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Thanks for this rich comment, Ben.

On prehension, I don’t think Spyridon would deny that physical forces are examples of prehension. The point he is trying to make in calling it metaphysical is that it is a more general principle that cannot be reduced to physical forces. After all, the category of prehension applies also to how our thinking activity relates to concepts, which are not physical at all (at least not in the sense of what a physicist might measure or calculate).

You can find a bunch of our conversations here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL29llNJMc6MGR3umkpKQzvwJMVW_N0YX0

I’ll quote Whitehead from Science and the Modern World (pgs. 41-42), where he shows how Francis Bacon had a basically panexperientialist view of matter. This also explains why he didn’t just use the common word “sense” but instead invented the word “prehension”:

“Bacon: ‘It is certain that all bodies whatsoever, though they have no sense, yet they have perception; for when one body is applied to another, there is a kind of election to embrace that which is agreeable, and to exclude or expel that which is ingrate; and whether the body be alterant or altered, evermore a perception precedeth operation; for else all bodies would be like one to another. And sometimes this perception, in some kind of bodies, is far more subtile than sense; so that sense is but a dull thing in comparison of it: we see a weatherglass will find the least difference of the weather in heat or cold, when we find it not. And this perception is sometimes at a distance, as well as upon the touch; as when the loadstone draweth iron; or flame naphtha of Babylon, a great distance off. It is therefore a subject of a very noble enquiry, to enquire of the more subtile perceptions; for it is another key to open nature, as well as the sense; and sometimes better. And besides, it is a principal means of natural divination; for that which in these perceptions appeareth early, in the great effects cometh long after.’

Whitehead: There are a great many points of interest about this quotation, some of which will emerge into importance in succeeding lectures. In the first place, note the careful way in which Bacon discriminates between perception, or taking account of, on the one hand, and sense, or cognitive experience, on the other hand. In this respect Bacon is outside the physical line of thought which finally dominated the century. Later on, people thought of passive matter which was operated on externally by forces. I believe Bacon’s line of thought to have expressed a more fundamental truth than do the materialistic concepts which were then being shaped as adequate for physics. We are now so used to the materialistic way of looking at things, which has been rooted in our literature by the genius of the seventeenth century, that it is with some difficulty that we understand the possibility of another mode of approach to the problems of nature.”

[Matt Segall]

There are historical reasons that Whitehead found it necessary to invent a new word like “prehension” to describe the way one actual occasion of experience takes up another, past occasion. The modern philosophers before him had characterized sensory experience in what he believed was a thoroughly topsy-turvy fashion. Whitehead felt we are engaged with the world primarily via the “feelings of our viscera” (and surely he would also want to include the feelings of our heart), whereas the modern empirical philosophers were obsessed with our visual feelings. Vision presents us with a rather abstract picture of the surrounding world in comparison to our bodily feelings. Whitehead coined “prehension” to get at the ways we are in intimate resonance with the beings around us. We don’t just see them separated from us in space out there. We dwell together with them in common fields of feeling.

Whitehead would say that to be affected by anything is just to prehend and be prehended by it.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Matt Segall.

Hi te’a,

I wish there was an audio or video recording of Whitehead, but I do not know of any.

The distinction between “sensing” and “prehension” is a subtle one, and of course a lot depends what you mean by the former term. Usually, sensory experience is said to be supported by sensory organs, like ears and eyes, etc. Whitehead’s concept of “prehension” is an attempt to describe a form of feeling that is far more general than any of the particular sensory modalities like hearing or seeing (though these would be specific examples of prehension). The concept of prehension is meant to apply as much to the causal transmission linking one electromagnetic wave to the next as it is to the membrane-based perception of single cells and the sensory perceptions of multicellular animals.

So, in short, prehension is meant to capture the way any occasion of experience takes up or feels its past (physical prehension) and considers alternatives (conceptual prehension). “Sensing” or “sensation” is a more specific type of prehension available to organisms with differentiated sensory organs.

[Matt Segall]

I do not think what LLMs do is in any way comparable to what Whitehead is describing in the process of concrescence. The statistical weights shaping LLM responses are already calculated in advance of each prompt and response. There is no real participation in potentiae (or what Kauffman would call the “adjacent possible”), there is just a statistical calculation of probability. Whitehead is clear that concrescence itself allows for high grade occasions of experience associated with human scientists to engage in statistical judgments of probability, but that this capacity for conscious statistical judgments depends upon a more primordial form of non-statistical intuition. This latter form of probability arises from an intuitive understanding of the relationships and potentialities inherent in the structure of reality, rather than from numerical data. In Process and Reality, Whitehead argues that non-statistical probability involves an intuition of the intrinsic suitability of certain outcomes based on the complex interactions and “graduated relevance” of eternal objects to the primary physical data of experience. This intuition is not based on frequency or statistical sampling but on a deeper experiential insight into the potentialities and constraints of actual occasions within their environments​​. LLMs may (so far, still relatively poorly) simulate but do not realize the sort of intuitions of probabilities that Whitehead’s process of concrescence describes.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by Matt Segall.

Rolla,

I’m glad you mentioned Michael Hogue’s important book, which remains as relevant as ever. I had the chance to discuss the book with him several years ago: https://youtu.be/R9JmVawA6XM?si=TTJTb00xSJyaR3le

I also reviewed his book for Process Studies journal: https://footnotes2plato.com/2020/12/18/a-review-of-michael-hogues-american-immanence-democracy-for-an-uncertain-world-2018/

Thanks, Mark. I can’t reply to everything here, but I’ll say a few words about a few of your points.

First, regarding linear time, Whitehead in fact insists that nature is composed of multiple more or less overlapping time-systems. There is no universal clock. On this point he accepts fully the implications of Einstein’s relativity. That said, he is not so quick to dismiss our concrete experience of irreversible time. Nothing makes sense in human life if we throw out the cumulative nature of temporality (ie, that we remember the past and anticipate an as yet unactualized future). But that time is irreversible does not necessarily entail there is only one timeline or that our subjective experience of time’s passing cannot vary.

Regarding strong emergence, we’ll surely discuss this with Alex, our neuroscientist guest, on Wednesday. The point is certainly not to limit the advance of science. Of course I am fully in support of modifications of our concept of the physical, which is exactly what that article is about (varieties of physicalism, including panexperientialist physicalism). The argument is that if our concept of the physical is devoid of anything like feeling or at least basal forms of experience, then there is no way to get physical stuff to suddenly support or produce consciousness without a miracle. These sorts of arguments go back to Leibniz’s giant mill thought experiment in his “Monadology” (see Sec. 17).

So, yes, the solution is to change our conception of what it means to be physical so that it includes something like what Whitehead develops in terms of “prehension.”

I am not sure if I fully understand Mark’s question, but I’ll give it a try. “Conformal” would refer to physical prehensions that repeat the feelings of prior occasions. The subjective form of these prehensions would consist of subjective eternal objects that function relationally, ie, that come to be shared by two or more occasions of experience.

Hi te’a

Thanks for sharing your experience of the last session. I am sorry that the discussion felt inaccessible. You are right to ask about Part 2. There were so many questions for Spyridon that I decided I would fold in the comments I wanted to make in the scheduled second part in my responses to Spyridon.

I believe the next session on consciousness will be more accessible and interesting, and I encourage you to ask questions during the session even if they seem to you “simple” or basic. Those are very often the most important and philosophically rich questions!

Also, there is no guest in session 4, so there will be ample time for open questions and discussion.

-Matt

To be clear, God does not create the eternal objects. God grades them, granting relevance to their otherwise unordered relations.

Prehension is not a mechanism. There may be mechanisms involved in, eg, the way our sensory organs work (ie, the muscles shaping the eye, the structure of the inner ear, etc.). But prehension is not meant to be understood as an actualized mechanical apparatus. It is a metaphysical concept that is meant to offer a generic account of how the various centers of experience composing the world relate to one another (=physical prehension) and to the possibilities as yet unrealized in the actual world (=conceptual prehension). It is a generic concept of “relation” intended to be applicable across the various special examples of relations, whether it be relations to our human bodies via touch, hearing, seeing, thinking, or causal relations between supposedly mechanical entities like atoms and molecules.

In terms of how prehensions are selected, that is what occurs in each concrescence as a matter of self-creation. There is similarly no mechanism here. Whitehead describes it as a process of decision, and no two decisions are the same. Interestingly, the “subject-superject” of each occasion of experience cannot be said to precede the decision of selection. Rather, it is the result of this decision. So who decides? That is something like a Whiteheadian koan.

Hi Charlie,

Yes, in some sense the idea of participatory cosmology is the next step after we recognize the mind-bending implications of the so-called Anthropic Principle (which you nicely summarize as the realization that any model we come up with to explain the world must include the fact that we are in it). The first scientists tended to gaze upon nature as if from the outside, as though the knowing mind (like the Creator God) was set above and beyond the objects known. As science advanced, it became clearer and clearer that the observer cannot be neatly isolated from that which is observed. In fact, there is no such thing as pure observation: nature always knows when we are looking! Or said in a less spooky way, no matter how much we try to avoid interfering with what we are studying, even shinning light on a system to make it visible has important quantum effects. So, to know nature also always requires knowing ourselves, else we remain blind to how our way of looking changes the phenomena.

Great post, Eric. You ask: “Makes one wonder if ‘spacetime coordinates, charge, mass, etc’ are the social constructs of modern science or independent entities?”

Whitehead was a conventionalist as regards which geometry best matches our physical universe. Some geometries are better for some purposes, others for other purposes. He disagreed with Einstein that physicists ought to seek the “true” geometry that might be identical with the actual universe. The actual universe is a creative process that today appears to us as three dimensions of space but that in a million years may evolve into 15 dimensions. He viewed space and time themselves as abstractions from what was concrete, namely, actual occasions of experience. The spacetime of our cosmic epoch is thus brought forth from the relational network of actual occasions as a result of how they collectively decide to prehend one another moment by moment. After billions of years of mutual prehension, a rather stable structure has emerged, but it will continue to evolve in time. So you could say that spacetime is a “social construct,” but “society” here must be expanded beyond human groups to encompass the community of actual occasions.

Now, he also has a more metaphysical notion he calls the “extensive continuum,” which is something like the generative matrix out of which various special spacetime geometries can arise. The extensive continuum provides a shared relational nexus allowing all occasions of experience to coexist within the same universe even as they creatively advance beyond the settled past into an unknown future.

Thanks for sharing a bit about your background and interests, Thomas.

Hyde’s book is one of my favorites!

Hi John,

Just to clarify, when I say Whitehead’s account of process (ie, his account of concrescence) affirms the cycle of rebirth, I am speaking in a metaphysical register. While the process of concrescence is intended as a generic description of a moment in the life history of biological cells, sexually reproducing organisms, and organisms with nervous systems alike, it is not limited to these special cases of process. The point is that processes arise and perish, and that perishing is essential to the creative advance. This is my response to Jonas’ complaint that Whitehead’s organic scheme leaves no room for death.