Replies

Hi Enrique, thank you for this thoughtful and colorful reflection. I think that you are spot on in how Whitehead is helping us to see a Universe full of life, rather than lifeless, dead, and purely mechanical.

Hello Jeffrey! Welcome, so glad you could join the course. Thanks for sharing some of your background. You and I have similar backgrounds and I have found Whitehead’s philosophy not only eye opening, but also confirming of dim, or opaque intuitions I had already. This way of relating to the world really helps unify much of science, spirituality, ecology, consciousness, and philosophy in such important ways. I look forward to your contributions in the forums and live sessions!

Hello Karen, so glad you have decided to join the course this fall. Your research and the conceptual framework you are developing sound fascinating and I think is a great application of Whiteheadian process philosophy. Thank you for sharing this background on your project. I look forward to seeing you in the discussions and whenever you are able to attend the live sessions. I realize the time difference makes that very difficult.

Hello Jim, so glad you can join us! Thank you for sharing your background and goals for the future. Yes, I think Whitehead combines a lot of “western” thinking with the “east” in important ways. You will find that using Whitehead’s philosophy as a tool for doing philosophy of science is very fruitful and when we put the principles in to practice it can help usher in new ways of considering ourselves and our place in the cosmos and with the earth. This will be important if we are to have a flourishing future with a global society as well as our relationship to the ecology of the earth itself! That is just the beginning, I look forward to your contributions to our class this fall.

Hello Roni, so glad you can join the course! There are students here from MANY diverse backgrounds and many also do not have formal philosophy backgrounds. I think that diversity here is good and will spark great discussions and learning for everyone. Please do not hesitate to ask questions. Many times it is those questions that are not necessarily in the technical weeds of philosophical language and jargon that are the best and create the best environment for learning and thinking and actually doing philosophy in the best, most relevant way. After all, we are all here together to put philosophy to work! I look forward to seeing you in classes and the discussions.

Hello Christy! Glad you can join the course! I appreciate you sharing your background. I’m so glad you have an interest in what you are doing with your research in education. I feel what you described is VERY important work. That is something that is starting to become more and more overlooked in our education system at all levels and is a detriment to our society. I look forward to your contributions to the course!

Of course! And importantly, please do not feel obligated! Just enjoy 🙂

Yes, Thanks Richard, and Karen, I will look for your question in the forum and make a note to try and get it addressed in the live session. If for some reason we can’t get it out there, I will address your question in the forum for sure 🙂

Yes Chris, I think that works quite well. Trying to paraphrase the concept of time in the Extensive Continuum is not easy!! I like your paraphrasing sentence… good one.

Yes Dennis, I believe you are entirely correct, this is the nature of Whitehead’s Extensive Continuum which is also a very important discovery he made as well that I hope can be brought more in to the forefront of scientific and philosophical exploration.

Thank you for this reflection Montgomery. Yes, I remember that discussion in the live session. I think about this often as a philosopher and scientist of course. I think that the two inform each other in important ways similar to how the left and right brain have to interact and function together appropriately for a human to function the best. I think certain metaphysical principles of Whitehead’s like prehension for instance, can be observed in the empirical world, but it is like analogy. Analogy, or allegory, or mythology encompasses truth, but by its nature is not a mathematical truth, nor should it be because it must be applied in all sorts of subjective ways. Ethics and morality are like this but makes it no less true. This is just my own reflection in response to your post, it was thought provoking. No real instruction or question answering here hahaha!

Thank you for this very deep and rich reflection Bill. My “feeling” when I read your post reminded me of a quote from a Whitehead scholar named Victor Lowe:
“The fulcrum of Whitehead’s philosophy today is his doctrine
of the transmission of feelings. If he can convince you that you
actually feel your experience of a moment ago growing into your
present experience and compelling some conformation to it, then
it is likely that you will give his philosophy sympathetic study.”
– Victor Lowe

This is such a rich thread! Thank you for all these questions which pertain to some very important issues we are discussing for the class. I’m going to try and use a minimum of Whitehead jargon if possible hahaha! One observation is that I’m glad Karina points out that basically “it just makes sense” to talk of organisms as wholes and you “can’t think of parts existing in a vacuum.” I think this is a major point Whitehead tries to get across to solve thousands of years of philosophical and logical problems. However, it is very important to remember that Whitehead wants to have it both ways. We also know from our experience that there is individual agency, free will etc. So how did this come out of the fundamental aspects of the Universe. If not everything has this ability then how would it suddenly just emerge out of nowhere? Whitehead gives us an answer. For example I would point to the work of Aephraim Steinberg, a particle/optical physicist. He is doing work that shows that even sub atomic particles have “decision making” capacity to “feel out” the different possibilities of potential before they come out of superposition to be measured by some detector. We would not call them organisms in the same way we would call a paramecium or a human an organism, but none-the-less a photon can take in information of relevant data of the past in to its “decision” about what path to take through a double slit experiement, or tunneling through a barrier of supercooled rubidium atoms in Steinberg’s work. We have to remember that the distinctions between life, organism or not etc. are our own abstractions about the Universe we experience. Whitehead is looking for the fundamental metaphysical underpinnings of everything transcending our abstractions as much as possible. This probably isn’t really possible, but it is very helpful in that it can help us see the Universe in a different way that might help us overcome some of our divisions which hinder our societies and politics etc. if we apply it in the right way. Ok, great discussion in getting in to the weeds of Whitehead’s work and discoveries. I’ll just put my two cents in keeping the big picture in mind! Great job everyone!

Thank you for this great thread Stephanie and Chris. I like how Stephanie brought in Micheal Levin’s work. It is a great example of Whitehead’s philosophy of organism with its metaphysical principles playing out in reality as confirmation for them. Thanks for that explanation of eternal objects as well. You both are spot on in your interpretations. I wouldn’t add much at this point. I think one of the simplest examples of “ingression” of eternal objects I can think of for humans would be the example of the number three. Eternally it has all sorts of possible relationships (eternal objects are pure possibilities that can be ingressed by actual occasions to help define actuality) like that it is the square root of 9 etc. However, it is an artist that decides to paint three lemons into a picture as opposed to four or 6 etc. I like the questions about Whiteheadian terms, it will be helpful for everyone to discuss that.

Hello all, as an instructor I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading this thread and I’m glad for this interaction, this is so great for the course! I don’t want to add too much yet, other than I like these associations and the discussion it has sparked. In the original post Frans mentioned “inter-being.” I have always liked that parallel in helping to understand Whitehead’s philosophy. His philosophy of organism ends up being quite “eastern” so to speak. The issue of becoming and temporality is a very interesting one. I just want to give some food for thought. I believe Whitehead would invert temporality. He would advocate that time comes into being through the becoming of actual occasions. This gets into Whitehead’s so called Extensive Continuum, which is probably one of the most difficult portions of Process and Reality in my opinion. We can get into it further if you’d like!