Replies

I’m all for academics (or anyone) taking the risk to walk the talk, which probably involves walking away from many things. There is an expression about living in glasshouses and throwing stones that might fit better (at least in my case).

A course along the lines of “Practicing Whitehead” might create that space for something like you have in mind? It would probably be very difficult to do that over a videoconference, maybe something like a retreat.

Where do you see Whitehead making the case against patriarchy and against a preference for “whiteness” ? It seems to me that Whitehead provides a justification for biases being a reflection of the biases that God has been luring us toward since the dawn of time. I don’t agree with God’s preferences in that case!

Hi te’a, what would you like to see change in the context of this course? Given the subjects of Whitehead and science I was assuming it would sit within patriarchy and colonialism. Most of the participants are paying taxes to fund a genocide and a proxy war (more recently the invasion of the world’s largest nuclear power). I don’t think academics are in a position to push against that without being pushed into a marginalized community. An academic decolonizing academia might be something like burning my home down to protest homelessness 🙂

Hi Eric,

I think that Matt was often arguing against a materialist position e.g. a claim that everything can be decomposed into physical processes (e.g. quantum events). The actual entity has both a physical and mental pole so I think it is clear Whitehead is opposed to physicalist reductionism.

It is confusing territory when trying to clarify how human experience correlates with an actual occasion. You can experiment this in meditation, for example, focus on a very specific aspect of experience until everything else vanishes, this shows how our “everyday” experience is composed of many processes occurring together. That is where is gets confusing to give it a name.

There is a strong impression of our experience being continuous and unified but this does not align with deep examination of our experience. Our experience is discrete, which aligns with Whitehead’s idea of actual occasions being events. Our experience is also not unified in the sense that it is composed of experiences we can examine in more detail (e.g. we can see a green leaf, or just green). On a more “scientific” level there are many visual illusions that give insight into how our visual experience is “processed”.

I agree the actual entities cannot be simply “summed” to explain our experience.

For GPT quotes I’ll suggest that we try to use Matt’s Whiteheadian chatGPT model (https://chatgpt.com/g/g-uXLrsabXQ-whitehead-s-philosophy-of-organism) as that is more likely to ground itself in Whitehead’s writing (but it will still “hallucinate” and if you want to make it say a particular thing then it will tend to do that). Still useful tools I think. Maybe in another few years they will have more interesting debates than most humans can manage, but we are not there yet!

I started a fresh conversation with that bot and asked “Is the following correct” and pasted in the two questions and answers you posted above, here is what it responded:

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Your explanation regarding “actual entities” is mostly accurate but can be refined to align more precisely with Alfred North Whitehead’s terminology and concepts. Here’s a more accurate description:

What is an actual entity?

An actual entity, in Whitehead’s philosophy, is a fundamental unit of reality. It is not merely a static object but rather a process of becoming, characterized by its internal relations and experiences. An actual entity integrates various influences from its past and prehends (takes into account) potential future possibilities, thus contributing to the ongoing process of the universe’s becoming. Whitehead describes this as “concrescence,” where the entity gathers and synthesizes its data into a unified experience. Each actual entity is self-determining, as it decides how to actualize these possibilities, thereby influencing the future.

Is a human being an actual entity?

In Whitehead’s philosophy, a human being is not a single actual entity but a complex society of actual entities. Each moment of experience within a human life is an actual entity, contributing to the continuity of that life. Therefore, a person is understood as a series of interconnected actual entities, where each “occasion of experience” (another term for actual entities) contributes to the person’s ongoing process of becoming. Thus, while a single human moment of experience can be an actual entity, a human being as a whole is a complex structure of these interconnected entities.

This refinement better reflects Whitehead’s detailed metaphysical system, emphasizing the dynamic and processual nature of reality in his philosophy.

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That seems supportive of the position you are presenting.

I then continued the conversation with:
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But Whitehead refers to humans as a nonsocial nexus i.e. an instant of experience is composed of many actual entities ?

You’re correct in noting that Whitehead describes a human being as a complex “nonsocial nexus.” Let’s clarify the relationship between actual entities and the structure of human experience within Whitehead’s philosophy.

What is an actual entity?

An actual entity is the most fundamental component of reality in Whitehead’s metaphysics. It is a process of becoming, integrating various influences from its past (referred to as “prehensions”) and contributing to the formation of future events. Each actual entity is a “subject of experience,” which undergoes a process called “concrescence,” where it synthesizes its many prehensions into a unified, self-determined experience.

Is a human being an actual entity?

A human being, in Whitehead’s view, is not a single actual entity but rather a “nonsocial nexus” of many actual entities. A nonsocial nexus is a group of actual entities that are interrelated but do not share a common defining characteristic beyond their connections. In the case of a human being, this means that each moment of human experience is a complex event composed of numerous actual entities working together.
Instant of Experience and Actual Entities

Each “instant” or “occasion” of human experience is not a single actual entity but a complex composition of many actual entities. These actual entities within a nonsocial nexus like a human being do not constitute a society in Whitehead’s technical sense (where a society is a group of actual entities that inherit a common form). Instead, they are connected through the particularities of human experience and bodily organization.

So, while a human being is composed of many actual entities, each of these entities contributes to the continuous process of experience and the formation of personal identity over time.

This distinction is crucial in Whitehead’s philosophy because it underscores that human experience is an emergent phenomenon arising from the interactions of many actual entities, rather than being reducible to a single, simple unit of reality.

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We see how we can “lead the witness” with chatGPT!

I have not read Whitehead but scanning a few passages in P&R in relation to this indicates to me that the position you (and Matt) present is more coherent with Whitehead’s. It is likely that Whitehead did not have tools (I’m thinking of meditation techniques) to explore the process of human experience and I could believe he took the apparent “unity” of it as a fact. My own experience does not support that – it seems obvious there are a great many processes going on during what we might typically call a “moment” of experience.

I will stand corrected – thanks!

Hi Eric,

I had the impression we determined a human not to be an actual entity, page 43 of Cobb’s Whitehead Word Book defines a living person
https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/whitehead/WordBookWeb.pdf

“Further, it is important to remember that whereas in Plato and
Descartes the soul is metaphysically different from the body, for White-
head it is not. The body is composed of occasions of experience, the soul
or living person is also composed of occasions of experience. ”

What gave you the impression we determined a human falls into the metaphysical category of an actual entity and a human experience into the category of an actual occasion ?

It seems that according to Cobb the human is a collection of actual entities not a single actual entity. The point I try to hold on to is that an actual entity is fundamental in that is cannot be decomposed. Human bodies and human experiences can be decomposed.

Another key point is that an actual entity has a physical and mental pole. Which can explain why Cobb claims “Whitehead depicts the occasions that make up the living person as flitting around in the interstices of the brain surrounded by a nonsocial nexus.”

I could well have misunderstood this and I would greatly appreciate references that would clarify things.

Here is the Whiteheadian chatGPT take on the above:

Your inquiry raises a significant point of interpretation within Whitehead’s metaphysics, especially regarding the distinction between humans as collections of actual entities versus humans as actual entities themselves.

To clarify, Whitehead’s concept of an actual entity is indeed fundamental and indivisible, as you correctly noted. This indivisibility is central to Whitehead’s ontology, where actual entities are the most basic units of reality. They are the final real things of which the world is composed and are indivisible in terms of the processes they embody.

A human being, however, is not an actual entity in Whitehead’s system. Instead, a human is understood as a nexus, or a complex society of actual occasions. Each moment of a person’s experience, each pulse of feeling, thought, or perception, is an actual occasion. This aligns with your understanding that a human being, as a whole, is not an actual entity but rather a collection or society of actual occasions, each with its own process and becoming.

This interpretation is supported by passages in Whitehead’s texts, such as Process and Reality, where he describes the human experience as consisting of multiple actual occasions rather than being a single actual entity. This distinction is critical because it highlights that while an actual entity is the most basic element in Whitehead’s metaphysics, a human being (or any complex organism) is a society of such entities, continuously interacting and contributing to the ongoing process of becoming.

Moreover, the mental and physical poles of an actual occasion provide a nuanced understanding of how experiences are structured. Each actual occasion within a human has both a physical pole (related to the inheritance of past actualities) and a mental pole (related to conceptual prehensions or the creative advance).

Regarding the passage from Cobb’s Whitehead Word Book you mentioned, it does indeed emphasize that both the body and the living person are composed of occasions of experience, which aligns with the idea that humans are societies of actual occasions rather than single actual entities.

For further clarification and references directly from Whitehead’s works, I recommend reviewing Process and Reality (especially in the sections on the nature of actual entities and societies), where Whitehead explicitly discusses the structure of complex entities like humans. If you’d like, I can locate specific passages from the texts you uploaded to solidify this interpretation.

I recall this coming up a couple of times in interviews Matt had during the course. It seems that Whitehead had a linear notion of time whereby the future is not available to the actual occasion. The past is prehended through the physical pole and the mental pole is where eternal objects provide the potential for the actual occasion to generate a unique event.

I do not see a coherent way to introduce retro-causality into Whitehead’s metaphysics as it stands. Whitehead would be open to revising his metaphysics if empirical evidence requires that. I think that is where Matt ended the last session, noting that parapsychology may suggest Whiteheadians need to revise their position.

I don’t see any reason to believe that time functions in the way we perceive time. We know that a deep understanding of physics contradicts our assumptions about matter at human scale. We know we have a historical tendency to universalize our experience only to be continually reminded we are not at the center of the universe (neither figuratively nor literally).

It has amazed me how, in our current stage of evolutionary development, we continue to believe we can know the fundamental nature of reality. I was discussing this after our last call and an image arose of our future ancestors, in several million years, looking at our capacity to understand reality in a similar way to how we might consider apes to be understanding reality today. This is not to say we should not try but I do think we need a much larger dose of humility.

One radical rethinking of time could note that there is no continuous flow of experience in Whitehead’s metaphysics. Actual occasions are discrete events. If the universe is cyclical then actual entities could continually repeat. In that story God could be experiencing all actual occasions in the entire loop at once. We could imagine this a bit like our experience of a 3rd dimension e.g. you can look up into the night sky and see objects many billions of kilometers away, we experience time as if we can only see one meter ahead and need to move one meter further to see one more meter ahead, God could experience time similar to how we experience distance. Then the creativity that is driving the cycles is searching for the most beautiful outcome. The ability to prehend the “future” from our perspective then becomes similar to prehending the past, the implications of prehending the future impact the next cycle so it allows for a retro-causality and “freewill”. I’ve probably added more confusion than clarity, sorry!

Overview of past-life memories research: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550830721000951?via%3Dihub

Attached is a paper “Research on Experiences Related to the Possibility of Consciousness Beyond the Brain” which gives an overview publication trends.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

Hi Kevin, it is fantastic that you recovered. I wonder whether the GCS is a reasonable measure given your ability to respond and a GCS of 3. Your sister introduced a very useful test!

You raise something that I had not thought about – that an NDE is a memory of an experience not an experience that can be reported while it is occurring.

How do you explain Out-of-Body Experience (OBE) with Veridical Perception during NDE ?

While writing this post I was wondering why it is so hard to reproduce these results. Then I was thinking about the quantum measurement effect whereby measuring has to be considered part of the experimental setup that influences the result. Maybe measuring consciousness will have similar issues (not due to quantum effects but due to measurement interactions).

Based on my understanding of Whitehead there must be a physical pole associated with the mental pole of experience so human conscious experience is not possible without brain activity.

What do you think of past life memories ?

Hi Bill,

Thanks for reading. I will look more into Vervaeke’s work, it appears very useful.

I had an earlier post in mind (session 4 forum “Does Goethe know What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”). I was thinking about the limits of what we can understand given our current embodiment. In the same way that we cannot comprehend what it is like to be a bat, I assume there would be limits to what we can prehend from the realm of mental eternal entities. Answering your question, I imagine that God ingresses a hybrid actual entity in a way that is experienced and potentially experienced by the society that constitutes a person. That is perhaps the objective of faith – to experience and align with God’s intention.

I equate Whitehead’s consequence aspect of God with the becoming of the universe i.e., God experiences us fully but we can only partially experience God.

There could be pure mental actual entities that do have something resembling a personality. Your idea of allowing for the ingression of societies of mental actual entities is a nice twist. Perhaps a mental society could ingress in such a way as to be understood by a human hybrid society but I assume that potential would be limited because the two societies would be very different.

The idea of the communion of saints being available to us all is appealing. I’m reminded of a story where the afterlife reflects our deepest beliefs e.g. an unkind person may place themselves in hell (without that being a conscious choice), the atheist may be destined to experience nothingness, the Saint joins the communion of Saints, the Buddhist is reborn…

Thanks Jessica, I did not know about The Right Question Institute. Our modern conception of philosophy as an academic topic is never age appropriate 🙂 If we take “philosophy” as a love of wisdom this is quite the challenge!

As far as I have seen, the wisdom of process shines in the context of complex systems. The class of simple systems is mastered with an essentializing/algorithmic approach. This is what a lot of our schooling used to do well (and no longer does well – at least here in France).

I’ve noticed teachers of a secondary language for adults have more pedagogical training than most other teachers. Learning a language from a skilled teacher is an interesting way to learn about pedagogy. They are typically very good at dealing with simple topics using techniques like rote learning and also dealing with complex topics like intercultural understanding.

If we understand the difference between simple and complex systems this might be an insight that lasts. Maybe that is a gift process philosophy could offer in the classroom.

Simple systems can be understood through decomposition, the reductionist approach of breaking problems into parts etc. Complex systems have emergent properties that are not reducible to parts. Many complex systems are capable of learning and we don’t tend to study these dynamics until much later. The basic difference is that a simple system has a stable structure, that is why it can be decomposed and reductionist methods work so well. A complex system has a changing structure, for example, who you are at the beginning of this course and at the end changes, that change is unpredictable. Systems that demonstrate these dynamics for young children could include plants, animals (e.g. class pets), art, and play (which we get educated out of!). I don’t think the emergent properties of complex systems were ever a focus in my education. For example, we would produce a piece of writing or a piece of art and then move on, but that is not what writers and artists do, they iterate over the same material for long periods of time and allow intuitions about the complex dynamics to develop and facilitate the emergence of a contribution to art.

I hope these random thoughts might be of use, I will keep this short in case they aren’t!

At the beginning of the video I see Ed Kelly offers a strawman presentation of physicalism with the notion of particles being thrown around by fields. He does then point out that contemporary physics doesn’t support that view (for over 100 years now!).

Perhaps the best way to undo people’s belief in materialism is to use physics – there is no need of speculative philosophy for this. If someone is convinced of materialism they are already in the cult of 19th century science, so contemporary science should be able to influence their beliefs.

It was quite frustrating that we spent so much time criticizing materialism when I have not met anyone, in reality, with a slight grasp of quantum physics, who believes in materialism (that particles are fundamental). Funnily enough the idea of particles/substance being fundamental is a fringe view in contemporary physics.

One thing I have learned is how misinformed most academics are about physics! It is really amazing that we create such levels of unconscious incompetence whereby educated people don’t think to read about contemporary knowledge in the fields they claim to be building upon. Our education system is so broken!

Much of what Kelly describes as not explained by a physicalist view is under serious attack from AI – the ability for intentionality, our ability to talk about things in the external world, our ability to understand meanings including metaphorical meanings. All of this is being demonstrated as machine learnable.

I suspect that if people learn more about the concept of emergence then a lot of the debate about consciousness subsides. Once we understand that emergent properties cannot be reduced to the parts then the idea that consciousness experience has a top down effect is obvious. That covers a large range of the effects Kelly mentions e.g. placebo. It also creates a space for psychology as the study of these emergent properties (i.e. neuroscience is not a foundation for psychology).

Whitehead’s metaphysics has consciousness as a weakly emergent phenomena. The idea of consciousness not being emergent is far more radical and an interesting possibility Kelly raises. The concept of panaethism captures this (it might be inline with Whiteheads general approach to include this “panism” into his metaphysics).

It would be great to see mystical experiences taken more seriously. Ideally they would be part of our education, maybe part of the entry requirement for academics!

Another thing I would love to see is academics not using the word “science” when they are referring to outdated understandings. There seems to be confusion between the general culture (which we might call a kind of scientism) and science. If we are going to use science to progress a debate then it only makes sense to use contemporary science. The science of 100 years ago is still valuable to know for the history of ideas.

For those with less than an hour to spare, below is the chatGPT summary of the video. During our course I’ve learnt to see Whitehead proposing a form of physicalism. The fundamental actual entity has both a physical and mental pole, so it is not materialism, but reality is physical in the sense that every actual occasion correlates with a process the requires a physical pole. It could be seen as an attempt to encompass the mental into physicalism with the side-effect of ignoring the possibility of a purely mental realm. It is great that Matt has the courage to invite guests who have issues with Whitehead’s metaphysics – it will be interesting to hear more about Ed Kelly’s take on Whitehead’s metaphysics.

Summary of Edward F. Kelly’s Presentation on Physicalism and Its Problems:

Edward F. Kelly, a professor at the University of Virginia, presented his critique of physicalism, a worldview that claims all facts are ultimately physical facts, and its dominance in contemporary science. He argues that physicalism is a more refined version of 19th-century materialism and posits that everything, including consciousness and free will, is a byproduct of biochemical processes in the brain. Kelly highlights the bleak and pervasive nature of this view, which suggests life has no ultimate meaning or purpose and denies the possibility of post-mortem survival.

Kelly’s research has spanned psychical research, EEG and fMRI studies, and parapsychology. He critiques physicalism by citing examples of phenomena it struggles to explain, such as near-death experiences, multiple personality disorder, and psychophysical influences like placebo effects and hypnotic blisters. He emphasizes that many documented cases suggest the brain alone cannot account for these phenomena.

Kelly’s work aims to compile empirical evidence against physicalism, which he began with the book “Irreducible Mind.” This book, along with others like “Beyond Physicalism” and the forthcoming “Consciousness Unbound,” seeks to challenge physicalism and explore alternative worldviews that better account for the evidence.

In the discussion, concerns were raised about focusing on non-ordinary phenomena to critique physicalism, which might imply that physicalism adequately explains ordinary experiences. It was also noted that modern physicalism has evolved, incorporating abstract mathematical frameworks that might accommodate non-ordinary phenomena. The need for a precise, predictive theory of consciousness from an idealist perspective was emphasized, highlighting the challenge of providing such a theory to compete with the predictive success of physical sciences.

The discussion also touched on the reproducibility of psychical research and the potential of psychedelic research and meditation to unlock higher capacities of consciousness. The debate concluded with calls for clarity and precision in presenting alternative theories to physicalism and recognizing the limits of scientific methods in understanding consciousness.

Hi Jessica,

The challenges you are raising remind me of my experience in the education system. The process of de-educating ourselves is a slow one, the longer we spent in the education system, the harder it becomes.

One of the best simple models of learning I know is the Four Stages of Competence. Perhaps this is partly because it was developed outside of academia.

I believe that when science is well taught we have more questions and more wonder after learning more about it. Scientists are looking to increase understanding i.e. they are wondering about things that are out of reach for most of us. Engineering is perhaps where those with the least wonder end up turning scientific theories into material outcomes.

Perhaps a successful lesson about the moon would leave each child with more knowledge about the moon and more questions about the moon.

There is a huge cultural pressure to have one over-arching narrative to explain the world. In the case of Whitehead it is a complicated speculation but the motivation is probably similar. If we develop incompatible epistemologies then I think we create more space for wonder. For example, knowing that scientists do not understand gravity leaves a profound mystery but being able to experience the pressure of walking on the ground, barefoot, with only those sensations and a realization that we are just beginning to feel the potential, is also a kind of wonder. Maybe our education could increase our wonder of what science can measure and what science cannot measure.

Maybe we could leave science inside its box of measurable phenomena and learn about where the desire for an all encompassing narrative is coming from.

Hi Matt,

The confusion is partly because this feels like a game of tag as we try to clarify one notion it turns into another notion and then the earlier notion gets a new definition etc.

The actual entity was initially fundamental with two poles and trying to get clarity on that lead to the need for a “society”. While trying to get clarity on the “society” regarding biological life it turned back into an actual event (e.g. the human experience) the we could no longer have clarity about the physical pole of that actual entity. Then the society changed to a “nonsocial nexūs” which no longer has a physical pole it seems (as it can be granted immortality) – which raises doubts about actual occasions having physical poles.

I think it was when you wrote “Whitehead does speculate at some point that living personalities or souls may achieve a degree of intensity that grants them a form of immortality” that is why I thought “Whitehead has invented a new category for human personalities” If some are granted immortality and some are not there is a difference in kind (some are immortal and some are not). You introduced another concept of immortality regarding the physical pole of god and every actual occasion which adds more confusion.

If I had to guess I imagine that human experience is emergent (a nonsocial nexus) so it makes little sense to think of an instant of experience as an actual ocassion of a single eternal object.

When trying to calrify this with the Whiteheadian GPT is states:

In “Process and Reality,” Whitehead indeed states that a nexus is a form of actual entity. This means that while individual actual occasions are the basic units of reality, they can also group together to form nexūs, which are themselves considered actual entities but in a collective sense. This collective nature of nexūs means they exhibit properties and behaviors distinct from their constituent actual occasions.

The confusion might be using the same words “actual entity” to mean different things in different contexts without clarifying this (I have been trying to hold onto the idea that it is a fundamental process i.e. not a nexus, not a society, not a nonsocial nexus).

Thanks Matt, diving into these details helps.

I like that you connect personality and sole, I have not thought of it that way but there is a theme of essentializing. The concept of personality has evolved a lot in contemporary psychology and is typically no longer seen as independent from context.

It does not sit well, for me, that Whitehead introduced a special category for human personality. If the universe is evolving creatively I don’t see why a society could not be more or less creative. It feels like he might be bending his metaphysics to fit into earlier conceptions of personality. There is a strong anthropocentrism that I agree with on one level (we should want to privilege the human) but it is problematic when I consider Whitehead’s historical context.

I imagine most of us would be quite disappointed with how bound we are to routines. If you ever had/have the opportunity to live in a different civilization, for a significant period, it becomes clear that much of the structure we assume to be personal turns out to be social.

I am now learning that Whitehead believed a personality/soul could continue in the “divine realm” in form of subjective immortality within the consequent nature of God. This reminds me of going to Sunday school as a young child. He might have taken a page out of Newtons’ book on this one!

When Cobb wrote “an occasion of human experience is not to be understood as a person experiencing. There is no person beneath or behind the experiencing.” did he not understand Whitehead ? I have an impression that Whitehead is so abstract and intellectual that we can basically read anything we want into his work.

We could turn Whitehead’s society basically into materialism (there is not a significant mental pole). We could also turn Whitehead’s divine realm into idealism (there is not a material pole). I think this is the general problem of trying to systematize a universal theory – it just ties itself in knots when you go into the details. That is explored in later philosophical work like Derrida’s deconstructive method.

On one hand Whitehead was so far ahead of his time, intuiting concepts that would not be formalised until decades later, on the other hand he seems stuck in modernity – I really do wish he had learnt to speak Chinese!

Hi Matt,

It would be great to see more of the middle path. I suspect you’re projecting a binary reasoning whereby claiming something is not X is equated with saying it is the opposite of X. Another possibility is that X is incoherent e.g. Descartes’ independent isolated individual.

Do you see a place in Whitehead for the notion of an individual essence/soul ? It seems that a society of actual entities requires a structure and when the physical pole of that society has gone, so too has the mental pole. This still leaves the eternal influence of past relationships (I do not mean to reduce everything to relationships).

John Cobb, Jr’s “Whitehead Word Book,” we learn that “an occasion of human experience is not to be understood as a person experiencing. There is no person beneath or behind the experiencing.” I hope Cobb does not “completely reduce individuals to their relations”. Cobb tells us “Whitehead depicts the occasions that make up the living person as flitting around in the interstices of the brain” so I assume he does support the notion of the person being a society of occasions. It is still unclear to me if you imagine a person as a society of actual occasions. If you imagine the occasion of a human experience as being an actual entity it would be interesting to know where you imagine the physical pole of that actual entity.

I do not see “[each actual occasion] is a social effort, employing the whole universe.” as a middle path. I wonder what the extreme would be – the multiverse maybe! It might be more inline with Whitehead to see this as a metaphor about the relational dynamics. There is selection of prehensions that means the entire universe is not literally participating in each actual occasion. There is the notion of god as the only actual entity that does literally encompass all actual occasions – right ?