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

-----

Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from 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

Saturday, March 21, 2020

Index - Process Philosophy & Theology





The Index provided here on Process Thought is not exhaustive. To date there are 80+ articles listed in this index by category out of many, many more which could have been listed from this website which are still remaining to be tagged. To these articles other possible related subjects (found in the topical column on the right side of the website) could have been listed, such as open and relational (process) theology, process-based: divine sovereignty, providence, eschatology, sin, ecotheology, evolution, quantum sciences and technologies, life applications, faith applications, and on and on as the subject of Whiteheadian process thought is very deep. Yet this new index at least gives the novice and intermediate lay person familiarity with process thought in its religious, humanitarian, and ecological outreach and direction with enough educational acumen to continue exploring the subject capably on one's own.

Not so long ago I found stagnancy in the classical expression of my Reformed (Baptist) faith as it began to clash with what I had been taught as the "only-and-truest fundamentals of the Christian faith and its doctrine". Specifically, that Jesus is the standard around which all Christian beliefs and ethos practices revolve. Anything less is a prevarication of the Christian faith as it is understood through God's love and salvation. I had belatedly come to realize a decade or two back that those "fundamental ideas and teachings" of my past needed to be "fundamentally" re-envisioned through the lenses of a contemporary cultural, and societal, Christian expression (but importantly without Christian legalism and religiosity). Curiously, when undertaking this complex endeavor to re-appropriate my ancient creedal faith, I didn't expect to lose the gospel of Jesus as I began to intentionally re-actualize Christianity into contemporary societal terms applying post-structural ideas to the subject matters of God, the Bible, Jesus, salvation, sin or the future. On the contrary, by carefully deconstructing Christianity's modernity teachings - then reconstructing Christianity's postmodernity expressions back again - the gospel became clearer than before. It's surprising how cleaning up one's theologic windshield of bug-guts and splattered mud can help the weary driver see the Jesus-road before him so much more clearly!

Certainly, when undertaking this daunting task I realized it would upend all of the old creeds of the church and doctrines as I applied newer, more relevant, theologic language, concepts, and contemporary perspectives to traditional Christianity. The result of this singular vision which the Holy Spirit had years ago burdened my soul to move through was a very long, complex, and rigorous application of redefining my fundamental baptist and later, conservative-evangelical faith heritage, with an updated emergent (progressive) faith stream which I am much more at ease with in its substance and Christian direction than I would've been as a youth just starting out. Lastly, into all of this I am now adding a new Christian foundation known as Process Philosophy and Theology to give all substance and structure. Age and maturity goes a long ways to re-envisioning one's faith. Inasmuch as doubt and uncertainty have properly led my postmodern explorations of faith and the bible I believe those same attitudes used in the formation of scientific theory will continue to assist in leading me forward towards more relevant and missional ideas of the love of God, His divine will for our lives, and how Christ's atoning work is bringing all back together in a fundamental restructuring of mankind and creation. Enjoy. This has not been an easy task of sorting out or rebuilding.

R.E. Slater
April 13, 2020




Index to Process Philosophy & Theology

Alfred North Whitehead


A General List of Process Articles




Recent Process Articles

Sunday, February 13, 2022

Wednesday, March 30, 2022



Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Friday, March 12, 2021

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Friday, April 17, 2020


Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki

    
        
Jay McDaniel
Thomas Jay Oord



  
    
        
Robert Mesle

Monica Coleman


Introduction to Process Philosophy

















Alfred North Whitehead


Alfred North Whitehead's Process & Reality

October 9, 2021



















John Cobb - Whitehead's Process & Reality, IV Lecture

John Cobb - Whitehead's Process & Reality, IV - Class Discussions

John Cobb - Whitehead's Process & Reality, V Lecture

John Cobb - Whitehead's Process & Reality, V - Class Discussions

John Cobb - Whitehead's Process & Reality, VI Lecture

John Cobb - Whitehead's Process & Reality, VI - Class Discussions


Critiques of Whitehead & Process Philosophy






John Cobb, Jr.


Process Theologican - John Cobb, Jr.

Thursday, November 11, 2021

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Tuesday, November 9, 2021


Saturday, July 10, 2021



Charles Hartshorne


Process Theologian - Charles Hartshorne
Sunday, August 30, 2020
Process Theology - The Life and Philosophy Of Charles Hartshorne

 Sunday, August 30, 2020
Process Theology - Review of Charles Hartshone

 Sunday, August 30, 2020
Process Theology - SEP: Charles Hartshorne

 Sunday, August 30, 2020
Process Theology - SEP:Process Theism


Philip Clayton
Catherine Keller


Meet the Process Theologians


Thursday, May 27, 2021


The Future of Process Philosophy

 Catherine Keller - Process, Poetry & Post-Structuralism

Bruce Epperly - The Future of Process Theology

Is Process Theology Postmodern?

 Seeking a Postmodern Re-definition of Classic Theism





What Is Process Theology? by Robert B. Mellert

 Robert B. Mellert - What Is Process Theology: Preface, Chapters 1 & 2

Robert B. Mellert - What Is Process Theology: Preface, Chapters 3 & 4

Robert B. Mellert - What Is Process Theology: Preface, Chapters 5 & 6

Robert B. Mellert - What Is Process Theology: Preface, Chapters 7 & 8

Robert B. Mellert - What Is Process Theology: Preface, Chapters 9 & 10

 Robert B. Mellert - What Is Process Theology: Preface, Chapters 11 & 12

Bruce Epperly

Tripp Fuller


 Intersection Process Philosophy with Process Theology
*Related Topics: Open & Relational Theism; Sovereignty; Providence; Evolution

Catherine Keller - On Entanglement, Interconnectedness & Synchronicity

How Panentheism Differs from Other Theistic Systems of God + Creation

Describing Relational, Process-based, Panentheism

Thomas Jay Oord - Process and Wesleyan Theologies

Thomas Jay Oord - Where Do Open and Process Theologies Blur?

Thomas Jay Oord - What Does a God-in-Process Mean in relation to Providence?
Bruce Epperly - The Process Theologian's "Bonhoeffer"

 Process Theology - "Divine Action, Indeterminacy, and Dipolarism"

Critiques of Process Theology

Roger Olson - Can Relational Theism Overcome the Ills of both Process Theology and Classical (Evangelic) Dogma? Part I of 2

Roger Olson - Can Relational Theism Overcome the Ills of both Process Theology and Classical (Evangelic) Dogma? Part 2 of 2

So what’s wrong with panentheism?

 The Science Behind "Creatio Continua" versus "Creatio Ex Nihilo" (Process v. Classical Thought)

 Philip Clayton's talks about Process Theology - "No One Gets to Capture the Flag Around Here"

Tripp Fuller


Contemporary Process Theology & Social Justice

 Process Theology & Martin Luther King, Jr.

Jay McDaniel - Why the God of Process Theology is Like Marian Anderson's Courageous Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Why Process Philosophy Might Present a Better Form of a Liberal Democracy or Socialism

Jay McDaniel - Process Pluralism as an Antidote to Hate

Contemporary Process Theology & EcoTheology

R.E. Slater - The Holy Trilogy: Process Theology, EcoTheology & TheoPoetics

 ​Ecotheology and Ecological Civilizations: An Overview of Ideas and Practices

Contemporary Process Theology for Contemporary Living

Process Theology: The Peace of Uncertainty

x




Process Science & Evolution

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John B. Cobb - Understanding Whitehead





Whitehead’s Process & Reality

Probing Process & Reality – “Why Whitehead?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njPHcYJQDVk&app=desktop

by John B. Cobb

Claremont Institute for Process Studies
January 27, 2020

"Probing Process & Reality" is a six-week course by John B. Cobb, Jr. and Tripp Fuller. They provide an introduction to Alfred North Whitehead's masterpiece. This video may be found at the end of this post. In introductng the course, Dr. Cobb responds to the question of why Whitehead's work is worth exploring today.

Alfred North Whitehead (ANE) presented at the Gifford Lectures where he systematizes his ideas. Six hundred attended the first night. Six came back the next. His metaphysics is a very difficult subject to comprehend but well worth the effort if given a chance. So then, “Why Whitehead? And why process and reality?”


Question 1.

Philosophers each add to another philosopher’s perspective. Schools of philosophy conceive of different problems and topics from different perspectives.

ANE’s philosophy is one of cosmology. But why be interested in cosmology? It is seldom spoke of in most philosophy departments and has left a large hole in our education. Cosmology attempts to answer the nature of reality and the place of humanity in it; whether our lives are determined; what is freewill; how do we relate to the cosmos and the cosmos to us; how we might understand that natural world and fit within it; of the nature of reality; the human place in that reality; whether we have responsibility in that reality; what is the purpose of living; connectedness; interrelatedness; values; goals; and so forth. This use to be a very popular subject up to the 18th century.

The natural sciences have brought these questions all back to the fore because of their relevance to our questions about cosmology and the metaphysics/ontologies within it. Science and cosmology go together. To speak of one is to speak of the other. As example, the quantum physicist Steven Hawking in his book, “A Brief Period in Time,” brought this subject up when examining evolution and cosmology.

Hawking’s questions helped revive the discussions from ages past providing relevancy to the contemporary eras of today. To be a philosopher or theologian in the realm of cosmology must require a familiarity with science, math, and physics, without which the two streams of thought cannot intersect. Why? As each discipline will inform the other and consequently making each application of insight sharper.

Whitehead’s cosmological explorations between science and philosophy occurred when his very subject had faded from the mainstream of history. But lately it has come back into force with science’s many complex quantum discoveries of the universe linked around the fundamental questions of Darwinian evolution and its meaning for us today.

Question 2.

Why do we need a new cosmology? Its reflection is light of the many new discoveries that earlier ascetics did not have. The Greeks. The early church philosophers. The Enlightenment or even early modern prodigies. All these have left us with the Cartesian world of materialism without answering the question of consciousness nor that of the quantum world which had yet to be discovered.

A sensory, classical world does not understand today’s scientific idea of causality. The Greek’s thought of causes as fourfold:

  • An efficient cause
  • A material cause
  • A formal cause, and
  • A final cause (purpose).

The early modern world freed itself of final causes or purposeful causes. It concluded there was no teleology to a natural world of random, chaotic evolution. Yet perhaps a cosmologist will question these modern day reflections by looking into whether there is a teleology in process within creation. Whether science’s cosmological answers may be insufficient in this area which had dismissed final/purposeful causes to be antithetical to the real world and arbitrarily delimiting the area of scientific study and conjecture.

Many years ago the philosopher David Hume had concluded that purpose should be excluded empirically, and yet, the philosopher Immanuel Kant stated that in terms of metaphysics this cannot be done even in relationship to the known empirical data of that time. That the objective world was not on a par with the hidden the natural world. That what was understood as reality may be hiding a far deeper world of reality under philosophy’s pseudo-understanding.

As such, cosmology was given up only to be retaken by Whitehead in redefining it in newer, more relevant ways. Phenomology (e.g. the appearance of a phenomenon, aka Heidegger) describes human experience which was never noticed before. It’s sub-discipline, existentialism, is closely related to phenomenology. And yet, neither answer the question of what lies behind the reality of the appearance of phenomena? This is the greater question. To find, or see, the real world beyond its patches of color or sound. To refuse to exclude this hidden world of reality. This then is the realm of cosmology which has been left out of philosophical discussions for the past two centuries until science has revived its relativity.

Science then drives many newer questions of the natural world and what may lie behind it than what we had earlier understood in the nascent days of scientific research and discovery. Its strange anomalies have driven us to explore the evolutionary worlds of the very large and the very small beyond that which we had once assumed we knew and could explain. Of worlds which are deeply interconnected belying non-conscious chaotic motion and energy always surging forwards from inorganic to organic life and the many worlds of that life which have spawned in its ever widening wake.

Dualistic concepts of the world such as the ones religion espouses do not fit within these newer evolutionary categories. For example, neuroscience affirms non-binary sentient concepts from nonlinear complex inorganic to deeply interconnected organic lifeforms. The study of cosmology then revives the entire science of evolutionary beginnings and processes-with-unending-endings with perhaps the more relevant questions of whether there is a purposeful evolution - which the very name of evolution itself seems to hint at as it has been taken up since Darwin.

So then, “Why Whitehead?” Because process philosophy looks at the natural world and sees the many processes of evolutionary evolvement especially from the newer scientific perspective of the strange new quantum worlds of chaotic particles and dimensional structure. Beyond a bare cosmology, a theologian might therefore approach process philosophy from a more relevant theistic viewpoint created from the subdomain of process theology as it relates to evolutionary cosmology and philosophy. Much of the heavy lifting in this area has already been begun since Whitehead’s first questions. And yet, there will certainly be many more insights to come related to naturalistic consciousness, mechanism, and the quantum world of the unseen as approaches bring more relevant, open-ended discussions of life and world, God and teleology to light. Process and reality then is by far the best philosophical approach for science and theology to proceed.

John B. Cobb
Edited by R.E. Slater
March 1, 2020




SCHEDULE

March 16 - Session I:  xi-xv and pp. 3-17
o   Part I, Chapter 1 - Speculative Philosophy

March 23 - Session II:  18-36
o   Part I, Chapter 2 - The Categorical Scheme
o   Part I, Chapter 3 - Some Derivative Notions

March 30 - Session III  39-60
o   Part II, Chapter 1 - Fact & Form

April 7 - Session IV  61-82
o   Part II, Chapter 2 - The Extensive Continuum

April 14 - Session V  83-109
o   Part II, Chapter 3 – The Order of Nature

April 21 - Session VI
o   Session I-VI Wrap Up



Additional References

 Saturday, August 12, 2017

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In The Age of Trumpism Should We Retire the “Bebbington Quadrilateral?”



Should We Retire the
“Bebbington Quadrilateral?”

by JohnFea
January 4, 2018



Historian David Bebbington has suggested that evangelicals believe in conversion (being born-again), biblicism (the need to base one’s faith fundamentally on the Bible), the theological priority of the cross (Jesus died for sinners), and activism (the need to share one’s faith with others).

Gloege writes:

"When proposed thirty years ago, Bebbington’s definition was a valuable steppingstone. It pushed historians to ask new questions and research new groups. But the findings of that research also revealed the definition’s flaws. Its characteristics simply do not translate into identifiable patterns of belief and practice. (If they did, why isn’t evangelical Wheaton College’s statement of faith exactly four points?) It’s not a definition, but a prospectus for a theological agenda."

Consider the definition at work. To be evangelical, we are told, is to believe in “conversion.” But is conversion a uniquely evangelical idea? It’s not even uniquely Christian; Muslims convert too. Rather, they are appealing to a particular experience of conversion. And how is an evangelical conversion measured? That’s the rub. It’s been the cause of evangelical consternation for two centuries.


But conversion’s unmeasurable quality is what makes it useful for insiders. It allows them to state (or strongly infer) that only unconverted, ‘nominal,’ evangelicals supported Trump. Apparently, a vote for Trump is evidence enough? Meanwhile, evangelical Trump voters declare that by withholding support, never-Trump evangelicals have demonstrated their faithlessness. Liberal evangelicals also have a calculus of conversion that excludes their conservative rivals. “Conversion” acts as a theological weapon that muddies the definitional waters; it’s not an analytical category.

“Biblicism” functions similarly. Imagine a political scientist defining Republicans as “those who take the Constitution seriously.” Who would accept this transparently partisan statement? And yet many people today accept that evangelicals are “biblical,” while everyone else…isn’t? This is how former megachurch pastor Rob Bell and popular author Rachel Held Evans ceased to be evangelical: not because they quit the Bible, but because they came up with “wrong,” (thus “unbiblical”) answers about hell and being gay. “Biblicism” is evangelical gerrymandering.

Like using water to define Kool-Aid, Bebbington’s definition confuses common, ill-defined, features of Protestantism or Western Christianity for evangelical particularities. Evangelicals love it because they can do theology—make theological claims—under the guise of analysis.

Gloege adds:

"A definition should connect to a movement’s most salient features (what sets it apart), and help us understand how they developed. Does “the theological priority of the cross” capture something uniquely evangelical? (It doesn’t.) Does it explain why white evangelicals tend to harbor a deep suspicion of the federal government and embrace free-market capitalism? Why policing sex and sexuality is such a priority (except when it isn’t)? Does it connect the dots?"

The Bebbington Quadrilateral does none of these things; rather it offers theological slogans that make respectable evangelicals feel better about themselves. Rather than spur self-reflection, it lets evangelicals ignore hard questions, while the movement they helped conjure burns down the country.

I am probably one of those “respectable evangelicals” who want to “feel better about themselves,” so I guess I should keep thinking about this some more. Whatever the case, I appreciate Gloege’s attempts to historicize the term.

In my forthcoming book Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump, I assume the Bebbington Quadrilateral is the best way of defining evangelicals. On one level, Gloege is right. Conversionism, biblicism, crucicentrism, and activism, when considered alone, are features that one can find in many religions and Christian traditions. But when you bring them all together it still seems like you do have something that is unique.

Moreover, people who believe in conversionism, biblicism, crucicentrism, and activism have taken all kinds of positions on social issues. Gloege knows this. They have been abolitionists and slaveholders, socialists and capitalists, supporters of strong government and defenders of states rights, defenders and opponents of gay rights, revolutionaries and reactionaries. Is there room in American evangelicalism for Roy Moore and Jim Wallis (21st century politics)? William Wilberforce and Robert Dabney (slavery)? John Wesley and John Witherspoon (American Revolution)?

In the evangelical church I attended thirty years ago there was much diversity on social issues. The same thing is true about the evangelical church I attend today. But in both churches our differences were (are) aired under the umbrella of a shared understanding of a faith defined by something very close to Bebbington’s Quadrilateral. I know there are people in my evangelical church today who supported Donald Trump from the moment he came down the escalator in Trump Tower and announced his candidacy. I also know that there are people in my church who would have voted for Roy Moore if they lived in Alabama. All of these people believe in the tenets of the Quadrilateral and some of them lead lives of devotion to God that put me to shame. Some of my readers might wonder how this is possible. I do as well. But I have hope that because my fellow evangelicals believe in an inspired Bible, or a conversion (“born-again”) experience that results in holy living, or the command to share their faith with others, they can be persuaded that racism or nativism or Trumpism may NOT be the best way to be “evangelical” in this world. Perhaps they can be convinced, with the Holy Spirit’s help, that they have ignored large chunks of the Bible that don’t conform to their political views. Perhaps they can be convinced that personal holiness is something more than just casting the right vote. Perhaps they can be convinced that rabid support for Roy Moore or Donald Trump hurts their Christian witness.

This Sunday I begin a course at my church titled “Christian Politics?” It could get ugly. But I chose to teach the course, and I am hopeful it will be civil and productive, because most of us in the classroom will share a common approach to faith. Many of those who attend the class will trust me to lead them in a discussion of such a sensitive topic because, like them, I believe in the tenets of the Bebbington Quadrilateral. We will differ on a LOT of things, but most of us will have a common commitment to faith and practice because we can point to a conversion or born-again experience, we believe Jesus died on the cross for our sins, we affirm the Bible as the word of God, and we think it is important to live our faith in an active way in the world that includes not just social action but evangelism as well. This shared faith will provide a kind of subtext for my class. I call this subtext evangelical Christianity. It is not a subtext I can expect when I teach in mainline Protestant churches or Catholic churches or in secular arenas. It is not even a subtext that I can expect any more at the Christian College where I teach history. In those places, I need to understand my audience in a different way and argue in a fashion that makes appeals to universal ideas or a broader understanding of Christianity.

OK, I am rambling now. I may return to this later.

- JohnFea
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Friday, March 20, 2020

John Cobb - Whitehead's Process & Reality, Part I




As we begin the study of Alfred North Whitehead I should mention several introductory posts I had developed previous to this study. I would consider them helpful and would encourage further reading in them as we proceed here in John Cobb's thoughts and observations. They are as follows:


Saturday, August 12, 2017


Friday, September 1, 2017


Sunday, September 17, 2017



    



Schedule of weekly readings from Process & Reality
  • Session 1 - pp xi-xv and pp 3-17
  • Session 2 - pp 18 - 36
  • Session 3 - pp 39 - 60
  • Session 4 - pp 61-82
  • Session 5 - pp 83 - 109
  • Session 6 - Conclusion
For those of you who do not own Whitehead's tome here is a link to the table of contents for the content being covered; below I've listed the front page of the copy edition we are using and at the link seven photos of the table of contents which may be printed out as you read along.




STUDIES WITH JOHN B. COBB
Alfred North Whitehead, Process & Reality
Notes from Session 1
*Disclaimer. These are my notes from reading and listening to
John Cobb which may not truly reflect his learned positions or sentiments
built over a lifetime of study and interaction with historic material.


PART I - THE SPECULATIVE SCHEME

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

 Editors' Preface v
Preface xi

Chapter I. Speculative Philosophy

  • I. Speculative Philosophy; Coherent, Logical, Necessary System of Ideas; Interpretation of Experience.
  • II. Defects of Insight and of Language; Conditions for Observation; Rigid Empiricism, Imagination, Generalization; Coherence and Incoherence; Creativity, the Ultimate. 
  • III. Rationalism and Dogmatism; Scheme as a Matrix, False and True Propositions, Use of the Matrix; Experimental Adventure. 
  • IV. Philosophy and Science, Grades of Generality; Dogmatic Influence of Mathematics; Progress of Philosophy.
  • V. Defects of Language; Propositions and Their Background; Metaphysical Presupposition; xxcessive Trust in Language; Metaphysics and Practice; Metaphysics and Linguistic Expression.
  • VI. Speculative Philosophy and Overambition; Overambition, Dogmatism and Progress; Interpretation and Metaphysics; The Higher Elements of Experience, Subjectivity and the Metaphysical Correction; Morality, Religion, Science, Connected by Philosophy; Contrast between + Religion and Science; Conclusion.


pg xi

A philosophy of organism is essential to Whitehead's view of process philosophy. By "organism" he refers to the idea of connecting everything with everything. There can be no reality without relationships. As such, all events are formed by relationships and can only be defined through relationships with other things. This is substantively different from previous centuries of philosophical thought thinking in terms of materialism, mechanism, and reductionism, which isolate things from things, events from events. In these philosophical formations the idea was to define a system by its most elemental parts much like the idea of a philosophical monad. To Whitehead, this was the absolute opposite to how reality should be describe. That a philosophy of organism must always connect to its environment, its past, its future, and to all possible things within and without this environment. That it's metaphysic is inextricably a metaphysic of relationship. It is the key essential to process philosophy.

By this sublime surmise of organic relationship it changes everything regarded as absolute and eternal devolving from the Platonic world of the transcendent other. Further, the elements of organism have always been part of previous philosophical systems because of its comprehensiveness. Yet because of its very expansiveness it lay profoundly unseen, hidden, disconnected, from previous philosophical thought much like the illustration of describing an elephant by its parts without seeing its whole. The relatedness then of our deep organic experience lies so vast above, around, and in us, that even if another subject, such as mechanism, is brought in, the philosopher will yet inadvertently discuss some part of organism as reflective to the system he is developing. It can therefore be said that the history of Western philosophy from Descartes to Hume have not connected organic relationships to the observed objects.



pg xii - xiii

Part 1 - Introduces Cosmology
Part 2 - Relates all academic pursuits into Cosmology
Part 3 - Categorical groupings within Cosmology
Part 4 - Continues Part 3 using pure and abstract thought (most may skip this section)
Part 5 - Summation of Cosmology as Organism

Being familiar with Kant and his successors Whitehead determined at the outset to build on pre-Kantian thought. Why? Because, in Kant's words, "The human mind structures the world." To Whitehead's thinking this was not correct. The pre-Kantian position stated, "The world (of reality or organism) structures the human mind" and not the other way around. By this Whitehead can be described as an unqualified realist, meaning, "the world is" whether we know it or not. It had existed eons before humanity's arrival to comprehend and systematize it, and will go on existing when we have left this Earth. That humanity is but a very recent anamoly within its hoary history.

As such, its history of organic relationships is profound, disturbingly so, as we venture within our meager moments of existence to comprehend and systematize its eternal unfolding or "becoming" from moment to moment. This last is the very reason why we can never state absolutely with certainty whether reality is this-way-or-that as reality-in-itself is a living organic actuality perfusing infinite relationships between things from one moment to the next. It's reality is never static but a living dynamic bound in relationship with the entirety of its living corpus dynamically expounding its "being with events" leading towards newer "becomings." The best we can do is to approximate its organic metaphysic by stating such an organism may be this-way-or-that but not always, nor forever.





Adverse Influences on Philosophy

1 - Distrust of speculative philosophy
2 - The inadequacy of language
3 - The inability to state comprehensively a philosophical system
4 - Expression always steers us to the subject-predicate form of understanding
5 - The experience of reality is informed by our past and present
6 - Actuality is never fully defined
7 - Misleading idealisms separate us from actualities
8 - Ex absurdo arguments are misleading
9 - Neither rationalism nor mysticism are sound philosophical foundations
      on which to speculate, imagine, or create a testable system.

Beginning with item 1. Imagining is necessary for science, philosophy, and theology. Whitehead called imagining "speculation" in his day. What he wished to point out was the need to rethink systems profoundly. Conversely, empirical / rational philosophy differs from speculative philosophy in those disciplines quest for certainty. But the quest for certainty can never be arrived at in a process world of becoming by its very nature of "process becoming".

Item 2. Propositions are always ambiguous because of the nature of language itself with its imperfect means of communicating strictly, exactly, systematically. Language is always in the process of becoming coherent. It is never fully adequate in a world of process-based becoming. It's aftermath of meaning can vary widely between those reading or thinking through a communique's or system's iterations.

Item 3. Simply, "What is heard may not be what was intended." Dialogue allows for creating a closer understanding with one another but can never reach a point of completeness as events of becoming change its intentions, observations, inferences, and deductions over time and space.

Item 4. Seeing and experiencing is always fuller than reflective language in hindsight of the event. As we analyzed observation empiricism influences the senses; causes demand the conscious or nonsensuous; relationship to the event influences succession of the event and its processes; and, among other things, idealism or the need to find coherence, and thus to systematize, can cloud experience. Going back to item 3, language is powerfully shaped by our senses and consciousness; at times we allow one sense to overtake the others. Being a predominantly visual species we may miss the auditory sense of hearing, olfactory sense of smell and odor, the sensual of touch and feeling, and so on. Like language, even our physical being influences interpretation and comprehension.

Item 5. Perception of past and present event informs our world and beliefs. Though senses our important they may grossly affect or exaggerate reality's perception.

Item 6. Referring to vacuous actuality - seeing or thinking an actuality is fully defined when by definition of a processed based world it cannot be as reality shape-shifts through interminable relationships moment by moment.

Item 7. Kantian idealism separated from experience leads to (negative) adverse speculation or erroneous imagination. In essence, idealism cannot inform reality but reality informs idealism to allow for fully speculation, or imagining, of a subject.

Item 8. Ex absurdo arguments persist in false tautologies, deductions, or inferencing. By such logics we can state anything absolutely whether it be correct or not. As such, they become traps of falsely arranged (constructed) rationalisms.

Item 9. Refers to logical inconsistencies. Rationalistic propositions made by "popular philosophies and theologies" can be misleading. They are not a good vehicle from which to proceed. Neither can reliance on "mystery" form any adequacy of explanation as it can not be tested, observed or argued in its ethereal space of proposition. As such, a good philosopher or theologian rejects both rationalism and mysticism as proper foundations for philosophy and theology.

pg xiv

Whitehead believes we don't know anything certainly or dogmatically. That these sentiments run counter to a process world of becoming. We may explore, test, attempt to comprehend, and find coherence in a supposition as we search of clarity, knowledge or re-imagine what we are trying to discover. But in the end, the best we can do is to approximate reality without fully explaining its "being" of event driven relationships.





Whitehead sums up his preface as follows

1 - If one deconstructs then one must also reconstruct. The world of the organism demands this.

2 - The philosopher is to frame and explore what was reconstructed from what was deconstructed
giving the whys, wherefores, and hows of his suppositions.

3 - In exploring, on one is attempting to discover the hidden or unspoken scheme lying whatever portion of reality being research in extrapolating from this exploration a philosophical truth which may, or may not, be coherent to that discipline of science, philosophy or theology.

4 - There can never exist any dogmatic certainty, ever. Nothing is ever certain. All discoveries, assumptions, theories, or axioms, must be held loosely when forming coherency to a matter.



pp 3 - 5

Alfred North Whitehead's experience at the University of Chicago, which at one time had held a process philosophy department, noted two forms of process, neither of which he agreed with. Form 1 was led by the process philosopher Charles Hartshorne who preferred the rational approach. Form 2 was led out by the university's Divinity School arguing for the empiricist position. For Whitehead, neither form was sufficient as each neither completely informed experience or understanding of process philosophy as a cosmology.

Conceive ----> Test -----> Reimagine

Whitehead thus observes that speculative science and philosophy proceed mostly along the lines of either rationalism or empiricism. One holds to coherency and logic, the other to application and adequacy. Bound together they attempt to remove ambiguity but are not fully accounting for the nature of process reality's continually changing relationships between events and things moment by moment. Imagination then must have its affects over the approaches of coherence and logic. That is, between the interplay of induction, observation, and deduction, imagination (or speculation) must be at the core of this triangulation of scheme.


Induction
 -                    -
 -      Imagine     -
 -                             -
               Deduction ------------ Observation           

pg 7

Whitehead observes that the progress of though uses past discoveries to move forward. From Plato onwards the disciplines of philosophy, science or theology review their progenitors, then either keep  their thoughts, reform their thoughts, syncretize it, or throw it out to begin a forward discussion of new iterations, ideas, and discoveries. For Whitehead, the one constancy of error throughout all of this process he calls "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness" meaning, making certain (or rigid) ideas of fact without questioning, doubting, or testing them thereafter. In this sense, Whitehead wishes to hold a "fact" loosely so as not to allow it to overlook at future approach or observation later. A thing should never be looked at as fully understood. Nor should its fact filled existence prevent future exploration beyond its sense of concreteness.



pg 8 - 17

Logic may only achieve certainty within the construct of perfect communication. Yet language can never achieve this but only approximate perfect communication through dialogue. Accepting or assuming a certainty may have been helpful at one time but can it remain helpful now when set within a different framework of perception? As example, the difference between enlightenment's classic world of physics and modernity's posture of the quantum world presently.

Skipping over the last several pages John Cobb moves to Whitehead's Philosophical Matrix.

1 - We may agree to a conclusion

2 - We may disagree to the details of the conclusion

3 - Yet a conclusion may be incomplete and in disagreement with "the facts"

4 - Therefore, always remain open to ideation, conjecture, speculative imagining

By this is meant that theories may approximate an observed reality but the nature of a process-based evolutionary creation of cosmogeny, nature, and civilization must always move forward unfixed.


Speculative theories can never be concretely finalized. This would go
against the idea of "eventful becoming" of "being and relationship". - res


Theologic Observations

Christianity has failed to answer the questions of loss and pain. A comprehensive process theology would sufficiently reconcile theodicy with being and event. - res

"God" as an explanation for everything is not a sufficient explanation of reality. We must think about God  through coherent approaches to life's many faculties. God = Truth. Fine. Yes. But "God" as an explanation for life's many questions is not sufficient enough to comprehend  creation's infinitude of mechanisms. What we "see or observe" may be God's consequential nature through creation but in the observation we must avoid the static metaphysics of a non-process based theology resting on Platonic platitudes of the "eternal object" as versus the scientific discovery of creational dynamisms unfolding between being and event. - res

As philosophy modifies religion so too religion modifies philosophy. - John Cobb

The useful function of philosophy is to promote the most general systematization of civilized thought. There is a constant reaction between specialism and common sense. It is the part of the special sciences to modify common sense. Philosophy is the welding of imagination and common sense into a restraint upon specialists, and also into an enlargement of their imaginations. By providing the generic notions, philosophy should make it easier to conceive the infinite variety of specific instances which rest unrealized in the womb of nature. - ANW, last paragraph, pg 17












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