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Yes. Actual Occasions are scale free. Careful that you don’t equate the most indivisible unit with the “smallest” unit scale wise. In his Word Book Cobb says:
“The two clearest examples of actual occasions are, thus, a momentary experience, whether of a human being or of some other animal, and a quantum of energy. By giving them the same name, Whitehead calls attention to what, with all their differences, they have in common.” (pg 18)

And yes you can describe human experience in terms of actual occasions. When we have an experience of something, say we drank something hot and burned our mouth, that overall event is temporal. By the time we have consciously registered the burning all kinds of things have happened, from nerves flaring, to synapses firing, to registering it as a conscious event, time has past. In other words, that whole sequence is divisible. If you keep breaking it down backward at some point you end up with that no-longer-divisible momentary flash, or event/occasion, of pure experience that began the whole sequence. That momentary flash is an actual occasion.The next flash in the sequence takes account of that initial one that started it (and is also in itself indivisible in the same way), and builds on it,and then the next, etc. like frames of a movie.

The momentary flash of experience of a quanta of energy is also momentary and indivisible, so qualifies as an actual occasion. It is the sequence of quantum experiential occasions that allows for temporal endurance and hence measurement etc.
An occasion that is a flash of human experience is extremely complex because it comes out of all the past events of a human, including consciousness and the most recent and intensely relevant event of having a bad day and carelessly pouring a hot liquid in ones mouth, and is vectoring into a very complex future, including all the nerve, brain, and conscious registering of the event while still having an even worse day. Whereas the momentary flash of experience of a quantum of energy is probably as simple as we can understand.

Although there is a vast difference in complexity and intensity each event is still taking account of the past that is acting on it (hence ACTual) incorporating something novel (even if, as in the case of the Quantum of Energy, it is just the fact that it now has a different past than any other event that it must take account of), taking account of the context it finds itself in, and projecting into the future (ACTing on subsequent events).

So each is a micro process of becoming actual (having been acted on and will act on future others) with the same general makeup (same “phases” of process/concresence) but with vastly different potential and complexity.

So to Whitehead, all reality is composed of such momentary flashes, or occasions, of subjective experience, in a vast interrelated web (continuum) of extension ( the extensive continuum) of past events, the current moment, and the projected future. At the micro level that process is of an momentary event of becoming, and at the macro level it is the interrelated creative progression, or advance, of the extended world constituted by those momentary events. It some case such flashes combine together in a sequence that is a simple molecule, which then might, if they are closely related enough, combine together as a rock (although Whitehead would say the rock itself doesn’t have such flashes of experience, although its molecules might). Others combine in more complex ways, having built on each other, and be part of a living organism, with the most complex combinations/sequences of momentary experiences that we know of constituting “living persons”.
That is how I understand it and hope it helps.

I think we can fairly easily think of Whiteheads Cosmology as a Philosophy of Experience, but only if we wanted to refer to the most basic constituents rather than the organizing principle.

I think we typically use the term organism in the sense of a “living” organism. Otherwise, we use it as a analogy for something that is organized in an organistic way “like” an organism. In other words, we start with assuming an organism by definition is “living” and extrapolate from there, comparing the organization of whole to parts in whatever is being assessed with that as the reference. Anything non-living is organized “like” an organism. That way of referring to it has even come up a few times in this course. I have always thought that Whitehead goes a step further, or perhaps a step back, and redefines it by starting with those things with such order as their organizational principle as an organism and then differentiates between living and non-living. Hence a Philosophy of Organism as the organizing principle of the extensive continuum. A bit of a reversal of how we would normally think of it, and confusing for those who don’t realize he defines it in that reversed non-normal way. Does that mean that anything that is organized in such a way (the whole organizing and ordering the parts in an inter-connected and co-dependent way) is an ‘organism?” Is a theory or plan that has been developed organically, as we sometimes say because it has had input of ideas from multiple sources in a dynamic evolution that individually would not make sense outside of that particular context, be considered an “organism” in that sense? Perhaps, but perhaps not. That might be a stretch in the Whiteheadian context. I can’t think of anywhere he uses the term for a concept or idea rather than for actualized structured unities in the extensive continuum (societies) but I could be wrong on that.
Similarly, it has seemed in the course that people have sometimes considered an actual entity an organism, which has felt strange to me. I can’t think of anywhere Whitehead has referred to it in that way, rather than using organism to describe societies with such an order. An actual entity or occasion of experience is a singular event that is not divisible into parts so cannot have an organizing principle in that sense. Actual entities, to me, are the content of organisms that are being organized/ordered. They are what constitute organisms.
Perhaps I have got it wrong and someone can enlighten me and point out where he refers to these things in that way. I just can’t think of anywhere he does.

Eric, I don’t seem to have a problem with separating “experience” from the experiencer in the way you suggest. I think of it in terms of William James’ “pure experience” (which appears to have highly influenced Whitehead) that comes before such things as an experiencer. If we are to think in terms of what is the experience “of” I would say it is experiencing relations… that an actual occasion is a processional event of experiencing relationships, both physical and conceptual. Hence the Process-Relational aspect. In fact, in most conversations or talks I give I have pretty much dropped the “Process” part, only because it is implied and implicit in experiencing dynamic relations, and I find it easier for people to relate to a “relational worldview” rather than a “process worldview” if the relational part is not stressed. I seem to be able to talk about process without inferring relations, but I find it difficult talk about dynamic relationships without inferring process. Process-Relational has always seemed redundant to me.
”What” is experiencing comes after that in the form of societies as the content of the experience is transmuted and shared throughout the members. Then you get an experiencer because now the experience endures.

Just how I understand and think of it.

I like that Matt reminded us that Whithead’s term “actual occasion” was meant to apply across all scales. It was also meant to apply, not only to his own scheme, but as a concept that applies across any metaphysical cosmology. In The Whitehead Word Book Cobb puts it like this: “This term [actual entity] is not intended by Whitehead to refer to things only as interpreted by his own system. Instead it is intended as a way of referring across systems. Every metaphysics in some way distinguishes what is actual from what is merely possible or potential. Imagining things to be different does not mean that the actuality has changed.”

So as Matt said, historically we see that the Greeks called that most indivisible building block an “atom.” At the time that would be considered what Whitehead calls an actual entity. Once it was discovered it was divisible all that changed. We kept the term, but not as the most basic indivisible unit. I believe that is what Matt meant by calling the term “actual entity” a metaphysical category. It is a metaphysical term for a particular type of process of coming-to-be, the most fundamental indivisible kind, in whatever cosmological scheme you are referring to.

Musings:

As we know, in a Process-Relational view, Whitehead called that smallest indivisible building block an “occasion” of subjective experience. Cobb (and Matt) says that even a momentary flash of human (or animal, or plant) experience is an actual occasion. Of course, if the experience endures, it necessarily consists of many occasions happening in a serial order, therefore considered a socially ordered society, but the momentary flash itself is indivisible so is considered an actual occasion. Is that flash technically considered an actual entity, even if it is transmuted throughout a society as a whole, rather than just for a singular actual entity? Perhaps. Or perhaps although all actual entities (other than God) are actual occasions not all actual occasions are actual entities. Hmmmm. Never considered that before. Perhaps if Josh reads this he could chime in with his take on that.

Same at the quantum level. Again, as Matt points out, if a quanta of energy proves to be indivisible (which I believe it is by definition- but then so was an atom) that would satisfy Whitehead’s definition of being an actual entity, and certainly an actual occasion of subjective experience. If we find hat somehow even a quanta of energy is divisible then that designation would change. But here is what I think important to keep in mind: if its actuality lasts long enough to be able to trace and/or measure it, it is no longer an occasion but a society. A genetic series of occasions that have achieved spatial/temporal extension. We can’t measure an occasion, but we can measure a society. As Cobb also points out, an actual occasion doesn’t move, but a society can. Movement in that sense is a genetically derived series of actual occasion, much like the frames of a movie. So in the same way that physicists have ways (at least I hope they do) of describing how quantum phenomena that are merely quanta of energy can combine in complex ways until our physical universe emerges, we can think of actual entities genetically “combining” in complex societies within societies within societies, in creative novelty, until the enduring objects that populate this extensive continuum (space-time) emerge.

Whether it helps, just re-iterates what is obvious from Matt’s talk, or just confuses things more, that is pretty much my understanding of the “process.”

Be careful you do not personify Creativity. It is the Ultimate principle/category in which everything, both God and the World, participate. It is not something that can DO something like create us.Theologically, as Cobb does, you can think of God as the Ultimate expression of Creativity, but that is as far as that can go I think. Because God is an actual entity, Process Theologians certainly believe that one can have a personal relationship, however that may look. Theologically, God is not merely an abstract concept so a personal relationship is not ruled out.

EXACTLY !!!

Alexandra,
With Whitehead I believe you have be careful with the absolute bifurcation of “Creator” and “Created”. To paraphrase what I quoted above “It is as true to say that we create God as to say that God creates us.” All actual entities, including us and God, participate in Creativity. God has both an eternal nature (the primordial nature) and an “everlasting” nature (the consequent nature) which participates and responds to the world. God requires the finite world to be a dipolar actual entity with both a physical and conceptual pole. However, God’s concrescence never reaches final satisfaction as the world is “woven” onto his conceptual nature. It is continuous and everlasting so never becomes “finite” in the same sense as finite creatures that achieve final satisfaction and fade into the objective past. God is finite only in the sense that the consequent nature is continually entering back into the finite world, so participates in the finite, not finite in and of itself. So, technically (according to Whitehead) God is the only actual entity that is not also an “actual occasion” because to be an occasion there must be that final satisfaction, it can’t go on everlastingly. However, I would say that due to God’s everlasting nature that is continually prehending all actual entities as they reach satisfaction, without them fading into the past, God sustains or “saves” the world from moment to moment in its entirety, and is continually participating in “creation” of the finite world as the consequent nature responds to, and enters back into, the world.

I don’t know if you can make sense of that, and it is a bit repetitive, but perhaps Josh will read this and chime in to make it a bit clearer.

I just read Josh’s post in “Einstein’s vs Whitehead’s theories of relativity: abstract vs actual” where he addresses Eternal Objects as well. Fully recommend reading it because it addresses Eternal Objects as well and would probably be very helpful.

Eternal objects are pure potential that do not become actual except through ingression into an actual entity. They are not the sort of thing that would have goals, or evolve, or just hang around. If there were no actual entities, and thus no physical feelings to actualize into there would be no eternal objects because there would be nothing to be the potential for. Because they are purely conceptual, they do not need or have a “place” to hang around in. They exist because something cannot come floating in from nothing, but only AS potential. There are two species of eternal objects, subjective and objective. Objective potentials would be those like geometric shapes or planes, that give form to physical data while subjective potentials would be more like emotions etc. Because potentiality is infinite most eternal objects are negatively prehended by any particular becoming entity. The potentials that are relevant to the entity are envisioned and ordered in the primordial (eternal) aspect of God (God’s conceptual pole). In fact the ordering of potential IS the primordial nature of God. They do not EXIST in the primordial nature, they are ORDERED by the primordial nature. In his Whitehead Word Book Cobb says:
“Eternal objects are ordered by God with a view to eliciting greater value in the world. Actual occasions prehend pure potentials for their realization as ordered in this way. Thus they derive from God an “initial aim” at real¬izing what is possible in that situation.
God’s ordering of eternal objects thus functions as the basis of regu¬larity in the world, the basis of novelty, and the basis of purposiveness.”

So in that sense, in ordering the potentials for any given situation and aim God is limiting that potential which could ingress to those that are most relevant for the becoming of the actual entity in any particular context. Otherwise, there would be no rhyme or reason to what potential would be realized, and thus no order or purposiveness. Pure chaos. In fact, in his early writings Whitehead called this aspect the “Principle of Limitation” rather than God because he realized that to have both regularity and novelty there had to be an aim and ordering of the potentials that could be actualized in any given actual entity in any given situation.
I hope that helps. It is a tough concept to wrap one’s head around.

Hmm. I am not sure how that would follow. In a panentheistic cosmology God and the finite entities of the world co-create each other. There cannot be a world of finite entities without a God holding it together and supporting the creative advance, and there cannot be God (as conceived by Whitehead) without a world of finite ontological entities contributing to God’s own ongoing evolution. There doesn’t have to be THIS world, but there does have to be A world of entities. To paraphrase, Whitehead said it is as true to say that God is in the World as to say that the World is in God.

But there is new emergence out of complexity all the time. A dab of paint on a canvas is just that, a dab of paint. As more dabs get added to the canvas, with increased novelty as there are different colours, textures,etc. added, there is an increase in intensity of novelty until a completed painting emerges that may be full of novelty, beauty, zest, and meaning that was not present when it was merely a dab of paint, or in any of the dabs on their own. Something new is formed. The painting as a whole, with its full meaning and beauty, is an emergent entity, rather than merely a collection of dabs of paint (even if technically and mechanistically it could be reduced to that). Could we not think of consciousness in a similar way?

When we typically speak of “consciousness” there is a presupposition of a level of cognitive awareness associated with it, even if it is not “self-awareness”. I think it is problematic to use the same word when we are talking about it in the abstract sense of being the fundamental aspect of reality from which everything emerges, including the “physical” universe. It does not seem to me to be the same concept so needs a different word to describe it. David Ray Griffin coined pan-experientialism for that reason. He thought the world “psyche” in pan-psychism carried too much baggage with it that suggested a level of cognitive activity that Whitehead did not want associated with ALL basic actual entities. We can not use the two terms as if they were equivalent and stay true to what Whitehead meant, according to Griffin (and I agree). If we replace the term “consciousness” with “experience” at that most fundamental primordial level, and make consciousness an emergent property with experience as the building block, it starts to make sense, and it more closely resembles how we use the word and generally think of it.
Whitehead stated:
“Thus life is a passage from physical order to mental originality and from pure mental originality to canalized mental originality” (PR 107-08).
So it is canalized mental originality from which consciousness emerges, develops into self-consciousness, and then into “personhood.” Consciousness becomes the beautiful, meaningful, painting that has emerged out of the dabs of experience.

Here is my take on it:

1) The “concrescent journey” IS the occasion of experience. It is not “something” HAVING a concrescent journey. It does not ‘combine” with others, in the sense of being part of a social ordering, until after the final satisfaction as it then is available to be prehended by others.Then the genetic lineage that is its own social ordering can be combined with others to create other societies. There can be societies within societies within societies. Remember, the actual entity, or occasion of experience is the smallest indivisible unit of reality. Whitehead talks of the phases of concrescence but that is only for the sake of description and analysis because some presuppose others, you can’t think of these phases as separate in time or having separate existence. The totality of the concrescence is a single occasion of experience. You can think of “combining with others” because it prehends others in the initial physical pole, or primary mode of perception, and is then available to be prehended in others once its own concrescence has achieved final satisfaction, but it doesn’t combine with others “during” concrescence to form new organisms other than that.

2) First, as stated above, there are no “constituent units” of an actual entity. It is one occasion of experience, or “pure experience” as William James says. Actual entities form a socially ordered society if they share characteristics with each other. So, if we think of the society as the “new organism” with the actual entities as the constituents, they do each have an individual aim, but some part of it is shared with others enough to be part of the society. Think of it like in a single cell organism. The role and aim of the constituents are different because they contribute differently to the whole, but they share enough characteristics and aim to be part of the same cell. Rather overly-simplified explanation but I think you will get the idea.
From Cobb’s Whitehead Word Book (highly recommend):
“Societies come into being when some characteristic of one occasion is inherited by other occasions. The continuance of that characteristic through time makes the multiplicity of occasions that inherit and transmit this characteristic a “society.” The members of a society have something in common, and unlike members of a set or class, they share this characteristic by virtue of their feelings of antecedent members of the same society. Societies endure through time, whereas actual occasions only occur and fade into the past. Accordingly, societies can change location, as individual actual occasions cannot. Measurement of how they function is possible.”

3) Simply put: Yes. There is an ordering of the infinitude of potentials according to what is most relevant to that entity’s becoming. Theologically, there is a “gradation” in that some choices may contribute to a “better” outcome for the individual entity and all others (the common good), and God “lures” the entity toward the “best choice” via that ordering and aim, but it is still the entities “choice” within the relevant potentials that are available to it. For some, the choices are so limited by relevance that there is negligible novelty introduced, but more complex entities have greater choice for increased creativity, but that ordering is different for each actual entity because the relevance and context is never 100% the same.

I hope that helps.

Beautiful. I also really like Eternal Dreamer. Very reminiscent of Hindu imagery of Brahma “dreaming the world into being.”

Whitehead calls God the “Poet of the World” in the last chapter of PR. Another great image.

Beautifully said Bill. You’ve nailed it. I am very happy it was helpful to you.

Just found this in my thesis while looking up what I was going to post:

“For Whitehead, God is also an actual entity, but God originates in the conceptual pole of the primordial nature (PR 345,348). The primordial nature is timeless and eternal and consists of the forever unchanging envisaging and ordering of all eternal objects (PR 31). In the primordial nature there is no ‘past’ for God to inherit and conform to so God must originate in the conceptual pole. The correlate of what for actual entities in the temporal world is their physical inheritance of, and conformity to, the ‘past,’ is God’s prehension of all actualities of the evolving world into a “living ever present fact ” (PR 350). This pole, which is ‘consequent’ to the world, is the “weaving of God’s physical feelings upon his primordial concepts” (PR 345). God, then, “is to be conceived as originated by conceptual experience with his process of completion motivated by consequent, physical experience, initially derived from the temporal world” (PR 345). “

These are some very deep and interesting questions, with some having spurred discussion and debate in the process community for decades. I am not sure I can answer them in a satisfactory way in a forum like this, but can maybe tell you how I interpret it and give some food for thought. I hope it helps.

It becomes a language issue again because we don’t really have the words to describe an ordering that is not time-based. Whitehead says that we shouldn’t think of the phases of concrescence actually happening in a timely way as the whole process is a single event happening all at once. However, he separates it into phases for the purpose of analysis and understanding of how one phases acts on the other. I believe there is a non-Whiteheadian technical name for it, but it is more that each phase presupposes others in somewhat of an order, although not time based. One phase cannot happen without the others happening as well in a type of hierarchical priority or order, not in the sense of one being more important than the other, or happening “before” the other, but in the sense that you can’t have one phase without the other because one might presuppose the other. An eternal object can’t ingress unless there is the prehended forms for them to ingress into, or you can’t have a secondary mode of perception without a primary mode of perception, etc. I can’t explain it well without getting confused, but the concept (outside of the Whitehead context) was explained to me well enough for me to understand it at one point, so I continue to accept it. It is a timeless priority of order that we can think of as different phases, but not in a sequential way as such.

So in that sense, for actual entities other than God ( or the principle he labels as God) , having “aim” and the ingressing of potentials presupposes the prehending of the past actual world (both physically and conceptually through hybid prehension) for those potentials actualizing through “something”. You can’t have the concept of “squareness” actualizing without presupposing the physical prehensions for it to ingress into to make a square object, even if one doesn’t really happen “before” the other. You can’t have the “later phases” of concrescence, like the emergence of consciousness, without presupposing the previous phases that have created the intense novel conditions for that emergence. In that sense there is a presupposing “order”, but not in time.

But God is different. God’s physical prehensions are consequent to the world so therefore presupposes the conceptual phase of the primordial aspect being presented and prehended by each actual entity in the world, “before” they unify by being prehended into God’s consequent nature. In fact, God’s concrescence does not ever achieve final satisfaction as he prehends the everchanging world and “weaves” it upon the primordial concepts. (PR345) Then the “perfected actuality passes back into the temporal world, and qualifies this world so that each temporal actuality includes it as an immediate fact of relevant experience” (PR 351).

So in that way the consequent nature, or physical pole, presupposes the primordial nature, or conceptual pole that has qualified the final satisfaction of each entity which God prehends. This is the reverse of all other actual entities.

As to your fourth question I think we are participating to some extent in each actual occasions initial aim because all entities have been unified in the consequent nature and gets passed back into the world and because we are present in God, we are in that sense present in each occasions aim. In fact, some scholars, like William Christian, have thought that is the only way past entities are prehended by becoming actual entities. Not directly, but through God entering into the world.

One final note. Be careful not to think of God’s two natures as ontologically distinct from each other, they are the two poles of a unified entity. Like for all other entities, Whitehead discusses Goda s two poles for the purposes of understanding and explanation the two aspects or roles, not because they are ontologically distinct from each other. You cannot isolate one from the other and still have the concept of God as he understands it any more than you can separate the two poles of an actual entity and have it make any sense.

This is how I interpret what Whitehead means so I can make sense of it, but others have done so differently. I will add another response that quotes a relevant passage from my thesis that might clarify as well.