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

The Process of Being & Becoming

Did Kant create an inseparable gulf between the subjective (self) and the objective (science) so that the former is devoid of reality and the latter of value?

Question: MN

I am as far as can be from a trained philosopher but it seems to me that Kant is as much a hinge, a place where we went wrong, as Descartes is. Is that right? My understanding is that Kant “solved”, or put to sleep, the argument between subjective and objective realms of knowledge by proclaiming that they were by nature separate and incommensurable. Then, over time, because of the much greater efficacy and “power” in the observable world of the objective, the subjective kind of withered away, leaving what we have today; a secular world devoid of value, and a religious world devoid of reality. Do I have that at all right? I am just trying to remind myself of why this all matters, as I am a bit bogged down. Thx

Response: Jay McDaniel

What Kant set in motion was a turn to the subject as arbiter of all knowledge, because we can't know reality in itself; we can only know what is necessarily filtered through the categories in our minds. This gave rise later to an emphasis on subjective, first-person experience, as in existentialism, and human language, as in linguistic philosophies. Meanwhile, Kant notwithstanding, science made great strides in understanding what scientists believed to be an objective world, [one] independent of human projection. A twofold divide was [thus] created: humanities, dealing with subjective human experience, and the sciences, dealing with the objective world.

Whitehead seeks to overcome this [Kantian] dualism in several ways, one of which is to suggest that the very building blocks of the objective world are, in fact, moments of subjective experience. He formulates this in terms of what he calls the reformed subjectivist principle. Additionally, with his notion of experience in the mode of causal efficacy, he proposes that the objective world even apart from our mental categories finds its way into our own experience. He believes that this mode of experience was neglected by many philosophers, and that it provides a bridge between an objective (past actual world) and the immediacy of subjective experience, as enjoyed by humans and other animals and, for that matter, the energy-events with the depths of atoms. All occasions of experience, not just human occasions, begin with experience in the mode of causal efficacy, thinks Whitehead. In human life this experience is felt, among other ways, in what he calls the "with-ness of the body."

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Process-Relational Panentheism Diagram

How is God the Ultimate in Whiteheadian Thought?

Question: R.E. Slater

I finally completed Session 2 with Dr. Cobb. His last 10 minutes of so of discussion left me with a lot of questions. Is there something he might have written - an article or two - which might speak to what he was trying to express in a clearer way? I could pick out elements of his thought but it seemed a bit scrambled on a topic he had thought about for a long time. Especially on the idea of God as Ultimate or non-Ultimate vs Platonic thought and modern philosophy. Thanks.

Response: Jay McDaniel

Here's my take. If you ask the question: "Is there a thing or an activity of which all actual entities are expressions in their self-creativity and in the immediacy of the moment which can be manifested in the transition from one moment to the next?" Whitehead's answer is Creativity, not God. Understood in this sense Creativity is neither good nor evil; it can unfold in either way. It is the ultimate 'matter' of which all things, even God, are expressions. It is the ultimate reality.

And if you ask: "And is there a primordial manifestation of this Creativity which has preferences, which is on the side of life's well-being, and which shares in the joys and sufferings of all?" Whitehead's answer is God, understood as the primordial expression of Creativity.

Likewise, the primordial nature of God contains all the pure potentialities which can be actualized by the world: that is, eternal objects. Thus God is cosmic mind of sorts (an ultimate intelligence or wisdom) as well as a compassionate friend of the universe (a deep listening, the consequent nature). God is the ultimate actuality.

This is how I understand Whitehead and also John's view, developed in dialogue with Buddhism many years ago, that there are two ultimates: the ultimate reality of Creativity and the ultimate actuality of God. The idea is helpful because it opens us up to the possibility that different religious traditions may be attuned to different ultimates, all of which are 'real' in their way.

To this list we might add still more: e.g. the present moment of experience (Zen) and the sheer interconnectedness of all things (Chinese philosophy.) The word "ultimate" names different realities relative to the question being asked. Thus the idea of a single and exclusive "ultimate" is abandoned.

Response: R.E. Slater

Thank you Jay. I need to digest this a bit more but its direction helps me better understand how Whitehead was approaching the subject of the Ultimate. In relational terms, God shares, or creates, from himself a creation like himself... one that is relational, creative, self-becoming, etc. He allows agency to the creative process without determinative superintendency over it. God then is both the ultimate actuality as will as the eventuating causal expression of creativity et al as He fellowships, communes, and journeys with creation. I'm discovering the differences in Whitehead to philosophical and theological thought can be a lot to digest.

Follow-up Response: Jay McDaniel

One more thing to say, Russ. In Whitehead, God does not create the self-creativity of actual entiries. In the immediacy of the moment actual entities create in themselves a response to all the data they are given from the past actual world and God’s initial aims. This self-creativity is not reducible to God’s creativity or to the influences from the past. In this sense it is ultimate in its way. Even in the absence of God, it would be real. God works with this self-creativity but does NOT create it. This is one reason Whitehead names creativity as the ultimate reality. Even God has this capacity for self-creativity, but not God alone. God is ultimate in in a different way: as a lure for heightened creativity and a companion to all its expressions. It is God, not creativity. In whom monotheists plays their trust. This faith and awakening to creativity (as in some forms of Buddhist enlightenment and Hindu mysticism) are different, but both valid and potentially complementary. At least so it seems to me. Sorry to be so wordy.

Follow-up Response: R.E. Slater

Thank you Jay. I was thinking this but you helped fix the idea for me more concretely. That God is both the initial expression of creativity as He Himself is creative. Moreover, that creational creativity is an expression of God's creativity but without presidence over creational creativity in accordance with creational freewill agency. And finally, that both God and creation may everlastingly, to use John Cobb's term, create new creativities which have yet to be formed. This then would be the idea of "becoming" or "concrescence" of the organism or process-based union between God and creation.

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Process Theology re Ontology, Culpability & Theodicy

Question: TB

Keep bringing that goodness, Jay! This is such a helpful distinction for those [newbies] who are orienting to Whitehead. I've got some questions I'd hold out before you in the framing you are laying out that differentiates God and creativity that come from Christian contemplative streams (although it crosses many contemplative traditions).

First, a preface, then a few questions. If creativity is neither good nor evil, and needs God (principle of concretion) to create an actual world and to maintain a full openness for that system to function with true freedom, the possibility for evil must be a real possibility, yes? Some contemplatives will claim that there is nothing real but love (I think of Finley and the CAC living school here, as well as Eckhart Tolle and others in saying that "nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists"). And yet, in our subjective experience of the world, evil, trauma, and suffering do become actualized in the world -- thus making it feel (as in a felt sense of the Whiteheadian metaphysic) that they do indeed "exist" in that they have become "actualized" at the very least as an emotive quality that is produced by an actual body.

I've had a hard time relegating actual suffering as merely a product of one's emotions (which are to be detached from in both the Christian and Buddhist contemplative streams in order to gain peace), or to in any way to make a metaphysical claim like the complex embodied or emotional experiences of personally ordered societies that include experiences of evil, trauma, and suffering are not "real" or "actual" in any way. For instance, Odin and Whitehead will say something like, "the suffering attains its end in the sense of peace — the infinity of God in the infinite suffering. this is only achieved through a psychical distancing, detachment, or disinterested contemplation — of transcending the ego in order to connect to the transcendental ground of peace in the midst of experiences of suffering."

I know that Whitehead says that, ultimately, evil is only remembered as 'fact' and not value, but in the framing you laid out initially here, it sounds like God, as the primordial expression of creativity, contains within the divine mind even the pure potentials for evil, although clearly luring toward beauty. so, here are a few questions:

1. Is evil an eternal object?
2. If so, how could it be that God, in holding out pure potentials for a becoming world could contain within the divine mind potentials for evil and still be called 'good' in any sense of the word? Are humans who actualize "evil" thus following a lure of creativity rather than God? Or is there another solution?
3. Are human emotions real or actual in any metaphysical sense?
4. And lastly, perhaps a more pedagogical question...how is one to move through their human journey with its emotional and embodied events of suffering into a place of peace? Is it by detachment or psychical distancing? Or is there some other integration of the reality of "actual" or "real" suffering into one's perspective that acknowledges suffering's reality and somehow harmonizes it into beauty? what is the contemplative path in this regard in your mind?

I've got some developing thoughts on these questions myself from a Whiteheadian perspective, but would be very curious to hear your thoughts! I know this developed into a pretty large inquiry, but I am curious to see what you think about this! Thanks so much!

Response: Jay McDaniel

Four great questions. You are so nice to care about my opinions. Here they are for what it's worth. I'll put your questions in quotations and mine outside quotations so that others may follow the conversation without too much re-reading of past posts.

1. "is evil an eternal object?"

No. The eternal objects are pure potentials and they are of two kinds – objective dealing spatio-temporal relations and subjective, dealing with subjective forms or emotions by which we respond to situations. These pure potentialities are not in themselves normative. There is not a pure potential called “truth” or a pure potential called “goodness” or a pure potential called “beauty.” Here Whitehead is different from Plato. Truth and Goodness and Beauty pertain to relationships between such potentialities and the actual world. For example, the emotion of anger may be “good” in some circumstances but “evil” in others. The wisdom of God is to avail us of possibilities which, relative to circumstance, are good and true and beautiful.

What is evil? From my own Whiteheadian perspective evil is two things: (a) debilitating suffering for which no subsequent goods can compensate, as in the suffering of the holocaust, and (b) missed potential, as occurs, for example, when an alcoholic who could have been a good parent misses that potential. Thus understood, evil is quite real, including for God. The idea that it is unreal is, for me, false. Having some experience in contemplative traditions myself, both Christian and Buddhist, I don’t see any reason to assert the contrary. The western idea that evil is merely an absence of God, or unreal as such, derives from neo-Platonic ways of thinking, but not from biblical ways of thinking. The idea itself betrays the experience of so many who do indeed suffer in debilitating ways or from a genuine sense that what could have been, was not.

2. "if so, how could it be that god, in holding out pure potentials for a becoming world could contain within the divine mind potentials for evil and still be called 'good' in any sense of the word? are humans who actualize "evil" thus following a lure of creativity rather than god? or is there another solution?"

As said above, the pure potentials are not normative. When we choose evil over good, let’s say hatred over compassion, the choice is not lured by God or, for that matter, by creativity as such, since it is not a lure in the first place. Our choice may well be influenced by countless forces in our past, conscious and unconscious, and some from society. We may be tempted by other lures coming from other sources, including decisions we ourselves have made in the past, but the temptations are not from God.

3. "Are human emotions real or actual in any metaphysical sense?"

Yes. Emotions are subjective forms and they are as actual as anything else metaphysically. Much depends on what is meant by metaphysical, but if we simply mean part of the actuality of the universe, we best say yes. Additionally, emotions can carry forms of wisdom: e.g. the wisdom of knowing others; the wisdom of sensing connections; the wisdom of wonder and awe; the wisdom of hope. They can carry “metaphysical” wisdom. The denial of this is part of a western dualism that I think Whitehead helps us overcome.

4. "And, lastly, perhaps a more pedagogical question...how is one to move through their human journey with its emotional and embodied events of suffering into a place of peace? is it by detachment or psychical distancing? or is there some other integration of the reality of "actual" or "real" suffering into one's perspective that acknowledges suffering's reality and somehow harmonizes it into beauty? what is the contemplative path in this regard in your mind?"

In general, I think integration is the best option, Tim. Although I think there are occasions when distancing, or anesthetizing, may be the best option. There’s no universal here; we must be sensitive to what helps a person deal with the suffering at hand. But all things considered, and in many circumstances, there is no need to hide from suffering that is inescapable, but our response to suffering can itself be beautiful even amid the suffering, as when we respond with courage or sheer endurance. And often, suffering can become grist for a subsequent wisdom and love, which would not have occurred otherwise, even if, all things considered, we still wish it hadn’t occurred. Additionally, I myself think that, in faith, we can hope that it is somehow transformed into a harmony of harmonies (the consequent nature of God) which includes tragedy. I think we can also feel this harmony of harmonies sometimes as an inner peace.

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HELPFUL READINGS IN PROCESS THEOLOGY

Question - What Books Might Be Suggested?

Wikipedia - C. Robert Mesle (born 1950) is a process theologian and was professor of philosophy and religion at Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa until his retirement in 2016. After earning a B.A. in religion at Graceland University (1972), an M.A. in Christian theology at University of Chicago Divinity School (1975), Mesle received a Ph.D. in philosophy and religion from Northwestern University (1980).

Mesle is the author of Process Theology: A Basic Introduction. In this book he outlines three attributes of a process theology. There is a relational character to the divine such as:

• God experiences both the joy and suffering of humanity.
• God is not omnipotent in the classical sense
• God exercises relational power and not unilateral control.

    

   

Book Review - The Uncontrolling Love of God, by Thomas Jay Oord

A God of love births love in splendorous ways by granting agency to love from His Being or Essence. Not by decree or coercion but through who He is. Love is, because God is.

So too creational agency. An agency of becoming we might think of as freewill. As God has agency so too His creation has agency. Again, not by decree but because of God's Self, Being, or Essence.

The paradox is evil and how past church creeds and traditions misapplied ideas of God's Sovereignty to human culpability. Though God is sovereign He is sovereign not because He controls creation but because He releases it from His control to become as He is: "A serving God of sacrificial love and care. Of wound binding, healing, nurture and wisdom."

But this also speaks of a very weak form of sovereignty whose weakness is observed by our Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul to be God's greatest power. Again, a paradox. Would a powerful God allow evil? Illness? Suffering? Or be crucified on a cross? No, but a God of love who leads by love, who is love, would. This kind of love allows agency, not control. Though our ideas of God seems to be one of power, strength, absolute determination, and judgment, they are but very pagan forms of God-ness inherited by the much older religions even earlier then the Greeks.

Nor is a loving, giving, guiding God of the bible what God's followers in the bible expected. They wanted protection, deliverance, sustenance. And therein lies the struggle both in the bible narratives as well as in the histories of the church. A powerful God of judgment loses the idea of a loving God of care guiding his creation to become more than it is.

God's agency is certainly not a sovereignty / rule by coercion. Nor peevishness. Nor authoritarianism. No, a God of love shares Himself through His creation that it might become as He is becoming. Where together, both God and creation, may fulfill the bounty of the other in fellowship and communion.

In the end, we pray that God may act in our lives in ways which we may not be understandable but known by its fruit bearing goodness and love. Not only in our lives but in the lives of those around us and very nature itself in earthcare and restoration.

R.E. Slater

March 30, 2020

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The Uncontrolling Love of God:

An Open and Relational Account of Providence

by Thomas Jay Oord

BOOK REVIEW by W. Tyler

March 28, 2020

In this helpful and thought-provoking book, Thomas Jay Oord presents a love-based model of providence (which he calls the "essential kenosis" model) that fits very nicely in the framework of open theism, with special attention to making sense of our lived experiences in a world that is filled with "regularities and randomness, freedom and agency, good and evil". In wrestling with the apparent tension between divine power and divine love (which is ultimately the central locus of any discussion of providence), Oord opts to prioritize love in a logically consistent way, arguing that any account of God's action in the world which allows God absolute power over even the smallest part of creation logically fails to prioritize love. In the negative sense, this is because a God of absolute power exacerbates the problem of evil by adding to it what others have called "the scandal of particularity"; if God can stop events whose overall effects are evil, but chooses not to, then God is culpable for that evil. In the positive sense, this is simply the nature of self-giving love, and this extends all the way to the most fundamental laws of physics: "Regularities of existence—so-called natural laws—emerged in evolutionary history as new kinds of organisms emerged in response to God's love. The consistency of divine love creates regularities as creatures respond, given the nature of their existence and the degree and range of agency they possess. God's eternal nature of love both sets limits and offers possibilities to each creature and context, depending on their complexity. In this, God's love orders the world. And because God's nature is love, God cannot override the order that emerges." Oord takes special care to note that this is not the same as saying that God voluntarily limits his own power in the service of love; rather, God's power derives from his love, and so the power that we often attribute to God simply does not exist whenever it would conflict with love, and in particular whenever it would involve unilaterally overriding the so-called natural order that itself derives from God's love. It is worth mentioning here that even though Oord's proposal focuses a lot of attention on what God cannot do, this is only to clear away the reader's preconceptions, and would perhaps not be necessary were it not for the long theological tradition of depicting God as an absolute sovereign. The constructive part of Oord's proposal is substantial, so his is not a merely negative account of providence.

These basic assertions have surprising implications. One is an apparent solution the problem of evil: "This model of providence says God necessarily gives freedom to all creatures complex enough to receive and express it. Giving freedom is part of God's steadfast love. This means God cannot withdraw, override or fail to provide the freedom a perpetrator of evil expresses. God must give freedom, even to those who use it wrongly. ... Essential kenosis [also] explains why God doesn't prevent evil that simple creatures with agency cause or even simpler entities with mere self-organizing capacities cause. God necessarily gives the gift of agency and self-organization to entities capable of them because doing so is part of divine love. God's other-empowering love extends to the least and simplest of these. God cannot withdraw, override or fail to provide agency and self-organization to any simply organism or entity that causes genuine evil. The kenotic love of God necessarily provides agency and self-organization. God's moment-by-moment gifts are irrevocable. Consequently, God is not culpable for failing to prevent the evil that basic entities, organisms, and simple creatures may cause." An auxiliary claim is that even though God is present to all places at all times, he is not present in a bodily way, so that he must work lovingly and persuasively through and in creation rather than acting unilaterally from outside of creation; God actually needs the free cooperation of creation in order to redeem evil. Another surprising assertion is that God experiences time in a way analogous to our own experience of time, and in particular that God does not know the future. This is motivated partly by the understandable (but not incontestable) claim that God's foreknowledge would render creaturely freedom an illusion. Perhaps more importantly, this claim is motivated by the idea that "Love is an adventure without guaranteed results". While I appreciate the intuition behind this, I find myself skeptical of the idea that God experiences time with us; I find myself asking, "Where in the universe does God experience time?", because according to relativity, time flows differently in different places, and in fact time is wrapped up with the spatial dimensions of reality. Further, no two events taking place in different locations can be said to happen simultaneously. How then should we understand God's experience of time in light of God's omnipresence? This is not necessarily an unsolvable problem, but I find myself in want of a fuller explanation of how this problem might be solved.

Finally, Oord has an incredible exposition on how miracles fit into the essential kenosis model. Essentially, God is always working with and in creation, constantly opening up new possibilities if we cooperate; when our cooperation results in unusual good that appears to fall outside what we would call "natural", then a miracle has occurred. Because both the natural order and miraculous events derive from God's love with the cooperation of creation, there is no clear line between the natural and the miraculous; there is an irreducibly subjective, relational aspect to miracles. This coheres well with much of what the Bible depicts as miraculous; it especially sheds light on Jesus' oft-repeated phrase "Your faith has made you well," as well as his claimed inability to perform miracles for faithless people. It also helps explain why miracles are not always consistent; even for those who have faith, a miracle may not occur if some other aspect of creation is especially resistant to that miracle. My only complaint here is that Oord does not address biblical events attributed to God which are unambiguously harmful and unloving, such as the plague of death in Exodus. On the one hand, such events are not miracles at all by Oord's definition, since they are not good; on the other hand, one can hardly avoid calling such events miracles, since they appear to be the direct result of unusual divine action. The only way forward that I can envision here is to recognize that such events, though attributed to God by the biblical authors, cannot have actually happened as recorded if God is truly the God of love revealed perfectly in Christ. I am quite prepared to take this course, but other readers may not be.

Oord is to be praised for so consistently prioritizing love in a way that upholds the dignity of God and of people. His compelling vision of God working in and with others is compatible in interesting ways with other concepts within the Christian theological tradition, such as panentheism and deification. One particularly challenging but fruitful exercise in this regard is the reconciliation of open theism and universal salvation. Oord does not comment on eschatology in this book, which leaves the door wide open for a variety of views on the final state of created things. The most obvious choice would be to endorse a free will model of salvation and damnation, but I fear that this is too high a price to pray for God's goodness; as David Bentley Hart has pointed out, a God who knowingly creates a world in which the final damnation of any creature is even possible is an evil God, for morally speaking what has been risked has already been surrendered; moreover, in such a picture it would be logically possible to say that God loved all humans to the utmost, even though all humans voluntarily damned themselves. On the other hand, some Christian universalists have suggested that God may occasionally override human freedom in the interest of saving all, and on Oord's account this is too high a price for God's love. Following the lead of Hart, I would suggest that God's love has fashioned us in such a way that we are intrinsically drawn to God, who is our sole and final good; our freedom is ultimately not our ability to do wrong, which arises from deception and slavery to sin, but rather it is our ability to do right, to simply be what we are be design. That is to say, God's love naturally makes us so that we naturally seek God's love; just as God cannot not love us, we who are made in God's image cannot in the end not love God, though for some while we may deceive ourselves into thinking that we do not. So God need not know the future in precise detail to guarantee the ultimate reconciliation of all things (which I think he must do if he is good); and this inexorable return of all things to their source is not coercive on God's part, precisely because it is deeply consonant with the love-fashioned nature of created things.

Again, this is a helpful and thought-provoking read. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in providence, miracles, or open theism. I look forward to reading some of Oord's other books in the future!

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

After a lifetime of mathematics and developing the prodigious tome "Principia Mathematica" with Bertrand Russell, Whitehead went on to develop a holistic cosmology of interconnectedness, relationality, and the idea of process in his treatise, Process & Reality. This he did starting at the age of 63 and completing the project by age 68. Now that is what I call a PRODUCTIVE retirement! No pickleball, golf, or other time wasters; instead, a full, working production of process philosophy. Who'd of thought? Or, "What else is retirement for?" - re slater 

PART I - THE SPECULATIVE SCHEME

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Chapter II. The Categoreal Scheme 18

• I. Four Notions, namely, Actual Entity, Prehension, Nexus, the Ontological Principle; Descartes and Locke; Philosophy Explanatory of Abstraction, Not of Concreteness. 
• II. The Four Sets of Categories; The Category of the Ultimate; Conjunction and Disjunction; Creativity, the Principle of Novelty, Creative Advance; Togetherness, Concrescence; Eight Categories of Existence; Twenty-Seven Categories of Explanation. 
• III. Nine Categoreal Obligations. 
• IV. Preliminary Notes; Complete Abstraction Self-Contradictory; Principles of Unrest and of Relativity; Actual Entities never Change; Perishing of Occasions and Their Objective Immortality; Final Causation and Efficient Causation; Multiplicities; Substance. 

hapter III. Some Derivative Notions 31

• I. Primordial Nature of God; Relevance, the Divine Ordering; Consequent Nature of God; Creativity and Its Acquirement of Character; Creatures, Objective Immortality, Appetition, Novelty, Relevance; Appetition and Mentality, Conceptual Prehensions, Pure and Impure Prehensions; Synonyms and Analogies, namely, Conceptual Prehension, Appetition, Intuition, Physical Purpose, Vision, Envisagement. 
• II. Social Order, Defining Characteristic, Substantial Form; Personal Order, Serial Inheritance, Enduring Object; Corpuscular Societies. 
• III. Classic Notion of Time, Unique Seriality; Continuity of Becoming, Becoming of Continuity, Zeno; Atomism and Continuity; Corpuscular and Wave Theories of Light. 
• IV. Consciousness, Thought, Sense-Perception are Unessential Elements in an Instance of Experience. 

STUDIES WITH JOHN B. COBB

Alfred North Whitehead, Process & Reality

Notes from Session 2

*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.


CHAPTER II - THE CATEGOREAL SCHEME

pg 18 - 20

Process of Organism ---> refers to ---> Process Philosophy

Whitehead - All things are sentient (sic, panpsychism)

Open & Relational Process Theology (ORPT) - All things are panexperiential

thus removing sentience from Whitehead's inorganic matter

1 - Actual Entities / Actual Occassion  (BEING)

- for myself, I think of this as "Being and Event" as used by French Philosopher Alain Baidou

• Involves most elemental and relational realities
• Creates:

• gradations of complexity,
• diversities of function, and
• interdependencies

• Consists of transitory connections and experiences
• Are processes of concrescence (a growing together, an evolving en masse)

2 - Prehensions (EVENT)

• The process of becoming (through vectoring),
• Vectorin are the relational connections affecting process and event,
• Creates future occasions for becoming

3 - Nexus or Nexi (EVENT)

• An aggregate of Actual Events / Actual Occassions
• Refers to networks of connected relationships
• Bespeaks organisms as "complex societies"
• Process: Complex Societies --> Transmuting --> Incoming & Outgoing Prehensions
• An endless panentheistic cycle between reality and eternal objects; the former defining the other; the latter enhancing the former's perception.

4 - Ontological Principle of Purposeful Teleology (PURPOSE)

• Actual entitites and actual occassions move teleologically towards purpose (sic, "becoming")
• Reality creates eternal objects; eternal objects reflect reality

Summary

• "Being" - Actualities form by interdependent relationships
• "Event" - prehensive processes of occasions joining and disjoining from one another
• "Teleology" - outcomes of concrescence towards more concrescence

SECTION II - THE CATEGORIES

pp 20 - 26

1 - Category of the Ultimate - How all the categories relate one with the other in their parts and together as a whole: existence, explanation, and obligations. Together they define creativity, relational commonality in vast interconnected communities of everlasting becoming, and all driving towards enhancement of the primordial occassion yearning for more expression. It is how the one and the many interact. Or, how the many enters into complex unity with itself always striving for creative advance of wellbeing, wholesome novelty, amid diverse disjunctions and conjunctions with itself.

The ultimate metaphysical principle is the advance from disjunction to conjunction, creating i) a novel entity other than the entities given in disjunction. The novel entity is at once ii) the togetherness of the many which it finds, and also iii) it is one among the disjunctive many which it leaves; iv) it is a novel entity, disjunctively among the many entities white it synthesizes. v) The many become one, and the are increased by one. vi) In their natures, entities are disjunctively many in process of passage into conjunctive unity. "This Category of the Ultimate" thus replaces Aristotole's category of "Primary Substance." - ANW

In this way "the production of novel togetherness" is the ultimate notion embodied in the term "concrescence." It begins with creativity (or, novelty) expanding towards "concrete togetherness" to form a concrescing "moment of becoming" restlessly evolving in everlasting agony of expression. - res

pp 20 - 22

2 - Eight Categories of Existence

• 1 - Actual Entities / Actual Occassions / Final Realities / Res Verae
• 2 - Prehensions
• 3 - Nexi (plural of Nexus)
• 4 - Subjective forms
• 5 - Eternal Objects / Pure Potentials
• 6 - Propositions
• 7 - Multiplicities
• 8 - Contrasts / Modes of Synthesis of Entities in one Prehension/ Patterned Entities

For the Greeks, "atomism" constituted their outlook on how the world might be broken down into its constituent elements, or elemental parts. This outlook would be deemed a materialistic, mechanical, or representational form of philosophy. The goal is to find the most indivisible element of a thing.

Ex 1. "molecule" --> "atom" --> "quantum particles" --> "dimensional vibrations of a string"

Ex 2. Force/Energy --> primary quark or string --> never static, always in motion, always relational

In the example are objects being broken downwards into greater and greater elemental forms until at last the most basic object becomes an interrelation of events within a wave-particle composite refusing further separation due to our inability of technology to explore any deeper. Which begs the question, at an "objects" deepest base can be found an "event"; and that throughout this downward journey of examination each object is part of a greater complex of events resulting in the end as event within itself. This is what Whitehead observes as the necessity to look at our world in terms of a process-based dynamism always evolving, changing, seeking, blowing up, discontinuing, coming together, continuing en masse, and so on.

This further means that there can be not "vacuous actualties" or events in that no one object can be isolated unto itself and expect that object to yet carry meaning. Meaning, or identity, is only found in relationship with other objects. And that all objects are a misnomer of term since all objects consist in themselves an embodied relationship of relationships. That all things are ever process while being in process with themselves and other causal relational "objects". There can therefore never exist an actuality in vacuous disunity with its enviroment. There are only, and always, non-vacuous actualities always in motion, always, in stages of becoming, always conjoined with its external environment which is also in fluid motion and restless flux of becoming.

Select Explanations of Categories of Existence from #1-8

1. Acutal Entities or Acutal Occasions - each are descriptions of the same process used to describe a process as the term fits the observation

Actual Occasions are always constituted by the past world from which they are formed. The entity is always in stages of becoming and is always in process with surround events as it morphs and concrescses towards another entity or occasion.

AE(1) --> AE(2) --> AE(3) --> ... --> AE(N)

where each "aarow" is an "event" [E(1) --> E(2) --> E(3) --> ... --> E (N)]

2. Prehension - The preceding moment of experience affecting a succeeding experience in the formation of an actual entity / occassion. "An actuality is prehended in the constructs of past prehensions." The entirety of this process is known as "concrescence."

No two actualities or events may occupy the same space at the same time. However, one actuality or event, may enter into, and participate with, the becoming of another actuality or event. All actualities or events evolve from a past world of actualities and events.

Process-Relational Panentheism Diagram

Question?

• Theism - Ex Nihilo Creation out of nothing; God is separate from creation

• Pantheism - creation is everlasting; God and creation area the same thing

• Panentheism - Ex Continuum Creation out of something (chaos); God is integral with creation

• Process Relational Panentheism - God as "One" with creation as "the many" each bound together with the other in the process of becoming; affecting and affectuating each other

God IS (as the Ultimate Actuality/Event) -->

                             Becoming of succeeding actualities / events = Creation -->

                                                              Evolves (evolution) in timeless becoming --> Concrescence

Causality must always be seen as a process. As such, we are always experiencing the causality of our immediate past which then affects our immediate present. In effect, we are prehended by our environment which influences us internally and externally by its external affects upon us.

Our sensory experiences cannot include casuality (unless in its more obscure form). That is, we perceive moment-by-moment, whereas we "feel" the whole of our perceptions.

Ex. We listen to a symphony from note to note, expression to expression, section to section, in moments of expression. However, we "feel" a symphony throughout the entirety of its concert as each note prehends the notes ahead of it. Our senses comprehend the moment but our being comprehends the wholeness of our sensory absorptions.

In sum, a prehension begins the initial phase of the occassion. As example, the past world was prehended and absorbed into the present world. There then exists infinite prehensive moments of possibilities from which one prehensive moment became actuated. Another example, the mind prehends all of its neuronic structure before acting from one neuronic connection.

As evolution's mechanism is to the adaptation of life to survive regardless of environmental conditions. Though many claim evolution has no purpose, its overall drive is its purpose. A mechanism expressing life in every way possible and in every environment provided. Similarly, process philosophy's mechanism is that of life becoming in whatever form or fashion it may become. This too is succinctly its purpose. Like evolution, process philosophy has a teleology. That of becoming. And if expressed in theistic terms, than the God of creation has granted from His Being, or Essence, that which is Himself. A Being of becoming. Life Father, like Son, like creation. Nothing can exist as bare mechanism alone.

Further, creation's participation in the Divine drives itself towards holism, greater becoming, greater values of the mechanism expressed (not decreed, but expressed; there's a difference). Participation in and with the Divine provides as outcome fellowship, communion, and synergy between the parts with the whole, and the whole with its parts. All are one, living, dynamic or unity seeking concrescence.

Again, from a Processed-based Theological perspective,

God has:

• prehended an actuality
• introduced into creation the goal of being and becoming (or, being & event)
• introduced an intensity of force to be as effective as possible
• introduced the achievement/advancement of value for both past and future

Similarly, man is part of this same creative mechanism, or purpose. We are called to become as valuable as we can so that in the achievement of that goal we gain greater intensity towards becoming even more valuable as a prehended and prehending entity or occassion moving towards a concrescing future. In this way creation reflects God as God reflects creation in its essence.

• Example 1 - We need to love ourselves but also to equally love others and let it grow

• Example 2 - We may generate value beyond ourselves into humanity and creation

Platonism v Whitehead

Plato dealt in idealisms or idealistic forms of the cosmos; Whitehead was more interested in the forms themselves and not eternal idealisms. For Plato, eternal forms influenced worldly events; For Whitehead, actualities influenced eternal forms. He considered eternal objects unreal creative expressions of observed actualities. From these entities or occasion might larger lessons or ideas be drawn, but they are not real in themselves. Only the actualities are.

Considered another way, eternal objects cannot have an efficacy in the cosmos. Ontologically, modernity removed the idea of eternality and became even more secular in itself having lost its call forwards. The call forward is the concrescing lure towards something more. Something greater. Something better. This is the promise of the future for creation and evolving beings.

God as Caller --> Calls Forward --> A new occasion is begotten --> Call forward --> etc

As an aside, Heidegger said that "the Self calls Self forward" which showed both his atheism and background as a phenomenologist seen as a secular event. It also explained his attraction to Nazism. Whitehead, however, stated that authenticity demands that God calls creation forward; He, who is the Cosmic Caller calling everything forward that is and is becoming. In this way harmony of organism, balance, morality, value, etc, are not lost to unbecoming events.

pg 22

3. Nexi - Are "public matters of fact" meaning, every actuality is both complexity of organism as well as interrelated organism to a greater complexity of organism than itself. Whitehead thought of this as "facts" which relate to a "public" space. As example, wooden tables, the trees, our bodies, even the stars form societies of complex organism. As tables come from trees, and our bodies from star dust, so each is part of a greater complex of the whole. They are facts which have become public matters.

4. Subjective Forms - In contrast to nexi, there are also "private matters of fact" focusing on the actuality itself.

Past Occasion --> Is prehended ----> Shapes the Occasion --> Generates a new entity or occasion

                              and prehending                                                                                                          

This last stage cannot be repeated or share the same space of a past occasion. The form must always be unique, which parallels the thought of space-time novelty. Nothing is ever the same. Perhaps similar, but never the same. Example - a snowflake or an atom's interior space.

5 - Eternal Objects - not discussed; refer to text

6 - Propostions - not discussed; refer to text

7 - Multiplicities - not discussed; refer to text

8 - Contrasts - refers to intensity of occasion. As the past is renacted into the present, so too the whole becomes more unified from what it was. This then creates an intensity of affected entity towards the evolving future occasion. This goes back to the idea that we always think our future will be better than our past however true or untrue that may be in a freewill, self-expressing, inderterminate universe.

"Among the eight categories of existence, actual entities and eternal objects stand out with a certain extreme finality. The other types of existence have a certain intermediate character. The eighth category includes an indefinite progression of categories, as we proceed from 'contrasts' to 'contrasts of contrasts,' and on to indefinitely higher grades of contrasts." - ANW

From contrasts come modes of synthesis: A + B = AB

Example: Beliefs (A) + Contrasted Input (B) --> produce --> Synthesis (AB)

* B = new, perhaps enriching meaning

Contrasts are stimuli for thought, increased sensibility, increased sensitivity, and increase openness among other things.

3 - Twenty-Seven Categories of Explanation

• 01 - The actual world is a process in the becoming of actual entities
• 02 - The actual entity is the real concrescence of many potentials
• 03- Concrescence involves many processes:

• novel prehensions
• nexi
• propositions
• multiplicities
• contrasts
• but there are no novel eternal objects

• 04- For every entity lies the potential for concrescence / becoming
• 05 - No two actual entities originate from an identical universe
• 06 - There lies a multiplicity of mode but only one modal outcome
• 07 - Eternal objects may be postscriptively described as pure potentials without birthing actual entities
• 08 - An actual entity requires an internal object and an external process
• 09 - The combination of object and process creates a unique actual entity
• 10 - An actual entity's concrete elements are a result of a concrescence of prehensions.
• 11 - Every prehension has a prehending subject, a prehended datum, and an resulting subject
• 12 - Prehensions may be either positive or negative re operative or inoperative datum
• 13 - Subjective forms may be many things: emotions, valuations, purposes, adversions, aversions, consciousness, etc
• 14 - A nexus consists of two or more actual entities related by a prehension of the other
• 15 - A proposition is the unity of actual entities in their potential for forming a nexus with each other; further, propositions may be partially defined by their relatedness to an eternal object
• 16 - A multiplicity consists of many entities unified by several features: Specific reference to its community of entities small or complex or voided by having no community at all
• 17 - A complex datum has unity if it is a pertinently linked community of entities
• 18 - The ontological principle of process must have efficiency, finality, and causation.
• 19 - Fundamental types of entities are i) actual entities, and ii) eternal objects; all others express either or both of those types
• 20 - Function refers to determination of the entities into the nexus of some actual world
• 21 - An entity is actual if it has significance for itself which functions to its own determination. It requires self-identity and self-diversity.
• 22 - Process function has different roles in self-formation without losing self-identity: self-creation, coherent transformation. Thus, "becoming" is the transformation of incoherence into coherence.
• 23 - Self-functioning is the internal constitution of an actual entity. It brings to itself immediacy so that it is the subject of its own immediacy.
• 24 - Objectification occurs with a functioning entity provides to another the act of self-creation. Eternal objects ingress upon the actual entity [while actual entities express an eternal object]
• 25 - The final phase of concrescence of an entity "satisfies" its self-creation: determinative, objective, and either a positive or negative prehension
• 26 - Every object of concrescence is towards "final satisfaction"
• 27 - Concrescence has several phases wherein new prehensions arise by integration with antecedent prehensions. In this way the flow of panexperientialism is passed from one entity to another, and from one event to another, each leading towards one determinate integral satisfaction [never "final" but always progressing forwards from prehension to concrescence to actuality

SECTION III - THE CATEGORIES

pp 26 - 28

4 - Nine Categoreal Obligations

1. The Category of Subjective Unity
2. The Category of Objective Identity
3. The Category of Objective Diversity
4. The Category of Conceptual Valuation
5. The Category of Conceptual Reversion
6. The Category of Transmutation
7. The Category of Subjective Harmony
8. The Category of Subjective Intensity
9. The Category of Freedom and Determination

9 - Freedom and Determination - an actual occasion is i) internally determined in its purpose towards concrescence but, ii) is externally free to re-determine its choice or direction.

"The concrescence of each individual actual entity is

internally determined and is externally free." - ANW

SECTION IV - SUMMARY

pp 28 - 30

*Skipped by John Cobb. Starts Chapter 3 which will be carried on in our discussion in Part III.

All is original. Every moment of becoming is perpetually

birthing a new creativity that is novel and becoming - res

A.N. Whitehead - A Conspectus of Whitehead's Metaphysics

Alfred North Whitehead

A Conspectus of A. N. Whitehead’s Metaphysics

http://www.philosopher.eu/a-n-whitehead-summary/

by Peter Sjostedt-H

* To Peter's observations I will abridge it with my own using [RES]

• A system of panpsycho-panentheism.
• i.e. a panpsychism: that all entities have sentience (or, ‘proto-sentience’), combined with a panentheism: that God is nature and more
• [RES - panexperientialism may be the more prefered route re inorganic matter]

• Whitehead calls his system the ‘Philosophy of Organism’; it is also known as ‘Process Philosophy’.
• Every entity is an organism, encapsulated in his sentence:
  • ‘Biology is the study of the larger organisms; whereas physics is the study of the smaller organisms.’ (SMW, ch. VI)
• It is known as Process Philosophy because in actuality there are no static substances, but only events, occasions, processes.
• [RES - In place of, or in addition to "organism" the idea of "Being & Event" might be added]

• The smallest processes are called ‘actual occasions’, or ‘actual entities’.
• These are drops of experience that constitute nature (cf. William James).

• Actual entities are perspectives on the world, analogous to Leibniz’s monads. They are transitory: they become and they perish.

• The process of an actual entity is called a concrescence. [It] involves:

• an initial subjective aim to create that actual entity,

• a prehension of other actual entities,

• a subjective aim that conduces a decision, and

• a satisfaction that completes the process.

• An initial subjective aim is bequeathed by the panentheistic God (see below) that sets off an experiential perspective.

• [RES - The word "bequeathed" may speak of a determinate cosmos; as such, open and relational process theology would say God allows creational interminate freewill]

• An actual entity prehends other actual entities, but not in the traditional relation of representation-to-object but rather as part-to-whole.
• i. e. the prehension of an actual entity is the actual inclusion of that other actual entity within itself. This fusion is called vectoring. There is no absolute subject-object dichotomy. (cf. Henri Bergson)

• The type of qualia that actual entities employ for their prehensions are called ‘eternal objects’. These are metaphysical ‘pure potentials’ and subsist within a realm of ‘God’ (see below).

• Prehensions can be positive or negative, physical or conceptual:
• Positive prehensions are of what is included in the actual entity. [sic, Formed Relationships]
• Negative prehensions reject entities and concepts for inclusion. [sic, Unformed Relationships]
• Physical prehensions are of other actual entities.
• Conceptual prehensions are of eternal objects alone.
• There are also impure and hybrid prehensions which are combinations of the above.

• An actual entity is determined by past prehensions, but is also to varying extents self-determined through its subjective aim that strives for experiential aesthetic intensity.

• There is thus efficient causality in the inheritance of the prehensions of actual entities, and final causation (teleology) in the subjective aim of actual entities.

• [RES - Prehensive Process --> AE / AO --> Process of Becoming]

• Actual entities in aggregate are called nexūs, and if the nexūs share a common characteristic they are called societies. An electron is an example of a society, as is an atom, molecule and crystal.

• Whitehead adopts a dual-aspect theory whereby external appearance correlates to internal experience.

• What are traditionally named ‘organisms’ are complex societies.

• These high-grade societies ‘transmute’ a plurality of incoming prehensions into an abstracted unity for ease of comprehension. Common human sense perception is an example thereof.

• There are two main species of human perception: perception in the mode of causal efficacy (PMCE) and perception in the mode of presentational immediacy (PMPI):
• PMPI is commonly identified with all perception, being that from the five senses.
• PMCE is the less distinct yet more ubiquitous internal experience of the actions and experiences of the past and concurrent surroundings flowing into the present.
• Our actual perception is the combination of these two, a combination named ‘perception in the mixed mode of symbolic reference‘.
• [RES - Sensation + experience = perception]

• God is vital for the operations of Whitehead’s system. (S)He has two natures: the primordial and the consequent:
• The primordial nature of God (PNG) is the realm of eternal objects.
  • The eternal objects are ingressed into all our experiences thereby determining the qualitative type of the experience.
• The consequent nature of God (CNG) is the pantheistic unity of all experiences drawn into one higher consciousness.
• PNG is unconscious; CNG is conscious.
• [RES - Open & Relational Process Theology state that God IS and IS BECOMING ("I AM That I AM"). Thus, Experiential Event --> Prehensive Process --> Concresence as eternal cycle)]

• God bestows the initial subjective aim for an actual entity as a lure for its concresence and the experiential intensity it evokes.
• It is God’s purpose to enjoy the experiential intensities S(H)e provokes.
• [RES - "enjoy" perhaps learn, take in, observe, be affected by, take action, etc]

• God is not omnipotent as actual entities and their societies have their own teleology.

• [RES - Open and Relational Process Theology may say God uses His omnipotence to sustain the cosmos but choses to guide, or participate, with it by its permission.]

• God is not omniscient because the future does not yet exist because novelty emerges from actualities via their subjective aim and the infinity of eternal objects.

• [RES - Open and Relational Process Theology may says unknowing is the nature of becoming.]

• God is not omnibenevolent because morality is subordinate to aesthetic appreciation which is God’s desire. (Thus ‘God’ is perhaps a misnomer.)

• [RES - Open and Relational Process Theology may rather say the God is always, and at all times, loving. It is both a choice but far deeper, it is who He is.]

• Above Actual Entities and God, the third main tenet of Whitehead’s cosmology is Creativity.
• God conditions creativity but it is beyond His control.

• All but the PNG is subject to flux, to process, to novelty, to creativity.
• Matter evolves as well as ‘organisms’, the laws of nature change, even the three dimensions of our extensive epoch will pass into history and in its place a cosmos of unimaginable difference will rise.

[*Note - RES - Based on Open & Relational Process Theology Whitehead's metaphysic of cosmology will need more rigorous adaptation as ORPT is a more recent subject not known during Whitehead's day though he was leaning into it.]