Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Astrology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Astrology. Show all posts

Thursday, March 24, 2022

Astrobiology, Exo-Philosophy and Cosmic Religion




REGISTER NOW



An exploration of the relevance of process philosophy to
astrobiological science and the search for extraterrestrial Intelligence.


About this event

The possibility of a truly biological universe has not ceased to haunt the human imagination. Over the past three decades, the discovery of thousands of exo-planets has spurred novel research programs integrating science, philosophy and theology in exciting new ways. A variety of stimulating proposals have drawn together convergent insights in physics, cosmology and astrobiology; metaphysics and the philosophy of mind; the philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. Ever-more-relevant questions as to the status and implications of wide-ranging life in the universe continue to be raised. These questions in turn spark deeper questions about the necessary philosophical assumptions or presuppositions of a bio-centric universe; and wider constructive considerations as to how theology, religion, and society must change in light of the impact of discovery.

Little attention, however, has been explicitly directed toward the valuable resources inherent in process philosophy when approaching these questions. What constructive dimensions do the organic philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead, Henri Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin and others sustain for the interrelated scientific, philosophical and religious dimensions of astrobiological research? What is the place of process, organism, temporality, novelty, experience, value, mind and intelligence in a more than human universe? How does process philosophy anticipate the creative evolution of philosophy, theology and religion beyond earth? Sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation and organized by the Center for Process Studies and the Whitehead Research Project, this conference is the first full-scale investigation of the relevance of process philosophy to extraterrestrial life. Visit https://www.processastrobiology.com/ for more information.


Date and time:

Thu, May 5, 2022, 4:00 PM –
Sat, May 7, 2022, 12:30 PM PDT


Location:

Willamette University
900 State Street
Salem, OR 97301







SPONSOR

Organizer of Astrobiology, Exo-Philosophy
and Cosmic Religion
The Center for Process Studies (CPS) is a faculty research center of Claremont School of Theology at Willamette University. CPS conducts interdisciplinary research guided by the view that interconnection, change, and intrinsic value are core features of the universe.

 


Conference Vision & Rationale

"[O]n a grand scale, our cosmology discloses a process of overpowering change, from nebulae to stars, from starts to planets, from inorganic matter to life, from life to reason and moral responsibility. We can no longer conceive of existence under the metaphor of a permanent depth of ocean with its surface faintly troubled by transient waves. There is an urge in things which carries the world far beyond its ancient conditions."–Alfred North Whitehead

The possibility of a truly biological universe has not ceased to haunt the human imagination. Over the past three decades, the discovery of thousands of exo-planets has spurred novel research programs integrating science, philosophy and theology in exciting new ways. Indeed, a variety of stimulating proposals have drawn together convergent insights in physics, cosmology and astrobiology; metaphysics and the philosophy of mind; the philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. Ever-more-relevant questions as to the status and implications of wide-ranging life in the universe continue to be raised. These questions in turn spark deeper questions about the necessary philosophical assumptions or presuppositions of a bio-centric universe; and wider constructive considerations as to how theology, religion, and society must change in light of the impact of discovery.

Little attention, however, has been explicitly directed toward the valuable resources inherent in the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead, Teilhard de Chardin, Henri Bergson and other process philosophers when approaching these questions. What constructive dimensions do pervasive themes of process, organism, temporality, novelty, experience, value, and mind, harbor for the interrelated concerns of astrobiology, philosophy, and theology? This conference proposes three core layers of investigation:

Astrobiology and Process Philosophies: Initial Connections

How should we frame the relationship between astrobiology and process philosophy?

  • What points of convergence and divergence does this relationship sustain and how might this differ from that of other sciences and philosophies?
  • In what ways does a “philosophy of organism” undergird affirmations of a “biological universe”? 
  • Do the developments of astrobiology also inform the development, reaches and/or limitations of process philosophies as differently put forth by Whitehead, Teilhard and Bergson?
  • What challenges emerge in and among these figures with respect to the goals of astrobiology?

 A Philosophy of Exo-Life: Origins, Experience, Mind

  • What must be assumed or presupposed metaphysically of a biological universe in the context of Whitehead, Teilhard and Bergson’s work?
  • Do these exo-philosophical assumptions inform or transform our understanding of cosmic origins and evolution; mechanism and organism; possibility and actuality; experience and freedom; life and mind; temporality and eternity?
  • How do theories of life’s origins and possible pervasiveness (e.g. panspermia) relate to process theories of mind and its possible pervasiveness (e.g. panpsychism)? Is mentality necessarily “living?” Does life necessarily imply “mind?”
  • What insights or challenges arise when considering the relationship between experience, life, and mind beyond particular planets, galaxies and perhaps even universes?
  • How might considerations of a “bio-centric” cosmological principle challenge and/or expand narrower “anthropic” commitments when situated within the cosmological visions of Whitehead, Teilhard, and Bergson?

 Cosmic Religion: Toward a Constructive Process Cosmotheology

Steven J. Dick’s “cosmotheology” calls for radically new conceptions of a natural God and a “religious naturalism” that uniquely support a bio-centric evolutionary cosmos. While he has stated that “No Thomas Aquinas for cosmotheology has yet appeared…,” he does hold that “In its emphasis on evolutionary becoming, Cosmotheology resonates well with Whitehead’s process theology…It also resonates with the Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin’s evolutionary cosmology…” These statements open unique spaces for considering more deeply the resources of these and other process philosophers for reframing theological and religious approaches to astrobiology:

  • What kind of radical changes are required of our religious and theological visions in light of the discovery of intelligent alien life? Do process philosophies offer unique resources to this end?
  • What relevance or irrelevance do categories and distinctions of naturalism and supernaturalism; personalism and impersonalism; immanence and transcendence; monism and pluralism; creator and creativity actually have in a biological universe? Where do Whitehead, Teilhard and Bergson inform and/or transform these distinctions? 
  • In what ways do these and other distinctions aid the development of theological models suitable for a bio-centric cosmos: whether atheism, theism, pantheism, panentheism, transpantheism, or others?
  • Where do the strengths and weaknesses lie in current theological and religious proposals including: “cosmotheology” (S.J. Dick), “astrotheology” (T. Peters); “panoramic theology” (T. Walker & C. Wickramasinghe ); “biocosmic theology” (G. Genta) and others? How might they be critiqued, supplemented and improved in light of the philosophies of Whitehead, Teilhard, Bergson?
  • In what ways might exclusive, terrestrial religion be expanded to pluralistic visions of cosmic religion in a bio-centric universe? What resources and challenges do world religions harbor? What might extraterrestrial religions harbor?
  • Where are points of convergence and divergence when considering the roles and/or commonalities between human and extraterrestrial religion? What is the place of value, ethics, and morality; aesthetics and art; mathematics and science; doctrine and dogma in cosmic religion?

It remains a truly exciting time for science, philosophy and religion. Through exploration of the unique dimensions and themes of Whitehead’s, Teilhard’s, Bergson’s work, this conference aims to deepen human understanding and imagination by further uncovering the scientific, philosophical and religious implications of life beyond Earth.



Abstracts

“Astrobiology, Cosmotheology, and the Biological 
Universe: Implications for Religion and Theology”

by Steven J Dick

Recent discoveries in astronomy and astrobiology strongly indicate the need for a transformation of established theologies and suggest possibilities for new cosmically-oriented theologies such as cosmotheology. In particular the Biological Universe, the idea that intelligent life in the universe is common, necessitates a reconciliation of this new universe with dogmas of the Abrahamic religions in the same way that Thomas Aquinas tried to reconcile natural philosophy and Christianity in 13th century Europe. Other religions and their associated theologies will be less affected but still need to incorporate the cosmic perspective. In particular, discoveries in astronomy and astrobiology resonate with the dynamism of process theology in the sense that all theologies must take into account cosmic evolution and the possibilities of a biological universe in which life may be part of the very fabric of the universe. These discoveries also strongly suggest a denial of supernaturalism, a critical eye toward the epistemological status of revelation, and a rethinking of the nature of God and the sacred in the tradition of religious naturalism. In contrast to traditional theologies, human destiny is most universally couched in cosmic terms. The endeavor of transforming current theologies and creating new cosmic theologies is broadly characterized as astrotheology, a new and increasingly robust discipline that embraces the possibility of a more universal theology common to all intelligence in the cosmos. Astrotheology and its various flavors such as cosmotheology are part of a restructuring of our worldviews, a necessary endeavor as we internalize the realities of the new universe.



“Astrobiology, Astrotheology, and Cosmic Consciousness”

by Ted Peters

Like every natural science, astrobiology gathers objective data about the cosmos. But the data of astrobiology excites and even inspires the human soul. Astrotheology learns from astrobiological data while trying to account for its inspiring implications, for its subjective impact. Earthlings are growing in cosmic consciousness, at least in the minimal sense of being aware of possible intelligent consciousness living on exoplanets in the Milky Way. When contact with an extraterrestrial civilization is established, will the interchange of human and alien consciousness lead to a fusing of horizons, so to speak? Can we rightfully expect an expansion if not a deepening of human understanding, knowledge, and awareness? Might we test giving voice to a more intense cosmic consciousness with the physics of David Bohm and the metaphysics of Whiteheadian process theology?



“Religious Belief and the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life:
What’s Worldview Got to Do with It?”

by Constance M. Bertka

Astrobiology studies life in the universe, exploring from the perspective of an interdisciplinary science three general questions: “Where did we come from?”; “Are we alone?”; “Where are we going?” As a defined discipline Astrobiology is relatively new, but these questions are old, popular with scholars, including theologians, and non-scholars alike. While we can’t currently answer the question, “Are we alone?” with a definitive “no,” over the last couple of decades astronomers have discovered that planets around other stars are common and that some are rocky planets in locations around their stars comparable to earth’s location to our sun. Our first extraterrestrial life discovery is an increasingly reasonable expectation. How might this discovery impact worldviews, particularly theological perspectives and religious belief? The discussion around this question is multilayered. Academics within theological traditions answer differently than academics outside of those traditions and the religious beliefs of those outside the academic environment are likely moved by other concerns.

The question of worldview impact also falls within the context of how the relationship between science and religion is viewed. Some argue that a new cosmic consciousness will be awakened by the discovery of extraterrestrial life, decentralizing humanity and threatening belief in a classical supernatural image of God. But process theologians have already proposed revision of the classical view of God and though they have been at work for decades, the more traditional view still thrives. Will the discovery of extraterrestrial life increase the popularity of process theology? Perhaps the answer will hinge in part on normalizing science and religion discussions, breaking down siloed worldviews. Not only theologians but the scientific community writ large needs to be concerned with a broader conversation and one that reaches beyond academia. Recent efforts by the scientific community to support this broader conversation are encouraging, conflict between science and religion is falling out of fashion but work towards integration, where significant worldview change might happen, is still elusive. Without this work we are likely to prefer a mental shortcut, seeking out and accepting information that accords with our prior beliefs while dismissing information that does not- protecting our worldviews.



“Astrobiological Searches for Shared Knowledge”

by Chelsea Haramia

In this paper, I present arguments for the claim that humans and extraterrestrials will share common axiological and biological domains. I begin with a “partners in crime” argument that explores the partnership among biology, mathematics, and ethics. I outline important parallels between the scientific search for extraterrestrial life and pursuits of mathematical and ethical knowledge. These parallels justify an appeal for consistency in our reasoning. I identify and explain shared epistemic challenges in each of these domains, arguing that value is as real and as detectable as life and as mathematical truths. But the question remains: How real are these things? To answer this crucial question, I first address demarcation concerns regarding the difference between life and non-life. The puzzles produced by these concerns mirror some of the puzzles faced by those who posit robust intrinsic value in the universe or the objective truth of mathematical claims. I then propose the following avenue of response to these puzzles. We may assume that life and value are genuinely present in other areas of the universe in the same way that we may assume mathematics is genuinely present in other areas of the universe. That is, numbers, life, and value are non-observables the effects of which we may nonetheless recognize. Reorienting extraterrestrial searches with this in mind reveals overlooked commonalities in these domains, and it indicates that we may reasonably assume that at least some extraterrestrials could recognize these commonalities as well. This approach leaves open questions regarding the groundings or sources of non-observables, and it requires that we accept potentially significant limitations regarding our and others’ knowledge of non-observables. Ultimately, this view justifies claims of the reality of life and value in the cosmos and the assumption that, at least to some extent, our mathematical, biological, and axiological understandings will be shared by others.




"A Darker Forest?
The Fermi Paradox and Extraterrestrial Spiritual Life (ETS)”

by Roland Faber

One of the more fascinating solutions answering the Fermi Paradox is the “Dark Forest”-conjecture. It states that the universe is not only biotic (ETL), but full of intelligent life (ETI). However, since the probability that the encounter of ETIs will lead to mutual destruction rather than cooperation is “astronomical,” everyone hides as behind their tree in a dark forest, and any contact will passively or actively lead to the eradication of the communicator. Is the Earth doomed? This conjecture is based on an assumption that evolution is locked, in Darwinian terms, in the survival of the fittest, and that even cooperation, as on Earth, is, if not the exception, so merely a means for self-survival and -promotion. Other philosophical resources, such as Teilhard de Chardin, A. N. Whitehead and ‘Abdu'l-Baha, side with primary religious intuitions and desires for the function of cosmic religiosity to counter exactly this assumption. The question then becomes: How does the Fermi Paradox impact not only their acceptance that life is ubiquitous (ETL) and suggestive of the appearance of intelligent lifeforms (ETI) in our universe, but that evolution tends to foster the emergence of spiritual lifeforms (ETS) which actually strive to overcome this evolutionary, biotic condition of self-assertion and the survival strategies of competition and expansion?



"From Cosmological Negation to Metaphysical Exemplification:
A Deeper Whiteheadian Cosmotheology"

by Andrew M. Davis

For decades, Steven J. Dick has been a longstanding advocate of the development of “cosmotheology” as a scientifically rooted endeavor which uses our best understanding of nature to “inform a much broader range of theological discussion.” Cosmotheology as Dick defines it revolves around the use of our ever-expanding knowledge of the universe to “modify, expand or change entirely” current theologies. Central to these theological changes, Dick insists, is the rejection of anthropocentrism and supernaturalism: human beings are relegated to the cosmological periphery and there is nothing beyond the natural world. These commitments converge in Dick’s affirmation of both scientific and religious naturalism: nature is all there is and a creative evolutionary universe devoid of “God” suffices to inspire the reverence, awe and meaning traditionally assigned to the religious sphere. Dick’s six core “principles” of cosmotheology thus consist primarily in a series of cosmological negations of human existence and experience and ultimately, an ontological negation of God. While admitting that his proposal is perhaps better termed “cosmophilosophy” rather than “cosmotheology,” Dick ironically leaves open the possibility that advanced extraterrestrials in the “biological universe” may have something akin to the traditional theological attributes.

This paper argues that Dick’s laudable project can be considerably strengthened by Whitehead’s bio-centric cosmophilosophy (the “philosophy of organism”) which culminates in (rather than negates) a robust naturalistic cosmotheology that is actually deserving of the name. Demonstrating this requires showing how Dick’s cosmological negations can be transformed into metaphysical exemplifications. While Dick holds that the creative evolution at the heart of his own “cosmotheology” has limited resonance with Whitehead’s (and Teilhard de Chardin’s) process theology, a deeper investigation of Whitehead’s cosmotheological metaphysics effectively challenges and widens Dick’s proposal. For Whitehead, human experience while cosmologically peripheral is nevertheless metaphysically central: their existence and experience exemplifies fundamental metaphysical principles of an organic, experiential and axiological character that are essential to a creative evolutionary universe at all scales. Rather than being the great supernatural “exception” to metaphysical principles, “invoked to save their collapse,” Whitehead’s God is their “chief exemplification.” Whitehead’s wider naturalism coupled with his theological realism allow for imaginative metaphysical continuity in our reflection all the way “down” and all the way “up” the biological universe: from terrestrial and extra-terrestrial life to the culminating life of God. What is more, Whitehead’s vision arguably re-integrates and resolves outstanding metaphysical problems that remain unanswered by Dick’s proposal (and those of others). These problems surround the presuppositions of cosmic evolutionary novelty, including the metaphysical basis for objective rational, aesthetic, and ethical (or moral) values and their association with ontologically real possibilities in the nature of things. Whitehead therefore offers a wider cosmotheology that includes Dick’s naturalistic intuitions while also transcending his conceptual and explanatory limitations.



"Prospects for a Universal Philosophy of Organism"

by Derek Malone-France

There are a number of recent discoveries and developments in biology that seem evidently congenial from process philosophical and theological perspectives. Take for example, the discovery of “quorum sensing” functions and other anticipatory directive/non-random-adaptive environmental response phenomena in microbial societies, which may be interpreted as verifying essentially teleological (non-Darwinian, neo-Lamarkian) and cooperative-altruistic dynamics in the environmental responses of these individual and collective organisms. Increasingly—and often with real cogency—process thinkers are engaging with this new biology in order to make the case that process metaphysics can better explain these observational realities than can the dominant alternative philosophical perspectives (see the growing “biophilosophy” movement that is an outgrowth from contemporary process thought). This is an appropriate and productive response to this ongoing science. Yet, if we are to remain true to Whitehead’s conception of the proper function and mode of philosophical inquiry, we must also discipline ourselves, to maintain a certain degree of critical distance from these developments, and we must acknowledge that there are some other recent discoveries and developments that may be seen as potentially cutting against common principles or presuppositions of process thought. Take for example, elegant mechanistic modeling of the developmental pathways of the molecular regimes associated with the evolution of particular planetary chemical systems.

Moreover, if the ultimate aim is to demonstrate the ongoing relevance of Whiteheadian—or neoWhiteheadian—process thought as a universalizable metaphysical perspective, then we must also recognize the fundamental ways in which our biological and physical, as well as our philosophical and theological, concepts and categories necessarily, to some degree, reflect the contingent particularities of the evolution of the particular planet (and solar system) on (in) which we have emerged and by which we have been conditioned. Just as philosophy and theology have always needed to be mindful of the problem of anthropocentrism, we now understand, better and more specifically than ever before, the extent to which our thinking is also prone to the more generic problem of “terracentrism.”

One concrete implication of the recognition of our terracentric perspective is that we must look beyond “life” as a category around which we construct our most general claims. Over time, the concept of “life” has become, if anything, theoretically more, not less, problematic, especially in light of recent developments in a number of diverse (but increasingly intersecting) areas ranging from prebiotic chemical evolution and evolutionary virology, to planetary chemistry and astrobiology. I will argue, therefore, that the more general category of “organism,” as constructed in Whitehead’s thought, is not only a better candidate than “life” for universalizability, but also it has the additional advantage of reflecting the ultimate convergence (non-dualism) of both “physical” (non-biological) and “biological” phenomena, under the rubric of a more generic ontological category. This, in turn, allows for the ultimate clarification of both the common and the disparate elements characterizing what we refer to as “living” and “non-living” phenomena. It also suggests a cosmic application of this category with what I take to be productive theological implications.



"Cosmic Evolution Connected to Theory of Value
by Process-Relational Theology"

by Theodore Walker Jr.

Process-relational theologian John B Cobb Jr. encouraged developing “a richer account of evolution” in biology. Beyond biology, evolution more broadly considered embraces cultural evolution, stellar evolution, and cosmic evolution. Connecting cosmic evolution to theory of value is another enrichment that can be helped by process-relational philosophy and theology, including neoclassical metaphysics. For the sake of univocal references, the word “God” refers to the transcendent “all-inclusive whole of reality”; and unless explicitly qualified in ways indicating transcendence, the words “cosmos” and “universe” refer to the nontranscendent sum of all parts of reality.




"The Cosmological Context of the of the Hot Spring
Abiogenesis Hypothesis"

by Matt Segall & Bruce Damer

The question of how life on earth first arose has puzzled researchers since the inception of the modern science of biology around the turn of the 19th century. Advances in complex systems science and the study of non-equilibrium thermodynamics have helped close the gaps between physics, chemistry, and living organization, but many questions remain unanswered. This presentation will examine the cosmological context and metaphysical implications of a leading candidate for the origins of life in Astrobiology: the “Hot Spring Hypothesis for an Origin of Life.” Connections will be drawn between key concepts from Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism and the astrophysical, geochemical, and protocellular processes described in the Hot Spring Hypothesis. For example, clear analogies are evident between the production of novelty via the process of concrescence and the liposomal combinatorial selection processes driven by wet-dry cycling in shallow freshwater ponds. Further convergence is seen in Whitehead’s account of the “sheltering” of living societies by environmental layers of social order and the importance of environmental rhythms and other conditions in making possible otherwise highly improbable chemical reactions. The question of whether the Whiteheadian notion of an “aim at satisfaction” may play any role in the emergence of self-organizing, self-producing protocells will also be explored. Finally, the social, ethical, and spiritual implications of our growing scientific knowledge of life’s origins will be discussed.



“What Is Life?
Panexperientialism, Cosmic Consciousness, and
Swami Vivekananda’s Religion of the Future”

by Jeffery D. Long

Is there life in the universe, or the multiverse, beyond the planet Earth? Responding to this question from the perspective of philosophies of process, such as that of Alfred North Whitehead, prompts us to raise another question, “What is life?” Is there finally anything which is not, in some sense, alive? The emergence of philosophies of process, as well as a growing sense amongst thinkers in the West that consciousness (or at least experience) is in some sense foundational to existence, and not something which evolves from an essentially material reality, puts the question of life in the universe on a different level from that of simply searching for entities like ourselves. It becomes not only an empirical question, but a fundamental question of ontology. Such a situation is already envisioned in many Indian philosophical traditions that both take consciousness to be foundational to existence and take for granted that there are many planes of existence inhabited by intelligent beings. We are therefore witnessing a convergence of Indian and Western thought, in our current period, as we reflect upon the question of life in the universe and the closely related question of the nature of life itself. Over a century ago, Swami Vivekananda envisioned this convergence when he spoke of religions to come in the future. This presentation will take up the interrelated questions of, first, the nature of life, experience, and consciousness as seen in the context of the search for extraterrestrial life, and secondly, the kind of religious sensibility that emerges from reflections of this kind. The demise of religion has long been predicted by scholars who have then proven to be premature in their claims. This presentation will suggest not that religion will be destroyed or superseded as humanity engages with the possibility, and eventually the reality, of extraterrestrial life, but that it will be radically transformed by this process.



“Astrobiology without Biology:
Will AI be Our Emissary or Our Bottleneck?”

by Noreen Herzfeld

Given the difficulties of space travel for biological beings, it seems likely that our first contact with another intelligence will be through their and/or our technology. AI offers the opportunity for a presence in space that is both dynamic and functional. Thus, AI might be the best emissary to other worlds. Yet Fermi’s paradox persists. If intelligent life is out there, why have we not encountered their technology? The answer may lie in a paradox of evolutionary biology. The very nature of biological evolution may mean that technological advancement always outstrips a society’s ability to control that technology. While AI might be our best avenue to space exploration, it might also be the technological bottleneck that precludes that exploration.



“Extending the Noosphere into Intergalactic Life:
Teilhard de Chardin and the Third Axial Age”

by Ilia Delio

In 1949 Karl Jaspers described a global breakthrough in human consciousness, which he described as the “axial age,” a term which has served as a heuristic marker of consciousness and human development, including the depth dimension of religion. Ewert Cousins described a second axial age ushered in by the new science and mass communication. This new age is marked by ecology, community, divine immanence and global consciousness. Teilhard de Chardin said that evolution is the rise of consciousness and described a process of theistic evolution grounded in second axial consciousness. He proposed that life is unfolding from simple, biological material life, to complex interconnected life, empowered by a divine presence, following Henri Bergson’s élan vital. Evolution continues in and through human development and is accelerating with technology toward the maximization of conscious life marked by the symbol of Omega.

This paper will examine the evolution of consciousness toward Omega by using the axial age as a paradigm of development. Attention will be given to Teilhard’s ideas on consciousness and matter and argue that the inextricable link between consciousness and matter, the drive to complex consciousness, and the development of the noosphere and computerized planetary consciousness, render the search for conscious intergalactic life the next logical step in the evolution of the Christic toward Omega. In this respect, Teilhard’s notion of the Noosphere marks the beginning of the third axial age, which will continue with interstellar exploration and the expansion of human consciousness into other life forms, a development consistent with the fecund symbol of Omega.




“The Organic Universe and Otherworldly Lives:
Bergson and Sagan”

by Wahida Khandker

In his 1985 Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology at the University of Glasgow (published posthumously as The Varieties of Scientific Experience), the physicist Carl Sagan reflects on the spectroscopic analysis of comets that reveal that what is “out there” (a range of organic molecules in the tails of passing comets) is very close to what is “in here” (the organic molecules in living organisms on Earth). He finds in this molecular affinity between our own bodies and the stars a reason for humility and a greater sense of continuity with other living organisms, both on this planet and in the potential forms they may take on other planets. This will form the first part of the paper. The second part will turn to Henri Bergson, for whom the fundamental connection between the material and the biological enjoyed by organisms is both a necessity of life and a critique of the limitations of the function of the intellect. This motivates the entire project of Creative Evolution, which is at once a theory of life and a theory of knowledge. Bergson sets out to identify the structures that inform our everyday knowledge of the world, including life, and to speculate on the conditions of their formation, not in a priori structures of the intellect, but rather in the evolved conditions, in a fully biological sense, of our physiological interactions with our environment. What Bergson names “the double form of consciousness,” or the intuitive and intelligent aspects of conscious life reflects the material and vital aspects of reality. Accordingly, the long history of the study of nature (phusis) has tended to divide itself into the studies of physics and biology (material nature on the one hand, and the natural world on the other), but the history of physics is, it could be said, plagued by the resistance of living beings to its principles. The final part of this paper considers features of life that have evolved in the deepest parts of our oceans, and that have only recently become accessible with the development of technologies able to navigate ecosystems at these otherwise inhospitable depths. There, we discover forms of life capable of evolving and flourishing in the absence of sunlight, sustained by chemosynthesis, mirroring obliquely the development on land of ecosystems founded upon photosynthesizing plants. In summary, this paper explores varied perspectives on the challenges of traversing vast distances in space, in evolutionary time, and between land and the deep sea, and how all of these endeavors might enhance our understanding and appreciation of our own imperiled “habitat.”



“Multiplicity without Tyranny:
The Nonviolent Telos of Process and Jainism”

by Brianne Donaldson

Ethical-aesthetic terms within process philosophy, such as “beauty” and “intensity,” often aim to preserve the role of contrast, conflict, and inevitable loss as essential aspects of an ecological planetary multiplicity toward an open-ended future. In these views, exclusionary valuations, and even destruction, are accepted as a necessity, even if a tragic one, of a worldview that ascribes some level of self-determined creativity to all actual entities. If, as Whitehead states of the natural world in general, “Life is robbery” (PR 105), then suggesting nonviolence as a valuable aim could smuggle in a loophole of exceptionalism wherein homo sapiens’ morality is somehow different from that of “nature.” Moreover, any kind of telos could suggest a predestined future. Finally, nonviolence, if interpreted as passivity or sacrificial paralysis, could result in a stultified, rather than dynamic, universe.

While these concerns, and the (often) ecological sensibilities that motivate them, offer an important metaphysical and realist intervention in anthropocentric accounts of the universe, proponents often overlook a normative aspect of Whitehead’s religious and metaphysical vision of a possible future characterized by less, or perhaps no, loss. Utilizing the metaphysical framework of Jainism, an ancient Indian tradition centered on ethical experiments in nonviolence, as a comparative case study, I will provide an account of Whitehead’s ethical aim as a telos of nonviolence. Technical concepts in Whitehead’s works, such as “unison of immediacy,” the “many” and the “one,” the potentiality of “eternal objects” or the “subjective aim,” the “lure,” his description of the “khora,” and even his use of the term “peace,” present a vision of social and ecological nonviolence for an unfolding future. In this view, harm reduction and social ecology need not be at metaphysical odds. Rather, nonviolence is, I argue, part of the structure of becoming in a process metaphysics, not only for certain exceptional beings, but ultimately for all existent entities.



“The Connection-Action Principle:
A Basis for Process Philosophy and Cosmic ‘Creativity’”?

by Mark Lupisella

A centerpiece of contemporary Western process philosophy is Alfred North Whitehead’s “principle of process,” which features creativity as an important element. The modern science of cosmic evolution can be interpreted to suggest a highly “creative” universe—perhaps increasingly creative over time. In asking how the universe’s creativity arises, or increases, we can appeal to a wide range of approaches from scientific empiricism to more theoretical, conceptual, metaphysical, and philosophically speculative approaches—many of which arguably relate to the principle of process. In a book published in 2020, Cosmological Theories of Value: Science, Philosophy, and Meaning in Cosmic Evolution, I explore a kind of relational-action metaphysics in the form of a “connection-action principle” (CAP) suggesting, in its simplest form, that the universe’s (or multiverse’s) property of connectedness is instantiated as relations and actions. Drawing heavily from that book, this paper will explore how the connection-action principle may provide a basis for process philosophy and how it may relate to the universe’s apparent creative tendencies, with a particular focus on the emergence of life, intelligence, and meaning in the universe.



“Whitehead, Kalogenesis, & Cosmocentrism"

by Brian G. Henning

Environmental philosophers have for half a century debated whether ethics is anthropocentric, biocentric, or ecocentric. Yet even the most capacious of these theories typically have difficulty thinking beyond our own planet and its distinct evolutionary history. As humans consider “colonizing” other planets, mining asteroids, and interacting with extraterrestrial life, it is urgent that we develop an adequate extra-terrestrial ethic, a cosmocentric ethic. Just as Europeans’ latent metaphysics and ethics defined what was morally defensible in their colonization of this planet, our species’ latent metaphysics and ethics define whether certain actions require moral justification. We take our ethics—and our metaphysics—with us as we move into and beyond the solar system. In this paper I defend the view that, grounded in Whitehead’s philosophy of organism, it is possible to conceive of a cosmocentric ethic whose ultimate duty is beauty. Reality is fundamentally kalogenic; each drop of actuality is a unique achievement of beauty and value. “The teleology of the Universe,” Alfred North Whitehead tells us in Adventures of Ideas, “is directed to the production of Beauty.”




Tuesday, June 8, 2021

Discussions in Whitehead and Process - Jay McDaniel, Richard Tarnas & Matt Segall




A Few Thoughts on Astrology
(where I wish to clarify the beauty of a process cosmos)

R.E. Slater


The subject of astrology comes up now-and-again with process non-Christians - and sometimes with Christians themselves. As a Christian, I do not look to the stars for my guidance and counsel. I would like to say simplistically, if not naively, that it comes from God and His Spirit through God's counsel with my heart and mind and soul through Scriptures, the people I meet, and how-and-what I discern in my daily readings and prayer life, etc.

Now perhaps in this regard when "listening" to the external world of God's creation through the physical, humanitarian, anthropological, and social sciences; or in the studies of earth history, its ecology and environmental responses; or in the many religions of the world such as found inherent in the Native American spiritualisms I observe every so often; or in the Eastern Oriental, Islamic, and Jewish religions around the world; or even more broadly, in those astronomical sciences of astrophysics, quantum universes, and cosmological studies, etc; or even more broadly still, the resultant "energies" intermixing and radiating from the cosmic universe, which we might include as some form of "astral energies" pervading the "cosmic energy" of the universe which so many auras (astrologers, not astronomers) speak of.... Where we might think as pervasively as possible as to what it may mean to "listen" to the external world of God, without getting tripped up over our own inner feelings, subjectivities, superstitions, local folklores, cultural mysticisms, and so on.

I mention all these considerations to say that for myself, as I suspect for so many others, when we come to the "cosmic mysticisms" of the ancient Semitic, African, Central & South American, astrology cultures there is good reason to step back and take a deep, healthy breath of skepticism in regards to these traditions. In many ways the sciences and enlightenment eras have shown good reason to disbelieve these religious "attitudes" as aural guides to our lives. Many religionists of differing faiths would also say the same.

But due to my own personal subjectivity on the matter, I need to remind myself once again that as a process theologian, God's "energy" does always reverberate throughout the cosmic structure of creation in the sense that it endlessly seeks to transform all spaces towards life, creativity, and wellbeing; especially in its relevance to its physical cosmic structures of quantum forces and energies (gravity, strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetic forces, boson forces, etc).

Perhaps this "energy" is what the more sensitive auras amongst us are feeling as they reverberate like "human tuning forks" to the creational energy radiating everywhere about us moment-by-moment from the trees and flowers, to the insects and birds, to the stars above our heads.

This kind of "creational energy" I wouldn't deny. But nor would I make more of it than what its is knowing that for any belief it can be one step away from introducing harm and suffering for others in its subjectivisms and superstitions (as even historically observed in much of Christianity by the assertion of its beliefs of God's wrath and punishment in unhealthy ways around itself in society).

Which is why here at Relevancy22 I caution again and again to lean towards love - God's love. And to portray love in action through humanitarian causes. And never towards judgment, exclusion, division, or hatred. If even in the very creational energy we sense "all around us" please know this energy is boundlessly good in its outlay and wellbeing for those around living within its organic structures. Not evil. Not harmful. Not destructive. But good. Healthy. Abounding. Novel. Loving.


Enter Process in its Astral Aspects

Since process philosophy states that all things are in synchronicity with all things I will allow astrology-under-the-category of archetypal energies without the (divine) fatalism, determinism, or prognostician which usually seems to come with the study of planetary transits, alignments, movement, etc. And also without the New Ageism beliefs which seem to lump along with astrology, including the various forms of human-mysticisms which so naturally seem to accompany the human religious psyche.

As said earlier, the cosmic energy of the universe is pervasively all around us. Everywhere we go, everything we consider, study, look at, or feel, is part of a vast cosmic mix across an energy matrix made up of physical forces and matter. From stars to rocks, from gaseous atmospheres to liquid seas of methane, from the smallest living cells to the vast scales found in more complex biological life. All is part of a complex energy matrix formed of forces and fermions. The spiritual which resides in these are no more or no less than what resides in each-and-every one of us. Not only are we "of the earth" but we are also "of the stars." The same force out there, or up there, is the same force which resides within us. It would be unnatural if we didn't reverberate with some sense of cosmic feeling and energy flow (sans the psychotic and mentally imbalanced elements which would inflict us to twist our imaginations into something more than they should be - says the skeptic within me).


Our Cosmic Journey

Having listened to Segall et al's discussion twice now, I found the first part to be very helpful but the second part I will admit does stretch me more than I wish to be in it's astral observations. However, when listening to the last 25 minutes or so I tried to hear the nuances that are being spoken over the stereotypes I normally lump everything into over the span of all my prejudices (as I had laid out above).

For myself, I think of process cosmology (PC) as requiring (i) panexistentialism (all things are relational to all things). As well as requiring (ii) a form of panpsychism (sic, a "cosmic feeling" of the universe) which is how Whitehead had initially described process cosmology - as a "philosophy of organism" {which some have interpreted as an "organic reality" (see last article further below)}. And (iii) we might add many more cosmic centers - such as a process cosmology bearing synchronistic archetypal energies (e.g., the cosmos feels itself throughout itself in its process organism in some sense or manner).
However, the "astrology" stuff is not how I wish to describe the synchronicities of the cosmos even as the mechanics of the trade do seem to give evidence to Whitehead's "organic" form of insight.

Sure, if I and others feel a certain personal enlightenment, or a personal darkness of spirit, the cosmos may be feeling similarly in some sense to how we are feeling... perhaps we are "sensing" it or it is "sensing" us. But as an astrological directive, or as a foretelling, a prognostication, a way to live my life. No.

The cosmic archetypal feeling being felt or transmitted is more like an expression of an cosmological organic feeling as a whole throughout its parts (not limited to our solar system alone).

And at the last I'll state that for me, this cosmic archetype seems more than coincidental but less than speculation into the future as the future is undetermined, open, and chaotic in process.

Process thought when conveyed in these metaphysical senses works well in incorporating the idea of "feeling" to a process-based cosmos but I'll still pray, seek the Spirit of God, ask for God's guidance, and look to human sensibilities, fellowships, counsels, and Christian experience as guides.

I will not do the same with any form of astrology, even though some say they are following this practice and finding help in it. Or, perhaps, there is some strand of "Christianized" astrology being practiced, which I' sure there is.

But in all these instances any form of astrology only lends itself to testifying to the psychological archetypes and philosophical cosmologies which process cosmology has identified within its greater structure.

So give a listen to the discussion and see what you think. I found it generally helpful while preparing my occasional cynical soul to entertain some form of witness to the mystics among us. Who, I will say, have provided a nice offset to our materialistic societies. The mystics around us balance us off neatly between the blinded real of reality and the unseen reality all around us in some sensible way.

But, at the last, if I'm going to move towards mysticism, it'll be through the process-kind of enlightened mysticism of the Spirit and not the New Ageism which appeals to some.

R.E. Slater
August 6, 2021

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Richard Tarnas & Matthew D. Segall – 
Journeying Within a Cosmic Journey
May 22, 2021



Maybe we’re not lost in the cosmos after all. Years ago the novelist Walker Percy wrote a book called Lost in the Cosmos, in which he showed how, overly shaped by a rigidly scientistic approach to life, we humans lack any rich connection with the universe of which we are a part and, by implication, with ourselves and our neighbors. We know a lot about the periodic table and the laws of thermodynamics, but not a lot about how to live and love, creating societies of creativity and compassion. Richard Tarnas, known for his The Passion of the Western Mind and Cosmos and Psyche, presents a needed alternative. He invites us to imagine the universe as an unfolding journey, filled with multiple dimensions, both physical and archetypal; and to recognize our own embeddedness in this beautiful and dynamic whole. We are journeying within a cosmic journey. In conversation with Matthew Segall and Jay McDaniel, Tarnas shows how Whitehead influenced his thinking. He invites us to consider how the movements of the planets, no less than the movements of our hearts, can help us find our way in a vast and creative universe. We can be found, not lost, in the cosmos.




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#965: Primer on Whitehead’s Process Philosophy
as a Paradigm Shift & Foundation for Experiential 
matt-segall-process
December 10, 2020




Virtual reality has the potential catalyze a paradigm shift around our concepts about the nature of reality, and one of the most influential philosophers on my thinking has been [the British Philosopher] Alfred North Whitehead. His Process Philosophy emphases [the] unfolding [of] processes and relationships as the core metaphysical grounding rather than [that of] static, concrete objects. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry contrasts some of the fundamental differences to Western philosophy:
Process philosophy is based on the premise that being is dynamic, and that the dynamic nature of being should be the primary focus of any comprehensive philosophical account of reality and our place within it . [And yet], even though we experience our world and ourselves as continuously changing, Western metaphysics has long been obsessed with describing reality as an assembly of static individuals whose dynamic features are either taken to be mere appearances or ontologically secondary and derivative…
If we admit that the basic entities of our world are processes, we can generate better philosophical descriptions of all the kinds of entities and relationships we are committed to when we reason about our world in common sense and in science: from quantum entanglement to consciousness, from computation to feelings, from things to institutions, from organisms to societies, from traffic jams to climate change, from spacetime to beauty.
Virtual reality is all about experiences that unfold over time, and the medium [itself] is asking to interrogate the differences between how we experience the virtual and the real. A slight shift of our metaphysical assumptions from substance metaphysics to process-relational metaphysics allows us to compare and contrast the physical to the experiential dimensions of our experiences. Process philosophy opens up new conceptual frameworks to look at the world through the lens of dynamic flux, becoming, and experience as core fundamental aspects of reality, rather than treating these processes as derivative properties of static objects.

I think process philosophy makes a lot more sense when thinking about the process of experiential design. Human beings are not mathematical formulas, which means you have no idea how other people will experience your immersive [presence] until you [act it out in space and time, being and event].

There’s within game theory an inherent agile and iterative nature of game design, software design, and experiential design, where you have to test it lots of time with lots of people. This is different than the linear, waterfall approaches of building physical buildings or producing films where there’s clearly demarcated phases of pre-production, production, and post-production.

For Whitehead, these iterative processes aren’t just metaphoric at the human scale, but he’s suggesting that these processes reveal deep insights about the fundamental nature of reality itself as having a dynamic and participatory aspect of navigating non-deterministic potentials that’s really “experience all the way down.”

The thing that I love about Whitehead is that he was a brilliant mathematician that turned to philosophy later in his life, and so has an amazing ability to make generalizations that deconstruct the linear and hierarchical aspects of language [to create] more sophisticated models of reality. He [freelyl exchanges] physics as the fundamental science with biological organisms - or more abstractly, as unfolding processes which are in relationship to one other. This creates a scale-free, fractal geometrical way of understanding reality at the full range of microscopic and macroscopic scales.

Whitehead’s thinking has also impacted a wide range of areas including ecology, theology, education, physics, biology, economics, and psychology. Some specific examples include work in quantum mechanics, new foundations for the philosophy of biology, the psychedelic musings of Terence McKenna, and has opened up new pathways to be able to integrate insights from Eastern Philosophies, like Chinese Philosophy.

On October 31, 2020, I attended The Cobb Institute’s 2-hour program on Process Thought at a New Threshold, which brought together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, researchers, and practitioners where summarizing how Whitehead’s Process Philosophy was transforming their specific domains. One of the presenters was philosopher Matthew D Segall, who is one of my favorite Whitehead scholars who writes and shares videos on his YouTube channel.

I wanted to get a full primer of Whitehead, his journey into philosophy, as well as how his thinking could facilitate a fundamental paradigm shift that the world needs right now. My experience is that VR (virtual reality) and AR (artificial reality) can provide an experiential shift in how we relate to ourselves and others. But Process Philosophy brings a whole-other-conceptual-level that has the potential to unlock a lot more radical shifts in all sorts of ways [and means]. I also think that the spatial nature of VR and AR is particularly suited in order to produce [fuller] embodied experiences of process-relational thinking [while also helping] artists and creators [towards a fuller] cosmological grounding that [would] help them connect more deeply to their own creative process of unlocking flow states [as they use their artful] medium to communicate about their experiences in new ways.







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The Philosophy of Organism

Peter Sjöstedt-H introduces Whitehead’s organic awareness of reality


The philosophy of organism is the name of the metaphysics of the mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. Born in Kent in 1861, schooled in Dorset, Alfred headed north and taught mathematics and physics in Cambridge, where he befriended his pupil Bertrand Russell, with whom he came to collaborate on a project to develop logically unshakable foundations for mathematics. In 1914, Whitehead became Professor of Applied Mathematics at Imperial College, London. However, his passion for the underlying philosophical problems never left him, and in 1924, at the age of 63, he crossed the Atlantic to take up a position as Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1947. His intellectual journey had traversed mathematics, physics, logic, education, the philosophy of science, and matured with his profound metaphysics, a complex systematic philosophy that is most comprehensively unfolded in his 1929 book, Process and Reality.

The philosophy of organism is a form of process philosophy. This type of philosophy seeks to overcome the problems in the traditional metaphysical options of dualism, materialism, and idealism. From the perspective of process philosophy, the error of dualism is to take mind and matter to be fundamentally distinct; the error of materialism is to fall for this first error then omit mind as fundamental; the error of idealism is also to fall for the first error then to omit matter as fundamental. The philosophy of organism seeks to resolve these issues by fusing the concepts of mind and matter, thereby creating an ‘organic realism’ as Whitehead also named his philosophy. To gain an overview of this marvelous, revolutionary, yet most logical philosophy, let’s first look at what Whitehead means by ‘realism’, then at the meaning of its prefix, ‘organic’.

Realism

‘Realism’ has a number of meanings in philosophy, but with regard to Whitehead’s interests, a realist essentially adopts the view that we perceive reality as it really is.

Although this idea may seem to many to be common sense, it is considered naïve by many in non-realist philosophical traditions. Their anti-realist stance supplants realism with representationalism – the notion that rather than directly perceiving reality itself, we perceive an indirect representation of reality – that our experience of light, say, is but a representation of waves of photons hitting our retinas.

Idealist and materialist anti-realist positions ultimately owe their mistakes to dualism, the notion that mind and matter are distinct substances. Whitehead singles out the prime dualist René Descartes (1596-1650) as the figure responsible for inaugurating the fall into anti-realism, and the consequent problems at which we arrive in modern philosophy. The Catholic Descartes attributed mind, as ‘soul’, only to humankind. The rest of nature he classified as purely mechanical, and thus explicable by means of mathematics. As a result of Descartes’ ideas, today, science and (non-process) philosophy cannot overcome the problem of solipsism – not being able to conclusively demonstrate that our experiences are truly representative of an external reality – nor interwoven issues, including the hard problem of consciousness: how mind could emerge from or be related to the activity of the brain. Further related issues concern the problems of free will and mental effort: how mind could influence matter (specifically the brain and body) if all material causality is mechanical; the problem of causality itself; why consciousness should exist at all if it has no power; why we have aesthetic tastes for music or abstract art, and so on.

The philosophy of organism’s solutions to these problems begin by rejecting the bifurcation of nature into mind and matter. With an acknowledged debt to the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941), Whitehead rejects such a dualism through his reformulation of perception. The underlying erroneous presupposition of anti-realism is that perception is only the representation of an object, or in general terms, of an external world. Whitehead dismisses this presupposition and replaces it with the notion that perception is part of the object or of the world. He names this reformulated notion prehension. Concisely put, such perception does not stand in relation to the world as representation-to-object, but as part-to-whole. To give a human example, the light which emanates from a star changes the eye seeing it, the optic nerve, the cortex, possibly the mouth muscles (speech); and so part of the star – its electromagnetic radiation – becomes part of me. However, as a process philosopher, Whitehead rejects the existence of solid things with fixed attributes, and asserts, as Heraclitus did in ancient Greece, that all is change, flux: a mountain is a wave, given enough time. So for Whitehead a star is only its activity, including its radiance, and its electromagnetic energy continues its activity within us – there is no absolute delineation of activity. So a part of the whole star has become part of our perception. Thus one aspect of the realist element of his philosophy is that the real object and the real subject are partially fused. We are not only made of stardust, but also of starlight. Contra solipsism, we know that we perceive reality because our perception is part of that reality and not a mere representation of it.

Materialists may edge in here and say that they accept the causal line of star radiation to physiological alteration, but then they feel the need to add a new mysterious causal line, from brain alteration to conscious representation – from matter to mind. But with this unnecessary and mystical addition come all the problems of representationalism. Organic realism keeps the original causal line pure. But this purity and parsimony entail a rather radical refashioning of what one understands reality to be, in order to explain how physiological change already involves sentient perception. This brings us to the ‘organic’ prefix.

Organicism

For Whitehead the bifurcation of the world into organic and inorganic is also false. Consider descending a line of complexity from Homo sapiens to starfish, to cells, to DNA molecules, to less complex molecules, to atoms, and then to the subatomic. For Whitehead this descent is towards what he calls ‘actual entities’ or ‘actual occasions’, or ‘occasions of experience’, which we might think of as ontologically non-composite events.

Whitehead asserts everything to be organic. As he succinctly puts it: “Biology is the study of the larger organisms; whereas physics is the study of the smaller organisms” (Science and the Modern World, VI, 1925). The in/organic division is then ultimately false, sanctioned by the purported mechanical universe idea, once again resulting from Descartes’ mind/matter split. Most importantly here, to Whitehead, actual entities have a degree of sentience – of awareness, feeling and purpose – as do systems, or ‘societies’ as he names them, that are organically constructed from actual entities. Consciousness as we humans have it is therefore a complex nested system of subordinate sentiences: the redefined ‘organisms’ we traced in the path from Homo sapiens to subatomic particles, each of them being self-organising systems, are also sentient to degrees, according to the integrated complexity involved. Each cell in our body is such an instrument of sentience – instruments which focus their effects in the hall of the skull. Such consciousness requires a human brain because the brain channels together the awarenesses of the subordinate entities. Where actual entities have formed into non-self-organising aggregates – such as doors and windows – there is no unified sentience associated with the aggregate itself – only the myriad lesser sentiences of which the aggregate is composed: the sentiences of the molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles. Note the implication that although a brain is required for high-level animal-type consciousness, a brain is not required for mere sentience. Analogously, although an orchestra is required for a symphony, an orchestra is not required for a violin solo. Sentience, or experience, already exists as part of reality.

The concept of universal sentience is known as panpsychism, or as it is called with respect to the philosophy of organism, panexperientialism. Although panexperientialism may seem extreme to many of us raised in a post-Cartesian culture, it is arguably the most logical and parsimonious outlook on the nature of reality. The hard problem of how sentience evolutionarily emerged from insentience is resolved by denying the existence of insentience. Sentience has always existed, only its complexity evolved – a change in degree rather than the problematic change in kind.

To support Whitehead’s thinking about this, it may be noted that we have no evidence demonstrating that (so-called) matter is insentient. It may be retorted that we neither have evidence that (most) matter is sentient – a leveling that has no immediate default position. But the panexperientialist position is more parsimonious and able to resolve many traditional problems in the philosophy of mind, and so is the plausible account. It is parsimonious in that it reduces a dualism to a monism: matter and mind are one, that is, the same thing – both terms are merely abstractions from a unified concrete reality. Or we might say, matter is mindful – emotive and creative. This position also eliminates any mysterious causal connections between mind and matter (as seen, for instance in epiphenomenalism), and it fully adopts the causal efficacy of the mind as well as of matter, since they are of the same kind. So-called mechanical causes as such, involving physical force, are but abstractions from the concrete reality that includes the associated mentality. In this respect, Whitehead is akin to Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) with his idea of Will as the inner affect of observed external forces, or Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) with his notion of the Will to Power. Wielding Occam’s Razor, in organic realism we directly perceive causality because perception is causality: it’s the flow of so-called ‘external objects’ fusing into, and thereby altering, the subject. This makes David Hume’s ‘Problem of Causality’ – that we do not perceive causality itself – false; and therefore it makes Immanuel Kant’s critical project (that is, his whole later metaphysics) based on Hume’s purported problem of causality redundant. It seems Kant woke from his dogmatic slumber into an axiomatic blunder.

Organic Realism

Returning to realism, Whitehead’s metaphysics argues that perception involves the partial fusion of object and subject, of the world and the perceiving organism. In Whitehead’s words, ‘The philosophy of organism is mainly devoted to the task of making clear the notion of “being present in another entity.”’ (Process and Reality, 79-80.) There is no absolute dichotomy and magical transformation of matter into mind via some unknown causal line, as is the common concept today. Rather, the elements of the world are already sentient, so that such subject-object fusion is not merely the alteration of the organism, but the fusion of panexperiential reality with oneself. We thus do not simply perceive reality – we become one with the emotive, purposive, creative reality operating around and through us:

“Thus, as disclosed in the fundamental essence of our experience, the togetherness of things involves some doctrine of mutual immanence… We are in the world and the world is in us.” (Modes of Thought, VIII, 1938)

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© Peter Sjöstedt-H 2016

Peter Sjöstedt-H is pursuing his PhD at Exeter University. He is the author of Noumenautics, and an inspiration for the new incarnation of Marvel philosopher superhero Karnak. He can be contacted via his website, www.philosopher.eu.