’s term “actualization hierarchy”, and to use it with the explicit or implicit stipulation that I’m talking about a gradation of the actualization of complexity and possibility among entities of different species, and not a social dominance hierarchy among human beings who despite achieving different degrees of self-actualization are all entitled to social equality because we’re all basically configurations of the same eternal objects into the same life-form. Well, this is currently my rationalization for retaining the term “hierarchy”, but I’m open to other rationalizations, or to ideas about how we might dispense altogether with hierarchal thinking.

I’m happy that my reply was helpful.

Since physics has been brought into the conversation in this thread, I’ll post a physics-related question that I have for Dr. McDaniel here. My understanding is that subatomic particles such as electrons would technically be considered Whiteheadian societies, societies of actual occasions, or compound individuals in Hartshorne’s terminology, but what about the strings of string theory? Might they be identical with actual occasions, rather than societies? Are there any entities in physics that might be considered to be identical with actual occasions rather than societies?

I hope the fact that panentheism, and probably also process and open and relational theology are now on the radar of the religious right is an indication that the general public’s interest in these theologies is growing. But these folks have a threat bias that has them seeing threats to their subculture lurking everywhere, so Mr. Olson’s identification of panentheism as an important feature of liberal Christianity that needs to be opposed perhaps reflects his threat bias more than our numbers. I don’t know.

If I might also offer some thoughts on this question, I would say that rejection of the subject-predicate way of thinking involves recognizing that there are not pre-existing, already-formed, ontologically finalized, self-standing entities which then receive and add on to themselves, add on to their already-existing selves the qualities that characterize them. Rather, an actual entity is fundamentally a process of the integration of the world’s data and possibilities. Some process thinkers think that it’s okay to say that the process of an actual occasion finally produces a product, others take the view that it’s better to stick with process language all the way down the line, but in any case an actual entity starts not with an established subject but with a process; with prehensions, feelings; with the growth of subjectivity out of its prehensions; with the creative activity of the integration of prehensions, and eventuates in an actualized entity that’s characterized by certain actualized possibilities. Which is all my longwinded way of saying what boils down to “process precedes being”. The short version of the explanation of Whitehead’s repudiation of subject-predicate thinking is that it involves the perspective that process precedes being. (A Buddhist metaphysician would say that there are no intrinsic selves to which predicates or characteristic are added; rather, entities are configurations of interdependence, of interdependent elements.) Well, this is my understanding.

This article might be of interest to you.

https://www.openhorizons.org/quantum-mechanics-local-causality-and-process-philosophy-henry-pierce-stapp.html

I like “gradation of actualization”. I think I’ll appropriate it. “Axianoetic” is a neologism coined by Andrew Davis in his book Mind, Value, and Cosmos: On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy. He uses the term to describe the the ultimate nature of reality as experiential and oriented to value-realization. He’ll be teaching the next course in the program, and I look forward to our having the opportunity to explore his understanding of the term with him. Here’s a link to the publishers page for the book:

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793636393/Mind-Value-and-Cosmos-On-the-Relational-Nature-of-Ultimacy

Thanks for trying to provide the link. I think that this is the one you wanted to post (I share some thoughts about it below):

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7ujr91

I don’t think that according to Whitehead it’s the case that things are not what they appear to be in quite the same way as is the case in the plot of this episode. In Whitehead’s ontology the substantiality of the meso level things in the world is not completely false or deceptive, it’s just not the ultimate reality of things. The “substantiality” of the rock that Dr. Johnson advised us to kick to test the objective reality of external things is real enough on the meso level of reality to break your toe on, it just isn’t the most fundamental or the full ontological truth of things. Despite their appearance of being a lifeless and independent object, the rocks and other objects of the world are composed of interrelated occasions of experience. But, again, this doesn’t make their thingness an utter deception; it’s just the case that their thingness belies their most ontologically basic mode of being.

I think that the Madhyamaka Buddhist doctrine of two levels of truth (dvasatya) can be helpful. Rather than an abject illusion, the world of substantial objects that we naively take to be real is better thought of as a less than ultimate conventional reality that we can’t help but engage. To some extent we have to engage it on its own conventional terms, and we should in fact take those terms as legitimate since they’re what the creative nature of reality gives rise to. But the conventional is not ultimate reality, ultimate reality is creative-experiential interrelationality and interdependence; and enlightenment is engaging the world of conventional reality not only on its own terms but also with this insight about its deeper ontology in mind, with a sustained mindfulness of this insight. I think that this is the aim of the Vipassana discipline. Perhaps a process-Vipassana fusion might give us an effective practice for attuning our way of taking the world and living in it to Whitehead’s philosophy.