Replies

Thank you for this great rich reflection. So many good topics here. I like how you emphasize that “My sense is that Whitehead did not just imagine, but also enacted “a participatory mode of attending to nature” in his thinking and writing PR.” This is quite true in so many respects and is one of his great “discoveries” if you could call it that. For example, I was responding to some other posts about important philosophical questions such as the problem of “the one and the many,” and the combination problem in consciousness studies. Whitehead brings up early on in Process and Reality how it is simply the nature of the universe to produce unity, coordination, and harmony from diversity, and disjunction. Both individuality and unity is equally important, and it is our abstractions which hinder us from solving the duality there logically. The Universe simply functions in this way naturally without duality and so our enactive experience can help us have a fresh start to overcome these artificial issues of the bifurcation of nature and mind and matter etc. Great observations and contributions here!

This is a great thread, and thank you for your question. I think there are a couple of important things here. One is that Whitehead allows us to expand what we might think of as archetypal to involve more than human articulations of patterns in nature and our human societies. We can see that the relationships in Nature, everything from us to galaxies, to subatomic particles form patterns which have VALUE and are perpetuated in to the future. One might be symbiogenesis which we discussed in the live session briefly for example. Another could be the cosmological constant which far proceeds humanity as we know it, but yet is part of us and is a pattern or archetype which had value for creativity and harmony and thus has been perpetuated and repeated in Nature.

As a follow up Dennis asks about archetypes being the same as eternal objects. My answer is yes, archetypes could be construed as complex relationships of eternal objects which are “remembered” as patterns which are effective in harmonizing creativity. This would then bring in Whitehead’s theological ideas, specifically the consequent and primordial nature’s of God.

Hello Bill! So glad you can join us in this course. Thank you for the post about your background. You have found great application for this philosophy. Even if you cannot make many live sessions I do hope to see you in the discussions! Welcome to the course!

Hello Zhenbao, welcome to the course! I enjoyed your discussion and questions during the live session and I’m glad you have joined us for the course. I look forward to more discussion/insights etc. as we go forward.

Hello Montgomery! Welcome to the course, glad to have you with us and I hope to see you in the discussions and live sessions! I’m glad to hear you have this background in process philosophy, it will be valuable to us as we go forward.

It may be helpful for me to include in the presentation an explanation of these Whiteheadian terms and give concrete examples of things like prehension at work in the real world. Again, let me know if this might be helpful and I will ask other students as well.

This is a great thread you know is a philosophical/logical/scientific question that is as modern as it is ancient. In ancient greek philosophy this would be called the problem of the “one and the many.” In modern consciousness studies of course this is called the combination problem. Whitehead’s solution to this is quite key to all of this. His solution/discovery is that of prehension and concrescence. We can see prehension at work in everything from subatomic particles to the coordination of embryogenis, arguably to the coordinated movements of galaxies and the formation of our laws of nature including what you have diagramed with the holon. The important part of how Whitehead solves this is that prehension and concrescence unify all internal as well as external relationships such that a unified subjective form (another one of Whitehead’s terms) along with the objective data from the past is prehended by the next occasion. So, the unity of the past relationships both internally (individual) and externally (coordinated society) of those actual occasions and societies of actual occasions gets positively and negatively prehended to continue the process of creativity. This also rids us of the problems of emergence as well (strong verses weak etc.). Novel actual occasions are created but it is because of the prehension of actual data from the past in combination with prehension of possibilities for the future to then concresce in to final satisfaction (Whitehead sense) again to then provide data for the future. The process is inherently dynamic because there is constant novel creation not just rearrangement of static material that was already there. There are aspects of quantum physics which are helping us to see how this is possible as confirmation for Whitehead’s metaphysical discoveries. This seems to be a common thread so far in the forums and perhaps if enough students agree, I could make a short presentation on this subject in one of our live sessions? Let me know!

Hello Aliman, welcome and glad you can join the course. I enjoyed your contributions in our live session yesterday. I responded to Johannes as well and I think you can contribute much and I hope you will be able to join us for our live sessions and forums as much as possible. I feel that with Whitehead idealism and realism can be reconciled and we should explore this. Some like Leemon McHenry and others before him, a prominent scholar of Whitehead, have characterized him as a realistic idealist. I think, as you have espoused, that process theology and panpsychism/panexperientialism is definitely a way through the mire of the residual issues of classical theism and can go far to progress our species. Glad to have you with us!

Hi Johannes, welcome to the course! I’m glad you have found applications for process philosophy in your life’s work, that is so important! Whitehead’s philosophy is indeed daunting because of the new language. In the end I think that this new language of metaphysics is essential to forging a path to understand the Universe differently in important ways which end the bifurcation of our knowledge and Gaian/ecological/spiritual cooperation. You are on to this! It’s interesting what you say about idealism as well because I think a good (well at least superficial) characterization of Whitehead’s philosophy is that of a “Realistic Idealism.” In other words having it both ways between realism and idealism.

Hello Marcia, welcome to the course! As an instructor this year, I sincerely hope that you can be present with us in the live sessions and the discussion forums to help give your insights. I think you will have much to contribute (as will everyone of course in their own way of knowing). Your intimate baseline knowledge of the subject matter will contribute much I’m sure.

Hello Dennis, glad you are with us in this course! I very much enjoyed your contributions to our live session yesterday. I hope you will continue to do so and participate in the discussion forum etc. I share your concerns for the state of our nation. I hope that our participation in this course will help in some way to fruitfully analyze, and then carry the message of a better way of life. That is what philosophy should be all about after all.

Hello Rick, welcome to the course! I’m looking forward to your diverse background of potential contributions to our discussions and sharing ideas together.

Hello Ben! So glad you can join us for this course. AN Whitehead has done much to help us to move in to a deeper connection with the spiritual and religious impulses that the Universe gives us which are compatible with our other ways of knowing through science and philosophy etc. I am glad that you have joined us and hope that you will contribute to our discussions etc. and give your insights in to how this philosophy of organism helps elucidate the important theological implications of this insight.

Hi Eric, welcome to the course! As one of our instructors this fall with Matt, it sounds like you can have a lot to contribute. I hope that you will be able to join the forum and the live sessions as much as possible!

Hello Tanya, welcome to the course! I’m glad for your contribution and questions to our live session yesterday. I have been considering your question that you asked and might add some additional thoughts to what you, Matt, and I discussed. If we accept the philosophy of organism as a helpful description of reality, I think that it is so important to realize that all of nature, the entire cosmos embodies the collection of every single actual occasion which has actually existed to contribute to the experience of the present time. If a species (or nexus/society of actual occasions) that has endured through time (like Cheetahs to use Matt’s example) goes extinct, that collective experience leaves us all. The past experience of that species lives through eternity, but that harmonization with the rest of experience of all other things that are actualized and real/living loose the contribution of that species to the function of lived experience. This can result in all sorts of loss of creative potential and mutual symbiosis that can be very important not only to humans, but Gaia in general. I think that the concept of Gaia and all that contributes to that organism and the loss of any parts at all is very important to consider. Hopefully this is pertinent to your initial question. If not, please clarify more because I think it is an important topic for our discussion forum! Hope to see you further in the live sessions and in the forum!