Eric Ross
I found this essay extremely useful in restoring Whitehead’s “suchness”, restoring his philosophy so it is again like “the prism full of changing lights and colors”.
What the essay does is distinguish the varying ways Whitehead speaks, whether directly while developing his system, or analogously, while describing God in poetical language. It allowed me to replace my idea of Whitehead’s system as a description of reality, with that as a model for reality. From the model I can draw on what I find analogically useful, and leave alone what I don’t. For example, are human beings actually entities? Strictly according to the model no, human beings are “societies of occasions”, or nexus. Analogically, yes, like actual entities moment by moment they make their own choices based on the past, the influence of others, and subjective aims.
“Language about God in Whitehead’s Philosophy: An Analysis and Evaluation of Whitehead’s God-Talk”, by Palmyre Oomen
Ah yes, the “Christian Atheists”, I didn’t consider them. Wiki even has an entry for the topic. I accept they are Christian and they are at the same time atheists. What I don’t accept is that they are free thinkers, in the truest sense, in that they “form opinions on the basis of reason independently of authority”. Instead their thinking seems to be a response to traditional Christian teachings in light of the modern world. Without Jesus and his moral example, there wouldn’t be Christian Atheism. In my opinion true freethinkers develop their ideas from the ground up, based on their own observations of the world. Two Christians I accept as examples of freethinkers are Rene Descartes and Charles Darwin (an Anglican agnostic). My disputable claim is that with a Jewish cultural identity, there are fewer inhibitions to freethinking, than for a professed Christian, who must contend with a preexisting belief system. Three examples of Jewish freethinkers are Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein.
Nice to see you Bill, in Tuesday’s class on Hinduism. Sorry my camera wasn’t on, I had connection issues. I appreciate your frequent contributions to the forum!
My idea of God as “Atlas” came from the idea of God fulfilling “roles” from Donald Sherburne’s essay “Whitehead without God”.
https://www.openhorizons.org/whitehead-without-god-donald-sherburne.html
What role does the concept “God” play in Whitehead’s system? There are three main roles: (1) God preserves the past and in so doing creates significance, meaningfulness, and also provides the ontological ground for the claim that truth is immortal; (2) God provides the ontological ground, the “somewhere,” for eternal objects; (3) God is the source of subjective aims in temporal occasions, and in this role is the principle of limitation productive of order, the source of novelty, and the source of the real perspective standpoint within the extensive continuum for each occasion.
Sherburne goes on to argue these roles can be fulfilled naturally within Whitehead’s metaphysical system. I tend to agree with him, although in a world consisting of an endless multiplicity of perspectives, perhaps there is a need for an overarching perspective, that of God’s,
Regarding emergence, one of the great developments since Whitehead’s time is deepening our understanding of how entities with higher levels of functionality emerge from lower levels. In Ken Wilber speak, they “transcend and include” the lower levels. We see examples of this in biology (cells, organs, bodies) and computer science (neural nets, AI). But we still have lots to learn about how this alteration happens.
Alan, I am always very interested in what you have to say about Native Americans and indigenous culture. I can’t help but feel guilty when I think about the displacement Native Americans by Anglo/Europeans. I agree with you that polytheism is probably too coarse of a term to be used with Native American spirituality. So far as I know, they didn’t build temples to the Gods, like Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Hindus. But in honoring the spirit of the buffalo, the eagle, the bear in ceremony and dance, perhaps they honored many spirits. Anyway I see this as a good thing, maybe something we can rediscover for ourselves someday.
BTW, I stumbled onto a video on Rosseau (YouTube, essential salts), who in the 18th century saw indigenous people as freer and happier than the Europeans of his day. Interesting philosopher to look into.
Steve Wolfram’s program “Mathematica” is used by members of the physics community to perform calculations. Brian Greene said while interviewing Wolfram it was indispensable in calculating the Calabi–Yau manifolds which are important in superstring theory.
However his work in the “Physics Project”, has not garnered much respect. He postulates using a “computational model”, he can re-create the laws of physics and possibly resolve some of the current conundrums within physics, like reconciling general relativity with quantum mechanics.
One interesting aspect to his work is rethinking the notation of time. Time is “computationally irreducible”. If hypothetically, you knew the rules which govern the universe, and it’s initial state, could you accurately predict the state at any point in the future?
In the end, though, one needs to reproduce not just the rule, but also the initial condition for the universe. But once one has that, one will in principle know the exact evolution of the universe. So does that mean one would immediately be able to figure out everything about the universe? Absolutely not. Because of the phenomenon I call “computational irreducibility”—which implies that even though one may know the rule and initial condition for a system, it can still require an irreducible amount of computational work to trace through every step in the behavior of the system to find out what it does. – Stephen Wolfram
https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/what-is-spacetime-really/
To me, computational irreducibility sounds a lot like Whitehead’s Process. It will be interesting if the idea gains any traction within the physics community.
I like Ken Wilber’s description of differing kinds of experience associated with holons (or entities) up and down the chain of being. From the diagram on page 189 of “Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality”:
Upper Left Upper Right
Interior-Individual Exterior Individual
(Intentional) (Behavioral)prehension atoms and molecules
irritability prokaryotes and eukaryotes (single cells)
sensation neuronal organisms
perception neural cord
impulse reptilian brain stem
emotion limbic system
symbols neocortex (triune brain)
concepts complex neocortex(Higher levels of human consciousness)
concrete operational structural function 1
formal operational structural function 2
vision-logic structural function 3A holon is a whole/part with an interior and an exterior dimension, similar to an entity in Whitehead. The interior dimension is that which experiences. Hopefully this list helps organize types of experience. The full diagram is shown here:
I like Ken Wilber’s description of differing kinds of experience associated with holons (or entities) up and down the chain of being. From the diagram on page 189 of “Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality”:
Upper Left Upper Right
Interior-Individual Exterior Individual
(Intentional) (Behavioral)prehension atoms and molecules
irritability prokaryotes and eukaryotes (single cells)
sensation neuronal organisms
perception neural cord
impulse reptilian brain stem
emotion limbic system
symbols neocortex (triune brain)
concepts complex neocortex(Higher levels of human consciousness)
concrete operational structural function 1
formal operational structural function 2
vision-logic structural function 3A holon is a whole/part with an interior and an exterior dimension, similar to an entity in Whitehead. The interior dimension is that which experiences. Hopefully this list helps organize types of experience. The full diagram is shown here:
I like Ken Wilber’s description of differing kinds of experience associated with holons (or entities) up and down the chain of being. From the diagram on page 189 of “Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality”:
Upper Left Upper Right
Interior-Individual Exterior Individual
(Intentional) (Behavioral)prehension atoms and molecules
irritability prokaryotes and eukaryotes (single cells without and with a nucleus)
sensation neuronal organisms
perception neural cord
impulse reptilian brain stem
emotion limbic system
symbols neocortex (triune brain)
concepts complex neocortex(Higher levels of human consciousness)
concrete operational structural function 1
formal operational structural function 2
vision-logic structural function 3A holon is a whole/part with an interior and an exterior dimension, similar to an entity in Whitehead. The interior dimension is that which experiences. Hopefully this list helps organize types of experience. The full diagram is shown here:
I like Ken Wilber’s description of differing kinds of experience associated with holons (or entities) up and down the chain of being. From the diagram on page 189 of “Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality”:
Upper Left Upper Right
Interior-Individual Exterior Individual
(Intentional) (Behavioral)prehension atoms and molecules
irritability prokaryotes and eukaryotes (single cells without and with a nucleus)
sensation neuronal organisms
perception neural cord
impulse reptilian brain stem
emotion limbic system
symbols neocortex (triune brain)
concepts complex neocortex(Higher levels of human consciousness)
concrete operational structural function 1
formal operational structural function 2
vision-logic structural function 3A holon is a whole/part with an interior and an exterior dimension, similar to an entity in Whitehead. The interior dimension is that which experiences. Hopefully this list helps organize types of experience. The full diagram is shown here:
Whitehead called his system a “philosophy of organism”. Organisms we observe have a mental pole, which we infer by watching their activities. Observing ourselves we might say our soul is what animates us. Whitehead called moments in the life of such entities with souls, actual occasions. In an actual entity the mental pole dominates while in a nexus the physical pole dominates.
So the question arises, does the cosmos as a whole have a soul? Is the universe an actual entity? As Matthew Segall suggests in “Physics of the World Soul”, Whitehead may have gotten his answer from Plato’s dialog, “The Timaeus”. This passage describes how the “demiurge”, the father of the cosmos, generated the cosmos itself, out of the chaos that preceded it. In the modern “process” understanding of cosmic origins, we drop the demiurge, but retain the idea of the cosmos as a living creature:
Wherefore also finding the whole visible sphere not at rest, but moving in an irregular and disorderly fashion, out of disorder he brought order, considering that this was in every way better than the other. Now the deeds of the best could never be or have been other than the fairest; and the creator, reflecting on the things which are by nature visible, found that no unintelligent creature taken as a whole was fairer than the intelligent taken as a whole; and that intelligence could not be present in anything which was devoid of soul. For which reason, when he was framing the universe, he put intelligence in soul, and soul in body, that he might be the creator of a work which was by nature fairest and best. Wherefore, using the language of probability, we may say that the world became a living creature truly endowed with soul and intelligence by the providence of God.
I suggest using a myth such as this as the starting point for theology. I prefer having thinking associated with an entity, and not free standing without attributable origins. This would be similar to a cartoonist creating a balloon over a character with words or thoughts, instead of using a block panel with words or thoughts. What goes in the thought balloon of the cosmos? Well anything is possible. Here we’re speculating on divine attributes. Whitehead prefers to accentuate the positive. For example:
Whitehead uses deeply personal and emotionally evocative phrases such as “tender care,” “fellow sufferer” and “companion” to describe God.
He is the binding element in the world. The consciousness which is individual in us, is universal in him: the love which is partial in us is all-embracing in him.
Perhaps the faith model outlined above is minimalist. Only a mustard seed. But it’s sufficient for me to locate the emotional life of the cosmos within the same ontology as familiar beings that I see and know.
Do possibilities exist independently of subjective experience? Then “the possibility of having ideas or being possible is not something that depends upon our thinking of it in the least.” But here, to even consider the concept, we’re required to think about it, which in some ways makes it dependent on our thinking. The question is, is there a whole realm of unthinkables that vanish upon our consideration of any one of them as an idea?
A Dictionary of Philosophy by Peter Angeles gives a definition of possibility as:. “Something capable of existing (occurring, being, happening).” An Idea as “any anything that is the content (object, item) of consciousness; any act of awareness.” To me it seems the key difference is possibilities are independent of any subjectivity, while ideas are dependent on a subjectively. So maybe possibilities are “behind” our ideas, but we understand them as ideas. The content of our ideas might be possibilities, for example I could go to college A or the Cobb Institute. But even here, each of the possibilities is first thought up as an idea, “college A” or “Cobb Institute”. We chose one or the other.
My original thought was perhaps “Ideas” could stand in as a broader and more encompassing stand-in for “Eternal Objects”. A friend was reading to me Whitehead’s Wikipedia biography and we were both impressed by how long he taught mathematics. Didn’t start writing on philosophy until his 60’s. Eternal Objects seems a kind of stand-in for Platonic forms and some of the mathematical aspects of Plato’s philosophy. “Let no one ignorant of Mathematics enter here“ hung over the entrance to Plato’s Academy. Although Eternal Objects might be adequate for developing a theoretical, metaphysical understanding, it doesn’t seem to offer much of an opening for incorporating the insights of other thinkers and theorists, let alone different culture perspectives. Examples of “Eternal Objects”, such as shape and color are certainly included in the concept of “Ideas”. So why not use the broader and more inclusive concept of “Idea”, as an aid to integrating a wider range of influences into process thought?
Hi Bill,
I took a look at the free preview of the van Geert book, and although it looked interesting, the authors decided to bypass Whitehead in their “Process Approach”. They felt he was too difficult and technical for their purposes. Instead they decided to go straight back to Heraclitus for process insights, as indicated in the title. I see the David Roy book listed on Amazon for $166.81, still pricey, but less than the price you quoted.
J. R. Hustwit wrote the article on “Process Philosophy” for the “Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy”. Great resource for a 50,000 foot view of philosophical topics:
Just meant “actual occasion” or a momentary event in human experience must be experienced in a more familiar way than an “actual occasion” as a sub-atomic event, even if, as you say, they are both on the same structural continuum. It takes an act of faith to see prehensive experience extended to entities only understood in a theoretical way. I’m assuming “actual occasions” apply to humans in a similar manner to William James “droplets of experience”. That idea probably influenced Whitehead coming up with “actual occasions”.
Thanks Thom, I really enjoyed this post.
As a person who asks “Is Process Philosophy Therapeutic?” I find your thoughts invaluable. I particularly liked:
As I see it, the therapy client is something like an actual occasion, in the process of becoming, albeit in slow motion. While for Whitehead, the concrescence of an actual entity happens “all at once”, for the client, it happens within each therapy hour.
This is a reminder I need to keep straight two kinds of actual occasions, those related to Whitehead’s understanding of physics, and those related to his understanding of human experience.
Actual occasions correspond to electrons and sub-atomic particles, but also to human persons. The human person is a society of billions of these occasions (that is, the body), which is organized and coordinated by a single dominant occasion (that is, the mind). Thus, process philosophy avoids a strict mind-body dualism. – J. R. Hustwit
I think Whitehead regards colors as Eternal Objects that may be injected into any occasion of experience. That’s why “this patch of red, as a mere object of that present act of perception, is silent to the past or the future”. Eternal Objects have no past or future, they simply exist in a realm of their own. However, they can “ingress” during acts of perception. The phrase “this patch of red” might be a hat tip to David Hume, who would go no further in his philosophy than perceiving a variety of sensations, without finding a way to connect them to causality.
I think it is interesting that Whitehead rejected a philosophy of substances modified by “accidents”. An accident is a quality of a substance, such as color, that can be changed without altering the identity of the substance. However in his Philosophy of Organism he seems to assign a similar role to Eternal Objects. There they play a similar role in enhancing the quality of our experiences.
A term originated by Charles Sanders Pierce in 1866, quale or later qualia, is not used by Whitehead. Qualia refers to the qualitative characteristics of sensation. Something you hinted at in your experience of looking at paintings. More on qualia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia
Finally might I suggest some of the emotion felt looking at the “Red” paintings, might come peering through a portal through the everyday into the realm of Eternal Objects?
I like Ken Wilber’s description of differing kinds of experience associated with holons (or entities) up and down the chain of being. From the diagram on page 189 of “Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality”:
Upper Left Upper Right Interior-Individual Exterior Individual (Intentional) (Behavioral) prehension atoms and molecules irritability prokaryotes and eukaryotes (single cells without and with a nucleus) sensation neuronal organisms perception neural cord impulse reptilian brain stem emotion limbic system symbols neocortex (triune brain) concepts complex neocortex (Higher levels of human consciousness) concrete operational structural function 1 formal operational structural function 2 vision-logic structural function 3
A holon is a whole/part with an interior and an exterior dimension, similar to an entity in Whitehead. The interior dimension is that which experiences. Hopefully this list helps organize types of experience. Here’s a link to the diagram: