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Thank you as well, Paula, for your comments. I, likewise, feel as sense of pessimism. In that regard, I find myself agreeing with Whitehead’s wholesale critique of Christian theology. I think my focus now is to acknowledge the failure of much traditional theology yet find hope in the original vision of Jesus for a establishment of a community (this group-attachment is what the 1st century Mediterranean culture meant by love) that is founded on just and equitable interrelations with a view toward advocating (in a non-violent manner) for others that find themselves prevented from experiencing that kind of experience. So I look for pockets where people (and creation) are trying to live in this manner and there find some hope.

Thank you, Nelson, for your concern for the environment. Lynn White, in he late 1960’s, wrote a now classic article about the Roots of our Ecological Crisis. He was a continental historian and he noted that where humans go, habitat destruction follows in their wake. He his paper traced the issue to the victory of monotheistic Christianity over the pantheistic religions of the Roman World. The one of the issues was that if the world was viewed as disenchanted (removal of divine agents), then the purview of humans regarding nature was changed from a subject to one of an object, with all the accompanying activities that with see nature as an object to be exploited for humanity’s sake. My hope is that a philosophy of organism will help re-enchant our world before it is too late.

I too have a serious interest “Ecological Civilization, Nelson. When I taught in the Religious Studies Dept. most of my classes dealt with environmental ethics.

Best of luck on your life journey, David.

Thanks Monte. I resonate with your focus on cross-cultural and religious dialogue. I am a retired Religious Studies professor and that had been and continues to be important, yet now I see that ecological systems need to be brought into the dialogue, so to speak.

Thank you Andrew, my wife and I also gardening even though we are still learning what to do. We have raised planters in the front yard since the back is too small and each harvest season now I find our neighbors investigation our crops.lol

I did read your post Bill. I am not sure if your concerns and are ones that I struggle with. For instance, from a geometric perspective points are what make up a continuous line. At the quantum level light seems to be made up of both particles and photons.
As for as the process of prehension, I personally not drawn to mindful mediative practice, but more interested in why human civilization seems to be so violent or at the remedial end, how can we as a species learn to appreciate the full extent of our world and not destroy it?

Thanks Nelson for your reflections. So I’m just further reflecting. It seems clear that Whitehead’s term prehending is different than apprehending. So prehension happens regardless of our sensations. At the most we can become conscious of some societies of actual occasions. So I think you have worked through your dilemma and so I only comment to your last question to say that comprehension or apprehension is only possible at a certain level of complexity, societies of occasions which are groups of individual occasions. So, it seems, we do not feel the interactions of atoms, or molecules, or compounds. But as the complexity of relations increases we as living beings have systems of our own to register or interrelate with those societies of occasions. At any one moment there are so many occasions of experience that our consciousness can only register a small minority and a few more are registered by our body unconsciously, and others that occur without any initial registration like the sub-atomic particles that pass through our bodies at every moment. Or (God forbid) receiving an overdose of radiation that can one be noticed by a mechanical tool (badge) but the effects soon make themselves known.

Yes and in addition I would venture to say that human experience is predominantly unconscious in the sense of the way the body reacts to stimulii. There are whole systems in the body (one being the involuntary muscle system that operates without consciousness. Your body’s response to infection. These are all experiences that affect you daily and without consciousness.

Good evening Dr. Davis,
Thanks for responding. What I am getting perhaps more clarity on are how to ask the useful questions and appreciating what how Whitehead tried to bring the supernatural into the natural; not dismiss the super-mundane but to bring into the realm of the natural. Of course that brings up other issues that he was well aware of and so I am looking forward the more discussions. Thanks again.

Thank you to both Greg and Christie for your thoughtful musings. I am reminded of the Sy-fi movie “Avatar,” and the struggle between a viewpoint that treats the world as an object and one that sees the world as a subject. It seems to me that this seems a useful way to discuss our way in the world and it certainly fits well in a process framework. The issue is that we nature of things is that there are limited resources and those resources all have some kind of subjective being. Nature it is hard to get away from the brutality inherent in nature and necessary for survival. In the movie Cameron draws for indigenous cultures and their approach to this conundrum–a recognition that a life can only exist by the taking of a living thing. So the ethical dilemma revolves around at least two things: how the life is taken and was the same reverence surrounding the killing also extended to how the victim lived. I suppose that process terms for this would be ‘contrasts’ and ‘multiplicities’. This would entail a conscious recognition that all life is precious and the acceptance that life is needed to sustain one’s life. In fact, that could be included as a moment sometime around the meal.

Well just to add to the complexity, it seems to me that the writers of the NT were in the process of putting experiences together as well based on their experiences and cultural context. The writer of the gospel of John seems to have a different perspective than the synoptic gospel writers and the writer of Colossians has a different perspective than Paul. Just like the many different perspectives found in Hindu sacred texts.

I appreciate to post Daryl as they echo my thoughts as well. There are all those experiments that lean to the conclusion that sub-atomic particles communicate with each other over vast distances on a quantum level. So the issue is not the communication issue for me but one of purposive intent. Things are moving, changing, evolving, and communicating but is there a directionality over and above entropy. Or further we could look at entropy in the overall system and still find sub-areas where complexity is forming within the overall entropic system. Anyway, for me the issue is purpose.

Thanks for sharing your brief AI search. As you know categories can be so good or so bad (clarifying and limiting). For example the term ‘atheism’ can have different meanings depending in what context it is used. Atheism can be used to as a placeholder for ‘no God’ or a view that rejects the notion of a certain understanding of God (God as agent, rather than agency).

All good and thoughtful questions. My only input is an analogy, that God is not the biggest fish in the ocean, or a boat that is launched into the ocean to save people or capture and kill fish, but the ocean itself. That is not a perfect metaphor either as you can tell.