An Introduction to the Process
Philosophy of A.N. Whitehead.
Based mostly on lectures of Charles
Hartshorne and Jan Van der Veken,
PART
(A)
Introductory: what Whitehead is about, his
conception of his task as a philosopher and how he
proceeds.
(1) 'speculative
philosophy'/'metaphysics' vis a vis science and
common sense.
(2) the starting
point:
PART
(B) WHITEHEAD'S
SYSTEM IN OUTLINE.
1. a metaphysics of concrescent events rather
than of substances with properties.
2. a metaphysics of creative
becoming (equivalently:
"innovating becoming") rather than a metaphysics of being.
Some
implications:
W.r.t. Being
W.r.t. Time
3. a philosophy of organism: of
relatedness and inter-dependence
rather than individualistic independence
4. a philosophy which has Beauty as the
ultimate value: the whole
universe as a process for attainment towards beauty.
5. a philosophy with five so-called
metaphysical ultimates: creativity, actual entities
prehending their predecessors (i.e. actual entities,
prehension), eternal objects and God.
((b)actual
entities and (c)prehension already introduced)
(a)
CREATIVITY:
(b)
ACTUAL ENTITIES (already introduced)
(c)
PREHENSION (already introduced)
(d)
ETERNAL OBJECTS:
Whitehead's variation on Platonic Forms.
(e)
GOD
(I) why introduce God in philosophy
(II) some
notes on the nature of God thus defined:
PART
(C) FURTHER
EXPLANATIONS
I.
Some notes on 'Di-polar Theism'
II.
Some questions on the God question within process
thought:
III.
Additional on Reality as a Social Process
["the problem of
compound individuals"]
Introduction
Yet further discussion, for those interested:
IV.
Additional on Actual Entity and Prehension (cf.
esp. Leclerc.)
An Introduction to the Process
Philosophy of A.N. Whitehead.
Alfred
North Whitehead (1861--1947): Process and Reality (1929).
But see also Concept of Nature (1919)
and Science and the
Modern World
(1926); Adventures of
Ideas (1933); Modes of Thought
(1938); Science
and Philosophy
(1947).
PART
(A) Introductory:
what Whitehead is about, his conception of his task as
a philosopher and how he proceeds.
(a)
'speculative
philosophy'/'metaphysics' vis a vis science and
common sense.
Process and Reality is a work of
"Speculative Philosophy" rather than a work of
empirical science, as he explains in the first
chapter. Speculative
Philosophy
...is the endeavour to frame a coherent,
logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of
which every element of our experience can be
interpreted. By this notion of 'interpretation' I mean
that everything of which we are conscious, as enjoyed,
perceived, willed, or thought, shall have the
character of a particular instance of the general
scheme. Thus the philosophical scheme
should be coherent, logical, and, in respect of its
interpretation, applicable and adequate. Here
'applicable' means that some items of experience are
thus interpretable, and 'adequate' means that there
are no items incapable of such interpretation.[1]
It is not however inconsistent with the special
sciences. Metaphysics or speculative philosophy seeks
principles of which everything will be a special case,
not laws which are quantitatively definite. On the
other hand, "the philosophical scheme should be
'necessary,' in the sense of bearing in itself its own
warrant of universality throughout all experience,
provided that we confine ourselves to that which
communicates with immediate matter of fact."[2] In so far as
the special sciences "communicate with immediate
matter of fact", the theoretical entities of the
special sciences have to
be interpretable from within the scheme. Physical
science however is an abstraction. To stay with it
would be "a confession of philosophic failure. It is
the business of rational thought to describe the more
concrete fact from which that abstraction is
derivable."[3]
It is the element of 'adequacy' thus which both
distinguishes speculative philosophy from the special
sciences and relates it to them. Adequacy
means that you can be Whiteheadian and
physicist/chemist/biologist without going into a two world view. Note that
'science' here however is not classical science
but science after relativity and quantum physics
--already in 1929.
See Chapters VII and VIII of Science
and the Modern World,[4]
entitled "Relativity" and "The Quantum Theory"
respectively. However, Whitehead is obviously not in
quite the same advantageous position as David Bohm for
example, writing in 1980,[5] or some of
his own disciples writing in the 1990�s and the early
2000�s.
The element of adequacy means however that we
may rely on as well as need to be able to 'interpret'
all our experience, "every element of our experience",
and not only that part of it which submits to
scientific method as presently conceived. While very
careful to take account of the sciences Whitehead, and
process thinking generally, is not scientistic. According to
Whitehead, "it must be one of the motives of a
complete cosmology, to construct a system of ideas
which bring the aesthetic, moral and religious
interests into relation with those concepts of the
world which have their origin in natural science". [6] He is
striving, then, to be very much in contact with the
sciences, but not restricted to what the sciences have to deliver.
(b)
The starting
point:
The initial starting point is physics, in
Whitehead�s case, as noted, post-Relativity Theory
(Whitehead has his own version) and in the early days
of Quantum Mechanics.
Indeed, one can even think of it as an
extrapolation from Mathematics, the Theory of the
Function (fundamental Algebra) and the Theory of
Extensive Abstraction (fundamental Geometry). For the
former, see especially the recent work of James
Bradley (e.g. in Shields,
editor, Process and Analysis, pp. 139 -156. For the
latter, see Process and Reality itself. And indeed,
drawing from a similar background, other people such
as W.V.O. Quine and W. Sellers have also come up with
an event metaphysics.
However, for Whitehead, this gives an ontology
only at a very abstract level. To come up
with some idea of what reality might be like in its
full concreteness, we have to
go elsewhere.
The key for developing "a coherent, logical,
necessary system of general ideas etc" beyond the
abstractions of the sciences and maths
is to concentrate on an analysis of the only reality
we know from within, the actual entities or events or
happenings which we are, and to carefully generalize
the results. The
knower, the percipient, remembering, feeling, deciding
event within a particular environment, is taken as
providing the clue to nature in general. Compare
Leibniz � except that what results is no longer to be
�windowless�.
The starting point is analogous to
phenomenological analysis of human experience, or
Heidegger's existential analytic, or the intentional
analysis of Lonergan and co., but relying as well on
the deliverances of physics, physiology
and psychology.
The generalizing to the rest of nature looks
like gross anthropomorphism, but
is in fact based on a kind of naturalism, that human
beings are a part of nature, not something entirely
different --this rather than an idealism or some kind
of desire for certainty.
If we are really
consistent in regarding ourselves as part of
nature, then our knowledge from within of the events
or happenings that we are, carefully used, can well be
a source of possibly useful hypotheses about the
nature of natural events generally. The refusal
to even consider the possibility is a remnant of
dualism. Also,
any such generalizing, even when carefully done, has to be validated or tested
out in respect of applicability and adequacy to the
totality of our experience. One has to consider the differences
between various kinds of natural events, even if they
be differences in degree, not in kind. Obviously,
everything depends on how carefully the generalizing
is done, and how well it does check out.
Also, it needs to be carefully noted in advance
and emphasized again and again and every so strongly:
Whitehead�s analysis of concrescent
events applies only to genuine individuals and not to
aggregates: it doesn�t
apply to stones or statues or telephones.
In the Preface to Process and Reality Whitehead
claims his lectures as "a recurrence to that phase of
philosophic thought which began with Descartes and
ended with Hume", claiming support in elements in
their writings though not the ones usually emphasized. He claims to
be closest to Locke.
But there is also quite a lot of Hume and some
Kant and even more of Leibniz. He reverts
also to Aristotle and particularly Plato: "The safest
general characterization of the European philosophical
tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes
to Plato"[7]
after all.
But "ultimately nothing rests on authority; the
final court of appeal is intrinsic reasonableness."[8] In
addition, Whitehead confesses indebtedness to Bergson,
William James and John
Dewey among others (whereas Hartshorne is more closely
related to Charles Sanders Peirce). One of
Whitehead�s preoccupations however has been "to rescue
their type of thought from the charge of
anti-intellectualism, which rightly or wrongly has
been associated with it." (p. vii). Whitehead's
philosophy like that of Bergson is also a philosophy
of creative becoming but he manages this still with
the notion of time as consisting of definite discrete
events.
PART
(B) WHITEHEAD'S
SYSTEM IN OUTLINE.
Rather than try to work something out of Process and
Reality, I've taken advantage of some notes
taken during lectures by Charles Hartshorne at the
Whitehead's philosophy is:
1. a metaphysics of concrescent
events
rather than of substances with properties.
Reality is a succession of states, happenings or events, 'actual
entities', 'occasions of experience', 'occasions',
causally related to their predecessors. There are
many intersecting causal lines, a set of caused and
causing events but some lines are more important to
determining the character of a particular event than
others. This latter enables 'substance' to be defined
in terms of events.
A person, for example, is a succession of
states following on one another in certain ways,
related to each other in a certain way including a
high degree of similarity through time and in so far
as in seeking causes we go back to previous mental or
bodily states (looks like Hume, or Buddhism for that
matter, but in Whitehead later events are internally
related to previous events versus Hume, though not to
future events, versus some interpretations of Buddhism
-- see later).
Whitehead's philosophy is:
2. a metaphysics of
creative becoming (equivalently:
"innovating
becoming") rather than a metaphysics of being.
�
:creative
becoming, which is to say, the definiteness of the
universe is constantly increasing. The future is not
entirely written into the past, each event or actual
entity adds its little bit. This implies a radical
rejection of classical determinism, as the wrong view
of everything and not just of human beings. The
ultimate natural laws are claimed to be statistical
rather than deterministic in form, though this does
not make much difference most of the time, in so far
as random movements cancel each other out. Also, in
most cases it is only the last little bit of
definiteness which is added by the event itself.
�
:on
the other hand, every becoming is a taking into
account of the past. Creativity is
always a creative response to a given situation: the
past does not dictate but it does limit.
This
brings us to the Whiteheadian term for causality, the
notion of "prehension" = the taking
into account of the past, which he models after the
events which we are, the ones we know best, the ones
we live from within, in particular, perception and
memory. Perception
is analysed as having the
same structure as memory. In both cases we have
experiences which have the past as data. Memory =
experiencing my own past experiences, the data is
previous experience in the same personal series.
Perception = experience of past events not in the same
series. This is the case not only for light and sound
but also for feelings in the body: we never experience
the absolute present. Introspection on this view = a
kind of retrospection (a la Gilbert Ryle), telling
your own most recent memories.
The experience does something, however, to the
data it receives. Experience in both cases is a
synthesis, a creative synthesis, a new reality: "the
many become one and are increased by one". Each data is
a necessary condition, but even the totality of
conditions is not a sufficient condition for the data
in their togetherness in the experience: the
experience in part makes itself. The data make the
experience possible, more or less
probable, but do not necessitate it down to
the last detail.
The stuff/matter of which the present is made
is the past itself, and this using of the past in the
present is e.g. memory.
But you can mould your response to the past that you
remember: you can remember it this way or that way, e.g. an insult, nobly, manly,
like an animal, but in a way integral to a response to
the whole past. See
attached diagram, on Whitehead's concept of the
becoming of an actual entity/occasion of experience,
for the details of the modelling.
Note in all this that an actual entity is
nothing other than the becoming of an actual entity, a
blob of activity if you like, an instance of
creativity, a pulsation in the creative advance. An actual
entity = a "growing together" of antecedent data into
a novel unity, as in perception or memory, i.e. a 'concrescence', from the
Latin verb meaning to grow together, related to the
English word 'concrete'.
Some
implications:
W.r.t.
Being:
As
with substance and events, so with Being and Becoming,
Being is to be defined in
terms of Becoming:
Being = what has to
be taken into account of in any future
becoming: "to be is to be available for all
future
actualities".[9]
This is
claimed as an advantage over the metaphysics of Being.
Being can
be defined in terms of creative Becoming, but one
can't define creative Becoming in terms of Being. A metaphysics
of being cannot cope with any genuine novelty in the
universe: nothing in the future whose sufficient
conditions are not already contained in the past, i.e. nothing genuinely new ever
happens, everything has to be reduced to what is.
W.r.t.
Time:
We
may distinguish two senses:
(i) time1 as
constituted by the creative process, the succession of
discrete actual entities. Time so
understood is uni-directional
and
irreversible. The
future (also present) contains/is internally related
to the past, but not the past the future. There is
genuine novelty, an increase in definiteness, to be taken into account in any
further becoming.
(ii)
there is also (the) time (time2 )
that a single actual entity occupies. A single
actual entity is a single happening, takes a 'quantum
of time' to occur depending on what kind of actual
entity it is. It
takes a quantum of time in this case means: there
could be a whole series of other actual entities
happening, e.g. in an
atomic clock, while this is happening.
No event happens in an instant of time. The
quantum of time varies with the kind of actual entity.
Electronic events, for example, happen in so many nano-seconds or whatever you
call them. A human happening: according to Hartshorne
about a tenth of a second. Why say
this? Because
of the number of successive happenings, e.g. musical notes, a trained
person can distinguish in a second. Certain
birds take life much more quickly than this. Time is in
both senses relative to actual entities: either the
concrescence of actual entities relative to other
contemporary i.e. not
causally related 'shorter' actual entities or the
succession of discrete concrescences. The past =
everything to which the present is causally related.
The future = everything that is causally related to
the present. Space
meanwhile is also relative, = the ordering of
contemporary, i.e. not
causally related concrescences.
(An
interesting consequence of this, which makes space and
time relative to the things and effectively defines
both space and time in terms of events and prehension
or Whiteheadean
causality: every
event involved in the causal nexus is somewhere, even
the most high grade mental
events.)
Whitehead's philosophy is:
3. a philosophy of organism: of
relatedness and inter-dependence
rather than individualistic independence
�
:
The universe as characterized by a profound organic
unity. Instead of a machine consisting of an infinite
number of lesser machines, all of
whose parts are conceivable and can exist in
isolation, reality is a social process or even in the
way of an organism consisting of an infinite number of
lesser organisms.
In Whitehead, some relations are real or
internal and some are not. This is the middle ground
between
�
extreme
pluralism,
as in Hume and Russell, according to which all
relations are external (Hume: what is different is
distinguishable, and what is distinguishable by the
mind and imagination is separable and can exist
separately...);
�
and
extreme monism
according to which the whole universe is just one
complex fact, such that to know anything is to know
everything and the future (in principle) is just as
accessible as the past (e.g.
Hegel).
In
Whitehead's system some relations are internal but not
all. Also,
the more important relations are internal in only one
direction. For example, knowing, perceiving,
remembering --which make a difference to the knower
etc. but not to the known etc. For example,
past and future (or past and present): the character
of the past is not changed by its
having a particular future, but the future is
determined by the fact of there having been a
particular past. The future (present) is always a taking into account of the
past. In
Whitehead's technical terminology, the relation of
'prehending' is an internal relation, one way.
"Organism" for Whitehead is a biological way of
looking at what is ultimately sociological. To say
that the universe is characterized by organic unity is
the same as to say that Reality is a Social Process.
An organism is a society, usually a society of
societies, e.g. atoms,
molecules, cells, the human body, the cosmos. 'Social',
'society' imply interaction and usually a great deal
more than this: a group of at least sentient creatures
(or the equivalent on the lower level) each of which
has its own 'feelings', e.g.
bees, termites, ants and given the modeling of actual
entities as occasions of experience even molecules.
Not however stones: a stone doesn't feel, the feelings
are felt by the molecules in the stone.
Whitehead's philosophy is:
4. a philosophy which has
Beauty as the ultimate value: the whole
universe as a process for attainment towards beauty.
�
:
For Whitehead, beauty
is the fundamental value in the universe, the immanent
final cause of the social process, both in detail and as a
whole. Cf.
infants, fleeing from aesthethic
disvalue (being uncomfortable, a negative value in
terms of feeling), enjoying something new, provided it
is not too much and not threatening. Compare our
enjoyment of humour, an
aesthetic value in terms of immediate feeling. Compare
cats and dogs, enjoying the harmonious use of their
muscles.
�
:Beauty: the harmony
and intensity of experience --neither bored, nor in a
state of hopeless conflict, with boredom as bad as
conflict, which is why we go to the cinima to be scared, its
better than being bored. This something to be careful
of also in human relationships.
Intensity depends largely on variety. Which is
to say, Beauty = the integration of unity and variety
--if too much of either, no beauty. And boredom kills.
Compare Charles Hartshorne, Creative
Synthesis and Philosophic Method, Ch.
XVI The Aesthetic Matrix of Value, especially the
diagram on p. 305 (photocopy included).
With Whitehead, for perhaps the first time in
the History of Philosophy (according to Hartshorne),
we have then a metaphysics of beauty: the universe
doesn't exist to be logical a la Hegel, nor to be
ethical; the goal is harmony and intensity of
experience, the integration of unity and variety. Not
an extrinsic aim though: it's written into the nature
of the process.
�
:Beauty rather than
rationality or even
ethical goodness
--what are all the other animals doing if
ethical value is made the fundamental value? Animal
enjoyment of life = harmony and intensity of feelings,
and these are aesthetic values. And isn't the value of
being good partly 1/that there is something
aesthetically good about a good will --not in basic
discord, in principle in harmony with oneself and with
other persons, in itself an
intrinsic ethical value (ethical goodness = beauty of
character, cf. Hume); and partly 2/that wicked people
tend to destroy the beauty of life.
Compare
the N.T. Mt 6/24--34, beauty and not just goodness as
values, and values for God/in themselves, not just for
or in respect of humans. Also, what is the
(Note that Truth, considered as a value, is
definable in terms of beauty, a kind of harmony within
experience between the foreground of 'presentational
immediacy' and the background of 'physical efficacy'.
See Cobb,
A Christian Natural Theology
(Lutterworth Press,
London, 1966), pp. 104--108, for this idea.)
Whitehead's philosophy is:
5. a philosophy with five
so-called metaphysical ultimates: creativity,
actual entities prehending their predecessors
(i.e. actual entities, prehension), eternal
objects and God.
'Metaphysical ultimates'
in the sense of kinds of things we have to talk about
and relate to each other
in the endeavour to frame
a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas
in terms of which each and every
element of our experience can be interpreted.
'Actual entity' and 'prehension' have already
been introduced. 'Actual entities' are the events that
we and everything else in the universe consist in. Each of these is a
creative 'prehending' or taking
into account of the past-- as in events of
perceiving or remembering. This taking account of past
actualities is only one kind of prehension =
'physical' prehension, other kinds later; but it is
the most important kind and the one on which the
others depend. 'Actual entity' the same as
'occasions', 'occasions of experience', 'actual
occasions of experience', 'concrescences', our
knowledge of them being modeled on the events which we
are, the only ones we know from within. To
introduce the others now in a more formal fashion. For
the full picture, these also have
to be taken into account.
To take the other three 'metaphysical ultimates' now in some detail:
(a)
CREATIVITY:
= Whitehead's 'absolute', the counterpart of
matter for the materialists, dialectically evolving
matter for some Marxists, Absolute Spirit for Hegel or
Substance consisting of infinite attributes for
Spinoza.
'Creativity'
however is not a kind of thing. 'Creativity' is the
generic name for the activity in which the universe consists. That the
universe is doing this kind of thing is itself however
a kind of ultimate matter of fact. It belongs to the
nature of things that the many enter into a complex
unity, which is also the source of novelty, new things
which in their turn become part of the many, which
enter into further complex unities --
that's just the way it is. From Process and Reality, in
the
section on the Category of the Ultimate:
'Creativity'
is the universal of universals characterizing ultimate
matter of fact. It is that ultimate principle by which
the many, which are the universe disjunctively, become
the one actual occasion, which is the universe
conjunctively. It lies in the
nature of things that the many enter into
complex unity.
'Creativity' is the principle of novelty. An
actual occasion is a novel entity diverse from any
entity in the 'many' which it unifies. Thus creativity introduces
novelty into the content of the many... The ultimate
metaphysical principle is the advance from disjunction
to conjunction, creating a novel entity other than the
entities given in disjunction. The novel entity is at
once the togetherness of the 'many' which it finds, and also it is one among the
disjunctive 'many' which it leaves; it is a novel
entity, disjunctively among the many entities which it
synthesizes. The many become one,
and are increased by one. In their nature,
entities are disjunctively 'many' in process of
passage into conjunctive unity...[10]
Each actual entity, including God, is an
individualization of creativity. Actual entities,
including God, are 'creatures' of what Ivor Leclerc calls
a universal, two-phase creative
process:
--the phase
inherent in the constitution of the particular existent = concrescence
--the phase
whereby the perishing of a process, on the completion
of the particular existent,
constitutes that existent as an original element in
the constitution of other particular existences
elicited by repetitions of process. = transition.
On
the other hand, creativity has no actuality apart from
its individual embodiments. We are not
to think of creativity as if it were itself an actual
entity -- there is no activity apart from the
individual pulsations each taking account of their
total past environment.
So it's not another
name for God.
This secures the character of the universe to
be perpetually going on: its ultimate character is
that of self-creating activity --the sheer on-goingness of the creative
process. This secures thus the existence of the
universe: the existence of the universe is constituted
by its ultimate nature as perpetual self-creating
activity.[11]
What is not secured is how exactly this generic
character will be embodied. That depends on God and on
us:
always on God --functioning as principle of
limitation,
determining e.g.
that space have 3 dimensions and also the ultimate
laws of nature;
and in the case of an individual concrescence
on the
past which it prehends and to some extent the
individual concrescence itself.
To
tell this story properly, however, you have according
to Whitehead to talk about 'eternal objects' as well
as actual entities.
(b)
ACTUAL ENTITIES (already introduced)
(c)
PREHENSION (already introduced)
(d)
ETERNAL OBJECTS:
Whitehead's variation on Platonic Forms.
'Eternal objects' are forms of definiteness,
characters, ways of being definite or determinate,
qualities such as red or hard, also patterns. They are
repeatables, e.g. the same shade of red or
the same patterning may occur on/in two different
occasions. They are also possibles or potentials, in
two senses. On the one hand they are possibilities:
they are possible forms of definiteness, the
multiplicity of eternal objects in their various
combinations are so many
different ways for actual entities to be
determined. On the other hand
they are mere possibles, pure potentials. Eternal
objects of themselves are neutral in
regard to their 'ingression' in particular
actual entities. They may have ingression into actual
entities, but as far as they themselves are concerned
they need not. Their "conceptual recognition does not
involve a necessary reference to any definite actual
entities of the temporal world" (P.R. p. 60).
With respect to the words 'eternal', 'object':
they are eternal
-- in the sense that what they are is not a
product of the actual process, they are what they are,
whether instantiated or not, a form of that particular definiteness and no
other. Objects:
a neutral word, to avoid misleading historical
connotations of words like 'Form', 'Idea'. Also in the
sense of givens --givens for
the subjects of the
creative
process.
Unlike Plato's Forms, eternal objects exist
only as ingredients in some or other actual entities,
only as determinants of the definiteness of the
process of acting of actual entities. Actual
entities, the pulsations of creative activity, are the
only fully existent entities: all other entities exist
only in the derivative sense of being implicated in
the existence of actual entities. This
is Whitehead�s ONTOLOGICAL PRINCIPLE.
Some
Notes on Whitehead's eternal objects:
Note
(i)
While all eternal objects may be described as
possibles for ingression into the creative process,
there is need to distinguish between what is possible
abstractly considered, and conditioned possibility,
what is possible in a particular situation for a
particular actual entity. This latter is determined on
a number of different
levels:
1. For
an eternal object to be a genuine possibility for
ingression into the Social Process at all, it has
already to have ingression into some or other actual
entity. Not only can't anything exist except be it an
individual concrescence or a component of an
individual concrescence. Nothing can have efficacy for
an actual entity or concrescence except be it itself
an actual entity or a component of an actual entity. (This is
termed, �the Ontological Principle�.) Which
is to say that all eternal objects have at least to be
thought of by "God". Only in so far as I prehend what
"God" is thinking is a possibility for me not already
ingredient in the creative process given to me. In this
sense God thinking the eternal objects (preferred:
God's "envisagement" of the eternal objects, including
both vision and evaluation, an element of appetition,
a will to or feeling for their embodiment) is the
final principle of possibility and the principle of
novelty.
(Note:
while He/She/It is an instance or creature of
creativity, there has to
be a God if there is to be a creative process:
He/She/It is as necessary as the universe. The
existence of She/He/It is necessary. What form
It/She/He takes, like what form the Universe, is
dependent on God's self-creation and
also on the universe.)
2. Secondly,
if there is to be a universe at all, some order has to be put into the realm of
possibilities: the undefined kingdom of possibilities
has to acquire borders in respect of relevance for the
creative process. There is a need for a "principle of
limitation" defining the limits of the possible
within the concrete world, if
there is to be a concrete world at all. Note that an
ordering of eternal objects is an ordering of forms of
definiteness, which is what laws of nature are,
orderings in respect of forms of definiteness.
On the level of individual concrescences this
is to say that the deciding which the actual entity is
does not start off as neutral in respect of what it
will become, what eternal objects will have ingression
in it. It
starts off with an "initial aim", a kind of invitation
to become this rather than that, which the actual
entity receives as a kind of given. It is given to the
actual entity to have this "initial" aim. God
works as principle of limitation by
working on this initial aim -- a kind of persuasion, like the
Demiurge persuading necessity. God does this by
getting Himself/Herself/Itself prehended. This is why
there are laws of nature and also
social laws and such.
But it's only a persuasion --which is why the
ultimate laws of nature
and the laws of human beings are statistical.
Finally, this general character is not
necessary in the same sense as the existence of God or
of the universe --it is contingent on the divine
decision.
Given
1) and 2), while there is no creatio
ex nihilo, it can still be said that ever since
the 'beginning' God has been creating the world out of
previous stages. Unlike the classical God however
He/She makes things make themselves. (Hartshorne
--who goes on to remark that evolution, while not
decided by the metaphysics, therefore fits in quite
well.)
3. Thirdly
there is the past, actual entities with their already
decided forms of definiteness, which might be repeated
in the present entity perhaps in a novel integration
or appropriated in a more creative
fashion, e.g. wavelengths of light appropriated as colours in the spectrum.
Always a little bit novel --though they incorporate repeatables, no two individual
actual entities are ever exactly
the same (cf. Leibniz's principle of the
identity of indiscernables).
Each reflects its standpoint in the creative advance,
as well as its own perhaps negligible bit of
creativity. Interesting
point: the past doesn't actually
do anything --it is past, its activity is
over and done with. The past "functions" in the
present by being what the present is obliged to take
account of in its acting: "the objectified actualities
'characterize creativity' because, as data, they
condition the character of creative activity beyond
them selves. (Leclerc, p. 110.) The present
for its part is of its very nature a creative taking
account of the past --without the materials it can't
build anything, can't itself become anything definite.
Thus is it "obliged".
Note
(ii)
on Whitehead's doctrine of eternal objects:
Whitehead's doctrine of eternal objects has
been criticized by some other process thinkers,
notably Hartshorne.
Hartshorne is much less Platonic, more nominalistic: the forms of
definiteness come to exist in the
course of the creative process --they rise up
in the process, just as the actual entities
themselves. In
Hartshorne's scheme, not only do forms of definiteness
never before embodied get
embodied but whole new forms of definiteness emerge.
While the introduction of God into the system
is with Whitehead himself intricately involved in its
detailed elaboration with his doctrine of eternal
objects, process philosophy of God and theology and a
largely Whiteheadean
philosophy generally can be elaborated independently
of the doctrine. In other words, process philosophy
and theology are compatible with more than one
solution to the problem of universals.
�
THE
FIVE METAPHYSICAL ULTIMATES (continued)
(e)
GOD
Introduction:
Process
thinking distinguishes two sides to God's nature,
defined by reference to the world process: the Primordial
Nature of God, which is creative in respect of
the process, and the Consequent
Nature of God, which is receptive of the world
process. Occasionally
there is reference to a third side, the Projective
or Superjective Nature
of God, the flowing back into the universe that
Whitehead talks about at the end of Process and
Reality.
This
makes for is a break with tradition but also a
continuity.
On the one hand a continuity: Process thought
still describes God as creator, infinite, independent,
with necessary existence:
�
--though
what is actualized is finite, his/her/its
potentiality is infinite;
�
--in
respect of his/her
primordial determination of the
social process, she/he is independent of the
process;
�
--no
matter what kind of world, there has
to be a God,
His/Her existence is necessary.
�
--considered
in their abstract character, all God's
attributes including the relational attributes
implied in the consequent nature are necessary
and
eternal and unconditioned, possessed immutably
and
impassively and absolutely. E.g. that God should
know everything --though what God knows will be
dependent on what there is to be known, and God
does not completely determine what there is.
�
--were
there not a God acting both as principle of
possibility and novelty and principle
of limitation, there would be no Cosmos as we know it.
What there would be would be
pure, completely unknowable and inconceivable chaos.
On the other hand, there is a very definite
break. In so far as God has a consequent as well as a
primordial nature, the concrete nature of God is
dependent on what kind of Cosmic Process.
�
--
In respect of his/her consequent reception of the
social process he/she is dependent on the process,
which God enables, limits and persuades but does not
completely determine;
�
--while
His/Her existence is necessary, what kind of God there
is in the concrete = the divine actuality, will thus
be
partly dependent on the details of the Cosmic
Process.
(Note that Whitehead's primordial and
consequent natures are not quite the same as
Hartshorne's more usual way of talking in terms of abstract and
concrete poles. Any God
whatsoever has to have a
consequent nature, this is part of what it is to be
God: that God has a consequent nature belongs to the
abstract pole, is definitive of the divine existence.
It is just that, given that God has a consequent
nature, (i.e. any God), the
concrete nature of God, the Divine Actuality = how
this divine existence is realized in fact, will be
partly determined by the contingent features of the
world process which God him/her self does not
completely control.
See later, "Some notes on Di-Polar Theism" for
exposition in terms of abstract and concrete poles.)
Why however do we introduce God into
our speculative philosophy in the
first place?
ABOUT GOD
(cont):
(I)
Why introduce
God in philosophy
--the
reasons for doing so are co-ordinate with the insights
into his/her nature.
He/She is introduced for philosophical, not
just religious reasons --on the grounds of experience
available to all, prior to a consideration of the particular experiences of
particular people. Hartshorne distinguishes 4 reasons
or arguments in Whitehead, not that Whitehead himself
spells all of them out, but that the material for the
arguments are to be found
in Whitehead's philosophy:
How
to understand there being an order in the world --that
there is a 'world', in the sense of an orderly set of
processes. And there is an order: even the existence
of knowledge is already an order --coherent memory and
coherent perception. Without some order, not even
hopeless conflict, just pure chaos, unknowable. How
can there be an order --unless there is a supreme form
of creativity which gives direction/guidance to all
the lesser creativities, so that they keep their
freedom within limits.
So there must be an
eminent form of creativity which orders the lesser
from without without
destroying their freedom. (It does this by getting
itself prehended/ experienced
by the other actualities.)
So that when we are thinking of possible worlds
or possibilities we are
not thinking about nothing: the non-existence of the
ground of possibilities cannot be one of the
possibilities. Cf. above, under "eternal objects", for
more details.
You can't understand what truth is, otherwise.
Truth can only be defined in terms of someone's
knowledge. The
truth is what God thinks to be so, the
reality
of the world is the world as God sees it --our
conception is only more or less. Truth and reality:
things as they are to God, God's knowledge as the
measure rather than what we think is so or what the
experts think is so. Whitehead: the truth nothing but
the way things are together in the consequent nature
of God.
No
permanent value without God: without God ordinary
process has no real long range significence,
all experience is a passing wiff
of insignificance, humanity itself only a passing wiff. God is needed then to
save the transcience of
everything, it can make a lasting contribution to some
one, e.g. God.
Not so much a theoretical argument as a strong
ethico-religious
conviction: the only way our fleeting ways can have an
abiding significence.
The
first two arguments characterize God in his/her
Primordial character/nature, the latter two in her/his
Consequent or derivative Nature.
Hartshorne himself has 6 proofs, cf. Creative
Synthesis and Philosophic Method (Open Court,
Illinois, 1970), Ch. XIV. (a) and (b)
above become I. Ontological, II. Cosmological and III.
Design. (c)
and (d) above become IV. Epistemic, V. Moral and VI.
Aesthetic. Hartshorne's
proofs are not nearly so dependent on the details of Whiteheadean metaphysics. In general,
Hartshorne prefers to argue both existence and nature
of God in a way that is independent of acceptance of
the metaphysics.
Provided this is understood properly, it can be
said that all the arguments are a priori rather than
empirical (thus Hartshorne). Not just
that the factual order implies God --any conceivable
order implies it, any experience whatsoever will do. We are
arguing from the very possibility of permanent value,
the very possibility of order and the nature of truth
itself --any truth whatsoever. Order, value
and truth are instanced in our world, but the
arguments are not empirical in the sharp sense of K.
Popper = falsifiable, a proposition or theory as
empirical if there is at
least a conceivable experience which would falsify it. To think of
the existence of God as depending on the kind of world
would make nonsense of the idea of God. (There is a
similar idea in the medieval philosopher/theologian
Duns Scotus.)
These proofs and speculative philosophy
generally define God only very abstractly
however. What further can be known about God must be
sought in the region of particular
experiences, and therefore rests on an
empirical basis.
See especially Science and the Modern
World, p.
213. The
real, actual God is always the concrete God of a
particular people. God in the concrete is richer than
the abstract God, but the concrete contains the
abstract. (Part
of the difficulty however is that the interpretations
of particular experiences
get perverted by poor metaphysics. Therefore eliminate
metaphysics? No,
you would only be left with uncriticized prejudices all the more powerful for not
having been brought to reflection.)
(II)
Some further notes on the nature of God thus
defined:
(i) For Whitehead himself, God
is an (eternal) actual entity. There is a
kind of becoming within the actual entity, but God
him/herself is timeless, there is no transition of
divine moments. Time applies to God in the second
sense above but not in the first.
For Hartshorne on the other hand and also John Cobb and numbers
of others it better fits Whitehead's system or at
least is not incongruent with it and makes more sense
generally to regard God not as an actual entity but as
a series of actual entities with personal order. The relation
God--the rest of the Social Process is then modeled as
a thoroughly radicalized version of the relationship
between mind or soul and body/brain. Time applies to
God in both senses.
Cobb makes other changes to Whitehead,
particularly in respect of the nature of God as
creator. God
is more of a creator for Cobb than s/he is for
Whitehead --the role of creator must be more drastic
than Whitehead recognized. God has a
prime and indispensable role not only in determining
what each new occasion becomes but also in determining
that it becomes.
He also makes the point that even in Whitehead
without God there would be no enduring objects, no
"things" in the usual sense.
(ii)
The distinction between primordial
and consequent
nature is only a distinction of reason. It is not
meant to imply that there ever was a time when there
was no world (nor however does it mean that the Social
Process has always had the determinate character that
it has in this particular epoch.) God's
concrete nature, = the actual God who is in part
consequent on the actual world process, includes the
primordial nature as the abstract is included in the
concrete. See Process and Reality, pp.
405, 406-407.
(iii) That God's concrete nature is in part consequent on the world process means that the relationship between God and world is a real, internal relation going both directions. Not that God is bashed by the world process: She/He creatively responds to it, does His/Her own thing with it, saves it. On the other side, the primordial influence of God (= the Divine omnipotence) is certainly not to say that He/She does everything or that He/She is the only centre of power in the universe. She/He provides each actual occasion with (some of) its limits but also with certain possibilities, and does this by being felt, sometimes very obscurely, and every occasion does a little bit its own thing.
(iv)
Given the doctrine of internal relations and the truly
radical character of the divine
knowing/feeling/evaluating/enjoying of the creative
world process, the Divine can be said to radically
include the world (Pan-en-theism),
while
still being distinct from it (no Pan-theism). The world
process is outside the Divine while it is happening,
though included in God immediately after. Implication:
Totality of Reality = the World and
God-including-the-World.
PART
(C) FURTHER EXPLANATIONS
I. Some notes on
Di-polar Theism (with
apologies to Prof. Jan Van der Veken and Charles
Hartshorne)
1.
The basic idea involved in a 'dipolar' view of God or
of reality can be expressed in the following
thesis:
the most coherent and adequate way to conceive either
God or the totality of reality is to view them in
terms of two contrasting aspects or poles, of which
one is abstract and the
other is concrete.
(a) The relationship between the two poles or aspects:
�
These
poles are not to be thought of as substances --we are
not saying that reality is made
out of two parts, that is not the idea at
all.
�
The way
to conceive the relationship abstract--concrete is
best explained by examples:
E.g. History and the concrete events: History does not exist without the concrete events, yet all the concrete events might be
different
and yet History would still be History.
E.g.
humankind and the human person: no humankind without
human persons yet different human persons and there is
still humankind:
humankind
=the abstract unity of all the human persons.
E.g. I
and the concrete events of my life.
E.g.
an audience and the actual people in the audience: the
audience could be entirely different yet so long as
there are people listening to a speaker there would
still be an audience. For there to be an audience
there needs to be people with the abstract feature of
being "people listening to a speaker".
E.g.
Reality/Being and the concrete realities. Reality: the
all encompassing unity of
all concrete reality. Every concrete being could still
be other and there would still be Reality; but Reality
in its concrete actuality would be slightly different
even if you left me out.
(b)
Concerning the abstract pole:
(i) The abstract pole points to
that which necessarily obtains regardless of the particular course of the world
process. Being for example is eternal and necessary --in so far
as nothing comes from nothing there must always have
been something, and in so far as things just don't
completely disappear, there must always be something.
Compare Parmenides.
But this is not to say that this actual
realization of Being has to
exist or that any particular
reality
has always been or will always be.
(ii)
The abstract pole points to the elements that are the
pre-conditions for any reality of that kind
whatsoever: e.g. the
preconditions for being any world whatsoever. These
abstract conditions of possibility are necessary but
not sufficient conditions of possibility for the
specific actuality which now obtains. For example any totality of reality
whatsoever may have to include some God and some
Universe, but not necessarily this God and this
Universe: the totality of reality in its concrete
actuality the result of the concrete realizations of
the beings in it.
(c)
Concerning the concrete pole:
(i) The concrete pole points to
that aspect of reality or of God or
whatever that
is dependent on the particular world process:
�
concrete
humankind: includes all of us, cannot be without each
single person.
�
concrete
History: includes Julius Caesar, Napoleon and so on,
what has really happened, the concrete particularities
of the world process.
�
concrete
I: includes what has
happened in the life of that complete person and the
not yet realized possibilities.
�
concrete
Being, Being in its
concrete actualities: includes all realities,
everything that is actual and their possibilities
also, would not be what it is without any one of us.
In respect of what it is in concrete actuality, Being is contingent and
changeable.
(ii)
It is essential to emphasize that the
concrete pole is not less than the abstract pole, that it
includes the features of the abstract pole (whereas
the abstract pole cannot be said to include the
concrete pole):
�
concrete
History includes the abstract features of History,
otherwise it would not be History.
�
concrete
Humankind includes the abstract features of
"humankind" --otherwise it would not be humankind.
�
I
in the concrete includes the abstract features of the
"I" --otherwise we would not talk of an "I".
�
concrete
Reality includes the abstract features of any Reality
whatever, yet it also includes concrete realities.
In
other words the Abstract is necessarily poorer
than the Concrete. Reality is not less
necessary and eternal just because it is
also contingent and changeable,
otherwise it would not be Reality at all, this or any
other.
(iii)
This means that the abstract all-there-is or whatever
is not to be talked about as if it were a concrete
all-there-is and then compared favourably
with
the concrete all-there-is. The
abstract pole points to (abstract) features of any
reality whatsoever etc., not the features of an
abstract reality.
This provides a diagnosis of the natural
theology of Thomas and Aristotle: they reify the
abstract features of any reality whatsoever, divide
this off from concrete finite realities, call one
'God' and the other 'creation'.
2.
A further ingredient towards a dipolar conception of
the divine reality is provided by noting that
persons as well as other high grade
beings are qualified by what might be termed
(Hartshorne) abstract
relational attributes.
According to the famous text from Plato's
Republic, Book II, #381, God
is perfect, therefore He can't change: any change
would have to be either for the better or the worse;
if for the better then of course he is not now
perfect; and something that could change for the worse
would not qualify as perfect. This
may be true for things, e.g.
beds neither too hard nor too soft, e.g. colouring, neither too bright
nor too dark, and also for Platonic Ideals but it is
not true for persons.
In the case of persons sometimes it
is the abstract quality which does not change, but which
itself not only allows but requires change in concrete
activity as the environment changes, change which
however is not pure passivity, not reaction but
response. For example, loving kindness,
trustworthiness, fidelity, goodness, wise,
intelligent. In
the case of persons, 'perfect'
requires that he or she changes: when a situation
changes what counts as a perfect response changes. Plato is
simply wrong, or needs to
be more carefully interpreted. He has a prejudice
against relativity, but there is a particular kind of
relativity, sensitivity, active-passivity,
responsiveness, that increases rather than decreases
as you go up the scale of being.
Omnipotence, omniscience, perfect
righteousness, fidelity, loving kindness would all
qualify as abstract relational
attributes of
the divine reality, not only compatible with but
inseparable from a qualitative concrete aspect of
perfection which includes change and allows room for
self-surpassing.
Thus ultimate
goodness might be: the adequate taking into account of
all actual and possible interests, each given its due. Omniscience
might be: clear, certain,
adequate knowledge whose content is all that is, as it
is, the actual as actual, the possible as possible.
Even omnipotence: power adequate to control the whole
universe in
the best possible way
--qualifying the mode of power and not only the
reach and intention of the power, which is what the
tradition should have done long ago, to criticize the
notion of power in the light of the Gospel before
applying it to God. This is all to presuppose that in
the case of God as in the case of human persons and
the higher animals there is something like a partly
independent environment for the divine activity. What
is shown is that responsiveness to a partly
independent environment for activity is quite
consistent with being perfect in a divine kind of way.[12]
This
is to say that there is required a change in the
notion of divine or supreme perfection. It is only
abstractly considered, in respect of abstract
relational attributes, that God is unsurpassable even
by himself/herself at a later stage. In concrete
actuality the divine perfection = unsurpassable,
except perhaps by Himself/Herself at a later stage.
4. Not
all the divine attributes are abstract relational
attributes according to which the character of the
activity remains the same (determined by the abstract
pole) whereas the activity expressing or embodying
that character depends on the actual cosmic process
(concrete pole --which includes the abstract as the
abstract is included in the concrete).
There
are as well attributes such as perfection in the
strong sense, immutibility,
impassivity, eternity, necessity, unconditioned which
are not themselves relational attributes but which
among other things qualify the relational attributes. There has to be a supremely perfect
divine reality and all his/her abstract qualities are
necessary and eternal and unconditioned, possessed immutibly and impassively and
absolutely. But these qualities include abstract
relational attributes and so in respect of his/her
concrete nature the divine reality is contingent,
conditioned, involved in process, mutable and passive
and relative and perfect in the sense of unsurpassible except by
herself/himself at a later stage (='the divine
actuality'). This
same divine reality of course continues to have the
abstract features of any God whatsoever (='the divine
existence'), is not less than the abstract pole,
includes the features of the abstract pole. The abstract
God is not to be talked about as if it were a concrete
God and then compared favourably
with the concrete God: the abstract pole points to
(abstract) features of any divine reality whatsoever
including this one, not to features of an abstract
reality.
Note again that 'abstract pole' and 'concrete
pole' do not quite coincide with Whitehead's
primordial and consequent nature. Any God
whatsoever has to have a
consequent nature, this is part of what it is to be a
God: that God has a consequent nature belongs to the
abstract pole, is definitive of divine existence.
Given that God has a consequent nature, the divine
actuality = what God is in the concrete, will be
partly determined by contingent features of the world
process which God him/her self
does not completely control. The being of a God with a
primordial and consequent nature is necessary, but
what the divine reality is in the concrete, how the
divine existence is realized, depends partly on the
divine self decision, partly on the details of the
cosmic process which God enables, limits
and persuades but does not completely determine.
II.
Some questions on the God question within process
thought:
(a)
In terms of Whitehead's system, should the God to whom
we are directed in our prayers and in our lives be
identified with:
1)
'Creativity' --which is after all the ultimate
metaphysical principle, of which even 'God' is a
creature. Creativity however is a bit too abstract, it does not exist
apart from its instantiations. So maybe
2)
the Creative Process itself = the womb of all
becoming; or perhaps
3)
the Principle of Possibility and Novelty and also of Limitation: the
event or series of events with personal order which
enables the Social Process and gives it its
determinate character, and who enjoys and saves
everything which happens = the vital principle within
the Social Process.
4)
the Primordial Qualification of Creativity itself,
rather than some �principle� which is supposed to
bring this about (cf. Jan Van der Veken, Andre Cloots)?
Is
3) good enough or rather
great enough? On
the other hand as
Whitehead notes Creativity and the Creative Process
itself produce both good and evil.
(b)
What of the Neo-Platonic mystical, Thomist and
Heideggerian concern to prevent God/the Divine from
being (merely) a being among the beings? The problem
of making God/the Divine an actual entity or a series
of such.
(c)
Is the God of Whitehead sufficiently a Creator to
qualify as a philosophical elaboration of the God of
the Bible or of the Biblical religions? Can S/He be
made more of a creator God without drastically
altering the system?
(d)
If the divine reality needs the world in order to be
Him/Her self, does not this
make the love of God a rather parasitic and selfish
kind of eros rather than agape?
See
also paper from May 1997 AAPT Conference, Big Things from
Small Things? Soon to be published in our
on-line Journal Concrescence, in a new,
improved version which will be given out.
[DISCUSSION:
"the problem of
compound individuals"
To work this out a bit more logically: a
society = an ordered sequence of actual entities or
occasions of experience.
So far as I can tell, a sub-atomic event, an
atomic event, a molecular event, a cellular event, a
mental event or experience
are all bona fida events,
actual entities, occasions of experience, each with
their quantum of time.
Not however a stone or a table. What we call
an electron, an atom, a molecule, a cell, a person all
count as societies of events. They are peculiar kinds
of societies of events, called "enduring objects",
characterized by serial ordering --the events happen
one after the other, no two events at the same time
--and also by the maintenance of similarity of
character over time. This character =the essence of
the enduring object, not something behind the events
however but the character of each of the events.
Most of these, so far as I can tell, count also
as societies of societies (of societies of societies
etc.) of events.
To speak crudely, the events of which they consist have events at a lower
level as ingredients.
But the event on the higher level is not
reducible to the many events on the lower level but
the happening of the many becoming one and being
increased by one, which takes its own quantum of time
to happen. This
"one" feeds into the next event on the same level but
is
also, apparently, reflected back into
the lower level, taken into account by happenings
there. A
mental event, for example, (cf. Hartshorne), prehends
the brain events or bodily events, not mental events
but a vast multiplicity of individuals, prehends also
the previous mental state (unless perhaps the first
mental event after a deep sleep). The cells in
their turn prehend our experiences -- we share in the
'feelings' of our cells and they in turn respond to
our emotional life. Thus Whitehead: "...Also in our
experience, we essentially arise out of our bodies
which are the stubborn facts of the immediate relevant
past. We are also carried on by our immediate past of
personal experience; we finish a sentence because
we have begun it...".[13]
This is not dualism, however, in so far as:
� --we are talking about events, not substances;
�
--all
events have the same basic structure, and are
characterized by a little bit or a lower
version of what we on our level call
experience and self-
determination; and
�
--this
kind of thing happens all the way up and down the
line.
Nor is it quite a pluralist interactionism, in
so far as some of the relationships are internal. The events
are determined by the 'environment' on all levels, to
which environment they themselves contribute. Each event
is both determined by and helps to determine, does its
little bit in determining, the character of the Social
Process. 'God',
meanwhile, is a particularly important everlasting
actual entity (Whitehead) or perhaps society of events
or actual entities characterized by personal order
(Hartshorne, Cobb), providing the Social Process with
a principle of limitation dividing off what can
genuinely happen from the infinity of logical
possibilities and in turn enjoying the Process in
his/her/its own life.
Below the level of human persons and the higher
animals, however, the situation in regard to
'enduring
objects' in respect of their relationship to their
lower level ingredient events is somewhat
controversial between Whiteheadeans,
and indeed somewhat confusing. What works
for mental events does not work so well for most
events which are themselves societies of (societies of
etc.) events, e.g. atoms,
molecules, cells.
The difficulty is as to whether the atomic or
molecular or cellular event is something other than
the sub-atomic or atomic or molecular lower level ingredients plus
their inter-relationships. To put it another way, do
electrons etc. continue to exist as such in atoms, and
if so, how, if the atom itself is a society of higher level events?
The usual answer to these questions in
Whitehead himself is yes and yes: cellular events, e.g. are other than the
molecular events in the cell, take place in the empty
spaces between the molecules.
This is a bit paradoxical
however. The
higher level event prehends
all the events at the lower level which function as
its ingredients, e.g. sets of electronic, protonic,
neutronic events, all of which have their own quantum
of time, less than that of the higher level event. But
prehension is always of the past. Thus, all
the events at the lower level which function as
ingredients have to have happened before the event at
the higher level even starts, and the lower level events meanwhile
feed into the next higher level event, not the one
happening at the same time.
The alternative is that the relation between a
higher level event and its
ingredient events in their inter-relationships is not
one of prehension (which is always of the past), that
is to say, not a relationship of causality, but one of
identity. The
atom is the integration of the sub-atomic events,
etc., and that is what takes the quantum of time to
happen. What
gets considered as an event depends on the point of
view, but the higher level
point of view is just as legitimate as the lower level
point of view. There
is a difference between being prehended, which is
always of the past, and functioning as a lower level
ingredient in a higher level unity; though the latter
can
always be understood, on the lower
level, in terms of the notion of prehension. It is just
that the lower level
events are different than they would be were they to
happen in isolation, and this difference is a function
of their working as part of a particular unit: we may
still talk of electrons etc. inside atoms but
electrons etc. have different properties inside atoms
than they have outside.
Ascribing these properties to electrons outside
atoms is just a remnant of substance thinking. We need to
be radically processual and to think ecologically. The part
events which are partially determined in their
character by the prehended environment and in turn
contribute to the environment are as much constituted
by the unity of which they are a part as the unity of
which they are a part is constituted by the events.
This latter view does appear to have some
support in Whitehead. From Adventures of Ideas:
When
we examine the structure of the epoch of the Universe
in which we find ourselves, this structure exhibits
successive layers of types of order, each layer
introducing some additional type of order within some
limited region which shares in the more general type
of order of some larger environment. Also this larger environment in
its turn is a specialized region within the general
epoch of creation as we know it. Each of
these regions, with its dominant set of ordering
relations, can either be considered from the point of
view of the mutual relations of its parts to each
other, or it can be considered from the point of view
of its impact, as a unity, upon the experience of an
external percipient.
There is yet a third mode of consideration
which combines the other two. The
percipient may be an occasion within the region, and
may yet grasp the region as one, including the
percipient itself as a member of it.[14]
As
a further explanation and an application of this
version of Whitehead's philosophy as a philosophy of
relation, see The Liberation of
Life,
by Charles Birch and John Cobb (C.U.P., 1981),
pp. 79--91; see pp. 90--91 for a clear statement of
the idea expressed above.
One application of this discussion: process
thinking allows for both an interactionist theory of
mental events and brain/bodily events (as in
Hartshorne, above) and a non-reductive identity
theory, as for example apparently in Birch and Cobb,
just cited. ]
Yet
further discussion, for those interested:
There is quite a literature on the subject,
called the dispute about 'compound individuals'. Some of the
positions taken up:
1)
There are different kinds of events, including
sub-atomic, atomic, molecular, cellular,
animal-mental, and they take different times, but they
are all microscopic in size. The higher
events take place in the 'empty spaces' between the
lesser events and there is no regional inclusion. Cf. probably
Whitehead himself; Prof.
Sherbourne.
2) As above, but events come not only in different kinds but in different sizes and the higher events spatially include (without being identical with) the lower events: the doctrine of regional inclusion. Characteristic of Hartshorne, and John Cobb and David Griffin and people depending on them. This does explain how the higher event can prehend all the relevant lower events and not just directly the ones next to it.
The
best they can do to solve the time problem is give the
higher events a 'blocing'
effect on lower events, e.g.
an event which takes 1 sec. projects an intent
for
all the events in the following second, which then
feed into the next plus one larger event, as in the
following diagram:
large
event: A---------A B---------B C---------C D---------D
small
events:0-0 1-1 2-2 3-3 4-4 5-5 6-6 7-7 8-8 9-9 0-0
1-1.
A
is prehended by 3, 4 and 5, which C prehends, and C is
prehended by 9, 10 and 11.
B
prehends 0, 1 and 2 and B is prehended by 6, 7 and 8,
which D prehends.
B
also prehends A, C prehends B, D prehends C, and so
on.
There
would usually be numbers of series of smaller events,
e.g. in all atoms above the
Hydrogen ion (= the same as a lone proton series). This is
solved by regional inclusion.
3)
Joseph Bracken has reverted to 1) but complements
this with the idea of 'fields' = the combined effect
of the events in the immediate environment, and then
thinks in terms of fields within fields within fields
etc. The higher event draws on and affects the fields
in which it occurs, so it does not have to be in
direct contact with all the lower events.
Whether the introduction of the word 'field'
really helps much is a matter for discussion: isn't a
'field' just another name for a determinate
environment?? And isn't my environment just events in
my vicinity in the immediate past?? But Bracken
in fact means to give the fields an ontological status in their own right, just
as real as the events � fields and events as �equiprimordial�.
4)
The marbles in jelly theory of George Wolf: larger as
well as smaller events, but not actual regional
inclusion, like marbles in jelly, the marbles
consisting of marbles in jelly and so on, or honey-comb, the holes
themselves consisting of honey-comb with smaller
holes, and so on.
The problem with regional inclusion is that
what an event is depends on where it is, which would
mean that the smaller events would have to be
co-incident with parts of the larger events.
5)
The smaller events when inside atoms or molecules or
cells etc. are to be regarded as 'sub-occasions'
rather than occasions in their
own right.
They are not prehended by the bigger events, but are elements within
the happening which is the bigger event. With the
collapse of the bigger event, however, some of them are capable of becoming events
in their own right.
This doctrine characteristic of Lewis S. Ford,
who sees it as the only way of solving the time
problem alluded to above.
According
to John Cobb, 5) is very un-Whiteheadian. It involves
a collapse of the distinction between transition
between events and concrescence of events. But
being un-Whiteheadian does not necessarily make it
wrong.
6)
The
(non-Whiteheadian) view of Ivor
Leclerc, offered in criticism of Whitehead. Fully reciprical interaction between
membership of series of smaller events can effectively
bring into existence a
series of larger events with agency in their own
right, and so on up and down the scale. Cf. above,
the 'identity' position. This also involves not being
very picky as to what constitutes a bona fida event.
I have a collection of photocopied articles on
this problem of the compound individual, if anyone
wants to research it: see folders in the Library. The most
useful single article is probably that by Cobb,
entitled "Overcoming Reductionism".
IV.
Additional on Actual Entity and Prehension (cf.
esp. Ivor Leclerc.)
An actual entity = an occasion of experience, a
prehending or
experiencing
which is a novel entity in addition to the many it
prehends and which to a greater or lesser extent
(sometimes negligibly) embodies forms
of definiteness not yet embodied: "the essence of an
actual entity consists solely in the fact that it is a
prehending thing (i.e. a substance whose whole essence
or nature is to prehend)" (P.R. 65).
The concrescent
process of an actual entity, this happening of a
prehending, however, is itself analysable
into prehensions or feelings. Some
terminology for understanding all this:
�
physical prehension:
the feeling of another actual entity under a certain
aspect i.e.
an-actual-entity-as-qualified-by-an-eternal-object. E.g. the feeling of a green
tie. The rest of the universe gets into the entity via
simple physical prehensions (either pure or hybrid
--see below).
�
conceptual or
mental prehension: the feeling of an eternal object as
a pure potential, as a general capacity for being a
realized determinant of process rather than as such a
determinant. Conception
includes always an element of valuation or appetition,
positive or negative; and, in general, all prehension
physical or mental has a subjective
form of
some kind or another, e.g. memory of an injury, may be
remembered nobly or manly or perhaps with bitterness.
�
simple physical
prehensions: physical prehension of a single
actual entity. Primary physical
prehensions, i.e. the ones that occur first,
constituting the 'physical pole' of
an actual entity, are always simple.
�
primary conceptual
prehensions: reproducing the eternal objects
ingredient in the simple physical feelings, the
conceptual registration of the physical pole.
As in Hume's philosophy, no ideas without
impressions and complex ideas derive from the simple:
primary conceptual feelings always derive from primary
physical feelings and more complex mental operations
depend on primary conceptual feelings.
� pure physical prehensions or feelings: prehending what another actual entity is physically prehending, e.g. to feel someone-as-being-affected-by-something.
�
hybrid physical
prehension: the feeling of another actual entity as
having a particular concept, physically feeling
another actual entity as involving a particular
conceptual prehension, e.g. to feel someone as
thinking something. Given that the whole nature of the
actual entity prehended is that of a prehending thing,
simple physical prehension will always be either pure
or hybrid.
�
complex prehension:
an integration of two or more simple or primary
prehensions.
�
complex pure
physical prehension
or feeling : the integration of two or more simple
physical feelings.
�
complex pure
conceptual prehension:
the integration of two or more conceptual feelings.
�
impure prehension
(by definition complex): a feeling integrating both
physical and conceptual prehensions, integrating them
into one new feeling.
An
impure physical prehension will be an impure
conceptual prehension and vice versa.
Complex feelings can be integrated with each other, to make still further complex feelings. Thus by integration can arise feelings of any degree of complexity.
With this terminology in mind: the concrescent process of an
actual entity starts with
the 'primary' prehensions, the physical ones before
the mental ones, followed by phases of complex
feelings involving integrations of feelings in the
antecedent phases, and terminating in a completed
unity of feeling, a certain definite unity, called the
"satisfaction". Every
concrescent process has at
least a little of mentality: the happening of
integrating of feelings into a certain definite unity
is dependent on the subjective
aim, a
kind of idea of itself, which starts out as an initial aim
derived from God (via a "hybrid physical prehension")
but may undergo modification in the course of the
process. The
initial aim is a kind of ideal posed by God, the ideal
way
for this entity to creatively respond,
the best way of integrating unity and variety in this
situation given both the 'needs' of this entity and
the rest of the universe. In the
process of concrescence
the data are evaluated for maintenance or discard in
accordance with the subjective aim dominating the
activity of self-creation. The primary
conceptual feelings are already evaluations, so there
is quite a ferment of qualitative valuation. The
conceptual feelings pass into novel relations to each
other, felt with a novel emphasis of subjective form,
and are integrated with the physical prehensions of
the physical pole.
The outcome, eventually, of this prehending
activity, is the realization or actualization of a
certain definite "value experience" of a particular
harmony and intensity: the universe (and God) in
detail and as a whole is
thus a process of attainment towards beauty,
intrinsically, of its very nature.
For
a detailed description of all this, see Thomas E.
Hosinski, Stubborn
Fact and Creative Advance, Chs
3-5.
[1]. Alfred North
Whitehead, Process
and Reality (Macmillan, N.Y., 1929), p. 5.
[2]. ibid., p. 6.
[3]. Adventures of
Ideas (Macmillan,
N.Y., 1933), p. 186.
[4]. Alfred North
Whitehead, Science
and the Modern World (Cambridge
University Press, 1926).
[5]. David Bohm, Wholeness
and the Implicate Order (Ark
Paperbacks, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1980),
working a somewhat similar project: "...But this
confronts us with a very difficult challenge: How
are we to think coherently of a single, unbroken,
flowing actuality of existence as a whole,
containing both thought (consciousness) and external
reality as we experience it? (new
paragraph) Clearly, this brings us to consider our
overall world view, which includes our general
notions concerning the nature of reality, along with
those concerning the total order of the universe,
i.e., cosmology.
To meet the challenge before us, our notions
of cosmology and of the general nature of reality
must have room in them to permit a consistent
account of consciousness. Vice versa, our notions of
consciousness must have room in them to understand
what it means for its content to be 'reality as a
whole'. The
two sets of notions together should then be such as
to allow for an understanding of how reality and
consciousness are related." (from page x).
[6]. Process
and Reality, p. vi.
[7]. Process
and Reality p.
53.
[8]. ibid., p. 53.
[9]. Charles
Hartshorne, introduction in Philosophers
in Process,
edited D. Browning (Random House, N.Y.,
1965), p. xix. Cf.
Process and Reality, p. 27:
"...every item in its universe is involved in each
concrescence. In other words, it belongs to the
nature of a 'being' that it is a potential for every
'becoming'."
[10]. Process
and Reality, pp. 25--26.
[11]. Why is there
anything rather than nothing? Why does the universe
keep on going? There just is: upwelling
concrescences, each a creative taking into account
of its predecessors. And it just does.
[12]. Compare
Charles Hartshorne,
The Divine Relativity (Yale
Univ. Press, New Haven, 1948), Chapter III "The
Divine Attributes as Types of Relationship", these
including Contemplative Adequacy or Omniscience,
Motivational Adequacy or Holiness, Causal Adequacy
or Divine Power.
[13]. Process and
Reality,
p. 151.
[14]. Adventures of
Ideas (Macmillan, London, 1933), p. 199.