A Conspectus of A. N. Whitehead’s Metaphysics

by Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes

 

 

• 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.

 

• 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.

 

• 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 that 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.

 

• 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 (and other objects) 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.
  • Negative prehensions reject entities and concepts for inclusion.
  • 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.

 

• 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‘.

 

• 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.

 

• 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.

 

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

• 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.

• God is not omnibenevolent because morality is subordinate to aesthetic appreciation which is God’s desire.

• (Thus ‘God’ is perhaps a misnomer.)

 

• 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.

 

Video rendition: www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIj2-lSnQ5M

PDF on Academia.edu: www.academia.edu/23885796/A_Conspectus_of_A._N._Whiteheads_Metaphysics

For my public article on Whitehead’s philosophy in Philosophy Now magazine (#114) – click here.

My Notes on Whitehead’s process philosophy for Undergraduate Class:  http://www.philosopher.eu/texts/1248-2/

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Relevant links:

Whitehead Quotations

Whitehead’s Concept of Nature (extract)

Panpsychism – Introduction

William James on Fechner