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Thank you all.

These comments have made me think about the place of “limitation” or restriction. If I see that every action (all behavior and thought) occurs in a field of possibilities, then I see that “pruning” that field to the one of my choice is a process where freedom (especially inner freedom) can be exercised. In a very general way, this involves disattaching (renouncing) most of the possibilities. In the language of the spiritual path wih which I am most familiar, it is the via negativa part named (controversially to some) “Renouncement”. I think it is a word, with a new definition from its common meanings and associations, that can work into process philosophy. It is a central attitude in the spiritual path of Cafh (about which I am most familiar). It is itself a process approach to spiritual unfolding.

Thanks. I, too enjoyed Cobb’s selection in the reading. I wrote down another phrase durian the recent class as I did a spontaneous drawing. It was “adventure of the possible”. I attach the drawing🙂

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While I am a relative newcomer to the world of Whitehead, I am sympathetic to this comment. I love Whitehead’s critique of the Christian theology and what became its emphasis on, essentially power, rather than love. However, the notion of God as “persuader”, appealing as it is, does seem a bit ad hoc to his philosophy as I currently understand it. I think it satisfies a number of issues though, including free will and the problem of evil. I think that his discovery of this way of imagining God feels like that of a mathematician who finally finds the last step of a proof. Perhaps, he was a mathematician to the end, only had gone from numbers and other variables to God.

If so, I am in awe of his transformation and growth as a person. I go back to our first class when we heard of his debt to his wife, Evelyn. I wonder if she contributed to some of his critique of Christian theology. It does seem a lot like latter day feminist critiques of the “Patriarchy” to me.

As one relatively new to Whitehead, I agree with these sentiments and especially as expressed after spending some time contemplating the Hubble deep sky images. It is the overall aliveness of creation that comes through in addition to is vastness.

I am getting a bit lost in all the theological arguments as I read the next sections, but there is an affective part that I think I get. Maybe his theology is new, but it feels old, ancient and re-enchantment is a good word. It is as if my rational side feels relaxed about this now that Whitehead has indicated it is “ok”.

I will keep trying to understand, but I am not sure that this is an “understanding” thing.

Reminds of the experience reading David Abrams’ The Spell of the Sensuous, another left brain discuyof what the right brain is experiencing. 🙂

I found this really helpful:

“… If reality is a creative process of utterly unique occurrences, how can we determine them scientifically? How can we think these unique occurrences in terms of universal rules? Whitehead admits that it is here that logic and math display their limits. Reality is not a deterministic equation or machine reducible to algorithmic computations. But there’s another means of gaining a kind of knowledge of the relationship between form and fact, and for Whitehead that’s analogy. The method of rationality for Whitehead is analogy. We’re comparing this to that, not to erase the differences but to discover identities amidst diversities.

“Whitehead’s whole philosophy is an attempt to look at all the special sciences and draw analogies between them so that we can begin to see how an account of the transmission of physical energy in some ways also reveals something about the flow of emotion in our psychological experience, and vice versa. These two extremes of reality can be compared to each other—not identified but compared—and we can see what the underlying similarities might be.”

From Matthew David Segall

https://footnotes2plato.substack.com/p/making-sense-in-common-a-reading

I very much appreciate your observations. For myself, it is the real life implications of a change in “metaphysics” that is important. The actual occasions of this happening, I suppose, begins with us, individuals.

This is a long term project and a worthy one.

George- I have not read the Capra book. I do appreciate your enthusiasm for systems thinking, as an extension or maybe manifestation of process relational philosophy- which I have only recently encountered. As an internal medicine physician, many of my efforts involved the workings and interactions of the various bodily systems. In medicine (in practice, highly Cartesian – if that is the correct designation) this would be the cardiovascular system, the nervous system, GI, etc. I never considered these to be “communities” but I think that word is very apt and could be a way of seeing ourselves differently. I think it beginnings to happen with the realization of the importance of the many different bacteria in the GI biome. Thanks for recommending systems thinking.

I probably have a kind of “folk” view of metaphysics and wonder if it is relevant. I think of it as the assumptions that are behind a particular worldview. Assumptions are not always obvious or even conscious. ANW makes his “working hypothesis” (metaphysics) very explicit and I suppose (not being a philosopher), that is one of the goals of philosophy.

During the course of illness, not to mention sleep, we have unconscious experiences. We may awaken after passing out with a headache or a fracture, not remembering it but clearly having been injured. That may seem a bit dramatic but as a physician, I would very, very often be with unconscious persons, who regained consciousness and clearly their body, if not their minds (sorry about the dualism here) had profound experiences while unconscious. Upon regaining consciousness, there are many feelings that “something” happened, not to mention that other people are informative.
Just a thought.