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Hello mountain friends and friend of mountains – all of your comments ring true to me and, for that matter, to those of us in process tradition. A nexus is both an aggregate expression of countless energetic configurations and, says Whitehead, a “public matter of fact.” What you show is that such public matters of fact are very much alive as elders from whom we can learn and with whom we have relationships, and as sources of personal meaning. They may well evoke “propositions” or “lures for feeling” such as those expressed in your comments., What you say of mountains, let us also say of rivers and lakes and oceans, deserts and forests, plant and animals, urban landscapes and the earth itself. They, like our mountain friends, leap forth as public matters of fact, with lives of their own, and as lures.

Thanks for sharing this, Thom. It is interesting that he includes the resurrection as evidence for life after death. And that he speaks of experiencing the personal presence of Jesus as a kind of evidence. I love his honesty: “I don’t know God very well and would like to know ‘him’ better.” Such a humane voice.

What a nice exchange. I’ll add my two cents. I think it can help to link Whitehead’s notion of God with his notion of prehension, which is by no means limited to human experience but is indeed an act of “taking into account” or “feeling the presence of” something else. If we think of prehension as a feature of what, generally speaking, we call life, then his concept of God might be seen as biomorophic or, to coin a phrase, prehension-morphic, but not necessarily anthropomorpic. Other animals, too, prehend, as do living cells. And, so Whitehead believes, quantum events. He is rendering unto God what which belongs to amoeba and porpoises and quanta. However, he does characterize God as love in Part V of PR. Here, perhaps, he does lapse into the anthropomorphism of which Kathleen speaks. As for the seeming dualism of a mental pole and physical pole to experience (including in God), the idea of prehension may also be helpful. A key factor here concerns what he calls the “datum” prehended. His cosmology speaks of two (of the eight) categories of existence as actual entities and eternal objects, or pure potentialities. We can and do prehend both: we prehend other actualities and we prehend potentialities. Both are real. My point here is that, for Whitehead, the seeming dualism emerges because, in fact, there are two different kinds of objects to be prehended. I think it is this distinction, between actuality and possibility, that leads to the dualism, if it is such. – As for mysticism, a unique feature of process philosophy, it seems to me, is that it is open to many kinds of mysticism. I speak of eight forms on this page. Take a look if interested: https://www.openhorizons.org/eight-kinds-of-mysticism.html

David, thanks for your comment. For my part, I don’t see what you wrote as rubbish at all. As I said in class, David Ray Griffin’s Parapsychology, Process Philosophy, and Spirituality was a game-changer for me, because it made such a strong empirical case for parapsychology. Whitehead’s philosophy well allows for mind-to-mind connections across time and space (through his notion of hybrid physical prehensions) and for non-three dimensional space, such that minds can exist in other regions. It then becomes an empirical question. Thanks, too, for sharing your story. I had not thought of banshees in such a long time; you bring them back to my mind in a compelling way. Food for much further thought.

Thanks for your comments, Evan. I need to check – it is possible that Whitehead propose still more fallacies. I do in my book. Please check that out. And so glad you’re in this course!

Thanks for this thoughtful commentary, Daniel. In his consideration of subjective immortality in AI, you write: “These later ideas of Whitehead appear to violate the fundamental principles of Whitehead’s metaphysical system laid out in Process and Reality.” How do you see them as violating PR ideas? For my part, I see them as consistent with the general idea that a continuing series of concrescing subjects may need a three-dimensional physical body at some stage, but that it can also continue in non-three-dimensional body at another stage, albeit (perhaps) building from the earlier experience. The key is to recognize that bodies can inhabit different regions of the extensive continuum. Who knows? So glad you include Buddhist thought in this commentary. Tell me of your interest in process and Buddhism, if time allows. I’m thinking about setting up a process Buddhism cohort with a Soto Zen priest from Milwaukee.

Jeremy, so glad the transdisciplinary aspect of Whitehead’s thought interests you. He was something of a polymath, with many interests, not least his interest in science and the humanities, neither to the exclusion of the other. I myself have given a bit of thought to links between Whitehead and theatre: particularly the way in which drama concretizes two kinds of pure potentialities, those related to spatial relations and those to subjective experience. Liturgy does the same.

Chris, what a nice idea. I’m not sure we got any response, but I can raise the question at our final meeting on Tuesday, if you’d like. Perhaps we could arrange an ongoing weekly zoom meeting for anyone interested. Is that what you have in mind?

Jeremy, thanks for your interest. Please email the Dean about this: Rolla Lewis. I am sure he can help. Here is his email: rolla.lewis@cobb.institute. Let me know if you don’t hear back.

Charles, thanks for your comments. As I see things, Whitehead is a “critical realist.” He believes that there is a world independent of human perception (realist) and that we always interpret that world through categories of human making (critical). However, we also experience, in a direct way, the world that is given for perception, as something that affects us (experience in the mode of causal efficacy), but that even here, as soon as we think about it, we employ categories of one sort or another. Most of his examples of experience in the mode of causal efficacy are from bodily experience: e.g. experience sensations within our bodies (toothache, stomach ache) as given for immediate feelin. But he also thinks that we can be affected by memories in this way. More specious, he believes, is “experience in the mode of presentational immediacy.” A certain kind of sense perception, especially visual perception, is his illust4ation: e.g. “seeing a patch of red.” This, he thinks, misses the causal side of immediacy experience. Hope this helps just a bit.

Lyndall, Whitehead uses the term “actual entity” and “actual occasion of experience” synonymously. There is one exception. God, for him, is an actual entity (a concrescing subject that includes the entire universe, and that has experiences or or prhehensions) but not an actual occasion. I’ll try to explain in class.

Thank you, John. It is so nice to know that you, too, were influenced by Thomas Merton., He’s still a mentor for me.

Wei-Dong…this sounds great…just what you need to write about in order to further your own creative thought.

Wei-Dong…this sounds great…just what you need to write about in order to further your own creative thought.

A rich conversation on multiple ultimates. Thank you Gordon and Charles. As process thinkers develop their ideas, I think it important to pay attention, not only to the ontological considerations but also to on-the-ground sociology, where we do indeed find people centering their lives around a number of different realities which are, for them, ultimate. As these two concerns coalesce, I think we arrive at six realities around which they center their lives, each of which is ultimate in a different way: networks of connection (nation, family, community), the present moment, God, a creative abyss from which all things emerge, a realm of timeless forms (eternal objects), a plurality of archetypal spirits (polytheism). Whitehead’s philosophy offers a way of appreciating each of these, not reducing them to one another, and yet also seeing how they can be combined in various ways. For example, the spirits can be seen as theophanies or faces of God, as in certain forms of Hinduism, and the present moment can be seen as the place where the entire universe “becomes one” as in Zen. Also this way of thinking opens for door for recognizing various and different kinds of religious experience: e.g. bhakti traditions of devotion versus Buddhist traditions of awakening to the sheer connectedness of all things. In a book I wrote years ago, Gandhi’s Hope, I proposed four ultimates: God, Creativity, Connectedness, and the Present Moment. I was thinking metaphysically. But these days, when I add on the ground realities, I come up with at least six. Also, important to keep in mind that religion, whatever it is, is not necessarily about ultimates at all. One of our leading process thinkers, Rabbi Bradley Artson, thinks that a preoccupation with ultimates gets in the way of understanding what’s really important in religious life: community, ritual, fidelity to bonds of relationship, etc. He thinks that adding the word “ultimate,” even to God, is sometimes a distraction from lived religion.