/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14414562]

Whitehead general #2

>What is the best order to read Whitehead?
Modes of Thought>Science and the Modern World>Adventures of Ideas>Process and Reality

What most people think process philosophy is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q6cDp0C-I8
What process philosophy actually is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmwXkJV_B-w

>Short summary of Whitehead's philosophy
http://www.philosopher.eu/a-n-whitehead-summary/
>What is radical empiricism?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_empiricism
>What are eternal objects?
http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=578
>What are prehensions?
http://home.earthlink.net/~icedneuron/Whitehead_Prehensions.htm
http://ppquimby.com/alan/prehen.htm
>Whitehead on Feelings
http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=1309
>Whitehead's God, or the Body Without Organs
http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/God.pdf
>What is Panexperientialism?
http://www.eoht.info/m/page/Panexperientialism
>What is Constructive Postmodernism?
http://huarenworldnet.org/articles/postmodernism
>A presentation on the socio-political implications of Whitehead's metaphysics.
https://youtu.be/BHztIS9kdVY

Best secondary readings on Whitehead:
The Quantum of Explanation: Whitehead’s Radical Empiricism by Auxier and Herstein
https://b-ok.cc/book/2927096/aa126b
Thinking with Whitehead: A Free and Wild Creation of Concepts by Stengers
https://b-ok.cc/book/2082942/1ccd0c
The Metaphysics of Experience: A Companion to Whitehead's Process and Reality by Kraus
https://b-ok.cc/book/1077436/3d79ba
The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism by Shaviro
https://b-ok.cc/book/2459618/d9afe9
Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics by Shaviro
https://b-ok.cc/book/815296/a64416
Steven Shaviro's Blog. Look for his posts on Whitehead.
http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/

>Whitehead is the quintessential math poet and the philosopher of adventure!
"There is a greatness in the lives of those who build up religious systems, a greatness in action, in idea and in self-subordination, embodied in instance after instance through centuries of growth. There is a greatness in the rebels who destroy such systems: they are the Titans who storm heaven, armed with passionate sincerity. It may be that the revolt is the mere assertion by youth of its right to its proper brilliance, to that final good of immediate joy. Philosophy may not neglect the multifariousness of the world — the fairies dance, and Christ is nailed to the cross."

[Anonymous No.14414582]

Based

[Anonymous No.14414586]

[Anonymous No.14414589]

[Anonymous No.14414590]

[Anonymous No.14414594]

Didn't godel BTFO this guy's magnus opus (principia)?

[Anonymous No.14414595]

[Anonymous No.14414626]

Whitehead is the crown heir to Nietzsche. Fuck Heidegger.

[Anonymous No.14414641]

>>14414562
Contrary to the Whiteheadian, it is Derrida who is the foremost philosopher of creativity and adventure. The Derridean realization puts us out on open seas. But a direction is necessarily taken, and land is inevitably found. It is then that we realize that this act was just another Derridean realization. We are then free once again.

[Anonymous No.14414650]

>>14414641
>Up until the event which I wish to mark out and define, structure—or rather the structurality of structure—although it has always been involved, has always been neutralized or reduced, and this by a process of giving it a center or referring it to a point of presence, a fixed origin. The function of this center was not only to orient, balance, and organize the structure—one cannot in fact conceive of an unorganized structure—but above all to make sure that the organizing principle of the structure would limit what we might call the freeplay of the structure. No doubt that by orienting and organizing the coherence of the system, the center of a structure permits the freeplay of its elements inside the total form. And even today the notion of a structure lacking any center represents the unthinkable itself.
>Besides the tension of freeplay with history, there is also the tension of freeplay with presence. Freeplay is the disruption of presence. The presence of an element is always a signifying and substitutive reference inscribed in a system of differences and the movement of a chain. Freeplay is always an interplay of absence and presence, but if it is to be radically conceived, freeplay must be conceived of before the alternative of presence and absence; being must be conceived of as presence or absence beginning with the possibility of freeplay and not the other way around.

[Anonymous No.14414672]

[Anonymous No.14414679]

[Anonymous No.14414718]

[Anonymous No.14414793]

Based

[Anonymous No.14414939]

Whitehead's theory of prehension is really amazing and cuts across the whole subject/object distinction, representation, solipsism, mind/body distinction, bifurcation of nature while also explaining a bunch of other shit like causality and so on. I think reading Whitehead would heal a lot of the ailments we have in a lot of the metaphysics people are still using.

[Anonymous No.14415053]

[Anonymous No.14415160]

Bump

[Anonymous No.14415431]

>https://youtu.be/BHztIS9kdVY
Thanks for posting

[Anonymous No.14415770]

Bump

[Anonymous No.14416024]

Process-relational philosophy gives at least two accounts of experience that aren't capable of communicating on each other's terms despite being somewhat mutually intelligible. You have to pick between the flâneur and the surveyor, the first is for the navigator the second is for the cartographer.

[Anonymous No.14416343]

>>14416024
More info please?

[Anonymous No.14416448]

>>14414594
Kind of, but this is literally a popsci meme-tier understanding of the subject of foundations. First of all Whitehead and Russell's work was extremely succesful in demonstrating the efficacy of formal logic and set theory in math. Secondly it helped initiate trends in both math and philosophy that were hugely dominant. Third, they provided a fairly convincing defense of the logicist position. That being said, I'm not even sure that Whitehead himself was ever actually a logicist. I know Russell was, but given Whitehead's own philosophy I would imagine he was closer to Godel or maybe Brouwer. At any rate, the idea that Russell and Whitehead failed or that their work has been refuted is not entirely accurate. In fact, pretty much anyone who majors in math or computer science today learns about Humes Principle, Peano Arithmetic, Von Neumann ordinals, and Hilbert Style deductions, so much of the early 20th century foundations is alive and well (although classical foundations and recursion theory are not really active as fields of research).

[Anonymous No.14416556]

>>14416448
Interesting. Indeed I was memeing - I actually have a degree in computer science and despite knowing those things you mentioned, yet I was under the impression that principia was a failed attempt at Hilbert's program (i.e. dealing with paradoxes in formal logic). This probably came from me reading Hofstadter's Godel Escher Bach a few years ago... I'm also aware that while Russell was wrong about many things (not just in logic and philosophy, but also in psychology; in fact, wherever he pops up he's usually noted for having proposed a totally incorrect theory) he was massively influential and I have actually enjoyed reading his history of philosophy.

Don't know anything about Whitehead other than the fact that he coauthored principia. Might read his plato entry.

[Anonymous No.14416677]

Whitehead on logical positivism, Witty, Bertie, and Carnap in a letter
> Logical Positivism is a topic rarely distant from my thought. Every mathematician and symbolic logician is, in his habit of thought, a logical positivist. Yet to some of the expositions I find myself in violent opposition — especially to the very habit of dismissing questions as unmeaning i.e. unable to be expressed in existing symbolism. Wittgenstein annoys me intensely. He is the complete example of the sayings: I am Master of the College What I know not, is not knowledge.
> Logical Positivism in this mood — its only mood — will produce a timid, shut in, unenterprising state of mind, engaged in the elaboration of details. I always test these general rules by trying to imagine the sterilizing effect of such a state of mind, if prevalent at any time in the last ten thousand years.
> The fact is that thought in the previous two centuries has been engaged in disengaging itself from the shackles of dogmatic divinity. Thus it unconsciously seeks new fetters, viz anything offensive to the Pope of Rome. But I see no reason to believe that the stretch of Bertrand Russell’s mind or of Wittgenstein’s mind, or of Carnap’s mind, has attained the limits of insight or expression possible in the evolution of intelligent beings. They are bright boys, good representatives of a stage of rationalization, but nothing more.

[Sage No.14416804]

Cringe

[Anonymous No.14416828]

>>14416804
faggot

[Anonymous No.14416848]

Why doesn't interesting discussion ever take place in Whitehead threads? It looks like Derrida anon is trying to spice things up again, but alas, the thread is nothing but links, quotes, memes, photos, copy-pasted walls of text we've seen a thousand times already. It's like bots are making these posts.

[Anonymous No.14416870]

>>14416848
People need to actually read him to discuss. The Derrida guy didn't even read him. Links and pics are for newcomers to see what he was about

[Anonymous No.14416998]

>>14416870
Derrida guy here. Yes, I have read him (at least enough of him to initiate discussion). Judging by the performance of my interlocutors, it was them that hadn't read him, or Derrida for that matter.

[Anonymous No.14417014]

All I want are autistic rants from girardfag and eris

[Anonymous No.14417150]

>>14416848
because Whitehead is being astroturfed on /lit/ by one dedicated autist, as opposed to someone like Guenon (who retroactively refuted Whitehead along with Parmenides) who has an organic folllwing with many dozens of regular posters who enjoy reading him and posting about him

[Anonymous No.14417165]

>>14417150
lol ok guenonfag

[Anonymous No.14417166]

>>14416848
Why would anyone ever put effort into their postings at all?

[Anonymous No.14417181]

>>14417150
Let's be honest. It's easuer for midwits to discuss Guenon and bullshit whatever discussion about him even without reading him. You can't really talk about Whitehead without reading him.

[Anonymous No.14417196]

>>14417150
Let's be honest. It's easier for midwits to discuss Guenon and bullshit whatever discussion about him even without reading him. Very simple ideas which the whole /pol/ crowd can get behind "durr kali yuga and shit bro no one has tradition and shit man shits in a decline. bro like black people semen has like magical qualities herp derp."You can't really talk about Whitehead without reading him.

[Anonymous No.14417237]

>>14416998
I don't believe you. You didn't seem to know anything about prehensions.

[Anonymous No.14417263]

whitehead is a hack

[Anonymous No.14417273]

I don't know much about Whitehead or Guenon but I can assure you guys that Hegel is one big pile of shit.

[Anonymous No.14417281]

>>14417273
hegel really is cringe. giovanni gentile had a much better take of the dialectic.

[Anonymous No.14417300]

What will I get from reading Peirce alongside Whitehead? Being part of American Pragmatism which was a huge influence in Whitehead, what does Peirce have to add?

[Anonymous No.14417303]

>>14417300
on*

[Anonymous No.14417319]

>>14417300
>>14417303
the only pierce you need to read is william luther pierce

[Eris Omniquery No.14417328]

>>14416848
The last thread had some good discussion: boards.4channel.org/lit/thread/14398282
Today it's slow because Christmas.
>>14417014
>All I want are autistic rants from girardfag and eris
My rants are 100% bipolar artism, periods of wild experimentation where I explore tangents and interconnections. I just engaged in such a period between September 20th and late November, now I'm in a period of rest and digestion so I'm not posting anything. If my pattern continues as it has, this will be followed by more reading, the creation of a new essay, and then the search for some new premise to serve as a launching point of another ramble.

[Anonymous No.14417654]

>>14417319
peirce not pierce

[Anonymous No.14417682]

>>14417328
Any important readings/videos you think should be added to the OP?

[Eris Omniquery No.14417821]

>>14417682
Yeah, I highly suggest you read "Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines."

[Anonymous No.14417841]

>>14417237
My comments were not directed at the content of Whitehead's edifice, but rather its conditions; I suggest you read them again, but only in light of a better understanding of Derrida. You can explain to me the relevance of "prehensions" in regard to my comments, or you can fall back onto another one of your cliches.

[Anonymous No.14417890]

>>14417821
faggot

[Eris Omniquery No.14417934]

>>14417890
You seem unsettled. Perhaps you should take a trip back to lereddit.

[Anonymous No.14418028]

Should I repeat my criticisms of Whitehead's use of mental terms for physical objects or is this meme tired already

[Anonymous No.14418035]

>>14418028
?

[Eris Omniquery No.14418078]

>>14418028
>>14418035
You should, so the redditors learn.

[Anonymous No.14418095]

>>14417328
bipolar autism*

[Anonymous No.14418112]

>>14418028
>>14414589

[Anonymous No.14418382]

>>14418035
>>14418078
>>14418112
The people have spoken, so here we go again. The criticism is centered around whether Whitehead's ascribing of mental properties to physical entities manages to make a point about ontology or it devolves to flowery wordplay.

The author of this >>14414589
passage starts by rejecting both a literal and metaphorical use of Whitehead's language. It's not literal because he is not a panpsychist, but also not metaphorical, since he admits that there is no analogy to be found that explains in what sense a material object has "emotions", or "makes decisions". In this point we should already be suspicious, for how is it possible to speak in a way that is neither literal or metaphorical?

His solution is to suggest that we should negate these aspects of the activity that are peculiar to human consciousness and arrive at some more general characteristics by a leap of the imagination. But what is that supposed to mean? When we normally talk about emotion, we are referring to states like sadness, happiness, fear and the like that are part of our conscious experience. In fact what the author gives us here is an unexplained metaphor while denying that it is a metaphor so he isn't obliged to explain it. Far from explaining Whitehead, he has shielded him from criticism by denying every intelligible interpretation of his doctrine while shifting the burden of explanation to his audience, who are expected to understand how a chair has also emotions but isn't conscious with a leap of the imagination. Hence, the attempt to elaborate Whitehead fails and all we are left with is a cryptic formulation with no discernible content.

[Eris Omniquery No.14418402]

>>14418382
based and redpilled

[Anonymous No.14418423]

>>14418382
>Far from explaining Whitehead, he has shielded him from criticism by denying every intelligible interpretation of his doctrine while shifting the burden of explanation to his audience
This summarizes my interactions with this board's "Whiteheadians" rather well.

[Anonymous No.14418596]

>>14418382
Oh you were that guy from the thread. Yeah not a real criticism. The entire point of that passage went over your head.
Experience is taken in the barest sense. He is not saying that the chair has emotions, there is a distinction being made between panpsychism and panexperientialism. Two atoms bumping together is an experience within the cosmos.

[Anonymous No.14418621]

>>14418382
>>14418596
I.e. experience (or actual entities-which all have relations with one another) is the fundamental building block of his philosophy. read more into Whitehead or at least read some of the links in the OP before trying to make another criticism.

[Anonymous No.14418670]

>>14418402
Stop using someone else's name.

[Eris Omniquery No.14418679]

>>14418670
No.

[Anonymous No.14418820]

>>14418596
>Two atoms bumping together is an experience within the cosmos.
So Whitehead is just playing semantics with the word "experience"? If any contact at all between two objects counts as an "experience" then his process philosophy is just standard materialism with fancy terms. You defended Whitehead by making his point trivial, as an idiosyncratic (and misleading) way to say something everyone already agrees with.

[Anonymous No.14418834]

>>14418820
>Whitehead is just playing semantics with the word "experience"?
No. Like I said, at least try to read some of the links or maybe even wikipedia before you try to discuss his philosophy.

[Anonymous No.14418844]

>>14418820
also it is not standard materialism. his philosophy is a philosophy of events. he named his philosophy the philosophy of organism. it is also an aesthetic ontology. maybe it can be seen as a sort of wonky materialism. it fits well with quantum mechanics.

[Anonymous No.14418857]

Philosophy noob here. Did Whitehead write an answer to Parmenides? Or did he just pretend he didn't exist?

[Anonymous No.14418864]

>>14418857
He reconciles permanence and flux and the one and the many. Stop falling for memes also.

[Anonymous No.14418867]

>>14418864
How does he do that? Could you elaborate?

[Anonymous No.14418868]

>>14418857
>>14414595

[Anonymous No.14418875]

>>14418834
I just read the Wikipedia entry on radical empiricism and it fails to explain what it is and how it differs from traditional Empiricism. Don't link it again, it's terrible. Reading the philosopher.eu article now.

[Anonymous No.14418879]

k i go to sleep now. if you don't know anything about whitehead read the links please. hopefully the thread stays up. probably won't make another one after this.

[Anonymous No.14418880]

>>14418868
Okay but how?

[Anonymous No.14418951]

>>14418875
http://www.philosopher.eu/a-n-whitehead-summary/
>Actual entities are perspectives on the world, analogous to Leibniz’s monads.
>http://www.eoht.info/m/page/Panexperientialism
>in philosophy, panexperientialism is the view that if evolution of humans goes all the way down to subatomic particles, then human ‘experience’ by deduction must have originated at the subatomic level, which implies that not just humans but individual cells, individual molecules, individual atoms, and even individual subatomic particles, such as photons or electrons, incorporate a capacity for ‘feeling’ or degree of subjective interiority.
This is panpsychism, and it contradicts what it says here >>14414586. Whiteheadians should make up their mind about his philosophy instead of providing contradictory interpretations and then accusing critics of not getting it.

[Anonymous No.14418957]

>>14418875
http://www.philosopher.eu/a-n-whitehead-summary/
>Actual entities are perspectives on the world, analogous to Leibniz’s monads.
>http://www.eoht.info/m/page/Panexperientialism
>in philosophy, panexperientialism is the view that if evolution of humans goes all the way down to subatomic particles, then human ‘experience’ by deduction must have originated at the subatomic level, which implies that not just humans but individual cells, individual molecules, individual atoms, and even individual subatomic particles, such as photons or electrons, incorporate a capacity for ‘feeling’ or degree of subjective interiority.
This is panpsychism, and it contradicts what it says here >>14414589. Whiteheadians should make up their mind about his philosophy instead of providing contradictory interpretations and then accusing critics of not getting it.

[Anonymous No.14419010]

>>14418857
I'm someone else replying. My reply includes my own understanding of process philosophy which I find irremovable from my interpretation of his work, so this isn't Whitehead verbatim. Substance metaphysics is closely related to the law of identity, x=x, something is equivalent to itself, in itself, and change is secondary to whatever essential unchanging facets something has. Process philosophy finds its corresponding mathematical principle in calculus (the mathematical study of change) as integration and differentiation as inverse operations of the same process, with the intuitive sense of integration being "cumulative change" and differentiation "instantaneous change."

These correspond to modes of perception and interaction with change, what whitehead calls "causal efficacy" and "presentational immediacy." I independently derived this relationship from my experience and analysis of meditative techniques, with a set of practices I call "perception bending" corresponding to the anticipatory mode of perception, utilizing a feedback loop between imagined anticipation and perception to create hallucinatory experiences and altered states of consciousness. Here's descriptions of some of the techniques I learned, all by using this basic technique: https://pastebin.com/vHKeTau2 I took a course in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy a few years back that introduced me to mindfulness meditation, which is the counterpart practice: the "goal" isn't to alter experience, but to merely observe and be aware of present change. The theory of the workbook I used, "The Mindful Way Workbook" by Teasdale et al described two modes of consciousness it referred to as "being" and "doing" which I quickly recognized as corresponding to calculus.

These modes are reference frames of change-perception, with the differential mode making a fixed omnipresent experiential moment as the point of reference, with continuous flux experienced in this ever-present. Favoring this mode is doubtlessly a big reason for the presentist bias in Buddhist thought. The more familiar mode of integration has a duration as the fixed point of reference, with experienced change being "a story of change over time," the mode of language and narrative that Western philosophy emphasizes.

[Eris Omniquery No.14419012]

>>14419010
Henri Bergson had another understanding of calculus that is intimately related to these perceptual modes and epistemology:

>Bergson placed a high importance on the role of the calculus for grounding contemporary science in an intuitive but rational way. Gunter is also correct, I think, is holding that what Bergson meant by "intuition" includes both qualitative and quantitative aspects. I take it as established that, for Bergson, calculus is more than just a handy metaphor or analogy, but rather, he indeed aimed at framing an approach to the organicist world hypothesis that employs the calculus as its actual method of discovery (i.e., differentiation) and explanation (i.e., integration), and that every discovery is the inverse of an explanation and every explanation the derivative of a discovery.

(From https://www.religion-online.org/article/influence-as-confluence-bergson-and-whitehead/))

The mode of differentiation / presentational immediacy can be imagined as the continual re-discovery of the world of experience, exposure for what the routines of understanding cannot account for; one is continually "surprised" by the present moment. Understanding is an intrinsically temporal engagement.

My theory of epistemological/experiential evolution relates the process of variation-> selection-> reproduction to question -> choice -> action. This is really evolutionary theory brought back to its native domain of understanding, as biological evolution itself is an abstraction of human creativity to a non-conscious creative process that doesn't require a mind; the "intelligence" is embodied in organisms' relationships with the world. Choice is a non-generative aspect, it omits options from a selection of possibilities, while questions generate them. Questions aren't merely linguistic objects, but actions: lines of inquiry in the sense of thought, and "quests" in the sense of experiences with the world.

Where do questions come from? From exposure to the questionable, to what "surprises" existing understanding; questions are the mutagenic aspect of experience and don't omit, but instead generate alternate potentialities. The act of questioning is self-differentiation.

[Eris Omniquery No.14419014]

>>14419012
Things get a bit strange when we consider that we can become aware of our questions themselves, and ask questions about our questions that in turn mutate them - and in the process of following quests new questionable experiences may modify part of the quests, or even cause them to entirely change from their original desires. Metacognition, or "thinking about thoughts" is better thought as "questioning one's questions," and it is this faculty that is our activity of self-awareness.

Whitehead's fallacy of misplaced concreteness thus corresponds to a creationist view of human creativity which neglects questions in favor of choice and action. This is where the mistake of "free will" comes from, misidentifying choice as the driving force of self-creativity, when it is our ability to question - freedom of inquiry - which allows us to change and grow experientially over time. This freedom is a skill, and rather than coming from nowhere it comes from our coninual exposure to present change, which is a gathering of influences together in a living perspective. This has important implications for education, as it suggests that what is important isn't to "have the right answer" and to program people with the "right answers," but rather to encourage inquisitiveness. This is a matter of personal freedom, the ability to grow beyond one's existing understanding.

Questions have been woefully neglected in philosophy, though recently I came across Lani Watson's work and from what little of it I've read so far it's very admirable: https://philosophyofquestions.com/ She doesn't go as far as to link it to metaphysics, but she realizes that there's much more involved with questions than empty voids to be filled, or questions as mere linguistic objects.

>>14417682
Any important readings/videos you think should be added to the OP?

This comic: http://kiriakakis.net/comics/mused/a-day-at-the-park It's highly related to the above discussions about questions, but stands on its own as a powerfully communicated perspective of process thought.

[Eris Omniquery No.14419041]

>>14417014
Looks like you got your Christmas wish for an Eris rant. To try to bring it all home, what I think Whitehead tried to understand and communicate is a rhythm of creative inspiration that is common to art, science, and philosophy alike, a profound personal intimacy with the world of experience. This rhythm is holy to me, and I see these videos as communicating the same spirit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxVVm75k_8Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLigBYhdUDs

Whitehead was truly a poet of this sense of wondrous adventure that is nurtured gently and quietly by the tender aspects of the world.

[Anonymous No.14419434]

Is Quantum Bayesianism compatible with his philosophy?

[Anonymous No.14419731]

>>14417300
Peirce is way more esoteric than Whitehead, I wouldn't recommend reading Peirce as a complement to Whitehead. IMO, Peirce's semieotic makes the philosophy of organism seem vain in comparison. Read Peirce for Peirce.

[Anonymous No.14420033]

>>14418957
Yea that particular part is a wrong reading. He explicitly says in Process and Reality that he does not attribute conciousness to anything. Albeit I guess you can say panexperientialism is a form of panpsychism but there are large distinctions.

[Anonymous No.14420046]

>>14418957
I couldn't find an article that explains it thoroughly to be honest guess that is mb.

[Anonymous No.14420049]

>>14419010
>>14419012
>>14419014
>>14419041
Based

[Anonymous No.14420073]

>>14418957
Whitehead's point is that if you take self-consciousness as we know it (the Western/rationalist cogito) as the crown of nature, we inadvertently demean the rest of Nature. Non-human organisms become "steps" on the way to the summit of human cognition, and I don't think I need to tell you the kinds of problems that cooks up

Whitehead uses the fallacy of misplaced concreteness to make the point (in agreement with Searle, I would say) that human consciousness is just that, distinctly human.

Human consciousness becomes relativized, and rational, calculative thinking becomes more a sign of its closure than its God-given openness (if your familiar with Bakker's writings on neuroscience it is scarily accurate, and honestly somewhat existentially terrifying. Also, Heidegger: man is rational precisely because he's an animal, and not because is anything more)

so we deny self-consciousness in (lower) animals, but do not deny them a measure of "inner life" or intensity, a "prehensive center" that relates and is related to its environment.

A microbe "experiences" a world, but it does not abstract the concept of worldhood as such from its experiences.

[Anonymous No.14420076]

>>14419731
Uhhh ok? Can you explain further?

[Anonymous No.14420622]

>>14420076
No, you only get a sop.
Everything is a sign, and signs are living things.
>I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former. My insertion of "upon a person" is a sop to Cerberus, because I despair of making my own broader conception understood.
Peirce is a mystical scientist.

[Anonymous No.14420892]

>>14420073
This is really weird to me, you put a lot of thinkers together that are pretty much at the opposite ends of the spectrum. Bakker is a hardcore eliminative materialist, he thinks that not even humans are conscious, that's the exact opposite of panpsychism.
>so we deny self-consciousness in (lower) animals, but do not deny them a measure of "inner life" or intensity, a "prehensive center" that relates and is related to its environment
Animals definitely are self-consciousness, if they didn't they wouldn't be aware that when you kick them it hurts for example. But this is besides the point, we aren't just talking about animals, we are talking about physical objects. Whitehead seems to want to say that material objects have experiences of some sort, but he denies them consciousness. It seems to me that he wants to have his cake and eat it, from one hand he likes the idea of everything having an inner life but he doesn't want full blown panpsychism - hence all the word joggling to try and find some intermediate position. But it just ends up looking incoherent.

[Anonymous No.14420910]

>>14420073
This is really weird to me, you put a lot of thinkers together that are pretty much at the opposite ends of the spectrum. Bakker is a hardcore eliminative materialist, he thinks that not even humans are conscious, that's the exact opposite of panpsychism.
>so we deny self-consciousness in (lower) animals, but do not deny them a measure of "inner life" or intensity, a "prehensive center" that relates and is related to its environment
Animals definitely are self-conscious, if they didn't they wouldn't be aware that when you kick them it hurts for example. But this is besides the point, we aren't just talking about animals, we are talking about physical objects. Whitehead apparently thinks that material objects have experiences of some sort, but he denies them consciousness. It seems to me that he wants to have his cake and eat it, from one hand he likes the idea of everything having an inner life but he doesn't want full blown panpsychism - hence all the word joggling to try and find some intermediate position. But it just ends up looking incoherent.

[Anonymous No.14420960]

>>14420910
Read the "Whitehead on Feelings" in the OP

[Anonymous No.14421038]

>>14420910
Keep in mind that "panexperientialism" is a concept that comes from David Griffin and is merely one interpretation of Whitehead. Also Whitehead's whole intent wasn't to create a complete, flawless system, but rather to advance a conversation as far as he could, knowing that it was insufficient. His true aim was to advance scientific thought by pre-scientific philosophical speculation that could possibly inspire new scientific hypothesis that could be empirically testable.

[Anonymous No.14421246]

>>14420960
I just read quite a bit of it, and the author stumbles in the exact same dilemma that I keep pointing out. Essentially what he is saying is that there is something analogous to the internal subjective states that humans have in inanimate objects without being really internal subjective states. I don't think he really manages to resolve this tension, he wants to be a panpsychist but can't make his mind about it.

[Anonymous No.14421312]

>>14421246
I think you are missing the bigger picture that is at play in the cosmos which his philosophy sketches out. Of everything having relations with each other, of events, of actual entities (i.e. drops of experience) and how they prehend other actual entities, eternal objects, how his so called God functions, etc. I get that you haven't read anything by him, but if you are going to try to make any criticisms you should really put some effort beforehand on understanding the building blocks of his philosophy and how everything works together.

[Anonymous No.14421435]

"In this way God is completed by the individual, fluent satisfactions of finite fact, and the temporal occasions are completed by their everlasting union with their transformed selves, purged into conformation with the eternal order which is the final absolute 'wisdom.' The final summary can only be expressed in terms of a group of antitheses, whose apparent self-contradictions depend on neglect of the diverse categories of existence. In each antithesis there is a shift of meaning which converts the opposition into a contrast.

It is as true to say that God is permanent and the World fluent, as that the World is permanent and God is fluent.

It is as true to say that God is one and the World many, as that the World is one and God many.

It is as true to say that, in comparison with the World, God is actual eminently, as that, in comparison with God, the World is actual eminently.

It is as true to say that the World is immanent in God, as that God is immanent in the World.

It is as true to say that God transcends the World, as that the World transcends God.

It is as true to say that God creates the World, as that the World creates God...

What is done in the world is transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality in heaven passes back into the world... In this sense, God is the great companion – the fellow-sufferer who understands."

[Anonymous No.14421442]

"The ultimate evil in the temporal world is deeper than any specific evil. It lies in the fact that the past fades, that time is a 'perpetual perishing.' Objectification involves elimination. The present fact has not the past fact with it in any full immediacy. The process of time veils the past below distinctive feeling. There is a unison of becoming among things in the present. Why should there not be novelty without loss of this direct unison of immediacy among things? In the temporal world, it is the empirical fact that process entails loss: the past is present under an abstraction. But there is no reason, of any ultimate metaphysical generality, why this should be the whole story. The nature of evil is that the character of things are mutually obstructive. Thus the depths of life require a process of selection. But the selection is elimination as the first step towards another temporal order seeking to minimize obstructive modes. Selection is at once the measure of evil and the process of its evasion. It means the discarding the element of obstructiveness in fact. No element in fact is ineffectual: Thus the struggle with evil is a process of building up a mode of utilization by the provision of intermediate elements introducing a complex structure of harmony. The triviality in some initial reconstruction of order expresses the fact that actualities are being produced, which, trivial in their own proper character of immediate 'ends,' are proper 'means' for the emergence of a world at once lucid, and intrinsically of immediate worth.
"The evil of the world is that those elements which are translucent so far as transmission is concerned, in themselves are of slight weight; and that those elements with individual weight, by their discord, impose upon vivid immediacy the obligation that it fades into night. 'He giveth his beloved - sleep.'"

[Anonymous No.14421449]

From Adventures of Ideas

"We notice that a great idea in the background of dim consciousness is like a phantom ocean beating upon the shores of human life in successive waves of specialization" pg. 19,

"The folly of intelligent people, clear-headed and narrow-visioned, has precipitated many catastrophes" pg. 48

In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as if it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasoning grasps at straws for premises and float on gossamer for deductions.
p. 91.

Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.
p. 102

"The creativity of the world is the throbbing emotion of the past hurling itself into a new transcendent fact" pg. 177

"Thus it belongs to the essence of each occasion of experience that it is concerned with an otherness transcending itself" pg. 180,

"It is not a mere question of having a soul or of not having a soul. The question is, How much, if any?" Pg. 208

"To know the truth partially is to distort the Universe. For example, the savage who can only count to ten enormously exaggerates the importance of the small numbers, and so do we whose imaginations fail when we come to millions" pg. 243

"Music elicits some confused feeling into direct apprehension. It performs this service, or disservice, by introducing an emotional clothing which changes the dim objective reality into a clear Appearance matching the subjective form provided for its prehension" pg. 249

The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.
p. 285.
The human body is an instrument for the production of art in the life of the human soul.
p. 349.
"Progress is founded upon the experience of discordant feelings. The social value of liberty lies in its production of discords. There are perfections beyond perfections. All realization is finite, and there is no perfection which is the infinitude of all perfections. Perfections of diverse types are among themselves discordant. Thus the contribution to Beauty which can be supplied by Discord -- in itself destructive and evil -- is the positive feeling a quick shift aim from the tameness of outworn perfection to some other ideal with its freshness still upon it. Thus the value of Discord is a tribute to the merits of imperfection." pg. 257

"One principle is that the very essence of real actuality -- that is, of the completely real -- is process. Thus each actual thing is only to be understood in terms of its becoming and perishing. There is no halt in which the actuality is just itself, accidentally played upon by qualifications derived from the shift of circumstances. The converse is the truth." pg. 274-275

[Anonymous No.14421598]

>>14421449
This hints why reading Whitehead can be worth the investment of time independently of whether or not his theory is "true" or "correct": Whitehead was a man of both incredible compassion and emotional sensitivity as well as reason and intelligence. His philosophy is very much a reflection of his psychology (as I think it is with all philosophers.) He's an inspiring role-model, and his humility invites the reader to join him as a fellow adventurer, as a friend instead of messiah or dictator of truth.

[Anonymous No.14421607]

[Anonymous No.14422312]

>>14414562
Been slowly going through Isabelle Stengers' Thinking with Whitehead. Still trying to find how Whitehead can help me think about temporality in relation to history / historiography.

[Anonymous No.14423586]

>>14421312
Well I don't see why I can't criticize a particular aspect of his philosophy if I haven't read the rest of it. And I don't think I misrepresent his views either since many sources in the OP confirm the point I am attacking. If I am wrong, Whiteheadians are free to explain how.

[Anonymous No.14423668]

>>14421598
This is precisely the biggest issue I have with much of contemporary continental philosophy. For me the point of philosophy is constructing a system that represents the nature of reality as accurate as possible, and so the criterion I primarily value philosophies with is truthfulness. Your post represents the exact opposite tendency, an interest towards ideas that are unique, creative or inspiring, an evaluation of philosophies based more on how fascinating they are rathan than whether they are true or not.

[Anonymous No.14423691]

>>14423668
This is a newfag perspective. You need to read more.

[Anonymous No.14423699]

>>14423586
What are you even attacking?

[Anonymous No.14423716]

>>14423668
In the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.

[Anonymous No.14423729]

>>14423668
But the systems all contradict one another

[Anonymous No.14423772]

>>14420073
How does Whitehead contend with the functional differences that exist between, and only between, human and non-human animals e.g. third-order attention, symbolic language, culture?

[Anonymous No.14423777]

>>14423586
Experience is the basis of his whole philosophy so you are going to have to know some of his concepts and how his philosophy operates. As someone who has read some Whitehead and looked at some secondary sources I feel like you haven't really said anything.

[Anonymous No.14423783]

Eris post more

[Anonymous No.14423823]

>>14423772
some multinaturalist view

[Anonymous No.14423895]

>>14423729
That's why it's important to know who got it right

[Anonymous No.14423993]

>>14423777
I don't know why you feel that way but I have definitely said quite a few things. The thrust of the argument is that Whitehead ascribes to material objects the capacity to feeling and experience, while simultaneously insisting that these are somehow different from the conscious experience humans have. But he cannot explain what this intermediate state is, all he does is use vague language that does not commit to any definite description, making Whiteheadian "experience" a term with no discernible meaning.

[Anonymous No.14424074]

>>14423691
Nah, style over substance is the newfag taste par excellence

[Anonymous No.14424103]

>>14423993
Like I said learn more about the concepts. As some who knows how they work you haven't said anything. Experience is just a general word. His philosophy is based entirely on experience taking the position of William James' radical empiricism. His philosophy is a philosophy of process, everything is moving participating in the creative advance. Everything has its different modes of experience it's not like he doesn't distinguish between other organisms. What is garnered from these experiences is data. His system is continually collecting "data." Nature in his system is never finished. It is continually partaking in the creative advance.
There is other stuff I haven't explained but I need to read more and don't feel confident to explain it. Hoping Eris pops up.

[Anonymous No.14424136]

>>14423716
>In the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.
And yet in order to give your post substance you feel the need to emphasize that what you say applies to "the real world" and not in airy fairy land. How ironic.

[Anonymous No.14424145]

>>14423993
And it is made to be general
>>14421607

[Anonymous No.14424150]

>>14424136
Not an argument

[Anonymous No.14424159]

>>14424103
So far you haven't explained why I get the concepts wrong, you are just assuming that if my criticisms have any bite it must be because I am attacking a caricature, it couldn't be the case that me, a mere mortal, managed to make a good point against Whitehead.

[Anonymous No.14424171]

>>14424150
Argue what, why a banal truth might have more value than fancy bullshit?

[Anonymous No.14424173]

>>14424159
I have.

[Anonymous No.14424176]

>>14424171
"truth." a flimsy word. read more.

[Anonymous No.14424180]

>>14424176
In your hands maybe

[Anonymous No.14424263]

>>14424173
Actually you just ignored the argument while proclaiming (as an erudite Whiteheadean no less) that I haven't really "said anything" even though I made the point clear, and elaborated on it repeatedly. The closer you got addressing it is this line:
>Everything has its different modes of experience it's not like he doesn't distinguish between other organisms.

No one said that Whitehead doesn't distinguish between different kinds or levels of experience between entities, the point is that ascribing experience to a physical object but denying it consciousness makes no sense because experience is a conscious state. It's verbal fireworks.

[Anonymous No.14424275]

>>14424263
>experience is a conscious state
no. read more or just ignore the thread.

[Anonymous No.14424293]

>>14424263
http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/DeleuzeWhitehead.pdf

pages 1-5

[Anonymous No.14424306]

>>14424263
They do this every time, anon. If something can't be explained, but instead must be "intuitied for oneself", alarms should start going off.

[Anonymous No.14424356]

>>14424306
>>14424293

[Anonymous No.14424366]

>>14424275
I mean in the ordinary sense of the word.

[Anonymous No.14424385]

>>14424263
>>14424293
to 6*

[Anonymous No.14424523]

>>14424293
I agree with the idea that everything that exists is inside time and there are no timeless platonic essences, although in this text it seems to take it too far by saying that literally everything is in constant change, which is absurd. Atoms for example even though they are in constant motion, they always remain qualitatively atoms and don't change to something else. Then in page 4 it says that Whitehead doesn't accept the classic dualism between material objects and mental states, but he doesn't really provide any plausible alternative. He says that material objects and mental states are both types of events and not substances, but that doesn't close the gap since material events are still different from mental events.
Then he argues that
>Of course, my perception of the Needle is not the same thing as the Needle itself, which stands there whether I look at it or not.(...) But these events are both of the same nature; they are both "spoken" or expressed in the same way; and they exist together in one and the same world.
This seems like a non-sequitur. Ducks and construction workers are also spoken in the same way and they exist in the same world, but it doesn't follow that there is no qualitative difference between the two.

Also there is no defence here of Whitehead's use of the term experience from the charge of obscurantism so the text isn't too relevant to my argument.

[Anonymous No.14424755]

>>14424523
>Atoms for example even though they are in constant motion, they always remain qualitatively atoms and don't change to something else.

The relationships between a particular atom and the rest of the universe are part of the atom itself, and cannot be removed from it. When Whitehead talks about everything having "experience," this is what he truly means: the web of relationships between an object and the rest of the universe aren't secondary to some unchanging essence. To consider an atom in itself, in a theoretical bubble universe detached of its relationships to anything else is only an abstraction, useful in some respects, but ultimately an extreme reductionism.

[Anonymous No.14424846]

>>14424755
Then his use of the term "experience" is misleading, since it doesn't refer to the act of subjective perception, but it makes the rather different point that the identity of a particular thing is only what it is in relatiom to everything else, which is a more interesting position than some closet panpsychism, so let's talk about that. I agree that unchanging essences don't exist, and I also reject the distinction between essential features and accidental ones. So for example when we say that a man is necessarily a mortal, this doesn't mean that there is such a thing as the unchangeable essence of man, which includes among other things the property of being mortal. Rather, "man" is merely a collection of features that we put under a single term (has two legs, is sentient, is mortal etc.). Therefore, the fact that makes a man necessarily mortal is a linguistic one - we define manhood in a way that mortality is part of the meaning of the term.

But I don't think it follows from that that something is what it is only in relation to everything else. An elephant, for example, is what it is regardless of what a chair is. If all chairs magically went out of existence, that wouldn't have any impact on the constitution of elephants, so the two entities can't be internally related in the way Whitehead claims.

[Anonymous No.14425894]

Bump

[Anonymous No.14425912]

>>14424846
The modes of experience of an elephant and it's relations throughout history through evolution are what make it up. You need to look at the bigger picture.

[Anonymous No.14425929]

>>14424846
And a chair is a construction from what used to be a tree (if it is made our of wood). You can't really take out anything from it's web of relations other than through abstraction.

[Anonymous No.14426779]

>>14424846
This is why Whitehead uses the term "prehension" instead of perception, to describe the activity of "grasping at" or apprehension that is neutral to either mind or matter. Conscious perception is a more specific species of prehension. This is closely related to neutral monism, but instead of everything being comprised of a neutral substance, what Whitehead tried to clarify was the concept of a neutral evolutionary process. His theory is pancreativist or pan-evolutionary and not panpsychic.

Consider how natural selection is an abstraction of choice from human experience to a process that doesn't require consciousness. This analogy is completely reasonable, the commonality is that something is lost, and something is retained. Both Bergson and Whitehead were inspired by the commonality between biological/evolutionary creativity and human conscious creativity, and Whitehead sought to abstract it further to all natural processes as creative processes, in contrast to mechanistic theories of reality that contextualize everything as determined chains of cause and effect.

[Anonymous No.14426864]

>>14424846
>If all chairs magically went out of existence
Herein lies the problem: the concept of a thing-in-itself requires such a magical exclusion of everything in the universe other than itself. If this were to happen, at the very least the mass of the Earth would be changed, and would have an undetectable and imperceptible but non-zero effect on the elephant. If such an event were to happen, it would have consequences for humans (We'd have to manufacture new chairs, and our view of the universe would be altered as there's apparently some powerful chair-hating magical agency in the world) and because humans share an ecosystem with elephants and have a profound impact on their lives, would doubtlessly change them.

[Anonymous No.14426985]

Reading a lot of these quotes and Whitehead seems very wholesome. Thank you Whiteheadfrens.

[Anonymous No.14427285]

>>14426864
>Herein lies the problem: the concept of a thing-in-itself requires such a magical exclusion of everything in the universe other than itself. If this were to happen, at the very least the mass of the Earth would be changed, and would have an undetectable and imperceptible but non-zero effect on the elephant.
Even if that's true, having an impact on something is not the same as being part of it's constitution. Whatever influence chairs might have on elephants, the definition of an elephant has nothing to do with chairs. Even if all chairs stopped existing an elephant would still be a mammal with this and that characteristic. Or to give a clearer example, although trees are constituted by atoms, atoms are not constituted by trees. If atoms didn't exist, trees wouldn't exist either, but if trees didn't exist, this wouldn't have any impact on atoms. This idea that everything is constituted by everything else just seems utterly implausible.

[Anonymous No.14427349]

>>14427285
>but if trees didn't exist, this wouldn't have any impact on atoms
are you serious? first of all, this is just mere abstraction and has nothing on concrete matters. second, do you even know what trees do? if trees didn't exist a whole of a lot wouldn't exist. I don't know how you can be so dense.

[Anonymous No.14427370]

>>14427285
Also you are only thinking of one thing and missing the entire web of interdependent relationships. This is just abstract speculation that doesn't mean anything.

[Anonymous No.14427434]

>>14426779
>This is why Whitehead uses the term "prehension" instead of perception, to describe the activity of "grasping at" or apprehension that is neutral to either mind or matter.
I don't know what you mean by "grasping at", but the activity of perception is not neutral between mind and matter. Humans have perceptions, rocks don't.
>Consider how natural selection is an abstraction of choice from human experience to a process that doesn't require consciousness.
Natural selection just means that organisms better adapted to their environment are more likely to stay alive and have offspring, the concept is not derived from human choice at all. And even if we termed natural selection "natural choice", that wouldn't mean that the concept is an abstraction from human choice, we would merely use the concept in a metaphorical sense rather than literally.
>Both Bergson and Whitehead were inspired by the commonality between biological/evolutionary creativity and human conscious creativity, and Whitehead sought to abstract it further to all natural processes as creative processes ,in contrast to mechanistic theories of reality that contextualize everything as determined chains of cause and effect.
That's not abstraction, you are just using the term creativity metaphorically. If you call evolution a "creative process" you haven't offered an alternative to "mechanistic theories of reality", you are just talking in flowery language. In order to actually give an alternative to the mechanistic interpretation of natural processes you would have to argue that they are literally conscious, if you just change the name but kept the mechanistic ontology you are just playing semantics.

[Anonymous No.14427491]

>>14427349
I don't know how you can fail to grasp such a simple argument, the point is that while trees are made from atoms, atoms are not in any way made from trees. When a tree is destroyed, the atoms that previously constituted it still remain, and they go to make something else. While a tree cannot exist in itself without atoms to make it up. Some things constitute other things, but not everything is constituted by everything, that's nonsensical.

[Anonymous No.14427786]

>>14427491
Atoms are not static substances.
The basis of reality are events and relations and how they prehend each other. The point seems to be continuously going over your head.

[Anonymous No.14428014]

>>14427434
>Humans have perceptions, rocks don't.
Actually crystalline growth is an excellent example of Whitehead's theory that can be very visible, crystals are a literal example of how external relations are part of the interiority of an object. The structural definition of a crystal, "a piece of a homogeneous solid substance having a natural geometrically regular form with symmetrically arranged plane faces" tells omits the life of a crystal that resulted in such a structure. As a crystal grows the conditions of its environment are continually "impressed" upon its surface as immediate interaction, influencing but not wholly determining future growth. In phantom crystals this can be observed as different layers of inclusions that result from changing physical and chemical conditions. Ordered repetition of structure isn't the only ingredient, but also divergence from self-similarity that can create extremely dramatic formations.

Also consider how mineral specimens are described similarly to works of human art: the mineral species is the medium, and the location (both duration and location of growth) is the "artist." Different growth patterns and appearances can be likened to aesthetic styles, and are appreciated as such by many rock hounds.

>This focus on concrete modes of relatedness is essential because an actual occasion is itself a coming into being of the concrete. The nature of this “concrescence,” using Whitehead’s term, is a matter of the occasion’s creatively internalizing its relatedness to the rest of the world by feeling that world, and in turn uniquely expressing its concreteness through its extensive connectedness with that world. Thus an electron in a field of forces “feels” the electrical charges acting upon it, and translates this “experience” into its own electronic modes of concreteness. Only later do we schematize these relations with the abstract algebraic and geometrical forms of physical science. For the electron, the interaction is irreducibly concrete.

[Anonymous No.14428409]

>>14428014
What's happening on the sub-atomic level of your crystalline structure? Are it's sub-atomic constituents internalizing these external relations?

[Anonymous No.14428460]

>>14427349
>this is just mere abstraction and has nothing on concrete matters
How is this any different from any other philosophy (nearly all) whose goal is to formulate a binary opposition, denote one term in this binary opposition as master word -- transcendental signified --, and attempt to place this master word outside of metaphysics; outside of "abstraction". If the Whiteheadian edifice does not have built within it the desire and means to dissolve these rigid oppositions, then it is nothing but a recapitualtion of the the bureauocratized philosophical edifices that came before it. That is, if the Whiteheadian edifice does not contain within it process -- free play --, then it cannot be said to be a philosophy of process at all.

[Anonymous No.14428516]

>>14428460
refer to
>>14421607
and
>>14414590
and the Eternal Objects link in the OP

[Anonymous No.14428576]

>>14428460
I don't know how this has anything to do with what I said. He was trying to abstract trees out of existence from the already interlaced web of relationships it is tied into stating that it would have no affect on atoms (it would). The overall effects on the minutest details and chain of events that would be affected are something he has no perception into.

[Anonymous No.14428629]

>>14428516
Can you please help me understand these passages? How do they impinge on my comment?

[Anonymous No.14428668]

>>14428576
You're doing it again: setting up a binary opposition (abstracted vs. relational), and ascribing one side of this opposition (the latter) the status of master. How is this any different from any other philosophical edifice?

[Anonymous No.14428685]

>>14428668
For Whitehead philosophy refashions abstractions so that they are in order with concrete experience. Abstractions and the concrete are always entwined with one another.

[Anonymous No.14428733]

>>14428685
For Whitehead, is concrete experience conditioned by anything? Or is the telos of philosophy continuous (maybe even infinite?) refashioning of abstractions towards concrete experience?

[Anonymous No.14428964]

Stop bifurcating nature.

[Anonymous No.14428986]

>>14421449
Thought Whitehead was a meme but this sounds really good.

[Anonymous No.14429248]

>>14428014
>crystalline growth is an excellent example of Whitehead's theory that can be very visible, crystals are a literal example of how external relations are part of the interiority of an object. The structural definition of a crystal, "a piece of a homogeneous solid substance having a natural geometrically regular form with symmetrically arranged plane faces" tells omits the life of a crystal that resulted in such a structure. As a crystal grows the conditions of its environment are continually "impressed" upon its surface as immediate interaction, influencing but not wholly determining future growth. In phantom crystals this can be observed as different layers of inclusions that result from changing physical and chemical conditions. Ordered repetition of structure isn't the only ingredient, but also divergence from self-similarity that can create extremely dramatic formations.
This is absolutely irrelevant to the doctrine we are discussing, you are again using the example of a thing causally interacting with its environment. Things are interacting with one another all the time, this is not a controversial statement. In your example the crystal is not constituted by the environment in the relevant sense of it being part of its ontological make-up, it is only "consttituted" by it in the sense that the environment is causally responsible for some of its features. But now we are stumbling on semantics again, because an external causal relationship is different than the ontological constitution of a thing.

We can emphasize this point by noting the difference between a causal and an ontological reduction. Each particular crystal is (partially) causally reducible to its environment, but it is ontologically reducible to the body of subatomic particles that make it up. The theory we are discussing says that a thing is never what it is in itself, but it owes its very ontological constitution to everything else that exists and it's related to it. If that was true the crystal would not be ontologically reducible to the small body of particles that is made up from, but the whole of particles that exist in the universe! It's a pretty crazy idea if you think of it this way.

[Anonymous No.14429468]

>>14429248
He isn't stumbling on semantics you just need to apply yourself.
Subatomic particles aren't static substances. There are no static substances. For Whitehead our underlying reality isn't made up of particles but rather events. You can't take out the crystal out of the web of interrelations it is placed in other than through abstraction.

[Anonymous No.14429491]

>>14429248
It's like you are literally stuck in the Newtonian paradigm lmao.

[Anonymous No.14429687]

wasn't whitehead just your basic bitch pre-socratic? trying desperately to bring back mysticism into traditional empiricism because he lost his wife to cancer or something.

[Anonymous No.14429716]

>>14429687
No

[Anonymous No.14430122]

>>14429491
I think it's just painfully forced contrarianism at this point. There isn't any sincere attempt to understand, any curiosity, only "this is why you're wrong."

[Anonymous No.14430137]

>>14429491
I think it's just painfully forced contrarianism at this point. There isn't any sincere attempt to understand, any curiosity, any attempt to entertain an idea, only "this is why you're wrong." The only thing to blame is that he's an asshole looking for an argument.

[Anonymous No.14430210]

>>14428964
Remember that Whitehead praised Descartes because he was such an eloquent and considerate spokesperson of a view he disagreed with.

Dawkins is similarly a brilliant spokesperson of the selection-centric perspective of evolution by having taken it to its most extreme conclusion with his selfish gene theory. However his concept of the "extended phenotype" jives strongly with relationalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Extended_Phenotype

The Dawkins vs. Gould debate is incredibly fascinating, and I've enjoyed both of their work and perspectives: https://necsi.edu/gradualism-and-punctuated-equilibrium

[Anonymous No.14430223]

>>14428964
Remember that Whitehead praised Descartes because he was such an eloquent and considerate spokesperson of a view he disagreed with.

Dawkins is similarly a brilliant spokesperson of the selection-centric perspective of evolution by having taken it to its most extreme conclusion with his selfish gene theory. However his concept of the "extended phenotype" jives strongly with relationalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Extended_Phenotype

The Dawkins vs. Gould debate is incredibly fascinating, and I've enjoyed both of their work and perspectives: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/driventoabstraction/2018/07/dawkins-gould-natural-selection/

[Anonymous No.14430271]

>>14430223
Here's the other two articles in the series:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/driventoabstraction/2018/07/dawkins-gould-development-life/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/driventoabstraction/2018/07/dawkins-gould-aims-limits-science/

The perspectives of Gould and Dawkins, and their personal emphases that extends beyond that of evolution to science, culture and human life was another major influence that led to my consideration of instantaneous and cumulative change as perceptive modes: >>14419010

[Anonymous No.14430503]

>>14429468
You don't seem to understand the doctrine you are defending very well. Of course considering the crystal by itself, without its environment, is considering an abstraction. This is not something anyone disagrees with. What you are saying is true, but it's completely trivial.

The argument has to do with whether a crystal can be said to be just that, a crystal, which is identical with itself, but different with planes, trees, and mountains. If you deny the notion of a thing having a certain amount of features that define it, you are committed to saying that everything is identical with everything else, which is nonsensical.

(Eagerly awaiting your response where you miss the point again and complain that considering one thing in a vacuum is merely an abstraction, even though I already conceded that.)

[Anonymous No.14430518]

>>14430503
You really need to find a way to get out of the "debate me" mentality.

[Anonymous No.14430522]

>>14430503
You really need to find a way to get out of the "debate me" mentality. Re-read your message as if it was someone else talking to you. Would you want to have a discussion with someone like that?

[Anonymous No.14430560]

>>14430522
>You really need to find a way to get out of the "debate me" mentality.
Nah, philosophical debates are fun to me. No one is forcing you to engage if you don't like heated arguments.
>Re-read your message as if it was someone else talking to you. Would you want to have a discussion with someone like that?
Well, I am assuming that this >>14429491 was written by the same person. He got pretty confrontational, so I don't think he would mind if I do the same.

Also aren't you the one who made the post about me being an asshole, you can't really pull the politeness card after that.

[Anonymous No.14430589]

>>14414562
this guy was retroactively refuted.

[Anonymous No.14431454]

>>14414562
A-a-are you back Girardfag?

[Anonymous No.14431467]

>>14414562
Sigh... guess I'll waste a couple months studying this bald loser...

[Anonymous No.14431499]

>>14431454
He was in this thread. Looks like he has just been browsing this place once in a while.
>>/lit/thread/S14411078