A good introduction to Whitehead?

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A good introduction to Whitehead? Anonymous Fri Dec 25 17:59:13 2020 No.17116907 [Reply] [Original]

I want to understand process philosophy to better understand Buddhism.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:03:00 2020 No.17116935 >>17116907 'Everything is a process' There you go fella, glad I could clear that up.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:03:57 2020 No.17116941 >>17116907 just look for a introduction and commentary, there ya go

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:05:35 2020 No.17116953 >>17116935 I want the arguments against substances. >>17116941 That's what I did, I took one and I didn't understand anything.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:07:43 2020 No.17116968 >>17116907 Modes of Thought then Science and the Modern World then Process and Reality then Adventures of ideas.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:08:57 2020 No.17116976 >>17116953 well try a lecture on a video site

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:09:58 2020 No.17116993 >>17116976 I searched on youtube, I didn't find a good conference on the subject.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:12:24 2020 No.17117015 >>17116993 ok, well it seems processism is periphery to ur interest in buddhism, just just skip it.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:13:23 2020 No.17117021 >>17117015 But I don't understand the Buddhist rejection of the substance, so I thought Whitehead might be able to help me since a lot of papers say that the two philosophies are extremely close.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:15:33 2020 No.17117039 >>17117021 buddhism should have its own internal logic for its rejection of substance since it arose from hindu modes of thought which posit a self

Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:18:28 2020 No.17117057

>>17116953
All reality is a continuous dance stretching out and blossoming into each new occasion. Its wrong to think of anything as a having an essential nature or essence because everything is constantly shifting in the wider process of reality. Everything is part of a wider stream, to set rigid objects or substances would be like grabbing at the water to pick it up. The core identity of something is just an "abstract generalisation". Everything is a singular oneness or sum idk. I've never read anything of his in full.

Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:18:42 2020 No.17117061

>>17117039
Yes, but Whitehead apparently came to the same conclusions, so the two systems are very similar.

Example:
http://www.integralscience.org/whiteheadbuddhism.html

So I thought that studying it would help me understand the Buddhist rejection of the atman. This is also the thesis of the book on the history of Indian philosophy that I am reading, namely that the Buddhist doctrine of non-self is understandable only as a rejection of substantialism in favor of a metaphysics of processes.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:20:28 2020 No.17117070 >>17117057 I don't understand how to comprehend phenomenal consciousness in a metaphysics of flow.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:20:58 2020 No.17117075 File: 24 KB, 324x499, 416d2YiiPKL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>17116907 ?

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:23:16 2020 No.17117090 >>17117075 I will look at it, thank you

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:23:25 2020 No.17117091 >>17117070 Don't know either, but It probably has something to do with "occasions of experience" that he talks about apparently.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:25:24 2020 No.17117104 >>17117075 Say something about it ffs

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:25:44 2020 No.17117112 >>17117075 this book is awful, try Process Philosophy by Nicholas Rescher instead

Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:26:27 2020 No.17117116
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>>17117091
>http://www.integralscience.org/whiteheadbuddhism.html
Yes, but I wonder how he would respond to Adi Shankara's arguments against the possibility of a flow of consciousness (pic related)

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:26:36 2020 No.17117117 >>17116935 Based

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:27:37 2020 No.17117124 >>17117112 Thank you, I note all your recommendations

Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:28:24 2020 No.17117128

>>17117104
It's quite good actually, it begins with an autobiographical section, right the way from childhood which really gives philosophical context. It then moves more in polemical territory speaking about how the author is the supreme gentlemen and how women are evil and must be purged. It ends on a weird abrupt line about showing the world his truth worth or something.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:30:17 2020 No.17117142 >>17117075 I heard this book was too new agey

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:36:14 2020 No.17117188 >>17117061 Just read Coomaraswamy.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 18:39:30 2020 No.17117219 >>17117188 I know the Hindu reinterpretation of the Buddhist doctrine of non-self, but it is contrary to the entire history of the Buddhist understanding of this doctrine.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 19:19:11 2020 No.17117469 >>17116907 Whitehead wont help you understand buddhism but it will help you shill popsci many universe theories

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 19:25:09 2020 No.17117510 >>17117142 Whitehead is new agey

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 19:26:47 2020 No.17117519 Cosmology is silly this nigga is literally trying to philosophize what SCIENTISTS CAN QUANTIFY AND VERIFY

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 19:55:05 2020 No.17117696 >>17117510 He's not

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 19:58:33 2020 No.17117708 >>17117696 Well he's certainly read and appreciated by primarily new age types, and I doubt very much that this is an accident.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 19:59:37 2020 No.17117712 >>17117519 there is a whole another metaphysics existing in the 4th dimension which scientists can't even measure with instruments or do calculations about

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 20:06:24 2020 No.17117743 >>17117712 >I invent my metaphysics as a 4th dimension and I act as if it wasn't retarded and didn't just add another layer of contingency that still need a fundamental explanation.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 20:07:29 2020 No.17117748 >>17117712 Wrong

Anonymous Fri Dec 25 20:24:01 2020 No.17117808

Whtiehead has relatively little in common with Buddhism, from two perspectives. Firstly, his system still posits the existence of non-Empty / non-dependently-originated objects. Whitehead's entire schema is essentially an inversion of the Platonic maxim that the more something changes the less real it is (culminating in the changiest thing, which is nothing). Whitehead posits the existence of actual occasions. These AOs send out a huge mass of tendrils that feel literally everything, positively or negatively. A negative feeling constitutes a component of the AO then, when it achieves concrescence. When this happens, the thing is static. It can be felt by later things, but it can and will never do anything else other than be felt. If it weren't for the fact that God doesn't want an absolutely static universe, this would lead to an absolutely static universe. God is thus constantly providing a "direction" to all AOs. AOs feel the Eternal Objects, which are basically the Platonic Forms. However, again, inverting Plato, the EOs are less real than the AOs. "Redness" is less real than actual red things. There's an infinite number of these EOs, they are unchanging, they are eternal, many of them have no possibility of being felt by our world (mathematical formulae are EOs; there is an EO for 1+1=3, even though it will never be felt by anything in our universe). God is the EO from which other EOs feel. So, right off the bad, Buddhism has a problem with the existence of EOs, with God, and with the final stage of conrescence, in which AOs become eternally static unchanging things.

Secondly, the whole "point" of Buddhism is completely counter to Whitehead's goal, and really that of Western philosophy as a whole. Western philosophy aims to create accurate statements that describe reality (going so far as to create languages to do this, such as mathematical notation). Buddhism is about ending suffering. There is no need to do what Whitehead does to end suffering. You don't need to accurately characterize reality in human language to end suffering (the Abhidharmins admitted this). While it is true that Buddhist thought posits that reality must be characterized by something a Westerner could call "Process Philosophy", reality is ineffable so you're just making an approximation anyways, so why fucking bother? Shit changes, deal with it, the Buddha showed us how to deal with it.

>>17117708
You have no idea what you're talking about. "New Agey" people do not read Whitehead. You have not read Whitehead. Nobody reads Whitehead. Nobody wants to read Whitehead. He's a terrible writer, and while he was clearly brilliant, he was too busy being brilliant to explain anything to anyone.

Anonymous Fri Dec 25 20:40:12 2020 No.17117887

>>17117808
https://www.religion-online.org/article/mosa-dharma-and-prehension-nagarjuna-and-whitehead-compared/
http://www.integralscience.org/whiteheadbuddhism.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_Western_philosophy#Buddhism_and_Process_philosophy
>the changiest thing, which is nothing
retarded
retarded
>So, right off the bad, Buddhism has a problem with the existence of EOs, with God, and with the final stage of conrescence, in which AOs become eternally static unchanging things.
Not really. Buddhism is transtheistic, so it accepts the existence of God but just postulates a non-substantial absolute "above". Theravada accepts the existence of elements that are ultimately real.

Anonymous Fri Dec 25 20:45:48 2020 No.17117917

>>17117887
>has no idea what he's talking about
>frantically googles and posts random links
You already told us you had no idea what you were talking about, dude.

>>17117808
Get the Process and Reality Key by Sherburne off of libgen btw. Whitehead is a major pseud filter because you can't understand him without secondary sources. You won't. Part of this is because Whitehead refused to used consistent terminology (when I said "feelings", I was shortening his usage of positive apprehensions, negative apprehensions, apprehensions, and feelings, which are four different things and he changes their precise definitions on the fly).

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 20:53:03 2020 No.17117951 >>17117808 Yes, new agey people DO in fact read Whitehead. They even comprise a significant proportion of Whitehead's readership https://www.ciis.edu/faculty-and-staff-directory/matthew-segall

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 20:53:36 2020 No.17117952 Me and Steven Shaviro are the only people in the world that understand Whitehead.

Anonymous Fri Dec 25 20:55:30 2020 No.17117962

>>17117951
Yes, I am aware that when you google anything related to Whitehead, this one guy comes up. This is why I said that nobody reads Whitehead: because nobody reads Whitehead. This is the one guy who has a boner for him. Because no one else does. Because nobody reads Whitehead.

Matthew Segall isn't "new agey", by the way.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 21:01:09 2020 No.17117984 >>17117962 >Matthew Segall isn't "new agey", by the way. He believes in astrology, parapsychology and Jungian archetypes. The guy literally has videos of him at burning man discussing the minutiae of celestial alignments with his research buddies.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 21:09:17 2020 No.17118017 >>17117984 Yes, none of that is new agey. By this definition Thomas Aquinas was "new agey". He's an academic and a fucking Communist, dude. Are you ESL by chance? I've noticed that ESLs don't really "get" the hippies and the age of aquarius stuff.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 21:10:51 2020 No.17118023 >>17117984 even if that made this random dude a new ager, and it doesnt, you still are just proving his point that nobody cares what whitehead thinks and that whitehead isnt some hippie icon

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 21:12:09 2020 No.17118026 >>17117984 Jung isn't new age, dude. Freud is. At least, if we're going by what the hippies, Age of Aquarius, and, y'know, actual "new age" types believed.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 21:30:02 2020 No.17118089 >>17117808 Imagining a ballpark idea of quantum physics is inferior to discovering quantum physics whitehead is useless

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 21:57:55 2020 No.17118213 >>17118089 >discovering >quantum physics That's not how it works.

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 22:02:26 2020 No.17118232 >>17118213 Bait

>>	Anonymous Fri Dec 25 22:10:45 2020 No.17118264 >>17118232 Yeah, my bad, I forgot for a minute that I was on /lit/.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 00:52:45 2020 No.17119063 >>17116907 read Plato and Aristotle then take P&R directly

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 02:04:24 2020 No.17119388

Whitehead is fascinating in that he can turn you into either a Buddhist or a Christian depending on how you read his metaphysics. Some of his stuff is kinda outdated but it's definitely all worth it.

For the record, he did know about Buddhism but thought it got stuck at seeking one of the ultimate aspects of God (ultimate reality/emptiness) while ignoring the platonic form-endower abrahamic faiths worship and the cosmos shamanism and native religions revere.

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 02:08:19 2020 No.17119417

>>17119388
>Whitehead is fascinating in that he can turn you into either a Buddhist or a Christian
The God described by Whitehead bears little resemblance to the God of Christianity or really any organized religion, so not really. If anything Whitehead's "God" is the atheist's "God."

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 02:34:12 2020 No.17119525 >>17119417 Whitehead is mostly influential today among theologists. Christian and specially Catholic theologists are the reason he's not been forgotten.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 02:36:12 2020 No.17119536 >>17119525 The theology department actually butchers him and you should pay no attention to what they have to say.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 04:07:01 2020 No.17119885 auxier quantum >>17119417 hartshorne is a good reader of whitehead

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 06:02:05 2020 No.17120269 >>17117743 Kek (based)

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 08:17:27 2020 No.17120764 It just doesnt make any sense to me I must be a substantialist mind Prone to believing in atman

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 08:27:07 2020 No.17120796 Does anyone here actually think Whitehead’s metaphysics are in any way meaningful or true? Or is it all fanciful conjecture?

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 08:38:16 2020 No.17120835

>>17120796
Fancy conjecture. I've read some lectures on his works and it sounds half baked imo. He doesn't seem to want to go through with his own conclusions and tries to limit his own idea. It's a shame to the might be something interesting said if not for hesitancy and lack of follow up.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 08:38:48 2020 No.17120837 >>17120796 Hes very brilliant for imagining a pseudo-quantum physics but none of what he says advances the field of QM at all so hes clearly not useful. He may have been useful in his own lifetime.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 08:44:17 2020 No.17120868 >>17116907 RETROACTIVED

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 08:47:01 2020 No.17120881 >>17120868 where

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 08:52:02 2020 No.17120900 >>17116907 whitoid's rambling is not compatible with buddhism

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 08:54:23 2020 No.17120913 >>17120796 Careerists want to believe, otherwise they would end up hobos

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 09:14:38 2020 No.17121007 >>17120796 >>17120835 >>17120837 >>17120913 To follow up, is there any metaphysics that is “meaningful” or useful, or is it all cope to justify the contemporary worldview at some point in time?

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 09:17:49 2020 No.17121022 >>17121007 i found neo-aristotelianism/thomism and advaita vedanta quite useful

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 09:23:29 2020 No.17121056 >>17121007 Buddhist/Taoist stuff, Nietzsche, a heavy study and personal reflection of history and science. Generally I find it useful to have learned the continental and metaphysical philosophers but to take it all with a very large grain of salt.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 10:36:50 2020 No.17121418 >>17121007 All meta physics are cope in a sense. What you need is practice, which buddhism and meditation gives. Now that makes buddhist stand out

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 10:38:02 2020 No.17121426 >>17116907 >I want to understand process philosophy to better understand Buddhism. Why, are you trying to become a tranny?

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 10:49:46 2020 No.17121496 >>17121426 the absolute state of /lit/

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 10:54:16 2020 No.17121522
File: 1.56 MB, 1789x987, Screenshot 2020-12-26.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>17121496
Well, I know from browsing /lit/ and /lit/-twitter that trannies love Whitehead, Deleuze and process philosophy. And I'm increasingly discovering that like Jews, trannies love Buddhism too.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 10:55:45 2020 No.17121531 File: 129 KB, 718x546, 118.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>17121426 >>17121522

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 10:59:00 2020 No.17121550 >>17121531 Forgot your meds again, huh?

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 11:00:35 2020 No.17121560

>>17121522
It's stupid. The whole of buddhism is about shedding away your identity, not holding on to it. Buddhist point out identity is a problem. It's literally a most robust attack on identity and likely one of the ONLY mainstream doctrines that do that. If tranies feel the need to let out their identity when proclaiming their buddhism then they have failed buddhiam

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 11:02:08 2020 No.17121568 >>17121560 Deleuze (PBUH) also said this, so trannies got filtered by him as well

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 11:05:31 2020 No.17121588 >>17121560 hinduism too tells you that you are not your identity (ego)

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 11:10:57 2020 No.17121620 >>17116907 Do they call him Whitehead because he's bald?

Anonymous Sat Dec 26 14:08:38 2020 No.17122853

>>17116907
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTogDiejEvk

This random dude on youtube has probably made some of the best content out there on Whitehead and process philosophy. He can come off as a little up his own ass sometimes, but he really knows his shit.

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 14:33:59 2020 No.17123017 >>17122853 thanks anon

>>	Anonymous Sat Dec 26 17:34:14 2020 No.17124387 >>17116907 bamp

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