Whitehead concepts
I. Substance is that wich exists by itself
II. We use substance to mean solid stuff. It is not what the world
is made of.
III. Substance, then tends to mean "matter or energy". The
fundamental substrate of real forms and qualities.
IV. But this is not the formal meaning of substance in philosophy,
as described by Descartes in his principle of philosophy: By substance we
can conceive nothing else than a thing wich exists in such a way as to
stand in need of nothing beyond itself in order to its existence.
V. Substance refers to that wich can subsist by itself, and needs
nothing else to sustain its existence.
VI. As Descartes argued: Nonspatial mind, or "thinking stuff", can
exist on its own; it does not depend on a body for its existence.
VII. This for Descartes, both matter and mind were substances.
VIII. Whitehead argues against the notion of substance in its strict
philosophical sense.
IX. Whitehead says that there can be no such thing as a wholly
self-sustaining ultimate.
X. There may be an ultimate _ he insists there must be an ultimate
to avoid infinite regress _ but this ultimate is not self-sustaining.
XI. The ultimate is not a substance.
XII. By itself, the ultimate is an abstraction, he can have no
meaning apart from its particular instantiations.
XIII. Actual reality is a process of interchange between "eternal
objects" and "actual entities".
XIV. Eternal objects may exist at the level of ultimate reality, but
this is not existence _ it is existence only in the form of pure
potentiality.
XV. Eternal objects can be expressed only as ingredients of some (or
many) actual entities.
XVI. Thus the ultimate is interdependent with some, many, or all of
its actual manifestations.
XVII. Neither ultimate eternal objects, nor limited and determined
actual entities, are self-sufficient.
XVIII. They are wholly dependent on each other, and so are not
substances.
XIX. They are instead processes because the relationship between
eternal objects and actual entities is one of act or acting.
XX. The eternal objects "ingress" into (become ingredient of) actual
entities that come into being through the "coming together" (concrescence)
of eternal objects passed on from previous, completed actual occasions.
XXI. There is no substance because nothing exists by itself.
XXII. The world is a network in time and space of interconnected and
interpenetrating processes.
XXIII. There are no single occasions, in the sense of isolated
occasions. Actuality is through and through togetherness.
XXIV. Each volume of space, or each lapse of time, includes in its
essence aspect of all volumes of space, or of all lapses of time.
I. A thing just is where it is, and nowhere else.
II. Closely interwoven with the notion of substance is the
"commonsense" belief in simple location.
III. It follows that if something can exists wholly by itself, then
at any time and any place that object remains wholly itself in that place,
at that time.
IV. According to this view, real objects are extended in space by
necessity _ for if they did not occupy space (e.g numbers) they would be
abstractions.
V. But, from this perspective, real objects, need not be extended in
time. The passage of time for any object is an accident.
VI. It is something that happens to the object, but it is not an
integral part of its essence the way space or volume is.
VII. According to this notion of simple location, an object can be
wholly itself at any instant of time (where instant means without
duration). It doesn't need time to exist.
VIII. Take any slice of time, no matter how small, and the object is
still there wholly itself.
IX. Whitehead disagrees with all of this.
X. First that any object is simply located, and second, that it is
simply located in time.
XI. He says that every object is the result of a process whereby
aspects of the universe converge ("concrescence") to become that object.
XII. Thus the object is really a process extended over distances
that involve the entire universe.
XIII. Furthermore, it also has to be extended over time.
XIV. If it were possible for an object to exist wholly as itself at
any instant, then the question arises: How could it be the same object the
next instant ?
XV. If it is wholly itself at an instant, then no part of it can
extend to either the previous instant or to the subsequent instant. It
would be a different object from instant to instant.
XVI. So what would account for the apparent continuity from instant
to instant of what we take to be a self-identical object ?
XVII. Without some connection between instants _ that is, without
extension from moment to moment _ you could have no memory of what
happened even a split second ago.
XVIII. Without extension in time there could be no
self-identity.
I. Confusing abstractions with concrete reality. According to
Whitehead, both the notions of substance and of simple location are
examples of "misplaced concreteness".
II. It is not wholly untrue to say that an object exists in a
particular place.
III. But the full truth of the situation is that the "object" is
embedded in a flux _ a flux of events that are creating that "object" at
that location, for that duration.
IV. Beyond that, the "object" has no real existence. It is merely an
abstraction from the flow of the whole. A helpful way to picture this is
the way a tornado forms.
V. It is nothing more than a concrescence of meteorological events,
swirling cones of wind. Yet we even give it a name.
VI. The tornado looks like a thing _ we can point to it, measure it
_ but in essence it is just rapid, patterned movments of air.
VII. It emerges from the flux of weather events, has its own
particular form.
I. "Taking account" of at-a-distance. What we call "objects" are
really the focal points _ or gatherings together" of events _ of processes
streaming from the universe.
II. Whitehead calls this streaming together the act of
"concrescence".
III. But this coming together is not merely a receptive, passive
affair.
IV. The focal entity actively selects from the innumerable, if not
infinite, possibilities streaming its way _ otherwise, there would be no
way of explaining why one "object" or event should differ from any other.
V. Yet all actual entities are individuals, they are distinct.
VI. This act of selection is what we call "perception" at the level
of human organisms.
VII. It is a "reaching out" and "taking account" of what is distant
in space (and time) from the actual entity occupying this point here in
space at this moment now.
VIII. This "reaching out" is not unique to humans, not even to
animals. Whitehead extends the concept, calling it prehension, to all
actual entities all the way down.
IX. This unity of a prehension defines itself as a here and a now,
and the things so gathered into the grasped unity have essential reference
to other places and other times.
X. With this understanding, Whitehead introduces his notion of
"sense-objet": An entity of wich we become aware in sense perception is
the terminus of our act of perception.
XI. Whitehead says that a sense-object has ingression into
space-time.
XII. Unlike Galileo and locke's, Whitehead makes no distinction
between primary and secondary qualities; instead, he embeds sense-objects
in the domain of space-time.
XIII. The prehension of a particular sense-object follows the
ingression (the becoming ingredient of) into space-time of that particular
object.
I. Events are happenings over time and space _ embracing past,
present, future.
II. They enfold the past, mirror the present, and anticipate the
futur. Whatever is prehended (or perceived) is always an event.
III. An event is the grasping into unity of a pattern of aspects.
IV. The word event just means one of those spatio-temporal unities.
Accordingly it may be used instead of the term "prehension" as meaning the
thing prehended.
I. Everything (every event) is related to everything else (every
other events).
II. Whitehead's theory involves the entire abandonment of the notion
that simple location is the primary way in wich things are involved in
space-time.
III. In a certain sens, everything is everywhere at all times.
IV. For every location involves an aspect of itself in every other
location. Thus every spatio-temporal stand-point mirrors the world.
V. The holographic character of Whitehead's organicist worldview
echoes Buddhist descriptions of the fundamental interrelatedness of all
beings.
VI. In both, the overall impression is of a cosmos mirroring itself
in all its parts, a hierarchical cosmos in wich every entity is partly
created and sustained by every other.
VII. The "parts" of the cosmos are not independant bits of matter,
they are organisms creating and being created by their environment.
VIII. In a purely mechanical universe, where all things happen due
to outside disturbances, the only reality is extrinsic _ where all things
are related externally as configurations of independent substances.
IX. In Process & Reality, Whitehead uses the term "nexus" to
point to a distinct node in the network of universal relationships
streaming and interpenetrating into each other.
X. [A] nexus is a set of acual entities in the unity of the
relatedness constituted by their prehension to each other.
XI. What in normal language we might refer to as an "individual"
(you or me), Whitehead describes technically as a "nexus" of unified
dynamic relationships.
I. That wich is. What actually exists. What is really real.
II. "Actual entities" _ also termed "actual occasions" _ are the
final real things of wich the world is made up.
III. There is no going behind actual entities to find anything more
real.
IV. The final facts are, all alike, actual entities; and these
actual entities are drop of experience, complex and interdependent.
V. Whitehead is quite explicit that "an actual entity is a process,
and is not describable in terms of the morphology of a stuff".
VI. The very being of an actual entity is that it acts, it becomes
itself, its becoming constitutes what it is.
VII. An actual entity is wholly a process of coming into existence _
an actual entity is the act of existing.
VIII. Beyond the process of coming into existence, there is no
actual existence. Thus the world is "made-up" of actual entities in the
sense that they are its dynamic ingredients.
IX. Its own process is what creates the world from moment to moment
to moment; universal process is the fundamental constituency of all
reality.
X. Without act, no actuality; without process, no actual existence.
XI. Actual entities are the only reasons; so that to search for a
reason is to search for one or more actual entities.
I. Changeless forms, the ultimate ingredient of all events.
II. Some objects exist but do not have actual existence; they exist
potentially.
III. But their being potential does not diminish their importance in
the scheme of things, fir without them no actual entities could exist.
IV. The reverse is also true. No eternal objects could exist in the
absence of actual entities.
V. What are examples of something that is "eternal" and in what way
are they "objects" ?
VI. Whitehead gives as examples of eternal objects: "colors, sounds,
scents, geometrical characters.
VII. They are what in classical and medieval metaphysics were called
"universals".
VIII. Where an actual entity is particular, an eternal object is a
universal.
IX. Each human is a particular examplar or instantiation (or
manifestation) of universal humanity.
X. Without humanity, there could be no individual humans; without
individual humans, there could be no humanity.
XI. Particulars participate in universals.
XII. This interfusion of events is effected by the aspects of those
eternal objects, such as color, sounds, scents, geometrical characters,
wich are required for nature and are not emergent from it.
XIII. Such an eternal object will be an ingredient of one event
under the guise, or aspect, of qualifying another event.
XIV. Each event corresponds to two such patterns; namely, the
pattern of aspects wich of other events wich it grasps into its own unity,
and the pattern of its aspects wich other events severally grasp into
their unities.
XV. We conceive actuality as in essential relation to an
unfathomable possibility.
XVI. Eternal objects inform actual occasions with hierarchic
patterns.
XVII. Every actual occasion is a limitation imposed on possibility,
and by virtue of this limitation the particular value of that shape
togetherness of things emerges.
I. Each relationship enters into the essence of the event.
II. For Whitehead, every actual entity is constituted by a set of
internal relations _ meaning it derives its very being, its essence, and
its value from the relationship between the various prior actual entities
and eternal objects that stream into it from the past in each moment.
III. Without these constitutive internal relations, nothing actual
would exist. Reality, therefore, is essentially both relational and
interior.
IV. Furthermore, these relationships are felt or prehended. The only
way for a set of internal relationships to endure from moment to the next
is for interiority to be experiential _ to literally feel the presence of
the past.
V. Internal relations, then, account for the experiential
interiority, or subjectivity _ "the what-it-feels-like from within" _ of
every actual entity or event all the way down.
VI. Whitehead: "Each relationship enters into the essence of the
event; so that, apart from that relationship, the event would not be
itself. This is what is meant by the very notion of internal relations".
VII. Whitehead: "It has been usual, indeed universal, to hold that
spacio-temporal relationships are external. This doctrine is what is here
denied".
VIII. All entities are not of equal values. The hierarchical depth
of internal relations experienced by any particular entity is the relative
value of that entity within its hierarchical network.
IX. For instance, a cell is more valuable than a molecule or an
atom, and a dog or a fish is more valuable than a single cell, because it
literally incorporates more reality, more complex nesting of levels of
internal relations.
X. On this analysis, downward causation is more valuable than upward
causation (e.g instances of mental activity determined by events in the
brain).
XI. Whitehead: "An actual event is an achievement for its own sake,
a grasping of diverse entities into a value by reason of their real
togetherness in that pattern, to the exclusion of other entities".
XII. Whitehead: "This really means that each intrinsic essence, that
is to say, what each eternal object is in itself, becomes relevant to the
one limited value emergent in the guise of the event.
XIII. Whitehead: "But values differ in importance. Thus, though each
event is necessary for the community of events, the weight of its
contribution is determined by something intrinsic in itself".
XIV. Whitehead identifies this "something intrinsic" as a property
he calls "retention", or "endurance", or "reiteration".
XV. Value, therefore, is graded, hierarchical. It depends on the
hierarchical depth of self identity.
XVI. The more of the layered spacio-temporal hierarchy of organisms
that contributes to his self-identity, the more value that
organism-as-a-whole has.
XVII. Value, then, is the mirroring of internal relations. It is the
mirroring of the self-identity of the whole in its parts, and of the parts
of the whole.
XVIII. Whitehead: "There is the same thing-for-its-own-sake standing
before you. Thus the event, in its own intrinsic reality, mirrors itself,
as derived from its own parts, aspects of the same patterned value as it
realizes in its complete self".
XIX. Whitehead: "It thus realizes itself under the guise of an
enduring individual entity, with a life history contained within itself".
Processes come in whole units _ pulses of self-creation
and perishing.
All concrete enduring entities are organisms: the whole
influences its parts (its various suborganisms) that come together to form
it. Part-whole relationship are mutually determining. An alternative to
mechanism.