Jay McDaniel
A rich posting, Jason. I want to respond to one set of sentences. Would and “imbalanced and unjust economic systems be a case where (to oversimplify) an economist, based on her experience, generates an economic theory that, as it spreads and develops, concretizes as it is enacted by financial leaders (and the experience of this injustice is then received, processed and transmitted to others who then could lead to the reification — both good and bad — of the effects of this system)?”
As it happens, this is exactly the claim of John Cobb and Herman Daly in their For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future. They argue that neo-classical economics neglects the role of community in its assessment of persons, speaking instead of persons as isolated utility-maximizing individuals, forgetting that persons are always persons-in-community with others and with the more than human world. This leads, they believe, into terrible policies which now wreak havoc on the world.
Great discussion. I’m learning a lot, too. The question of the ontological status of virtual realities is important, because so much of our lives – in what sociologists call “screen culture” – is in fact dealing with realities that are neither actual nor purely possible, but somehow in-between. In the technical terms of Process and Reality, I think that that would make them propositions, which combine the actual and the possible. Propositions are among Whitehead’s eight categories of existence. The others are actual entities, eternal objects, prehensions, subjective forms, contrasts, nexuses, and multiplicities.
Propositions thus understood are not merely linguistic entities. For example, characters in films can be propositions. They are, as it were, propositions-in-motion, because they endure through time like enduring objects. They have histories. I think Chalmers is right to say that they are genuine realities, as are eternal objects and nexuses. But they are not fully actual or merely possible. To my mind, propositions is the best we have, with Whitehead, for naming something in between.
See Whitehead’s Theory of Propositions in OH for a nice essay by Anthony Steinbeck on Propositions: https://www.openhorizons.org/whiteheadrsquos-ldquotheoryrdquo-of-propositions-anthony-j-steinbeck.html
Welcome, Daniel. So glad to know of your interest. With your interest in process theology, I want to make sure you know about some links:
Christian Process Theology: https://cobb.institute/educators-toolbox/christian-process-theology-marjorie-suchocki/
Process and Interfaith: https://cobb.institute/educators-toolbox/process-interfaith/
Process and Spirituality: https://cobb.institute/educators-toolbox/process-spirituality/
Process for Nones:https://cobb.institute/educators-toolbox/the-religion-of-kindness-beauty/
and the newly formed Process and Faith with a multi-religious orientation: https://cobb.institute/educators-toolbox/process-interfaith/
There’s so much more, but each of these, for different reasons, might be interesting to you.
Jay
Hi Jacquelyn. I am from San Antonio, too. And I grew up close to Incarnate Word. I’m glad to hear about your interest in children. You might be interested in this new book by Lynn De Jonghe called Starting with Whitehead: Raising Children to Thrive in Treacherous Times. Here’s the publisher’s description:
“Parents and teachers want to give children the best opportunities for success in life. But opinions may vary vehemently about the methods for accomplishing these aims. Starting with Whitehead begins with the premise that today’s children will need skills and values to live in a world of fast-paced, turbulent change: creativity, problem solving ability, attitudes of life-long learning, emotional resilience, and appreciation of different perspectives. As we seek guidance on these issues, we are led to the work of Alfred North Whitehead, who brilliantly perceived that the process of change itself is fundamental to our existence, how we experience ourselves and others, and how we interact with the world around us. In his classic work, The Aims of Education, he elaborated a three-stage process of learning, involving romance, precision and generalization. His vision of education calls for exploring real experiences rather than packing scraps of information into passive students. This book offers examples of learning events at each stage that illustrate how adults can help children thrive in a world of change, based on the author’s experience working with children as a parent, teacher, principal and policy maker. Drawing on seminal psychological and educational research, De Jonghe sets these events in the context of a vigorous theoretical foundation and proposes specific strategies for success. Her recommendations have relevance for parents, teachers, principals, and policy makers”
Meanwhile, I’m going to try to develop a bibliography on Education that you and others might appreciate.
Great question. I’ll say more Saturday.
But for now let me offer just an idea for thinking about it.
How we as humans experience and respond to the world, moment by moment, is “who” and “what” we are. We do not stand outside our experience as an external observer, we are within our experience as its inhabitants. And the “we” who inhabit our lives do not pre-exist who we are, we become who we are through our experience, through how we experience and respond to the world.
Make any sense, Jennifer?
Great question. I’ll say more Saturday.
But for now let me offer just an idea for thinking about it.
How we as humans experience and respond to the world, moment by moment, is “who” and “what” we are. We do not stand outside our experience as an external observer, we are within our experience as its inhabitants. And the “we” who inhabit our lives do not pre-exist who we are, we become who we are through our experience, through how we experience and respond to the world.
Make any sense, Jennifer?
“Harmony can be invalidly understood to connote pleasure. Harmony can be euphonious as well as cacophonous, and yet default assumptions (perhaps a reflection of the pervasiveness of the anachronistic Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm throughout much of competitively individualistic societies) often only refer to the former. Rhythm seems to more readily suggest movement, vibration more readily, allowing for attention to activity into the depths of things as opposed to an inadvertent moralization of activity.”
A very helpful comment, Jace. I think you’ve enunciated an insight that is relevant to many in the process world. Our images of harmony have been unduly shaped by visual experience at the expense of auditory experience. You correct that in a great way. Here’s to cacaphonous harmony! Would you say the same for the constructive role of dissonance in music: e.g. jazz. Also irresolution? Is that part of what you mean by cacophony?
Rick, thanks very much for your comment. Many cultural and spiritual traditions have much more to say on these matters than does Whitehead himself. His ideas are springboards for thinking about such matters and provide a context for interpreting and appreciating them, but they, not Whitehead, offer the most substance (forgive the word.) However, when it came to thinking about the consummation of human life, Whitehead spoke of it, in his book called Adventure of Ideas, a Peace, and emphasized that it did indeed involve a transcendence of personality, acquisitiveness, and what we might call ‘ego’ concerns. Moreover, many who are influenced by Whitehead are quite appreciative of transpersonal psychologies that take us beyond egos. One, and jst one, example would be what you find, say, in Sheri Kling’s work at the intersection of Jung and Whitehead. Take a look here: https://cobb.institute/educators-toolbox/a-process-spirituality-whitehead-jung/. There’s much more to say about Process and Buddhism, Process and Krishnamurti, Process and Quantum Mechanics, but maybe Sheri’s slideshow can help get us started.
PS Krishnamurti has a profound effect on the physicist David Bohm, and Bohm’s work in quantum theory has been a source of deep interest among process philosophers. Take a look at this page: https://www.openhorizons.org/david-bohm1.html
Michael,
What good questions! There are too many for me to answer easily in this text, so I’ll try to address them orally in our session, either this coming Saturday or the one after that. Just a brief word about the first two:
1. As I understand idealism, it emphasizes the primacy of ideas over actualities. An example of idealism would be to say that the universe is “merely” an expression of mathematical axioms or that everything originates in “ideas.” Process philosophy is not idealistic in this sense. Drops of experience are empirical realities, actualities in their own right, not reducible to ideas. Whitehead has a technical name for this; he calls it the “ontological principle.”
2. In Whitehead’s philosophy, the word “value” can mean different things. It can mean ideals such as truth and goodness and beauty. And it can also mean the fact that living beings (concrescing subjects, to use his terminology) have intrinsic value, or value for themselves. In his view, this is true of all living beings, other animals for example, quite apart from what humans impute or ascribe to them, In this sense, intrinsic value is not a human projection but rather something in “nature” itself. Intrinsic value is the activity of any living being “mattering” to itself. And, for Whitehead, this self-mattering goes all the way down into the depths of atoms. Even quantum events “matter to themselves,” so he thinks. More to say here, but perhaps this can get us started….
Michael,
What good questions! There are too many for me to answer easily in this text, so I’ll try to address them orally in our session, either this coming Saturday or the one after that. Just a brief word about the first two:
1. As I understand idealism, it emphasizes the primacy of ideas over actualities. An example of idealism would be to say that the universe is “merely” an expression of mathematical axioms or that everything originates in “ideas.” Process philosophy is not idealistic in this sense. Drops of experience are empirical realities, actualities in their own right, not reducible to ideas. Whitehead has a technical name for this; he calls it the “ontological principle.”
2. In Whitehead’s philosophy, the word “value” can mean different things. It can mean ideals such as truth and goodness and beauty. And it can also mean the fact that living beings (concrescing subjects, to use his terminology) have intrinsic value, or value for themselves. In his view, this is true of all living beings, other animals for example, quite apart from what humans impute or ascribe to them, In this sense, intrinsic value is not a human projection but rather something in “nature” itself. Intrinsic value is the activity of any living being “mattering” to itself. And, for Whitehead, this self-mattering goes all the way down into the depths of atoms. Even quantum events “matter to themselves,” so he thinks. More to say here, but perhaps this can get us started….
Ben, just talked with her today (about an hour ago), and she’s glad to advise. Send me an email (mcdaniel@hendrix.edu) and I’ll introduce you to her. She’s glad to help, and can be a very valuable resource.
Jennifer,
There has been a little work on Mormonism and Process Theology. Here is a link to a bibliography. A couple of articles in it may be helpful for you.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YopNezf5Um5BxoC0BX3LXF1R77oyzYNF/view
Ironically, just today, I was saying to a friend of mine, a Mormon, that I hoped he might develop a slideshow for the Cobb Institute on Process and Latter Day Saints Theology. Your note is fortuitous. It is an subject worth exploring!
PS Please let me know if the link doesn’t work.
Seems accurate to me, Charles. And, as you say, things are changing.
I encourage those among us interested in religion to take a look at Process and Faith (https://processandfaith.org/} and the “many paths” to which they are reaching out (https://processandfaith.org/paths/)
For a sense of Jewish Process Theology, see the work of Rabbi Bradley Artson. He has many essays in Open Horizons: https://www.openhorizons.org/rabbi-bradley-shavit-artson.html. He has quite a following; and the Cobb Institute will soon offer a “Jewish Process Theology” slideshow developed by him. And to get a taste of an emerging Islamic Process Theology, see this essay by a young Muslim scholar, Jared Morningstar, who speaks of three trajectories for an Islamic process theology: https://www.openhorizons.org/three-paradigms-for-an-emerging-islamic-process-theology.html.
Mostly liberal Protestants in the past, but not in the future.
I like your imaginative ruminations, Kent. I am quite influenced by the “spiritual alphabet” of an organization called Spirituality and Practice, and in their alphabet “I” is for imagination. Seems very Whiteheadian to me.
It is natural to use language such as “I experience events.” In this manner of speech, events are objects which are experienced by subjects. If we get very technical, they would be objects in the past actual world, albeit in great proximity to a concrescing subject. But we might quickly add that the concrescing subject is likewise an event: indeed, an event-in-the-making. And for the subject, this event is not an object of experience but rather the subjective process of experiencing other events. In other words, the subject is the event, however intense or non-intense. It is the activity of feeling (prehending) a world, with emotions (subjective forms) and purposes (subjective aims), aiming at satisfaction (harmonious intensity) and filled with aliveness (subjective immediacy). This event, too, creates time. The perishing of its immediacy, once complete, is itself cause for the transition into new events. On this view, we humans don’t simply experience events “out there” in the world, we are ourselves events-in-the-making throughout our lifetimes, however long those lifetimes might be. The phrase events-in-the-making is my way of naming what others might call the subjective history of a person’s life. I think Whitehead invites us to understand two kinds of history: subjective history and objective history. He also invites us to imagine a third kind of history: divine history. The latter feels the feelings of each subject in the universe and weaves those feelings into an ongoing tapestry. It, too, is a kind of subjective history, where the subject is an all inclusive and everlasting concrescence of the universe.
Thanks for raising such a helpful question, Kent.
Dear Ben, Thanks very much for your post. I hope that, by now, you’ve had a chance to watch the first session.
As it happens, I majored in English literature as a college undergraduate, so I have a very soft spot for poetry and Whitehead’s interest in poetry, Romantics much included. Here’s a link to a page on Whitehead and Wordsworth: https://www.openhorizons.org/whitehead-on-wordsworth—art-out-of-nature.html
There is a great deal of literature on Whitehead and Education and, more generally, Process and Education. One very recent book, focusing on Whitehead and early education is Lynn de Jonghe’s Starting with Whitehead: Raising Children to Thrive in Treacherous Times: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61103163-starting-with-whitehead.
And if you want a very quick take on Whitehead and education, I offer twelve principles on this page: https://www.openhorizons.org/whitehead-and-twelve-principles-of-education.html
The Center for Process Studies, a sister organization, provides a bibliography in PDF form on Process and Education and Process and Religious Education. Here are the two links:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HIZQr6qwu06LS9IgY_dWqaRsGJbWiKtC/view
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r4Q5PpdhXujuaD1UmGOuO5agvAzXMuhB/viewMy guess is that these two links provide too much information, but it will give you a sense of all that has been written.
Finally, a member of the Cobb Institute Board, Mary Elizabeth Moore, focusses on education. She was formerly Dean of the Boston University School of Theology. She is also actively at work in Religious Education. I’ll be visiting with her today (Sept. 5) and will tell her about you. She may have some good advice for you and me alike on how you might proceed. I’ll be back in touch.
And, yes, don’t let the process perspective feel too rigid. It is an outlook and springboard, but not a fence. I like the link you see with Rahner.
Peace,
Jay McDaniel