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I found the following very helpful for thinking about this topic, Chris: “Perhaps personhood is the superject which becomes the objective data for the next flash of subjectivity and this process is the “transmitted over time” part of your statement. In other words, personhood is our memory of our past flashes of subjective becoming. On the other hand our physical bodies are societies which sum, scale up, to provide the prehensive material for the flash.”

Thank you.

As someone who spent their undergraduate days (a long time ago) immersed in quantum mechanics (mostly at the molecular level), I find the notion of particles first existing as potentials and the idea of “quantum foam” very helpful and satisfying ways of thinking about “The Society of Extensive Connection.” Thank you for taking the time to explain all of this. Quantum foam is quite a delicious concept!

I deeply admire Whitehead’s appreciation of all kinds of language and the ways he stretches it, but the words he invented are part of a first schema for describing this philosophy of organism, and as such are a first pass. Have other process philosophers found them limiting? Have they expanded on the language of process and invented new words and descriptors? I say this sheepishly because I am only at the beginning stage of trying to comprehend his system, vision and language. In any event, from what we have learned of Whitehead, I suspect he might celebrate such a thing.

I have really enjoyed these posts and the sharing of your readings. I am obsessed with this subject of consciousness. I am drawn to Manzotti’s notions. I may be crazy, but I often have an intuition of consciousness all around me, not simply my own embodied consciousness. If, as Whitehead says, everything is in everything else, does this apply to consciousness as well? At least some degree, some apprehension of it.

I want to believe that the more we as humans develop our understanding that we are part of something much wider to which we are deeply and mutually connected our consciousness will mature and enlarge. The question is to what an extent that will that happen.

I find this fascinating and hope to hear Dr. Davis address this particular research in relation to Whitehead. I wonder if what I posted in the last session bears any connection to this OR scheme? Clearly neuroscience is taking this levels about mycelia and mother trees, but who knows what fungi really are.

I am savoring and thinking about both of your responses. Charlie, your thoughts bring up the whole question of how do our aesthetic responses develop, and Eric’s how our emotions, from birth on, arise and how we might then apprehend an Eternal Object with a particular emotion that I would imagine relates to our history, etc. An abstract minimalist artist might easily object to the statement: “An accident is a quality of a substance, such as color, that can be changed without altering the identity of the substance” if the title of her work is Red Painting! I suppose, to give Whitehead his due, she could cryptically entitle it Eternal Object #1.

As to colors themselves, they are wavelengths of light perceived (are they eternal objects because there is a set of mathematical relationships involved?). Perceived by what? Electrons also recognize very specific wavelengths that correspond to the difference between energy levels they might inhabit orbiting around a nucleus. So are we talking colors (what the human eye calls its perception) or wavelengths of energy? What is the eternal object here?

I will continue, I think, to struggle with this notion, which doesn’t mean that I won’t-might-eventually embrace it.

Hi Charlie,

I feel like there has to be so much going on within these three stages. How does analysis take place; how quickly? What happens when a sudden external condition blows into the situation? I think of human decision-making. Consider a small one, such as choosing the right word: are we to think that in such an activity there are actually millions of actual occasions building up to what we perceive as a decision made?

Douglas,
I haven’t read these books (would like to), but if you want a sense of his thought and who he is, Tripp Fuller has interviewed him on his Homebrewed podcast three times. All wonderful talks.
Kathleen

I just finished responding to Benjamin’s post then read in your beautiful one a sentence from Whitehead that resonated with his words and what I was trying to say: “We experience more than we can analyze.” Thank you.
Last night in class I was thinking about (perhaps I heard wrongly, Dr. Davis) that Whitehead saw the sleep experience as unconscious? Of course, dreams are important to Jung. Perhaps I am not wholly understanding Whitehead’s concept of consciousness, yet. I am sure I don’t!
I thought of dreams and how important they have been to me. In Native American cultures they are considered to be part of reality to be taken seriously. Amy Shawanda (Anishinaabe) has written about this.
Certainly dreams reveal the great creativity in us.


This interests me also, Benjamin. I practice meditation, too, although I can’t say I am “advanced” meditator! I have had similar experiences when thinking seems to have ceased in meditation or prayer, and I felt a deep connection with a vastness in which the normal self is lost. I wonder in part if the cessation of chatter which seems to propel us along in time creates a seeming sense of being out of time, alongside that connectedness in which one is held and identity feels erased, though of course, not in a terrifying way. There can be a mystical feel to the experience. I doubt time has stopped though I wonder if some deep awareness and connection with the everlasting character of God is awakened? I like to think there might be more than the four dimensions we normally speak of in which experience is possible. This is an area within Process Thought I want to read more about and hope we might talk about in class, if only briefly. Thank you for the references.

Yes, it’s a bit of a slippery slope talking about awareness, where it begins. I feel the same way about the subject of consciousness. I wish I had some wisdom or thoughts to offer. Only questions at this point. I hope we discuss this in class!

Kevin, this happens to me, too. I wrote in another post that every question I ask eventually gets answered as if we are reading a thriller, chapter to chapter. This is indeed a process! I found your statement that “the facts of the cells of our body being continually replaced while a pattern of cells is largely maintained helps clarify for me at a very deep level of feeling the difference and brevity of actual entities (or occurrences) and the stability (or endurance) of societies or nexūs” enlightening and confirming.

I really appreciate your response, Charlie, and I don’t think you are oversimplifying, Charlie. Shouldn’t we assume, from what Whitehead has said about human experience being an exemplification of the cosmos that this aspect of our experience has value and is another “clue”? Some would say this is all an illusion.

The speed with which an “event” becomes a memory, so often with a visual component, may be what helps to create that static, stable view which is so comforting and sometimes (not always) pleasurable.

I found Chapter 7 of Dr. Davis’ book helpful in thinking about Whitehead’s notion that opposing opposites “require” each other to be fulfilled. I take “being” and “becoming” to be among them. Of the “rhythmic multiplicity of opposites” he says “each of these contrasting or opposing notions . . . Are with [itacilized with] each other through the creative rhythm of the universe.” That “with” is beautiful!

I wonder, too, if often we see opposites where there are really infinite gradations, a vast spectrum.

Zhenbao Jin, I love your comment: “Language should be as delicious as a juicy peach. it does not mean that juicy language has to be poetic. rather, the language of science and philosophy could also be very juicy, as I have experienced with the thoughts of Whitehead.” Fantastic!

As a writer, a poet, I’ve thought a lot about this same topic, Kevin. I am getting the sense that the more you read Whitehead and other people writing about his thought, the more it starts (I emphasize “starts’!!) to be comprehensible for just those reasons you mention. His thinking, combined with others’, is truly prismatic.

Everyone has written about his vision as more of a world of verbs, becoming, but that begs the question of what is becoming and how they are related. We still need those nouns. Parts of speech exist/do things in relation to each other. I love Kim Stafford’s poem in which he uses only verbs, but . . . all that depends on two nouns: “lesson” and “tree.”Lessons from a Tree

LESSONS FROM A TREE

by Kim Stafford

Seed split. Root sprout. Bud leaf.
Delve deep. Hold fast. Reach far.
Sway. Bow. Lean. Loom.

Climb high. Stand tall. Last long.
Seed. Thicken. Billow. Shade.
Grain. Ring. Grow. Sow seed.

Whine. Sing. Flicker. Glimmer.
Rise by pluck, child of luck,
lightning struck survivor.

Hollow. Glisten. Witness. Seed again.
Remember. Testify. Thicken.
Burn. Bleed. Heal. Seed. Learn.

Nest. Host. Guard. Honor. Savor. Seed again.
Fade. Groan. Sag. Crack. Split.
Soften. Slough. Grip. Gather.

Then arc. Swish. Sail. Fall. Settle.
Log. Stump. Slump. Sag.
Surrender. Offer. Enrich.

Be duff. Enough

In a way, it makes me think of mathematics, which is all about relationships, and music, too. Once you start establishing those relationships, you can build creatively on them to establish new meanings and connections. We are challenged by assumptions of what a word means, but language is also wonderfully flexible, fluid and creative. Yes, this is like learning a new language and using it alongside the new one. Speaking in two languages at once. The experience reminds me of learning about quantum mechanics; the equations, the words describing them and this strange world, and the visualization of these interactions which went way beyond the purely visual to a new conceptual dimension. I think reading Whitehead is a bit like that. I have to believe that his understanding of the quantum world contributed deeply to his vision.

I am not sure if any of this is helpful, just a few wandering thoughts about language.