What exactly is Process Philosophy?

Reply to Darkneos
Essentially it means that all is flux, nothing is static. Everything moves, and is made of things that move, that are made of things that move, that are made of things that move. At the very bottom it's just space, or the vibrating void. If a thing were to truly stop moving, then it would simultaneously cease to exist, and it will no longer be a thing.

Process Philosophy:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-philosophy
A bit too hefty. Then there is:

***
Quoting IEP - Process Philosophy

Process philosophy is characterized by an attempt to reconcile the diverse intuitions found in human experience (such as religious, scientific, and aesthetic) into a coherent holistic scheme.

Process philosophy seeks a return to a neo-classical realism that avoids subjectivism. This reconciliation of the intuitions of objectivity and subjectivity, with a concern for scientific findings, produces the explicitly metaphysical speculation that the world, at its most fundamental level, is made up of momentary events of experience rather than enduring material substances.

Process philosophy speculates that these momentary events, called “actual occasions” or “actual entities,” are essentially self-determining, experiential, and internally related to each other.

Actual occasions correspond to electrons and sub-atomic particles, but also to human persons. The human person is a society of billions of these occasions (that is, the body), which is organized and coordinated by a single dominant occasion (that is, the mind). Thus, process philosophy avoids a strict mind-body dualism.

[...]

1. What Counts as Process Philosophy
a. The Perennial Process Tradition
Process philosophy argues that the language of development and change are more appropriate descriptors of reality than the language of static being. This tradition has roots in the West in the pre-Socratic Heraclitus, who likened the structure of reality to the element of fire, as change is reality and stability is illusion. Heraclitus is famous for the aphorism that one can never step in the same river twice.

In Eastern traditions, many Taoist and Buddhist doctrines can be classified as “process.” For example, the Taoist admonition that one should be spontaneously receptive to the never ending flux of yin and yang emphasizes a process worldview, as do the Buddhist notions of pratyitya-samutpada (the inter-dependent origination of events) and anatma (the denial of a substantial or enduring self).

More recently on the continent, one finds process philosophers in Hegel, who saw the history of the world as processive and dialectic unfolding of Absolute Spirit and in Gottfried Leibniz, Henri Bergson, Nikolai Berdyaev, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Even David Hume (insofar as he rejected the idea of a substantial self in favor of a series of unconnected perceptual “bundles”) can be considered a process philosopher....

Just for starters.

Quoting Darkneos

I figured I'd try to ask it on here to see if anyone knows what it is and what it means, because I just get more lost on it.

I am not one of those who knows what 'process philosophy' is, or means. Getting lost is part of finding out. From chaos comes clarity. Sometimes!
First question: Why is it so important to you? Second, why did you give up so easily? Research is fun!
I don't suppose there is a simple answer to your question of 'exactly'...there never is...

Quoting The Basics of Process Philosophy - Reason and Meaning

There is a strong tendency to overlook process and to think we simply live in world full of separate things. We use nouns, which indicate some kind of stable entities — what in the philosophical tradition have been called “substances.” It’s quite normal to think of the world as a thing, filled with other things — rivers, mountains, lions, mosquitos, people, all sort of things. It’s also quite normal to think of these individual things as distinct from other things, which they are not. The fish is not the river. It is in the river. The river is not the river valley. It flows through the valley. The valley is not the region. But it is a part of a region. Objects are parts of bigger objects still. Wholes are parts of other wholes. [...]

We cannot understand the things mentioned without understanding the processes in which they are involved. Process philosophers tend to emphasize these processes that interlink these various things, and they emphasize that the things themselves have fuzzy boundaries and are also characterized by their processes.

The focus on processes is rarer than the focus on stable things. But especially in light of our environmental concerns today, and the fundamental importance of understanding the intersection of biological and human processes in order to address those concerns, a focus on processes is vital. [...]

...the first four characteristics that Rescher views as basic tendencies of process thinkers. In Rescher’s words:

1. Time and change are among the principle categories of metaphysical understanding.
2. Process is a principle category of ontological description.
3. Processes are more fundamental, or at any rate, not less fundamental than things for the purposes of ontological theory.
4. Several, if not all, of the major elements of the ontological repertoire (God, nature as a whole, persons, material substances) are best understood in process terms.
5. Contingency, emergence, novelty, and creativity are among the fundamental categories of metaphysical understanding. (5-6)

Interesting to read the 16 thoughts on the article.
Also that 'a future post will focus on Heraclitus, Laozi, and the Buddha as some of the original process thinkers.'

***
Quoting Darkneos

the answers I get make even less sense than the wikipedia entries

If we take only one example, from many, why doesn't this make sense to you? :

Quoting Wiki - Process philosophy

Ecology
With its perspective that everything is interconnected, that all life has value, and that non-human entities are also experiencing subjects, process philosophy has played an important role in discourse on ecology and sustainability.

OK. Re my questions as to why it is important to you, I should have looked at this first.

Quoting Darkneos

I asked the question on Stack Exchange: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/121885/what-does-process-philosophy-mean-exactly-and-the-ethical-implications-of-it

And the final question and response:

1
Uhhh…what does that mean exactly? I know that things change but what exactly does that mean and what does that mean for what I’m saying about people and society? –
BoltStorm

Your question, "I'm wondering I guess how would such a worldview function if it stopped seeing living things as "things". ... From an understanding of semiosis, you would not see people as discrete, concretely bounded 'things'. You would see each person as an amazing manifestation of what their genetic, epigenetic, and cultural influences autopoietically combined to form what you recognize as their form and identity. ... Think of a dust devil, and how just the right combination of circumstances came together to create a fleeting form. This is probably not the best analogy but please consider. –
Sarah C Tyrrell

[emphasis added]

I think that response sounds about right, from the very little I've gleaned so far.
What is it that you are saying about people and society? This?:

At a glance it seems to think that what individuals are is a collection of processes, though to me that would appear to have serious ethical implications since it seems kinda dehumanizing to just label people as just processes. Would that change our view of "people" and would it be for the better? I'm wondering I guess how would such a worldview function if it stopped seeing living things as "things".

Sorry for the confusion but I guess it just highlights my lack of comprehension of the subject. I've met maybe two people who subscribe to it and seem to live regular lives, though when I asked them to explain they couldn't, which gave me doubts about it.

I just seems like it would be a bad philosophy if one is concerned with well being and things like that, thoughts?

So far, I don't see it as 'dehumanising'. People are not being labelled as 'just processes'. It seems to be a way to understand humans and their place in the world. As individuals and part of many processes, relationships and interactions, including the creative. Changing and not static.
Just as in:
Quoting punos

Essentially it means that all is flux, nothing is static

I often think it's comical – Fal, lal, la!
How Nature always does contrive – Fal, lal, la!
That every boy and every gal
That’s born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative!
Fal, lal, la!

Gilbert and Sullivan, Iolanthe.

How the mind loves to classify, and no mind more so than the philosopher's! And if something, or someone does not fit neatly into the compartments one has, then a new compartment must be created, named, and defined. And for many, perhaps most, the classification of a philosophy or philosopher counts as a sufficient understanding thereof. Hence the proliferation of names of 'isms.

Processism: a philosophy characterised by the prioritising of 'happens' over 'is'; of event over object; of doing over being. Now I can relax! I still know everything!

Quoting unenlightened

How the mind loves to classify, and no mind more so than the philosopher's! And if something, or someone does not fit neatly into the compartments one has, then a new compartment must be created, named, and defined.

I know, I know. It's crazy!

Love the Gilbert and Sullivan quote. Most apt.
Looked for some others. To lighten the day...

“Gilbert's response to being told they (the words 'ruddy' and 'bloody') meant the same thing was: "Not at all, for that would mean that if I said that I admired your ruddy countenance, which I do, I would be saying that I liked your bloody cheek, which I don't.”
? W.S. Gilbert

“It's love that makes the world go round.”
? W.S. Gilbert

Now that's all settled, we can get on with today's play, or not...

Quoting unenlightened

Now I can relax! I still know everything!

Yup, indeedy, you do :nerd:

Reply to Darkneos

The lable is very diffuse and is applied in different ways by different people. It tends to be self-consciously adopted most in continental philosophy and unfortunately this sometimes leads to be it being defined in a waterfall of confusing continental speak. Reply to Amity's citation is a good effort, but it makes the definition appear to be in terms of Whiteheadian terminology, but then massively expands it with applications to other, earlier areas of thought. This is not the fault of the author, the term is used equivocally, sometimes mostly for the descendents of Whitehead and a few others, sometimes encompassing Hegel, Hume, or even Aristotle and some of the Scholastics and some of the Islamic thinkers.

There is "process theology," "process metaphysics," etc. The term is most used to apply to metaphysics. Nicholas Rescher's introductory book is the best text I've found introducing it because it explains the benefits and aims of the process view without doing injustice to contrary views, making clear arguments, and most importantly, not using a ton of foreign terminology. Rescher also takes a broad view, so he looks back to process views in Aristotle, Neoplatonism (e.g. exitus and redditus), Hegel, etc. instead of just 20th+ century continental philosophy and its main precursors.

Mark Bickhard has a really neat paper on process and systems philosophy in the North Holland Handbook for philosophy of complexity. It is a bit naive, and mislabels historical thinkers with process elements to their thought as squarely "substance metaphysics," but he does show a good job showing how process philosophy gets around problems related to emergence that have been identified in reductionist accounts, particularly in Jaegwon Kim's influential monograms.

I've quoted some of these sources in some places if it's helpful:


https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/826619 -Bickhard
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/885631 - Rescher and Aquinas
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/837241 - Deacon

There are, of course, difficulties with "everything is changing," and "everything is mutable." For one, if this was true, then even these statements are subject to change, implying things will become immutable. Moreover, if everything is changing, even the meanings of our words and change itself, how shall we ever say anything true about anything? How does this affect our intuition that certain things won't change (e.g. Napoleon will never become the first president of the USA)?

One can posit "stabilities" in change, but this does not do much good if such stabilities are themselves subject to unrestricted flux, as well as what it even means to be stable or enduring itself subject to change. This is why Heraclitus has the Logos to invoke as the stability within change.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

?Amity's citation is a good effort, but it makes the definition appear to be in terms of Whiteheadian terminology, but then massively expands it with applications to other, earlier areas of thought.

Thank you. Not bad for an initial foray, huh? :smile:
I've never stepped into this river before, so I thank @Darkneos for starting the thread.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

There is "process theology," "process metaphysics," etc. The term is most used to apply to metaphysics. Nicholas Rescher's introductory book is the best text I've found introducing it because it explains the benefits and aims of the process view without doing injustice to contrary views, making clear arguments, and most importantly, not using a ton of foreign terminology. Rescher also takes a broad view, so he looks back to process views in Aristotle, Neoplatonism (e.g. exitus and redditus), Hegel, etc. instead of just 20th+ century continental philosophy and its main precursors.

Good to know. I had continued my quick, superficial search and posted part of a paper which mentioned Rescher: The four characteristics that Rescher views as basic tendencies of process thinkers. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/963482

***

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

The lable is very diffuse and is applied in different ways by different people

Yes, well. No single, short and sweet answer to the thread title:
'What exactly is Process Philosophy?' Didn't expect there would be!

Nevertheless, it raises interesting questions, like:

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

...if everything is changing, even the meanings of our words and change itself, how shall we ever say anything true about anything? How does this affect our intuition that certain things won't change (e.g. Napoleon will never become the first president of the USA)?

One can posit "stabilities" in change, but this does not good if such stabilities are themselves subject to unrestricted flux, as well as what it even means to be stable or enduring.

***

So, what is the point of 'Process Philosophy'?

The second part of @Darkneos's query:
Quoting Darkneos

I asked the question on Stack Exchange: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/121885/what-does-process-philosophy-mean-exactly-and-the-ethical-implications-of-it

What are its ethical implications? Or any other kind, for that matter?

Insights from Nicolas Rescher's Philosophy: Process Metaphysics (06:43)

In this enlightening video, we unwrap the philosophical gift of process metaphysics, a perspective that sees the foundation of reality not as a collection of static entities, but as a dynamic collage of processes and happenings. We delve into the essence of change and contemplate the notion that change is not merely an occurrence within the universe but the very fabric of the universe itself. [...]

As we navigate the moral whirlwind of advancements in genetic engineering, process metaphysics offers a framework to consider the implications of our actions as processes with trajectories that shape humanity's course. We also examine how culture, through literature and storytelling, channels the spirit of process metaphysics, with narratives that reflect transformation and moral awakening.

In our current discourse on climate change and social justice, process metaphysics challenges us to consider the spectrum of possibilities that unfold over time, prompting critical thinking about the patterns of development we weave into our collective future.

This video is not just a philosophical exploration; it is an invitation to reflect on how seeing the world as a series of processes can change your perspective. It encourages you to ponder your contributions to these processes and to consider what verse you will add to the grand symphony of life.

Quoting Darkneos

What exactly is Process Philosophy?

IMHO, by reductive conceptual conflation of (e.g.) Heraclitean flux + Democritean ceaselessly swirling atoms in void + Spinozist conative infinite & finite modes (sub specie durationis) + Schopenhaurian Will + Bergsonian élan vital + Peircean-Deweyan truth as inquiry ... A.N. Whitehead produces a baroque panpsychist teleology he calls (the) "process" as the fundamental property, or ground, of reality – there are only happenings ("occasions of (possible?) experience") and their inter/relations (i.e. "complexes", or patterns of events); there aren't any static or unrelated 'things' (i.e. Aristotlean substances (or unmoved mover)). Yeah, okay. So an explicit "process philosophy" seems to me preposterously redundant (re: predecessors), and almost Heideggerian in its obscurant ponderings and neologisms (or Hegelian prolixity). But I'm a quixotic pandeist so what the hell do I know? :smirk:

What is Process Philosophy?
Quoting Darkneos

But the answers I get make even less sense than the wikipedia entries on it and so I figured I'd try to ask it on here to see if anyone knows what it is and what it means, because I just get more lost on it.

Years ago, I too, got lost in Whitehead's complex & convoluted abstract & abstruse explication of Process and Reality. So, although the general gist seemed to be agreeable to my own Holistic & Information-based amateur worldview, I couldn't answer your question. Therefore, I was prompted to do a Google search on : "process philosophy compared to what?"

Here's the response from Google A.I. Overview : "Process philosophy is often compared to substance metaphysics, which is the dominant paradigm in Western philosophy. Process philosophy differs from substance metaphysics in its focus on becoming and change, rather than the static nature of being."

I suppose "substance metaphysics" is the modern scientific worldview : reductive and materialistic. But Whitehead's dynamic "process" of the universe may be more like a living evolving Organism than a soulless cycling Mechanism. I'm still not sure what "transient occasions of change" might be in a more vernacular expression. It may refer to the perplexing Phase Changes of Physics, or to the unmeasurable exchanges of energy & information (Entanglement) on the quantum level of reality. The Information Philosopher says : "in PNK Whitehead calls the instantaneous and infinitesimal points of special relativity "event-particles." Not much more enlightening.

Even the quantum pioneers, who inspired Whitehead, didn't understand what was going-on in the basement of the world. Heisenberg called that essential mystery & unpredictability "The Uncertainty Principle". :nerd:


"Process and Reality" by Alfred North Whitehead is a philosophical work that presents a system known as "process philosophy," arguing that reality is fundamentally a process of becoming rather than a collection of static objects, where the core concept is "creativity" as the driving force behind this ongoing process of actual entities coming into existence; it emphasizes the interconnectedness and relational nature of all things within the universe, with each "actual occasion" (moment of experience) drawing from past events and contributing to future ones, essentially viewing the world as a dynamic flow of becoming rather than a fixed state.
___ Google A.I. Overview
Note 1 --- In my own thesis, I refer to that creative "driving force" as EnFormAction : Energy + Form + Actualization. It's basically aimless Energy combined with a program of Information --- like a guided missile --- to convert static Matter into dynamic substance (Life) and sentient stuff (Mind). Does any of that make sense?
Note 2 --- The Big Bang, as described by physicists, would be like a bullet : powered by momentum, but otherwise unchanging. Yet if the power was EnFormAction, the material bullet might transform into a living butterfly along the way : a Process of Becoming. The universe began as formless Plasma, and eventually became the living & thinking organism we call Our World. It's a philosophical metaphor, not a scientific fact to be taken literally.

Quoting punos

Essentially it means that all is flux, nothing is static. Everything moves, and is made of things that move, that are made of things that move, that are made of things that move. At the very bottom it's just space, or the vibrating void. If a thing were to truly stop moving, then it would simultaneously cease to exist, and it will no longer be a thing.

That seems kind of a stretch.

Quoting Amity

First question: Why is it so important to you? Second, why did you give up so easily? Research is fun!

I dunno, why is anything important?

Quoting The Basics of Process Philosophy - Reason and Meaning

The focus on processes is rarer than the focus on stable things. But especially in light of our environmental concerns today, and the fundamental importance of understanding the intersection of biological and human processes in order to address those concerns, a focus on processes is vital.

It's sorta the opposite effect really, if they just reduce this stuff to processes then people stop giving a damn about them.Quoting Amity

So far, I don't see it as 'dehumanising'. People are not being labelled as 'just processes'. It seems to be a way to understand humans and their place in the world. As individuals and part of many processes, relationships and interactions, including the creative. Changing and not static.

Except from what I gather they are, I posted something about teleonomic matter which seems to say the same. We care about individuals not processes.

Quoting unenlightened

Gilbert and Sullivan, Iolanthe.

Doesn't seem very smart or insightful TBH. Why bother commenting if that's the response?

This video is not just a philosophical exploration; it is an invitation to reflect on how seeing the world as a series of processes can change your perspective. It encourages you to ponder your contributions to these processes and to consider what verse you will add to the grand symphony of life.

Methinks they don't fully grasp how just seeing things as processes is a bad thing. For one it would be like saying that individuals don't exist.

https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/84439/88743

Quoting Gnomon

Alfred North Whitehead is a philosophical work that presents a system known as "process philosophy," arguing that reality is fundamentally a process of becoming rather than a collection of static objects, where the core concept is "creativity" as the driving force behind this ongoing process of actual entities coming into existence; it emphasizes the interconnectedness and relational nature of all things within the universe, with each "actual occasion" (moment of experience) drawing from past events and contributing to future ones, essentially viewing the world as a dynamic flow of becoming rather than a fixed state.

PEople often use that in a similar vein to the "no self" in Buddhism, though that idea is way more complicated.

Quoting Darkneos

That seems kind of a stretch.

I admit it does take some stretching of the imagination, but one should expect to do so when learning new things. What part of my description do you take issue with, or is it the whole thing?

Quoting Darkneos

Methinks they don't fully grasp how just seeing things as processes is a bad thing. For one it would be like saying that individuals don't exist.

But the semblance and the process continue on.

Change, change, change… constant change, as fast as it
Can happen—the speed of light being foremost
The speed of causality—o’er 13 billion years now,
From the simple on up to the more complex.

The ‘vacuum’ has to e’er jitter and sing,
This Base Existent forced as something,
Due to the nonexistence of ‘Nothing’;
If it ‘tries’ to be zero, it cannot.

At the indefinite quantum level,
Zero must be fuzzy, not definite;
So it can’t be zero, but has to be
As that which is ever up to something.

Quoting Darkneos

So far, I don't see it as 'dehumanising'. People are not being labelled as 'just processes'. It seems to be a way to understand humans and their place in the world. As individuals and part of many processes, relationships and interactions, including the creative. Changing and not static.
— Amity

Except from what I gather they are, I posted something about teleonomic matter which seems to say the same. We care about individuals not processes.

Well, it seems we 'gather' things differently.
We can care about both individuals and processes. It's not an either/or scenario.

I've never heard of 'teleonomic matter', read about it and your conversation:
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/121491/does-teleonomic-matter-imply-subjectivity-without-identity

***

Your responses and questions flow from one idea to another. I think that is one of the many ways we can process our thoughts/feelings and confusion. There is a chain of interaction between individual brains/minds. This is part of a philosophical process. Just as writing can be a process of clarifying.

Process: https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/another-word-for/process.html

What do we hope to achieve by following a process. Improved understanding?
For what purpose? That depends on goals and aims. It's why I asked you:

Quoting Darkneos

First question: Why is it so important to you? Second, why did you give up so easily? Research is fun!
— Amity

I dunno, why is anything important?

So, here is where the process can go off on another tangent, away from a response which would reveal something specific. What would it matter if replies to your question didn't satisfy you? Is it that you just want to talk? See what others think? What motivated this question, other than other questions...
Is it 'turtles all the way down'?

***

Either way, it seems that some can never get enough of trying to find the 'true' answer.
And will argue until blue in the face, that they are right and others are wrong.
Some like it hot.

But sometimes it's good just to chill out. Get out of your head and any mental tensions.
There are other ways of getting tied up in knots. Following a process to a satisfying end product.
Chains of individual stitches, creating a whole.

Quoting Therapeutic effects of knitting - a guide to mindfulness and relaxation

In a world that often feels hurried and chaotic, finding solace in simple, rhythmic activities can be a gateway to peace and mental well-being. Knitting, a timeless craft cherished across generations, emerges not just as a creative hobby but as a surprising ally in the quest for mindfulness and relaxation. From the gentle click of needles to the tactile pleasure of yarn, knitting is more than just a means to create; it’s a meditative journey that offers a unique blend of focus, repetition, and creativity.

Garter Stitch Scarf Pattern – Simple For Beginners
https://www.handylittleme.com/easy-knit-scarf-pattern/

You can multi-task and listen to music at the same time. Or watch a video. You can even think about teleonomic matter...

Quoting Darkneos

Doesn't seem very smart or insightful TBH.

Quoting Darkneos

I dunno, why is anything important?

Your honesty is admirable. But unimportant. Your estimation of my responses likewise.

Quoting unenlightened

Processism: a philosophy characterised by the prioritising of 'happens' over 'is'; of event over object; of doing over being. Now I can relax! I still know everything!

Not over, but as. Happenings as is, object as event and doing as being. It seems to me that these terms are interchangeable depending upon which view we are taking at any given moment. It's not that the process philosopher is abandoning those terms but is instead re-purposing them.

Quoting Gnomon

Here's the response from Google A.I. Overview : "Process philosophy is often compared to substance metaphysics, which is the dominant paradigm in Western philosophy. Process philosophy differs from substance metaphysics in its focus on becoming and change, rather than the static nature of being."

What is a substance. What is a process? Which one is more difficult to define?

We've discussed our ideas before and I think we share a lot in the way we view the world. I would add that process and relations can be used interchangeably here, and information is another relation or process - a causal process/relation.

I personally do not like to invoke the term, "becoming" as that seems to imply some sort of goal, or intent, and nothing lasts forever, so becoming nothing would essentially be the case for everything and "becoming" becomes meaningless.

Quoting Darkneos

Methinks they don't fully grasp how just seeing things as processes is a bad thing. For one it would be like saying that individuals don't exist.

It's not saying that at all. It's saying that individuals are processes. You are a process. Your mind is a process. Your body is a process, or relation between organs. Your organs are a process, or relation between molecules. Molecules are a relation between atoms, and atoms a relation between protons and electrons, and protons a relation between quarks. It's possible we could go on for infinity as we continue to dig deeper. The point is that when we try to get at actual objects we are actually getting at relations between smaller objects, which are themselves relations.



If you think process philosophy is nonsensical then please explain exactly what is substance?

Quoting Harry Hindu

Here's the response from Google A.I. Overview : "Process philosophy is often compared to substance metaphysics, which is the dominant paradigm in Western philosophy. Process philosophy differs from substance metaphysics in its focus on becoming and change, rather than the static nature of being." — Gnomon

What is a substance. What is a process? Which one is more difficult to define?

We've discussed our ideas before and I think we share a lot in the way we view the world. I would add that process and relations can be used interchangeably here, and information is another relation or process - a causal process/relation.

I personally do not like to invoke the term, "becoming" as that seems to imply some sort of goal, or intent, and nothing lasts forever, so becoming nothing would essentially be the case for everything and "becoming" becomes meaningless.

Whitehead's Process philosophy is over my head. But it seems to be describing a worldview that is similar to my own. For example, reductive physical Science tends to use the word "substance" to mean composed-of-static-stable-immobile-Matter. But quantum Science has found that Matter is fundamentally a process of energy & form exchanges*1. So Aristotle's definition of "substance"*2 may be more appropriate for our understanding of Nature's fundamentals. On the sub-atomic level of reality, nothing stands still, and formless Energy (causation ; E=MC^2) is the essence of the material substances we see & touch, and depend-on to stay-put when we leave them alone.

Therefore, our world is not a finished product, but an evolving process. Yet classical Newtonian*3 Physicists tend to dislike the notion of progression toward some future goal, as in Teleology. I don't know what that final denoument will be, but I doubt that the end-state of this process will be heat-death. That's because disorderly Entropy is off-set by a tendency toward order (Negentropy) that I call Enformy*4. And the root of Enformy is Information : knowledge of inter-relations as both frozen snapshots and dynamic movies.

The Big Bang universe is typically portrayed as an open-ended expansion from almost nothing (singularity) to a lot more of nothing {image below}. But my Enformationism thesis describes it as Progression {image below} instead of just Expansion. That's because the original Singularity of big bang theory is an immaterial mathematical concept, so where did all the organized Matter and sentient Minds come from? Some scientists think the Big Bang ex nihilo notion is erroneous --- implying a Creation event and Teleonomy --- but so far no other First Cause concept has taken its place as a scientific Theory of Everything. :smile:


*1. Quantum form change refers to the transition of a quantum system from one state to another, such as a phase transition.
___Google A.I. Overview

*2. In Aristotle's metaphysics, essence is what makes a thing what it is, while substance is what makes a thing a general thing. Aristotle believed that primary substance and essence were essentially the same.
___Google A.I. Overview

*3.Newtonian forces push and pull physical bodies in specifiable spatiotemporal directions. But, in an important sense, evolutionary forces do not “act” like physical Newtonian forces. Evolutionary forces push and pull populations of organisms (not bodies) in evolutionary space, not in space and time.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/605799

*4.Enformy :
In the Enformationism theory, Enformy is a hypothetical, holistic, meta-physical, natural trend or force, that counteracts Entropy & Randomness to produce complexity & progress.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html






PS___Since the notion of Dissipative Systems*5 has been raised --- presumably to deny the possibility of cosmic or social Progress --- I here note that what some scientists dismissively call "Negentropy" is what I call positive "Enformy", in order to emphasize the role of Information (power to enform or transform) in physics. The depressing prediction of ultimate Heat Death, due to triumphant Entropy, ignores the subtle ways in which thermodynamic digression can be transformed into progressive forms, such as Life & Mind & Technology.

The dominance of information-sharing humans on Earth is merely one sign of Enformy at work, converting world-destroying Entropy into a world-conquering species of Information consumers and Entropy expellers. Purpose is the paddle by which we propel ourselves into the future (telos). Enformy is the fuel of Progress and Entropy is the exhaust. Elon won't make it to Mars --- in his dissipative rockets --- if he surrenders to Entropy. :wink:

*5. The maintenance of the structural, non-equilibrium, low entropy, order involves continuous entropy production, which is exported to the outside the system (its environment). In other words, dissipative structures import negentropy (“negative entropy”) and export entropy to maintain internal order.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-cities/articles/10.3389/frsc.2020.523491/full

Reply to Gnomon :sparkle: :lol:

Direction¹ (entropy) =/= purpose (telos).

[1] dissipative systems e.g. cosmogenesis, nucleogenesis, black hole evaporation, natural selection, autopoiesis ...

Quoting Gnomon

Whitehead's Process philosophy is over my head. But it seems to be describing a worldview that is similar to my own. For example, reductive physical Science tends to use the word "substance" to mean composed-of-static-stable-immobile-Matter. But quantum Science has found that Matter is fundamentally a process of energy & form exchanges*1. So Aristotle's definition of "substance"*2 may be more appropriate for our understanding of Nature's fundamentals. On the sub-atomic level of reality, nothing stands still, and formless Energy (causation ; E=MC^2) is the essence of the material substances we see & touch, and depend-on to stay-put when we leave them alone.

Therefore, our world is not a finished product, but an evolving process. Yet classical Newtonian*3 Physicists tend to dislike the notion of progression toward some future goal, as in Teleology. I don't know what that final denoument will be, but I doubt that the end-state of this process will be heat-death. That's because disorderly Entropy is off-set by a tendency toward order (Negentropy) that I call Enformy*4. And the root of Enformy is Information : knowledge of inter-relations as both frozen snapshots and dynamic movies.

Whitehead invokes God as a fundamental part of his metaphysical system which, I believe, is why he uses the term, "becoming" in describing the behavior of processes.

The problem is that any stable state some process (which we perceives a solid, static objects) achieves is only temporary. It is our skewed perception of time and the projection of our mental categories that leads us to believe that there is some goal, or permanent state some process is trying to become. Is a newborn wildebeest becoming an adult or becoming the dinner for a pride of lions, or the energy it gives them when they devour it? If things never stop becoming something else, then I think the more appropriate word is simply, "change". Everything is not becoming. Everything is changing, and everything changes at different rates. The relative frequency of change in the mind in the way it perceives and informs an organism is relative to the change in the environment, or other processes, so processes will appear as solid, static objects when their frequency of change is slower relative to your mental processes. Faster processes will appear as blurs of change (waves?) and may appear to have no cause at all from our perspective.


Quoting Gnomon

The Big Bang universe is typically portrayed as an open-ended expansion from almost nothing (singularity) to a lot more of nothing {image below}. But my Enformationism thesis describes it as Progression {image below} instead of just Expansion. That's because the original Singularity of big bang theory is an immaterial mathematical concept, so where did all the organized Matter and sentient Minds come from? Some scientists think the Big Bang ex nihilo notion is erroneous --- implying a Creation event and Teleonomy --- but so far no other First Cause concept has taken its place as a scientific Theory of Everything.

I still have not completely bought into the Big Bang theory. How do we know that the rate of expansion has been the same through time? How do we know if the universe has ever undergone contraction during its history? The "expansion" could be the effect of something else "outside" our universe interacting with our universe. Could it be multiverses, or something in this universe in different dimensions than what we can't perceive (dark matter/energy) causing the expansion?

Quoting Gnomon

*3.Newtonian forces push and pull physical bodies in specifiable spatiotemporal directions. But, in an important sense, evolutionary forces do not “act” like physical Newtonian forces. Evolutionary forces push and pull populations of organisms (not bodies) in evolutionary space, not in space and time.

What is the scope of evolutionary space when the human species has left the planet and can live in space? I don't like the term, "physical". Evolutionary forces are natural forces. Predator and prey are forces acting on each other. The dynamic environment is a force acting on the organism and the organism is itself part of the environment. Gravity is a force that plays a role in the shape and structure of organisms as well as the shape and structure of planets, stars and galaxies.

Quoting Gnomon

The dominance of information-sharing humans on Earth is merely one sign of Enformy at work, converting world-destroying Entropy into a world-conquering species of Information consumers and Entropy expellers. Purpose is the paddle by which we propel ourselves into the future (telos). Enformy is the fuel of Progress and Entropy is the exhaust. Elon won't make it to Mars --- in his dissipative rockets --- if he surrenders to Entropy. :wink:

It seems to me that the sun's energy is the biggest player in the battle against entropy, here in our local area of the universe. The sun won't last forever. I do hope Elon succeeds in his plans to colonize Mars. I hope we go much further because when the Sun goes nova, or a major solar flare occurs, even Mars won't be safe. I hope humans are destined to become a star-faring species. We should not keep our eggs all in one basket.

Quoting Harry Hindu

Whitehead invokes God as a fundamental part of his metaphysical system which, I believe, is why he uses the term, "becoming" in describing the behavior of processes.

I too, postulate a philosophical god-like First Cause*1 as an explanation for the something-from-nothing implication of Big Bang theory. The Multiverse hypothesis just assumes perpetual causation, with no beginning or end. But what we know of physical Energy is that it dissipates. So, I find the open-ended Big Bang theory to be adequate for scientific purposes.

Although it could be interpreted in various ways, the notion of becoming*2 does not necessarily imply moving toward a specific destination. But, if an intelligent designer initiated the process, some teleological destination would make sense. :smile:


*1. What is the Whitehead concept of God?
Moreover, Whitehead understands God as the Principle of Limitation in the sense that it is God who gives structure and order to the universe. In the Whiteheadian understanding God is the source of potentiality and source of novelty and the wisdom that permeates the universe.
https://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/35371/1/Unit-3.pdf
Note --- I would interpret the "principle of limitation" as the Natural Laws that limit infinite possible states to the few that we humans view as "structure & order".

*2. In philosophy, becoming is the process of change, growth, and evolution. It's a way of understanding reality as dynamic and ever-changing, rather than fixed or static.
___Google A.I. Overview

Quoting Harry Hindu

Faster processes will appear as blurs of change (waves?) and may appear to have no cause at all from our perspective.

Yes. I interpret the use of "acausal" in quantum physics to mean simply "no known cause". On the macro scale, sudden Phase Transitions, such as water to ice, also seem mysterious because there is no instantaneous change in the gradual inflow or outflow of energy. So, the potential to transform a liquid to a solid or gas state may be inherent to the geometry of the system, not to a particular cause. :nerd:

Quoting Harry Hindu

I still have not completely bought into the Big Bang theory. How do we know that the rate of expansion has been the same through time?

Some scientists object to the Big Bang theory, primarily because of its implication of a creation event. But they have not yet found a better alternative. The current rate of expansion can be measured, and is called the Hubble Constant. Yet some scientists hypothesize that the early rate of inflation was faster than the speed of light, then suddenly slowed down to its current leisurely pace of "67.4 kilometers per second per megaparsec." But the exponential inflation rate is theoretical, not measurable. :grin:

Quoting Harry Hindu

I don't like the term, "physical". Evolutionary forces are natural forces.

Evolutionary "forces" are metaphors*3 based on the physical forces of nature. And the "mechanisms" --- mutation, genetic drift, gene flow, and natural selection --- are also metaphors, not directly observable procedures. Would you prefer to call them "meta-physical"? :wink:

*3. “Force-Talk” in Evolutionary Explanation: Metaphors and Misconceptions
https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s12052-010-0282-5

Quoting Harry Hindu

It seems to me that the sun's energy is the biggest player in the battle against entropy, here in our local area of the universe. The sun won't last forever.

Yes. The sun is a blob of stored energy from the big bang, and is the source of anti-entropy (Enformy) for our local system, including Life & Mind. Since Sol's stores of energy are finite, those living & thinking beings may need to find a new home in about 5 billion earth years. So, Elon Musk needs to step-up the pace of his Starship program. :joke:

Dunning-Krugers are in full effect. :zip:

Quoting punos

I admit it does take some stretching of the imagination, but one should expect to do so when learning new things. What part of my description do you take issue with, or is it the whole thing?

More like how stuff would stop existing, it wouldn't. Stretching the imagination doesn't always mean learning new things, it could be delusion too.

Quoting Amity

So, here is where the process can go off on another tangent, away from a response which would reveal something specific. What would it matter if replies to your question didn't satisfy you? Is it that you just want to talk? See what others think? What motivated this question, other than other questions...
Is it 'turtles all the way down'?

If you don't know you don't know, I don't see the need for all that.

Quoting Harry Hindu

It's not saying that at all. It's saying that individuals are processes. You are a process. Your mind is a process. Your body is a process, or relation between organs. Your organs are a process, or relation between molecules. Molecules are a relation between atoms, and atoms a relation between protons and electrons, and protons a relation between quarks. It's possible we could go on for infinity as we continue to dig deeper. The point is that when we try to get at actual objects we are actually getting at relations between smaller objects, which are themselves relations.

But they're still objects and that's what leads us to giving a damn about anything. If it's just a process then who cares because that would mean nothing exists...

Quoting 180 Proof

Dunning-Krugers are in full effect. :zip:

That's the impression I'm getting, no one really knows what this means even the people who subscribe to it. No wonder it never took off.

Reply to Darkneos :smirk:

Reply to Darkneos
Well, we know that everything is made of atoms, but what are atoms made of?

We know that atoms are made of nucleons (neutrons and protons) and electrons. Focusing on the nucleons, we know that they are made up of quarks, but what are the quarks made of? Now things might get a little tricky. According to scientific consensus, quarks are considered fundamental particles, meaning they are not made of anything smaller. But if a quark is not made of anything (has no parts), then what is the substance of a quark? It can't be made up of infinite smaller things in an infinite regress.

The substance of a quark is its properties. But then, what are these properties made of? We know that a property is a characteristic or attribute that describes or determines the nature and behavior of something. But what is it that has the property? A property is its own substance.

The answer is that properties are what is fundamental, and thus it is the properties that have particles, not the particles that have properties. But what does that even mean?

It means that this perspective is an inversion of the usual way we think about matter. Instead of particles having properties, it's more accurate to say that properties manifest as particles. In other words, quarks (and other fundamental particles) are the physical manifestation of these fundamental properties in the fabric of spacetime (the void).

According to my current understanding of quantum mechanics, it is not possible for a fundamental particle to be completely static and motionless due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Even at temperatures close to absolute zero (which is unreachable in practice), particles retain a minimum amount of quantum energy. This energy manifests as small fluctuations or vibrations, preventing particles from being truly static. In quantum field theory particles are excitations of underlying quantum property fields rather than discrete, static objects.

Is there anything that you know about which does not undergo some kind of process, or that is not in some kind of flux state?

Quoting punos

In quantum field theory particles are excitations of underlying quantum property fields rather than discrete, static objects.

Really great post!

aside: Do the one-third charges of quarks make them suspect of not being elemental/fundamental?

Here's a song video that I made today, somewhat pertaining; turn on closed captions (CC) to see the words in the video:



The weave of the quantum fields as strokes writes…
(The letters of the elemental bytes—
The alphabet of the standard model…)

Each galaxy a grand epic unfolds,
As dark matter’s grammar shapes and upholds
The syntax of celestial motion,
While space-time’s meter measures and molds.

Like metaphors that bridge world and mind,
Consciousness emerges, strange and refined,
From neural verses sparking patterns
That mirror cosmic rhythms intertwined.

The double helix writes in four-base ink
Life’s endless variations, link by link,
Each mutation a new metaphor
Teaching matter new ways to think.

Black holes compress whole libraries of space
Into singular points of time and grace,
Where information dances on edges,
Neither lost nor found—just changing its face.

Through quantum entanglement’s subtle rhyme,
Particles poetry-slam through space-time,
Speaking in spooky correlations
That make Einstein’s certainties sublime.

We are stanzas in this cosmic text,
Each generation writing what comes next,
Adding chapters to evolution’s tale,
As simple atoms grow more complex.

The vacuum teems with virtual verse,
Particles borrowing time to rehearse
Their brief soliloquies of being,
Before returning to the universe.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

Really great post!

Thank you, although i'm sure others might not agree. :smile:

Quoting PoeticUniverse

Do the one-third charges of quarks make them suspect of not being elemental/fundamental?

For me, the existence of multiple "fundamental" particles, at least as presented in the Standard Model, suggests that none of them are truly fundamental in the strictest sense. I believe absolute fundamentality can only really be found in the void itself, as a property of space one might say.

Quoting punos

I believe absolute fundamentality can only really be found in the void itself...

:fire: :up:

Quoting punos

I believe absolute fundamentality can only really be found in the void itself, as a property of space one might say.

:up:

I think that's why they are called 'elementary' instead; however, they are directly quanta of fields.

Another video from today - that's mostly what I do every day:



When the universe ends—sparse photons left…

The last black holes will whisper to the void,
Their Hawking radiation’s fading song
A requiem for galaxies long dead,
For stars that danced and planets that once bloomed;

Yet in that darkness sleeps infinite seed,
The quantum foam of possibility,
Where virtual particles embrace and part
Like thoughts within the cosmic mind unborn.

The vacuum teems with spectral symmetries,
Mathematics’ ghosts that never sleep,
Platonic forms in timeless hibernation
Awaiting their next chance to manifest.

In this great pause between the cosmic acts,
The stage is empty but the script remains,
Written in the grammar of pure space,
In laws that transcend any single world.

Perhaps some deeper rhythm pulses here
In realms where time itself dissolves to now,
Where every ending holds beginning’s heart,
And death is just geometry in flux.

The constants and the forces hibernate
Like winter seeds beneath dimensional frost,
Until conditions ripen once again
For space and time to blossom into form.

See how the void begins to ripple now
With fluctuations in the quantum deep,
As virtual becomes the actual,
And possibility ignites to mass.

The eternal math starts singing once again,
Its abstractions clothing themselves in fire,
As from the ashes of our universe,
Another cosmos learns to read its lines.

I haven't read the rest of this thread, but I like Jo Whelers answer.

I would consider myself a "process philosophy" believer when it comes to the emergence of human minds.

I consider myself a physicalist, which is to say everything is either physical, or the consequence of physical events. When you mix that with Process Philosophy, you get a view of the mind where it makes sense to say "the mind isn't physical, but the mind IS the result of physical events - the mind is the consequence of physical processes".

So the physical stuff is real, the events are real, the processes are real, and that is a way of discussing how things like minds can emerge from non-mind things like chemicals in the brain.

Quoting Gnomon

I too, postulate a philosophical god-like First Cause*1 as an explanation for the something-from-nothing implication of Big Bang theory. The Multiverse hypothesis just assumes perpetual causation, with no beginning or end.

God is a something from nothing and isn't necessary as the universe could be eternal without intelligent design. God just complicates the matter. I find it easier to contemplate a perpetual causation than the idea of something from nothing. To say that God is eternal yet never does anything (cause anything to happen) is to relegate the notion of god into meaninglessness. How would we know how many Big Bangs have occurred before ours if god is eternal?

Meaning is a causal relation. In asking what life and the universe means is to ask what caused it and if there was an intentional purpose for its existence (intention is a type of cause). Without causation there is no meaning, no information, no existence as things are a relation between other things. God does not exist unless it does something, and if it exists eternally then it has acted eternally (perpetual causation (infinite Big Bangs)).

Quoting Darkneos

More like how stuff would stop existing, it wouldn't. Stretching the imagination doesn't always mean learning new things, it could be delusion too.

Quoting Darkneos

But they're still objects and that's what leads us to giving a damn about anything. If it's just a process then who cares because that would mean nothing exists...

It doesn't mean any of that at all. To say that they're still objects while never being able to point to objects, only processes, is stretching the imagination as a delusion.

To even say that things change is to say that things are processes.

You're failing to take into account the relative rate at which your brain processes information about the environment and the rate at which the other processes in the environment change, and how that affects how you perceive them as static "objects".

Giving a damn about anything is a process. :cool:

Quoting Harry Hindu

God is a something from nothing and isn't necessary as the universe could be eternal without intelligent design. God just complicates the matter. I find it easier to contemplate a perpetual causation than the idea of something from nothing.

Perhaps, prior to the 20th century, a self-existent universe may have been plausible. But the astro-physical evidence of a singular point-of-origin for space-time made our cosmos seem contingent upon some outside force. Also, the laws of physics indicate that our evolving space-time world, began with high energy and low entropy, and will eventually end in a Big Sigh*1. Moreover, "Perpetual Causation" is an illicit violation of the second law of Thermodynamics, unless an inexhaustible source of Energy can be found outside the finite physical system we find ourselves dependent upon.

So, apart from non-empirical speculations, the before & after states are missing from our current scientific model of reality. Hence, philosophers are free to theorize about those gaps in the empirical facts. Personally, I long-ago gave-up on the Hebrew Genesis model of creation. But the Greek notion of First Cause*2 and Prime Mover are still in play, logically. Also, the emergence of human intelligence, has yet to be explained in terms of Biology & Physics. So, some kind of apriori creative Mind is a philosophically reasonable account for that explanatory gap.

We can dismiss these non-empirical conjectures as God-of-the-Gaps-guesses, until science fills-in the lacuna in our understanding of how physical evolution could produce human beings and worldwide culture from chaotic random mutations without an algorithm of Intelligent Selection criteria. But there's no law against philosophical speculation is there? Is it pseudoscience or merely creative thinking? :smile:


*1. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the state of entropy of the entire universe, as an isolated system, will always increase over time. The second law also states that the changes in the entropy in the universe can never be negative.
https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry_Textbook_Maps/

*2. Plato (429-347 BC) was an early proponent of intelligent design (ID), a pseudoscientific idea that posits an intelligent cause for certain features of the universe
___Google A.I. Overview

Reply to Darkneos You're doing it, right here, right now...
There is no right or wrong approach to it truthfully.

Quoting punos

Really great post! — PoeticUniverse
Thank you, although i'm sure others might not agree. :smile:

On a philosophy forum we expect to have disagreements. But we also have a right to expect the disputes to be articulated in calm rational counter-arguments ; instead of infantile schoolyard name-calling with big words, such as "Dunning-Kruger", as a supercilious way to call someone an idiot, and get it past the forum censors, who frown on ad hominems.

A more acceptable response might be : I don't understand ; please define "X", or explain "Y". But mutually exclusive worldviews, such as Atheism vs Theism and Immanentism vs Transcendentalism, have ancient dug-in roots. And for those with dogmatic positions, no amount of reasoning would be persuasive. Even moderate positions, such as Deism or Preternaturalism, would be unacceptable for those who style themselves as defenders of Truth & Science. :grin:

TIP : Be on the lookout for a forum ID image of a mean 'widdle kid ; they bite with sarcasm! :angry:

Quoting Gnomon

But the astro-physical evidence of a singular point-of-origin for space-time made our cosmos seem contingent upon some outside force.

:yawn:

Yeah well there's no scientific EVIDENCE to support this anachronistic (crypto-creationist, woo-of-the-gaps :sparkle:) claim about the planck era universe.

Reply to Gnomon
Although i agree with you, i'm not sure what to say or how to say it. I'm certain you already know this but, this scene from the "Little Buddha" came to mind:


I didn't particularly like this film, but i did love this scene. It's just a reminder for those that know, and a lesson for those that don't.

Quoting Gnomon

Moreover, "Perpetual Causation" is an illicit violation of the second law of Thermodynamics, unless an inexhaustible source of Energy can be found outside the finite physical system we find ourselves dependent upon.

This would be a problem for your god as well. As I pointed out before, for you god to exist eternally prior to the universe it would have to have done something, move, think, etc. to exist at all, which would require an inexhaustible source of energy. It seems to me that you're saying that god did not exist until it created the universe.

Quoting Gnomon

Also, the emergence of human intelligence, has yet to be explained in terms of Biology & Physics. So, some kind of apriori creative Mind is a philosophically reasonable account for that explanatory gap.

If intelligence needs an intelligent creator then why would god's intelligent mind not need a creator?

Quoting Gnomon

But there's no law against philosophical speculation is there? Is it pseudoscience or merely creative thinking?

This isn't creative thinking. This is projection - anthropomorphizing the natural properties and laws of the universe.

Quoting punos

Although i agree with you, i'm not sure what to say or how to say it.

When bullied by a forum troll, the best thing to say is nothing. That's why I long ago stopped responding to my own philosophical gadfly, who doesn't know what he doesn't know. Since he considers himself to be superior, he doesn't need my opinions anyway. My role now is to warn others being browbeaten to use the best pest control : silence. It doesn't affect him, but leaves him isolated in an echo chamber. :cool:

Quoting Harry Hindu

This would be a problem for your god as well. As I pointed out before, for you god to exist eternally prior to the universe it would have to have done something, move, think, etc. to exist at all, which would require an inexhaustible source of energy. It seems to me that you're saying that god did not exist until it created the universe.

Thermodynamics is not a problem for "my god"*1, because it is not a physical system subject to natural laws, but the source of those laws. This Platonic First Cause*2 did not exist as a real thing, but as an Ideal Potential. Potential doesn't do anything until Actualized. Aristotle's Prime Mover doesn't move, because it's the Unmoved Mover. Infinite Eternal Potential --- not limited by space-time --- is, by definition, an "inexhaustible source of energy". Space-time energy is doomed to entropic anihilation ; so where did our limited supply come from?

These First Principles are not Gods, in the usual anthro-morphic sense, but fundamental logical Necessities to explain the ontological origin of the finite material & thermodynamic world we live in. Do you have a better philosophical answer to the Cause of the Big Bang? My "god' is more like Spinoza's 17th century pantheistic deity, except that it takes into account the 20th century evidence for a Big Bang beginning. If the physical world is temporal instead of eternal, his all-god requires a creation story.

Are you aware of a scientific answer to the Big Bang ex nihilo problem? The Multiverse Conjecture is not scientific because it has no physical evidence. Instead, both Multiverse and Many Worlds are philosophical conjectures that are no more empirically valid or explanatory than my own notion of Infinite Potential. Besides, they may be bound by their own definitional Paradox*3. Since our brains are physical systems subject to the given laws of Nature, we are baffled by the notion of anything outside of space-time. And yet, the Big Bang was the birth of space-time. So we go in circles trying to make sense of timelessness and placelessness. :smile:


*1. G*D :
[i] This eternal deity is not imagined in a physical human body, but in a meta-physical mathematical form, equivalent to Logos. Other names : ALL, BEING, Creator, Enformer, MIND, Nature, Reason, Source, Programmer. The eternal Whole (panendeism) of which all temporal things are a part is not to be feared or worshipped, but appreciated like Nature.
I refer to the logically necessary and philosophically essential First & Final Cause as G*D, rather than merely "X" the Unknown, partly out of respect. That’s because the ancients were not stupid, to infer purposeful agencies, but merely shooting in the dark. We now understand the "How" of Nature much better, but not the "Why". That inscrutable agent of Entention is what I mean by G*D.[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html

*2. Platonic Potential :
In Platonic philosophy, the "first cause" or "potential" is often understood as the realm of "Forms" - perfect, unchanging, and eternal ideas which serve as the ultimate source and blueprint for everything that exists in the physical world, including the potential for all things to manifest and become actualized; essentially, the Forms act as the underlying cause of all existence, without themselves being directly created or caused by anything else.
___Google A.I. Overview

*3. The Multiverse Paradox :
Physicists say the multiverse saddles us with a paradox. Multiverse cosmology builds on cosmic inflation, the idea that the universe underwent a short burst of rapid expansion in its earliest stages. Inflationary theory has had a wealth of observational support for some time but has the inconvenient tendency to generate not one but a great many universes. And because it doesn’t say which one we should be in — it lacks this information — the theory loses much of its ability to predict what we should see. This is a paradox. On the one hand, our best theory of the early universe suggests we live in a multiverse. At the same time,the multiverse destroys much of the predictive power of this theory.
https://bigthink.com/hard-science/paradox-stephen-hawking-cosmology/
Note --- Cosmic Inflation is not a scientific theory because it has no possible empirical evidence to support interpretations of abstract arcane mathematical calculations.

Quoting Gnomon

Space-time energy is doomed to entropic anihilation ; so where did our limited supply come from?

Heck if I know; I'm on vacation…

To the Ends of the Universe: A Cosmic Road Trip

The Departure

I took a road trip through the universe recently,
Rolled down the windows of my consciousness,
Cranked up some space-time tunes real loud—
The cosmic background radiation was a bit repetitive.

Holy-moly, what an inhospitable joint!
Forget about finding a decent truck stop
Or even a patch of habitable space.
I’d rather be stuck in rush hour in Melbourne.

The Void

96% of everything was invisible stuff—
Dark energy pushing, dark matter lurking;
Like driving through Nebraska at midnight
With no headlights and a broken compass.

The other 4% was mostly cosmic litter:
Hydrogen loitering on street corners,
Helium hanging out in bad neighborhoods,
And dust that would never settle down.

Man, I’m starting to miss Toronto’s winters—
At least there you can wear enough layers.
Out here it’s absolute zero or plasma inferno,
No comfy medium for flesh and bone.

The Design Flaw

Whatever cosmic architect drew up these plans
Clearly wasn’t thinking about the tenants;
No OSHA regulations, no safety rails,
Just vacuum, radiation, and chaos galore.

Evolution had to work overtime for billions of years
Just to make Earth somewhat livable,
Like a contractor fixing a badly built house
While the foundation’s still settling.

And even then we almost got evicted
By asteroids, volcanoes, and ice ages,
Our species squeezed through a genetic bottleneck
So tight you could count our ancestors on fingers and toes.

The Stellar Tour

Passed by some stellar graveyards,
Where white dwarfs sat cooling their heels;
Saw nurseries of baby stars throwing tantrums,
Spewing stellar winds across their cosmic cribs.

Watched black holes playing vacuum cleaners,
Sucking up anything that came too close;
While supernovas lit up the neighborhood
Like cosmic fireworks gone terribly wrong.

The Pit Stop

Made a quick stop at that famous restaurant
At the universe’s outer rim—
The one with good food but no atmosphere!
Their health inspection rating was abysmal.

The menu was pretty limited:
Everything pre-cooked by background radiation,
Microwaved to three degrees Kelvin,
Served on a plate of quantum fluctuations.

The Wasteland

What a cosmic dump of celestial debris!
A wilderness of wreckage stretching forever,
Like a junkyard that goes on for infinity
In every conceivable direction and dimension.

Not a single ‘Rest Area Next Exit’ sign,
No ‘Gas, Food, Lodging’ for light years,
Just emptiness occasionally interrupted
By things that could kill you instantly.

The Return

Back home now, counting my lucky quarks,
Realizing that after 14 billion years
Of cosmic evolution’s trial and error,
We somehow slipped through probability’s fingers.

Like winning the lottery while being struck by lightning
During a solar eclipse on a leap year—
We beat odds so astronomical
They don’t even have numbers for them.

The Punchline

Oh wait—what’s that in the rear-view mirror?
A mountain-sized rock with Earth in its GPS?
All that cosmic luck about to cash out
Like a rigged slot machine’s final spin.

Well, it was fun while it lasted.
The house always wins in the end.
At least we got to see the show
Before the curtain came crashing down.

The Epilogue

Just another day in the cosmos,
Where time deals exclusively in infinities,
And life is just a temporary glitch
In the universal operating system.

Perhaps somewhere past Andromeda
There’s a better-designed universe
With comfortable temperatures
And free parking for conscious beings.

But I doubt it.

Quoting punos

I didn't particularly like this film, but i did love this scene. It's just a reminder for those that know, and a lesson for those that don't.

[b]A Conversation with the Great Lama
(Who lives near me)
On Reality and Illusion[/b]

“Lama, I’ve heard that this world isn’t real,
That all we perceive is mere illusion’s deal—
That rain isn’t wet, and pain doesn’t hurt,
And nothing that seems to exist is quite real.”

“Indeed, that’s the teaching passed down through time,
That reality’s nature is more sublime
Than what our senses tell us is true.
Tell me, does this help when your problems climb?”

“Well, Lama, I’ve tried to see through the veil,
To treat life’s hard knocks as just details that fail
To pierce the true nature of ultimate truth—
But hunger still hungers, and storms still assail.

“The sunrise still wakes me, the night makes me sleep,
My heart still can love, and my eyes still can weep,
Each moment feels solid, each pain cuts as sharp
As if this illusion weren’t merely skin-deep.”

“You speak what you find with admirable sight.
The world does persist, through both day and night,
Appearing exactly, in every small way,
As if the illusion were really quite right.”

“But Lama, this puzzles my practical mind:
If something looks real, and no test can find
A difference between the false and the true,
Then what does it mean to leave reality behind?”

“Ah now, dear seeker, you touch something deep—
The paradox many find hard to keep:
How can the unreal seem perfectly real,
Yet still be untrue as a dream in our sleep?

“For when I am hungry, rice fills my bowl,
And when I am weary, rest makes me whole,
Each cause has effect, each action bears fruit,
As if the illusion were truth’s very soul.

“You notice with wisdom how things seem to be,
How perfectly matched is all that we see,
How every detail of life’s complex dance
Performs as if real—that’s the mystery.”

“Then Lama, forgive me, but I must say plain:
A difference that makes no difference at train
Of thought or experience, action or choice,
Seems rather like truth with a different name.”

“You’ve stumbled on something worth contemplating—
Perhaps the distinction we’ve been debating
Is itself an illusion, a conceptual trap,
A duality not worth celebrating.”

“Are you saying, Lama, the teaching itself
Might be like a book on the wisdom shelf
That points to a truth beyond true and false,
Beyond the division of self and not-self?”

“Now there’s a question worth sitting with long,
As deep as a temple bell’s evening song!
Perhaps the real truth lies not in the words,
But in seeing through both ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’”

“So whether it’s real or a dream that we see,
The point isn’t arguing what it might be,
But living each moment with full presence here,
Accepting what is, letting all else flow free?”

“Your wisdom grows like a lotus in rain,
Finding truth beyond pleasure and pain.
The question of real versus unreal fades
When we stop trying to grasp and explain.”

“Then maybe the teaching’s not meant to deny
The world that we live in, or label as lie
The experiences filling our everyday lives,
But to free us from concepts that make the soul sigh?”

“You’ve touched the heart of the matter at last:
The teaching’s not meant to deny what is vast
And present before us, but free us to live
Unbound by the concepts we cling to so fast.”

"So Lama, perhaps we can say this is true:
The world that we live in, both ancient and new,
Is neither illusion nor solid-set fact,
But something more subtle, seen fresh and anew?”

“Now that’s a wisdom worth taking to heart—
Beyond the false wisdom of tearing apart
What’s real and unreal, true self and false self,
Is simply this moment, where all things start.”

Reply to PoeticUniverse
That was excellent PoeticUniverse. Very good.. :smile: :100:

Quoting Gnomon

Thermodynamics is not a problem for "my god"*1, because it is not a physical system subject to natural laws, but the source of those laws. This Platonic First Cause*2 did not exist as a real thing, but as an Ideal Potential. Potential doesn't do anything until Actualized. Aristotle's Prime Mover doesn't move, because it's the Unmoved Mover. Infinite Eternal Potential --- not limited by space-time --- is, by definition, an "inexhaustible source of energy". Space-time energy is doomed to entropic anihilation ; so where did our limited supply come from?

:roll: Here we go again... dualism on a runaway train. How does a system not subject to natural laws become a source of those laws? Unmoved movers? Something from nothing? All you are doing is complicating things unnecessarily. I think our ideas about the fundamental nature of "objects" as bundles of process/relations/information are compatible up to the point where you invoke some sort of intelligent design.

Potential is an idea that stems from our ignorance of the deterministic effects of some cause. We think of probabilities and potentials as having some objective existence apart from our minds, but they are just projections of our own ignorance.

There is also the possibility that causation is a loop. No need for infinite regresses or something from nothing.

Quoting Harry Hindu

:roll: Here we go again... dualism on a runaway train. How does a system not subject to natural laws become a source of those laws?

The First Cause concept may seem like Dualism from your perspective, but it's Monism*1 from mine.

I can't tell you "how" it happens. That's a job for physical science. But I may be able to suggest "why" : temporal Natural Laws are a subset of eternal principles. From a physical scientific viewpoint, this notion will sound like non-sense ; which it is literally : beyond the scope of physical senses. Yet, from a philosophical metaphysical viewpoint, we can trace what is (Being : Ontology) back to its Origin. The Big Bang theory was an attempt to do just that. Unfortunately, the receding physical evidence disappeared into a Black Hole Singularity that is invisible to our eyes. So, we can never know (Epistemology) via our physical senses, what lies beyond that point of beginning.

Fortunately, our philosophical minds can extend the trail of evidence (conjecture) beyond the instance of Causation toward its inception. Imagine an arrow passing by your face, then try to discover "where did that come from?" When you look in the direction of the assumed Source, you may only see dark bushes. But your reasoning powers can conclude that an intentional human agent with a bow was hiding in the underbrush. Similarly, philosophers, from time immemorial, have looked for the Source of our Cosmos in the bushy stars.

Those attempts at understanding where our temporary world came from have yielded a variety of other-worldly models : from ancient Brahman (ultimate reality underlying all phenomena), to an anthro-morphic god-head (pantheon), and eventually to the monistic notion of Monotheism. More modern notions are Multiverse (infinite regression of what is) to Many Worlds (Schrodinger's Cat metaphysics). Yet, another modern worldview is based on the ubiquity of Information*2 (power to enform), in many different forms : Energy, Matter, Mind. My thesis provides links to scientific evidence for this non-sense.

I won't belabor this theme in a forum post. But the bottom-line is that a single creative force, EnFormAction (negentropy), operating in this world as Energy & Matter & Mind can be traced back to a Casual Principle that Plato called First Cause, and Aristotle labeled Prime Mover. These are not Gods in the traditional sense, but hypothetical explanations for the impetus that jump-started our evolving world on its journey through Space-Time. Nothing in this theory violates any laws of physics. But it gives us some idea about how an explosion of space-time came to be governed by logical laws. :smile:


*1. Mind/Body Problem :
Philosophers and scientists have long debated the relationship between a physical body and its non-physical properties, such as Life & Mind. Cartesian Dualism resolved the problem temporarily by separating the religious implications of metaphysics (Soul) from the scientific study of physics (Body). But now scientists are beginning to study the mind with their precise instruments, and have found no line of demarcation. So, they see no need for the hypothesis of a spiritual Soul added to the body by God. However, Enformationism resolves the problem by a return to Monism, except that the fundamental substance is meta-physical Information instead of physical Matter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_problem
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page15.html

*2. Enformationism :
A philosophical worldview or belief system grounded on the 20th century discovery that Information, rather than Matter, is the fundamental substance of everything in the universe. It is intended to be the 21st century successor to ancient Materialism. An Update from Bronze Age to Information Age. It's a Theory of Everything that covers, not just matter & energy, but also Life & Mind & Love.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
Note --- Spinoza described his "God" as the infinite eternal substance. But he knew nothing of the singular Big Bang theory or infinite Multiverses, so assumed that the material world was infinite & eternal.

Quoting Harry Hindu

:roll: Here we go again... dualism on a runaway train. How does a system not subject to natural laws become a source of those laws?

It's traditionally called Creation Ex Nihilo. But in my non-dual version it's called EnFormAction : the power to create something new, not from nothing, but from infinite Potential. We don't know anything about infinity or omnipotence, but we have the mental power to imagine such non-things as Zero, Infinity and Mathematics (e.g. transcendent functions). Again, nothing dual here, just a finite world existing as a limited-but-integral component of an infinite singular non-physical whole : the Monad*3. According to Leibniz, you can't get any simpler than Unity. But according to Virgil, you can get e pluribus unum. I feel sure that such philosophical profundities are not too "complicated" for you ; if you think outside the physical box (metaphysics). :nerd:

*3. "“Monad” means that which is one, has no parts and is therefore indivisible."
https://iep.utm.edu/leib-met/

Quoting Harry Hindu

... dualism on a runaway train. How does a system not subject to natural laws become a source of those laws? Unmoved movers? Something from nothing? All you are [@Gnomon is] doing is complicating things unnecessarily.

:100:

Quoting PoeticUniverse

Whatever cosmic architect drew up these plans
Clearly wasn’t thinking about the tenants;

Yes. The architect of our cosmic habitation apparently was designing for non-divine inhabitants who are subject to the same natural laws as the house itself : gravity, entropy, cause & effect. If humans were supposed to be angels, we would be walking on clouds in heaven. Instead we are temporary tenants, not owners. We are no more divine than the other tenants, including rats & roaches. But we do have an extra clause in our lease : we get to complain to the landlord. And self-maintenance is in the contract. But you-break-it-you-fix-it is the rule. :halo:

Quoting Darkneos

But the answers I get make even less sense than the wikipedia entries on it and so I figured I'd try to ask it on here to see if anyone knows what it is and what it means, because I just get more lost on it.

One way to understand an obscure philosophical opus is to learn what prompted it, or what it is arguing against. A few years ago, since I never fully understood what Whitehead was going on about, I just accepted that some of what he said sounded vaguely like an oriental worldview, such as Taoism. I have no formal academic indoctrination or experience in Philosophy --- other than what I get on this forum. So I often Google perplexing questions in order to get a quick dumbed-down overview : what-it's-all-about-Alfie?*1.

According to the summaries below, it seems that Whitehead was presenting a worldview in opposition to Substance Metaphysics (Materialism) and religious Monotheism (divine omnipotence)*2. Ironically, this wishy-washy position is likely to piss-off both hard-nosed Materialistic Philosophers and dogmatic Religious Believers. For example, modern science, since Newton"s Principia, took Materialism and Mechanism for granted. But then, Quantum Mechanics came along and made a mishmash of step-by-step deterministic mechanisms at the foundations of physical reality. And Quantum Uncertainty made even the existence of subatomic particles appear probabilistically fuzzy & conceptually immaterial*3. More like processes than particles. Apparently, the philosophical implications of this revolutionary New Science created perplexities that jolted his old viewpoint and informed his new worldview.

Whitehead also watered-down the certainty of traditional Monotheism, by noting that the physical world shows no signs of Omnipotent once-and-for-all creation. Instead, the cosmos seems to be both Logical (mathematics) and Irrational (capricious). And yet he reserved a place for a God in his worldview*4. His Deistic god-model is also similar to my own in some ways. So now, I'm gradually coming to a general understanding of his Evolutionary Process worldview. BTW, his contemporaries, Henri Bergson (Creative Evolution), and J.C Smuts (Holism and Evolution) also wrote subversive books on how the world progresses from simple primitive forms to the complexities of today. :smile:


*1. The opposite of process philosophy is typically considered to be substance metaphysics; this is because process philosophy emphasizes the fundamental nature of change and becoming, while substance metaphysics views reality as primarily composed of static, unchanging substances, like the idea of a "thing" with fixed properties"
___Google A.I. Overview

*2. [i]Materialism : Whitehead believed that reality is made up of processes, not material objects. He rejected the idea that reality is made up of independent bits of matter.
Divine omnipotence :
Whitehead rejected the idea that God is all-powerful. He believed that God is necessary for everything that happens, but not in the traditional sense of omnipotence.[/i]
___Google A.I. Overview

*3. Whitehead's Mission :
[i]In light of the rise of electrodynamics, relativity, and quantum mechanics, Whitehead challenged scientific materialism and the bifurcation of nature “as being entirely unsuited to the scientific situation at which we have now arrived”, and he clearly outlined the mission of philosophy as he saw it:
. . . . Philosophy is not one among the sciences with its own little scheme of abstractions which it works away at perfecting and improving. It is the survey of the sciences, with the special object of their harmony, and of their completion. It brings to this task, not only the evidence of the separate sciences, but also its own appeal to concrete experience.[/i]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/whitehead/

*4. [i]Alfred North Whitehead's concept of God is a unified actual entity that is necessary for his metaphysical system. Whitehead believed that God is the source of order, novelty, and wisdom in the universe. . . .
Whitehead believed that God's nature is primordial and unified. He also believed that God is present and immanent in the world. . . .
Whitehead believed that God is the Principle of Limitation, giving structure and order to the universe. He also believed that God provides an aim for all entities[/i]
___Google A.I. Overview
Note --- "Source of order" = Logos???
"Primordial" = First Cause???
"Aim" = teleology???
No "independent existence" = Holism???

What exactly is Process Philosophy?

Quoting Darkneos

But the answers I get make even less sense than the wikipedia entries on it and so I figured I'd try to ask it on here to see if anyone knows what it is and what it means, because I just get more lost on it.

This is a continuation of my previous post. In which I noted that Whitehead's book seemed to be arguing in favor of Idealism/Mathematical Platonism, and against Materialism/Empirical Realism. Since those conflicting categories (physics vs metaphysics) are commonly cussed & discussed on this forum, I was motivated by your OP to look more deeply into what Whitehead was trying to say. Were you approaching the book from a scientific/materialistic perspective? If so, the book might be contrary to your personal "common sense".

In my search, I came across this webpage : Asking Terrence Deacon about Whitehead’s Reformed Platonism*1. One comment caught my eye : "Deacon praises Whitehead for defiantly pursuing a realist philosophy despite the tide of nominalism rising all about him during the first half of the 20th century." I was generally familiar with the contrasting worldviews of Idealism vs Realism, and Forms (mental abstractions) vs Materialism (physical objects).

I identified Realism with Materialism, but Nominalism was not in my vocabulary, so I Googled it*2. Apparently, Nominalism --- numbers are mere names, not real entities --- is the standard viewpoint of modern "hard" science, in that it prefers to focus on particular things, and to leave generalizations & universals ---such as Qualia (redness) and Geometry (relationships) --- to feckless philosophers and number-loving chalk-pushers. Unfortunately, pragmatic science in a complex world is seldom that black & white.

Personally, I'm not an empirical scientist. So I don't see why we can't have both real things and ideal concepts about things. But a language problem arises when Plato & Kant claim that conceptual Ideals are in some sense more "real" than perceptual Objects. A similar categorical difficulty emerges from Quantum Physics, which concluded that physical particles of Matter (quanta) are ultimately waves of Energy (processes). Again, which is more real or useful depends on your perspective*4.

Another Real vs Ideal problem is concerned with Whitehead's Panentheistic notion of Nature as a manifestation of God. Yet, again the quantum pioneers reached similar conclusions in order to explain some of the quantum queerness that didn't fit their deterministic and materialistic presumptions*5. Their god-models were not amenable to the Judeo-Christian traditions, but closer to the Cosmos-organizing Logos of Plato.

Again, although my first philosophically-naive reading of Process and Reality challenged my mostly materialistic worldview at the time, I have since come to accept that the Real World can be viewed from two different, but valid perspectives : Scientific materialism & Philosophical idealism. The notions of Compatibility & Complementarity ; Holistic & Systems Thinking are essential to my BothAnd*6 philosophy. And I suppose that Whitehead had come to a similar compromise between Scientific Objectivity and Philosophical Subjectivity. After all, his specialty of Mathematical Logic did not claim to study physical material objects, but meta-physical mental subjects : inter-relationships. :nerd:


*1. Whitehead’s Reformed Platonism :
Deacon doesn’t seem to have much patience for theology. The idea that [i]God conditions Creativity, shaping it according to some primordial valuation is obviously not attractive to him. He would rather seek an explanation for value that finds it emerging later on in the creative advance, perhaps about the time life emerges. He quotes Nietzsche approvingly, and perhaps there is some Nietzschean sense in which he finds the will to live is the ultimate source of value.[/i]
https://footnotes2plato.com/2012/04/27/asking-terrence-deacon-about-whiteheads-reformed-platonism/

*2. "Realism and nominalism are philosophical theories that differ in their views on the existence of universal concepts. Realists believe that universals are just as real as physical things, while nominalists believe that universals are not real in the same way as physical things."
___Google A.I. Overview
Note --- It would make more sense to me to label the "realists" above as "subjectivists" or "mentalists" or "Idealists". The two kinds of Reality are basically Material vs Mental. Are ghosts "real"? Is PI a real thing? Seems like we have a language confusion, not a philosophical problem.

*3. "Idealism and nominalism are philosophical theories that differ in their views on the nature of reality. Idealism holds that reality is mental, while nominalism holds that reality is made up of particulars"
___Google A.I. Overview

*4. Werner Heisenberg : “What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”
Note --- What we conceive is not necessarily what we perceive.

*5. Werner Heisenberg : "Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think" and "The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you."

*6. Both/And Principle :
My coinage for the holistic principle of Complementarity, as illustrated in the Yin/Yang symbol. Opposing or contrasting concepts are always part of a greater whole. Conflicts between parts can be reconciled or harmonized by putting them into the context of a whole system.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html

Quoting Gnomon

A similar categorical difficulty emerges from Quantum Physics, which concluded that physical particles of Matter (quanta) are ultimately waves of Energy (processes). Again, which is more real or useful depends on your perspective*4.

That’s a common misunderstanding on quantum physics and not actually what it says. Particles are real.

Quoting Gnomon

"Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think" and "The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you."

Not…really?? Also none of this answers my questions.

So I guess you don’t understand it either.

Quoting Gnomon

But then, Quantum Mechanics came along and made a mishmash of step-by-step deterministic mechanisms at the foundations of physical reality. And Quantum Uncertainty made even the existence of subatomic particles appear probabilistically fuzzy & conceptually immaterial*3

Not exactly. There is a reason the quantum stuff doesn’t really apply to the macro state so it’s not really affecting our day to day.


This is just a misunderstanding of quantum physics.

Quoting Gnomon

Apparently, the philosophical implications of this revolutionary New Science created perplexities that jolted his old viewpoint and informed his new worldview.

Based on what the physicists told me there are no philosophical implications, just people who don’t understand it saying there are.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

“You’ve touched the heart of the matter at last:
The teaching’s not meant to deny what is vast
And present before us, but free us to live
Unbound by the concepts we cling to so fast.”

Poem is pretty much nonsense and not true but this part is definitely so.

Based on what we know today there is no being unbound by concepts.

Same this with this moment, what you experience now is based on everything before. This moment isn’t where things start.

Like I said, it’s just wrong.

Quoting flannel jesus

I consider myself a physicalist, which is to say everything is either physical, or the consequence of physical events. When you mix that with Process Philosophy, you get a view of the mind where it makes sense to say "the mind isn't physical, but the mind IS the result of physical events - the mind is the consequence of physical processes".

Based on current evidence you’d be wrong. The mind is physical, it’s the brain.

So far my questions haven't really been answered about it.

I'm beginning to see why this philosophy never really took off.

Quoting Gnomon

. Werner Heisenberg : “What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”
Note --- What we conceive is not necessarily what we perceive.

allegedly. Though QM has come a long way since his time and turn out it doesn't agree with eastern philosophy.

Quoting Darkneos

Also none of this answers my questions.

So I guess you [@Gnomon] don’t understand it either.

:smirk:

Reply to Darkneos :up:
Reply to Darkneos :up:

Quoting Darkneos

I'm beginning to see why [process] philosophy never really took off.

As I see it, this is why ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/963559

Quoting Darkneos

That’s a common misunderstanding on quantum physics and not actually what it says. Particles are real.

That assertion depends on how you define "real". If your interest is in statistical mathematical predictions, picturing the wave crests of a quantum field as billiard balls will work. But if you define material objects in terms of definite location & mass, those mathematical particles seem to be more like waves of energy.

Note that in the description below, "to consider" means "to imagine" an object to have a specified quality that is useful in a specific context. Events (processes) in the quantum field do have measurable effects on the macro level. And if you like to visualize those invisible events as little spherical particles, the math will still work. But billiard balls and cannon balls are "real" in a different sense. :smile:

Quantum particles are considered "real" in the sense that they are the fundamental building blocks of matter, as described by quantum mechanics, and their existence is confirmed by numerous experiments which accurately predict their behavior and interactions, even though their properties like superposition and entanglement may seem counterintuitive to our everyday experience at larger scales
___Google A.I. Overview

Are Quantum Particles Real? :
[i]It depends how you define “real”. If you define reality as what is “really” macroscopically observable, than particles are real. Quantum Field Theory cannot predict the “value” of an observable quantity except probabilistically. Just like with “normal” Quantum Mechanics pure “quantum” is not describing reality. . . . .
Talking about particles is a way to talk about fields but in different terms.[/i]
https://www.quora.com/Are-particles-actually-real-or-is-everything-ultimately-just-composed-of-fields

Quoting Darkneos

Apparently, the philosophical implications of this revolutionary New Science created perplexities that jolted his old viewpoint and informed his new worldview. — Gnomon
Based on what the physicists told me there are no philosophical implications, just people who don’t understand it saying there are.

So your unnamed "physicist" is saying that the pioneers of quantum physics didn't understand the philosophical implications of statistical (versus deterministic) quantum mechanics. Bohr, Planck, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, etc, all used philosophical metaphors in their attempts to make sense of the non-classical results of their experiments. That Quantum Theory works is not disputed. But what it means, in terms of philosophical worldview*1, remains open to question a century later.

For example, Einstein debated Bohr hoping to prove that Bohr's interpretation of quantum events was wrong. History records that Bohr was vindicated*2. Whitehead's Process Philosophy*3 was an attempt to create a new non-classical worldview that would take into account the Statistical Uncertainty and Indeterminate Mechanics of the New Physics, which eventually became the most validated scientific theory*4, despite it's unorthodox philosophical implications.

Apparently your understanding of quantum physics is closer to Einstein's. But Whitehead was also a certified genius. His "understanding" had little effect on the practical science of physics, but his philosophical interpretation is still discussed on this forum. Is pragmatic Science more important to you than theoretical Philosophy? If so, why do you waste time posting on a philosophy forum? :nerd:

*1. The Copenhagen interpretationis a collection of views about the meaning of quantum mechanics,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation

*2. Quantum Philosophy Debate :
Einstein and Niels Bohr began disputing Quantum Theory at the prestigious 1927 Solvay Conference, attended by top physicists of the day. By most accounts of this public debate, Bohr was the victor.
https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/legacy/quantum-theory

*3. Quantum process philosophy[i]is a philosophical approach that combines process philosophy with quantum mechanics. It views the world as a collection of processes that are constantly changing, rather than a collection of static objects.
Quantum mechanics challenges traditional ideas of time and causality. For example, it describes scenarios that make it difficult to understand how cause and effect work at the quantum level.
Quantum process philosophy can be used to describe consciousness, which is a complex phenomenon that is difficult to explain using traditional scientific methods.[/i]
___Google A.I. Overview :

*4. Quantum Physics isn't as weird as you think. It's weirder.
It is one of the best-tested theories of physics, and we use it all the time. On the face of it, however, the quantum realm is extraordinary: Within it, quantum objects can be “in two places at once”; they can move through barriers; and share a connection no matter how far apart they are.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-physics-isnt-as-weird-as-you-think-its-weirder/

Reply to Gnomon gotta say your sources of Quora and google AI is a red flag. They don’t really understand it enough, physics stack exchange is a good one. It’s where I learned they are real and not in a probability sense.

In fact you can just ignore the AI overview most of the time.

Quoting Gnomon

So your unnamed "physicist" is saying that the pioneers of quantum physics didn't understand the philosophical implications of statistical (versus deterministic) quantum mechanics. Bohr, Planck, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, etc, all used philosophical metaphors in their attempts to make sense of the non-classical results of their experiments. That Quantum Theory works is not disputed. But what it means, in terms of philosophical worldview*1, remains open to question a century later.

Doesn’t really matter what the pioneers thought, they turned out to be wrong later on, especially with regards to observation and consciousness.

There are no philosophical implications to the work, only people who don’t understand it think there are. I know because I’ve asked this every time some pop sci magazine makes bold claims about what QM says.

Quoting Gnomon

Apparently your understanding of quantum physics is closer to Einstein's. But Whitehead was also a certified genius. His "understanding" had little effect on the practical science of physics, but his philosophical interpretation is still discussed on this forum. Is pragmatic Science more important to you than theoretical Philosophy? If so, why do you waste time posting on a philosophy forum?

Doesn’t matter if it’s discussed on this forum it matters what the world at large thinks of his work and apparently it hasn’t actually taken off. Like due to no one understanding it, including you, and to failing to apply it to daily life.

Quoting Gnomon

Whitehead's Process Philosophy*3 was an attempt to create a new non-classical worldview that would take into account the Statistical Uncertainty and Indeterminate Mechanics of the New Physics, which eventually became the most validated scientific theory*4, despite it's unorthodox philosophical implications.

Not really. I don’t know many who regard his work well, and the apparent supporters of his philosophy are far from reliable.

You also never answered my original questions about it from my first post. All this you’ve posted is just noise.

Quoting Darkneos

. [i]Werner Heisenberg : “What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”
Note --- What we conceive is not necessarily what we perceive.[/i] — Gnomon
allegedly. Though QM has come a long way since his time and turn out it doesn't agree with eastern philosophy.

Allegedly! On what basis do you assert that Quantum physics does not agree with Eastern metaphysics?*1 Obviously, Eastern philosophy has not created atomic bombs and lasers. But it does allow humans to peacefully coexist with Nature*2. Physical Science is certainly superior to Philosophical Reasoning, for giving humans power over Nature. But Philosophy is intended to give us control over Human Nature which is interconnected with Nature on all levels. :smile:

*1. While both quantum physics and Eastern philosophy explore fundamental questions about reality, the key difference lies in their approach: quantum physics uses scientific experimentation to understand the physical world at the subatomic level, while Eastern philosophy primarily focuses on spiritual and metaphysical concepts through introspection and meditation, often presenting a view of reality that is interconnected and non-dualistic, which some see as aligning with certain aspects of quantum mechanics.
___Google A.I. Overview

*2. Non-Duality and Interconnectedness: Eastern philosophies emphasize the non-dual nature of reality, suggesting that everything is interconnected and part of a unified whole. Quantum physics, with its principles of entanglement and non-locality, also suggests an interconnectedness at the fundamental level of reality.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/interconnection-between-eastern-philosophies-quantum/

Reply to Darkneos I don't think so. I think the mind is more *what the brain does*, the processes it engages in, than just "the physical arrangment that is the brain". Of course, the physical arrangement of the brain gives rise to what it does - what it does can be derived from its physical construction.

Maybe the difference there is pedantic, I don't know. I actually can think of one important difference, though - if you can construct another, physically different object that undergoes isomorphic processes, then in my view, it's the same thing. If you can imagine a machine that was constructed to behave exactly like a brain, following the exact same high-level neuronal processes, but being chemically very different, then if the mind is "the processes the brain does", this machine is as much a mind as the brain, since it's performing the same high-level processes.

A machine that, for example, computes a neural net. (I'm not saying neural nets as they are now are conscious, I'm instead saying that if it were possible to make a neural net that follows all of the same processes as our own brains, they could be).

What current evidence says that's wrong?

Quoting Darkneos

?Gnomon
gotta say your sources of Quora and google AI is a red flag. They don’t really understand it enough, physics stack exchange is a good one. It’s where I learned they are real and not in a probability sense.

Just as I suspected, from your line of questioning, you are more interested in Physics than Philosophy. I assume that the Physics Stack Exchange would give you more satisfactory feedback, that agrees with your orthodox belief system. However, the Philosophy Stack Exchange might give you a different perspective*1. But why bother with philosophy, when it only asks stupid questions and never produces anything useful : i.e. physical? :joke:


*1. What does Whitehead mean by calling science anti-rational?
[i]In Science and the Modern World, Whitehead writes:
Science has never shaken off the impress of its origin in the historical revolt of the later renaissance. It has remained predominantly an anti-rationalistic movement, based upon a naive faith. What reasoning it has wanted it has borrowed from mathematics which is a surviving relic of Greek rationalism, following the deductive method. Science repudiates philosophy. In other words, it has never cared to justify its faith or to explain its meanings; and has remained blandly indifferent to its refutation by Hume.[/i]
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/36955/what-does-whitehead-mean-by-calling-science-anti-rational?rq=1

Quoting Darkneos

You also never answered my original questions about it from my first post. All this you’ve posted is just noise.

Actually, although I am not an expert on Whitehead's philosophy, I did give you the same answer that the Physics Stack Exchange offered : the ultimate reality is Process not Substance*1. If your worldview is based on Materialism, that won't make sense. I also discussed some of the Ethical Implications of his theory. Yet again, the ethics of Materialism*2 would consider anything immaterial as just so much noise. :wink:

*1. What does Process Philosophy mean exactly and the ethical implications of it?
"Process philosophy has as its fundamental ontological entity the process, not the substance. Hence process philosophy attempts to explain and to understand the phenomena from their interaction, their dynamics and their changing, not from an idealized static state."
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/121885/what-does-process-philosophy-mean-exactly-and-the-ethical-implications-of-it

*2. Materialism Ethics :
Materialists judged immoral acts done by the self and others more differentially. Materialists' preference for moral rules is more contingent on their self-interest.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0092656622000812
Note --- This definition sounds like Trump ethics : he who dies with the most gold, wins.

Quoting Gnomon

Just as I suspected, from your line of questioning, you are more interested in Physics than Philosophy. I assume that the Physics Stack Exchange would give you more satisfactory feedback, that agrees with your orthodox belief system. However, the Philosophy Stack Exchange might give you a different perspective*1. But why bother with philosophy, when it only asks stupid questions and never produces anything useful : i.e. physical?

This means nothing. The philosophy stack exchange said the same. Again, I think it’s because you don’t understand the physics behind it. Even with the Nobel Prize Discovery about non local reality there is no implications because we don’t really know what it means yet or how it works.

Quoting Gnomon

In Science and the Modern World, Whitehead writes:
Science has never shaken off the impress of its origin in the historical revolt of the later renaissance. It has remained predominantly an anti-rationalistic movement, based upon a naive faith. What reasoning it has wanted it has borrowed from mathematics which is a surviving relic of Greek rationalism, following the deductive method. Science repudiates philosophy. In other words, it has never cared to justify its faith or to explain its meanings; and has remained blandly indifferent to its refutation by Hume.

It doesn’t really matter what Whitehead thinks about it to be honest. Everyone has a take on science. To me it’s worked pretty well for us so far so that counts for something. I asked that question on stack exchange too and people would disagree with Whitehead.

If anything that just sounds like being bitter that science works and his philosophy doesn’t. And I’m inclined to believe that given the replies so far. More than that though it doesn’t seem like Whitehead understand what science is it that’s his take on it.

Quoting Gnomon

Eastern philosophy has not created atomic bombs and lasers. But it does allow humans to peacefully coexist with Nature*

Not exactly.

Quite the opposite in fact. In Eastern philosophy there is no subject or object, meaning there wouldn’t be anything to care about or preserve or help. So there wouldn’t be any coexistence, it wouldn’t matter what happens to anything else because there is nothing else. It’s pretty cold in practice.

Plus you’d just have to look at how early man hunted animals to extinction to see that is false. The only thing stopping other plants or animals from choking everything out is biology.

Recognizing everything is connected doesn’t mean harmony or compassion or love or ethics by default. You can go different ways from that. Heck Buddhism was used to justify wars and violence as well.

Quoting Gnomon

Non-Duality and Interconnectedness: Eastern philosophies emphasize the non-dual nature of reality, suggesting that everything is interconnected and part of a unified whole. Quantum physics, with its principles of entanglement and non-locality, also suggests an interconnectedness at the fundamental level of reality.

This is not true and is also a reason why I don’t use google Ai, it’s often wrong. Quoting flannel jesus

I don't think so. I think the mind is more *what the brain does*, the processes it engages in, than just "the physical arrangment that is the brain". Of course, the physical arrangement of the brain gives rise to what it does - what it does can be derived from its physical construction.

Again, current evidence would suggest you’re wrong.

Quoting Gnomon

Actually, although I am not an expert on Whitehead's philosophy, I did give you the same answer that the Physics Stack Exchange offered : the ultimate reality is Process not Substance*1. If your worldview is based on Materialism, that won't make sense. I also discussed some of the Ethical Implications of his theory. Yet again, the ethics of Materialism*2 would consider anything immaterial as just so much noise. :wink:

Ultimate reality cannot be process by definition, things still exist.

But even if I granted process that tells me nothing and if you’re not versed in his philosophy why are you commenting? All you have are snippets from google ai which tells me you don’t know anything.

Also I find it hilarious you linked the question from stack exchange that I asked where no one was able to answer me. Quoting Gnomon

Materialists judged immoral acts done by the self and others more differentially. Materialists' preference for moral rules is more contingent on their self-interest.

I can promise that’s not it.

So once again you don’t or rather can’t answer my questions. Seems like no one actually understands this enough to answer me.

And no you mentioned nothing about ethics in this entire thread either.

So yeah, it seems like you don’t know what you’re talking about. Guess I’ll have to keep searching for someone who can answer my questions.

Like the more people try to explain this the more I’m starting to think no one knows what the hell they’re talking about

Quoting Darkneos

Again, current evidence would suggest you’re wrong.

Again, what current evidence is that?

Quoting flannel jesus

Again, what current evidence is that?

I think there is one about how memory is affected by damage to the brain, how psychedelics affect the brain since they are chemicals, among others.

To date there is nothing to suggest “mind” exists and it might just be a relic of the past.

Quoting Darkneos

So once again you don’t or rather can’t answer my questions. Seems like no one actually understands this enough to answer me.

That's pretty sad. I suppose living in a dimly-lit world explains your choice of screen-name.

I'm sorry you didn't get any enlightenment out of this thread. But after this review, I now think I understand much better Whitehead's philosophical interpretation of the unorthodox New Physics. Process Philosophy is amenable to my personal worldview, but obviously not to yours. You can lead a horse to quantum philosophy, but you can't understand it for him.

Since my immaterial mind was already open to the possibility of a combination of Quantum Physics and Metaphysics, I've enjoyed this one-sided dialog. Despite the frequent razzberries --- which I ignore as a sign of childish incomprehension --- this new outlook has brightened my day. :razz:


Process philosophy rejects the doctrine of scientific materialism and substance-based metaphysics that entities can only influence each other by means of external relations.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/d13195p

PS___ Understanding anything new & different requires an open mind. But if you don't believe in a metaphysical Mind, you might take the metaphor of an open-mind literally, so it takes a jack-hammer to bounce new ideas off your skull. :cool:



PPS___ If it was not obvious, I've been using your original incredulous post as a quote to further my own end of understanding Process Philosophy. Not to answer your covert materialist put-down of metaphysical philosophy. I've had many dialogs similar to this, and they all end as they began, with the Materialist claiming victory over the ignorant Mentalist. :smile:

Reply to Darkneos Nothing i said would even remotely suggest memory isnt a function of the physical bain. I would hazard a guess that you didnt read much of what i wrote, because even a little bit of effort toward understanding it would lead you to see that my idea would fully predict memory loss, and other cognitive loss, from brain damage.

Quoting Gnomon

I'm sorry you didn't get any enlightenment out of this thread. But after this review, I now think I understand much better Whitehead's philosophical interpretation of the unorthodox New Physics. Process Philosophy is amenable to my personal worldview, but obviously not to yours. You can lead a horse to quantum philosophy, but you can't understand it for him.

You don’t really understand quantum physics enough to comment on it. You keep referring to the founders when our understanding has evolved since then.

And from your posts it sounds like you don’t understand process philosophy enough to explain it hence all the quotes. You never even got to the ethics of it, which is all I care about.

Quoting Gnomon

Since my immaterial mind was already open to the possibility of a combination of Quantum Physics and Metaphysics, I've enjoyed this one-sided dialog. Despite the frequent razzberries --- which I ignore as a sign of childish incomprehension --- this new outlook has brightened my day. :razz:

You haven’t actually explained anything…I guess it’s easy to pretend to know than to actually know.

Like I said, I guess I’ll have to find someone else who can explain it. So far no luck.

Quoting Gnomon

PS___ Understanding anything new & different requires an open mind. But if you don't believe in a metaphysical Mind, you might take the metaphor of an open-mind literally, so it takes a jack-hammer to bounce new ideas off your skull

Mind has always been an assumption we made that doesn’t seem to have any evidence to support it.

Quoting Gnomon

Process philosophy rejects the doctrine of scientific materialism and substance-based metaphysics that entities can only influence each other by means of external relations.

I repeat, that still tells me nothing that I’m asking.

Quoting Gnomon

PPS___ If it was not obvious, I've been using your original incredulous post as a quote to further my own end of understanding Process Philosophy. Not to answer your covert materialist put-down of metaphysical philosophy. I've had many dialogs similar to this, and they all end as they began, with the Materialist claiming victory over the ignorant Mentalist.

If you’re reading materialism into my stuff that’s your hangup. I just follow the evidence and so far I haven’t really seen anything backing process philosophy, only your misunderstanding of QM.

Like…it really just reads like you don’t know or understand it, which is fine but I’m looking to understand it and get answers to my questions.

You offered nothing, just like the people in my stack exchange question. Not one person on there was able to explain it or answer my questions.

Which, again, makes me see why this philosophy sorta died out. People who claim to subscribe to it can’t apply it to reality or explain it.

Like…to be blunt: what does this mean and why should one care? You haven’t answered this, just saying that it contradicts current materialist understanding, which tells me nothing. You also didn’t answer my initial questions

Quoting Darkneos

The mind is physical, it’s the brain.

Does a dead brain have a mind?


Perhaps you don't agree with Whitehead's formulation of process philosophy, and that's fine. However, you write as if it's the only possible way to understand it. I don't particularly care what Whitehead said about process philosophy. Before i even knew who he was, i already had the idea that most, if not all things are processes of some sort occurring at different rates and scales. I try to think from a first principles perspective, not from the perspective of a particular scientist or philosopher. Consensus is not proof, or even evidence of anything. In fact consensus is a process that inevitably changes throughout history and time. Even your own understanding of this subject is a process of development regardless of what temporary conclusions you come to.

If you know something that i don't, i'd like to know it as well. Can you tell me, from your own understanding, what your reasoning is against the idea of process philosophy? I also asked if you knew of anything that does not undergo some form of process, something static that does not change in any way?

Maybe it would also help if you asked a specific and focused question. A question that addresses the exact crux of your issue with the general idea of process philosophy as you understand it.

Quoting punos

Does a dead brain have a mind?

By definition no, but I’m doubting the existence of mind.

Quoting punos

If you know something that i don't, i'd like to know it as well. Can you tell me, from your own understanding, what your reasoning is against the idea of process philosophy? I also asked if you knew of anything that does not undergo some form of process, something static that does not change in any way?

I couldn’t say, since no one has really been able to explain it or answer my questions. As for static, I would probably use myself. I haven’t really changed in 25 years apart from my body. My autism isn’t changing either.

Also it seems to imply free will, which is a myth from what I’ve seen. He seems to imply a sort of agency that does not exist, along with panpsychism which seems to be a red flag since we can’t test that.

Quoting Darkneos

By definition no, but I’m doubting the existence of mind.

Ah, so then what is the difference between what a dead brain does and what a living one does? If your brain stopped processing (or living), what would happen to your autism? Would it remain the same?

Quoting Darkneos

I couldn’t say, since no one has really been able to explain it or answer my questions.

Why are you depending so much on the understanding of others? Can you see the question in your own mind (or brain)? Can you identify what is keeping you from understanding? When you think about process philosophy and follow its mechanics, where do you feel you get stuck? That's where your question lies. Show me that question.

Quoting punos

Ah, so then what is the difference between what a dead brain does and what a living one does? If your brain stopped processing (or living), what would happen to your autism? Would it remain the same?

If my brain was dead so would I because I’d be dead. A dead brain is dead, a living brain is alive.

Quoting punos

Why are you depending so much on the understanding of others? Can you see the question in your own mind (or brain)? Can you identify what is keeping you from understanding? When you think about process philosophy and follow its mechanics, where do you feel you get stuck? That's where your question lies. Show me that question.

You could just explain it to me rather than ask questions you know I can’t answer.

I can’t follow what I don’t even really understand

Quoting Darkneos

I can’t follow what I don’t even really understand

You are not ready to understand. It's not your time yet. It's okay, just keep at it. It's a process.

Quoting punos

You are not ready to understand. It's not your time yet. It's okay, just keep at it. It's a process.

If you don’t understand that’s fine but don’t pretend that you do.

Some articles say “from things to events” and I’m left wondering what it means to see “things” as events.

Which then brings up my earlier questions

Quoting Darkneos

Some articles say “from things to events” and I’m left wondering what it means to see “things” as events.

At first sight, it is reasonable to assume that "things" are static objects. It is also easy to see that things interact with each other through events. All this is apparent at the macro scale we inhabit. If we leave it at that, we can conclude that events depend on things. However, if we peer deeply into matter, as i have already explained, we can see that atoms are not static and appear to be made of smaller components interacting with each other as well.

We can continue this process, examining smaller and smaller scales. Eventually, we reach a point where we encounter entities that are not made of anything smaller. We could stop there and say that these fundamental particles have always existed, with a specific number of them that cannot increase or decrease. However, we know that these particles can annihilate with their antiparticles, so it doesn't seem like they are fundamentally "things" as we initially perceive "things" to be at first sight.

Quoting Darkneos

If my brain was dead so would I because I’d be dead.

So, then what would be the difference between you dead and you alive? Don't you think there is some kind of process involved? How can one go from a state of not existing (pre-conception) to living, and back to not existing (death)?

If I were to atomize you with my ray gun, would you still exist after that? If so, then how? If not, then why not? Yes, your atoms will still exist, but will you? How can static objects account for this kind of transience?

Quoting Darkneos

Some articles say “from things to events” and I’m left wondering what it means to see “things” as events.

A tree is a long event, as you are. Other than the permanent basis of reality, there are, strictly speaking, no 'things', although it's a handy way of identification, for the so-called 'things' are not identical with themselves over time, as just continuing on from a moment ago, although there are semblances that continue.

Quoting punos

We can continue this process, examining smaller and smaller scales. Eventually, we reach a point where we encounter entities that are not made of anything smaller. We could stop there and say that these fundamental particles have always existed, with a specific number of them that cannot increase or decrease. However, we know that these particles can annihilate with their antiparticles, so it doesn't seem like they are fundamentally "things" as we initially perceive "things" to be at first sight.

Not exactly from what people have told me. It's more complicated than that.

Quoting punos

So, then what would be the difference between you dead and you alive? Don't you think there is some kind of process involved? How can one go from a state of not existing (pre-conception) to living, and back to not existing (death)?

I mean there are bodily processes sure. But as for the difference between dead and alive, that's a matter of perspective.

Quoting punos

If I were to atomize you with my ray gun, would you still exist after that? If so, then how? If not, then why not? Yes, your atoms will still exist, but will you? How can static objects account for this kind of transience?

From what I gather it's complicated. If I were taken apart I'd be dead and would cease to be.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

A tree is a long event, as you are. Other than the permanent basis of reality, there are, strictly speaking, no 'things', although it's a handy way of identification, for the so-called 'things' are not identical with themselves over time, as just continuing on from a moment ago, although there are semblances that continue.

I wouldn't say there are no things as such "events" are made of things and are themselves things. In some sense they are identical with themselves over time, though that depends on the organism and what you take to be "themselves". The question of identity doesn't seem to have a solution.

So to me there are still things but they change, calling them events seems...unnecessarily complicated.

Still doesn't answer my questions.

Let me put it like this. The stuff I care about: my dogs, my family, a boyfriend/husband, my hobbies, working out, my interest in computers, what does it mean for all that and more that I love? What does it mean for human relationships and morality or ethics? For sex and sexuality?

Like...what does it mean for what actually matters.

Quoting Darkneos

Not exactly from what people have told me. It's more complicated than that.

Of course it is, but you have to start somewhere. Begin with the general idea and then work your way down to the details. Based on what you've been told, explain to me what contradicts the concept of process philosophy.

Quoting Darkneos

I mean there are bodily processes sure. But as for the difference between dead and alive, that's a matter of perspective.

Is there a perspective from which it appears that there are no processes?

Quoting Darkneos

From what I gather it's complicated. If I were taken apart I'd be dead and would cease to be.

Therefore, you are not a static object because you can be dismantled, at which point you would cease to exist. This indicates that you were constructed at some point through a process and can be deconstructed again through another process. The reason you would cease to exist is that the process that allows you to be would be utterly disrupted.

Quoting Darkneos

Let me put it like this. The stuff I care about: my dogs, my family, a boyfriend/husband, my hobbies, working out, my interest in computers, what does it mean for all that and more that I love? What does it mean for human relationships and morality or ethics?

If your dog were merely a static object, you wouldn't need to feed it, give it water, or show it love, because it wouldn't require these things. All those actions only have meaning if your dog is a delicate living process with needs to keep that process going. This is the foundation of your ethics and morality. Static objects do not feel hunger, thirst, loneliness, etc..

Quoting Darkneos

Like...what does it mean for what actually matters.

What actually matters is how we live day to day in a high level process. We wouldn't bring up a lower level process such as "My chemical receptors are well receiving your endorphin state" instead of saying "I love you", but we might talk about a medical condition that way.

Reply to Darkneos

I read an earlier version of this back in the 90s, and it really helped me. I recommend that everyone read it. Although it's written for hackers, it is applicable in any field of interest.

How To Ask Questions The Smart Way

Quoting punos

Therefore, you are not a static object because you can be dismantled, at which point you would cease to exist. This indicates that you were constructed at some point through a process and can be deconstructed again through another process. The reason you would cease to exist is that the process that allows you to be would be utterly disrupted.

I feel like process just needlessly complicates it.

Quoting punos

Of course it is, but you have to start somewhere. Begin with the general idea and then work your way down to the details. Based on what you've been told, explain to me what contradicts the concept of process philosophy.

Well from an ethics and morality view, if stuff is just processes then it doesn't really matter since nothing lives or dies.

Quoting punos

If your dog were merely a static object, you wouldn't need to feed it, give it water, or show it love, because it wouldn't require these things. All those actions only have meaning if your dog is a delicate living process with needs to keep that process going. This is the foundation of your ethics and morality. Static objects do not feel hunger, thirst, loneliness, etc..

Processes don't feel hunger, thirst, loneliness, etc. Only individuals do. If they're just processes then who really gives a shit?

Quoting PoeticUniverse

What actually matters is how we live day to day in a high level process. We wouldn't bring up a lower level process such as "My chemical receptors are well receiving your endorphin state" instead of saying "I love you", but we might talk about a medical condition that way.

Can you expand on that? From my view if everything is just a process then it doesn't matter what happens to "it" because there is no "it". If it's just an event then it has no feelings or emotions and cannot love or feel pain. Only individuals do that.

And honestly the more I read on this the less sense it makes:

https://www.openhorizons.org/concrescence.html

Which just goes more to the point, if the "object" is just being "made anew" again and again then ethics and morality would go out the window I would think. Why would I care about someone else if they "aren't going to be around for long". If one falls in love or makes a friend are those feelings a lie then?

Makes less and less sense each time.

Quoting Darkneos

I feel like process just needlessly complicates it.

It's not needless if it helps you understand what you're trying to comprehend.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" - Albert Einstein

Quoting Darkneos

Well from an ethics and morality view, if stuff is just processes then it doesn't really matter since nothing lives or dies.

No, the point is that it's a living (biological) process, and even if it's not alive, it's still a non-living (non-biological) process. I would put it like this: 'If everything were just static, nothing would really matter since nothing would live or die.' Alternatively, 'If everything consists of processes, then everything matters because everything lives and dies.'

Quoting Darkneos

Processes don't feel hunger, thirst, loneliness, etc. Only individuals do. If they're just processes then who really gives a shit?

Can you explain what you mean when you say that processes don't feel hunger, thirst, etc.? Why do you think that? Please explain how a 'static living object' (which is a contradiction in terms) could feel hunger, thirst, etc. i, for one, care deeply because of processes, and wouldn't care at all if everything were static. I've explained my reasoning; now, please explain yours.

Quoting Darkneos

Makes less and less sense each time.

That's fine. Now, please explain how it makes sense the other way. Don't justify it based on what you care or don't care about, as that's purely subjective. Nature doesn't care about our personal preferences.

Quoting Darkneos

If it's just an event then it has no feelings or emotions and cannot love or feel pain. Only individuals do that.

"Individuals do that" because it seems that way, which is the second story, but consciousness makes no referral to the brain state processes in the basement of the first storey.

We are discovering that we are as 'robots', but hate to think of it that way.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

"Individuals do that" because it seems that way, which is the second story, but consciousness makes no referral to the brain state processes in the basement of the first storey.

We are discovering that we are as 'robots', but hate to think of it that way.

You're not really making much sense. Also based on the evidence consciousness does make "referral" to the brain states.

Like I said, you're not making much sense. If everything is just events then they have no emotions. Thinking of ourselves as robots isn't something we hate though, that's more the materialist stance.

Reply to Darkneos

It appears that you're trying to understand this from an incompatible perspective. You have certain definitions you're reluctant to refine for this purpose. You seem stuck with your initial impressions and can't yet see a way around them. It's not that you're incapable; you just haven't done it yet. Understanding this perspective doesn't automatically validate process philosophy, but it will provide you with an additional lens through which to view the world. If it truly doesn't make sense to you now, set it aside and revisit it later. Don't stress over it, and maintain your curiosity.

The World is one Process - Alan Watts

Quoting punos

It's not needless if it helps you understand what you're trying to comprehend.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" - Albert Einstein

You realize the irony of quoting Einstein for process philosophy right?

Quoting punos

No, the point is that it's a living (biological) process, and even if it's not alive, it's still a non-living (non-biological) process. I would put it like this: 'If everything were just static, nothing would really matter since nothing would live or die.' Alternatively, 'If everything consists of processes, then everything matters because everything lives and dies.'

Well no, if it's a process then it doesn't live or die so it doesn't matter.

Quoting punos

Can you explain what you mean when you say that processes don't feel hunger, thirst, etc.? Why do you think that? Please explain how a 'static living object' (which is a contradiction in terms) could feel hunger, thirst, etc. i, for one, care deeply because of processes, and wouldn't care at all if everything were static. I've explained my reasoning; now, please explain yours.

It's like saying running can feel hunger, that burning flame gets lonely, or that packing toys can care. It's a process and therefor has no emotions or needs. If it's an individual then it does. Static and living isn't a contradiction. You haven't really explained your reasoning, you just keep insisting it is so without showing it.

Never mind that our ethics focuses on individuals not processes.

Quoting punos

That's fine. Now, please explain how it makes sense the other way. Don't justify it based on what you care or don't care about, as that's purely subjective. Nature doesn't care about our personal preferences.

Nature doesn't care about philosophy either so it's a moot point. Philosophy only matters in how it affects what we care about, whatever that may be. That's pretty much why people did it in the first place.

Quoting punos

It appears that you're trying to understand this from an incompatible perspective. You have certain definitions you're reluctant to refine for this purpose. You seem stuck with your initial impressions and can't yet see a way around them. It's not that you're incapable; you just haven't done it yet. Understanding this perspective doesn't automatically validate process philosophy, but it will provide you with an additional lens through which to view the world. If it truly doesn't make sense to you now, set it aside and revisit it later. Don't stress over it, and maintain your curiosity.

It's more like you're not really doing a good job of explaining it. On some level I understand what it means, that since things are dynamic it makes more sense to label them as events instead of things. But on the other hand they are pretty solid and do endure, unlike events, so maybe it's somewhere in between.

I wouldn't cite Alan Watts though, the guy drank himself to death, which sorta led me to believe he didn't buy what he was selling.

You keep trying to pin the fault in understanding on the other person when it's more like your own inability to make it clear. It's not my job to make your argument. It's like Einstein would say (to paraphrase) "if you really understood something you could explain it to a 5 year old". Don't make excuses.

And obviously the next question philosophers would ask for such a ontology is "what does it mean and how does it apply to our lives and world". That's sorta the whole point of the pursuit, why does this matter and why should one care?

I'm thinking you might be taking for granted what it means to see living things as individuals versus processes. To me it harkens back to all the times humans degraded their opposition as just "monsters" or inanimate to make it easier to kill or persecute them. Pretty sure black people were regarded as less than animals and felt no pain.

So to just write humans off as just processes is cold, ice cold.

Quoting Darkneos

You realize the irony of quoting Einstein for process philosophy right?

No, i don't. Explain.

Quoting Darkneos

Well no, if it's a process then it doesn't live or die so it doesn't matter.

Another assertion without an explanation as to why you think so. Then for you it is as you say it is.

Quoting Darkneos

It's like saying running can feel hunger, that burning flame gets lonely, or that packing toys can care. It's a process and therefor has no emotions or needs. If it's an individual then it does. Static and living isn't a contradiction. You haven't really explained your reasoning, you just keep insisting it is so without showing it.

How can an individual be considered a static entity? You seem to be asserting that because an individual is static, they must have emotions. Please explain how an emotion is not a process.

Running is a process an individual performs that burns energy, and that process is what causes hunger. Hunger is a biological process that compels you to seek food, which is another process. When you have acquired food, the process of eating begins, which includes the process of digestion.

Burning flames are exothermic processes releasing energy that was stored there by another process. Why would you try to apply a human emotion to a non-human entity like fire? But if you insist, then we can talk about the slow-burning fire that is in every cell in your body, which we call metabolism. Without this inner fire, you would not be alive to feel lonely.

Just because you're not understanding the reasoning doesn't mean i haven't provided any. The problem is that i don't know what your issue is. I've asked so that i can focus on the actual issue instead of taking stabs in the dark, but you refuse to answer any of my questions with any precision.

Please reproduce or point out for me where i simply insisted that something is so without at least attempting to give some account as to why or how.

Quoting Darkneos

Static and living isn't a contradiction.

Yes it is.

Static:

• Refers to something fixed, stationary, or unchanging
• Implies a lack of movement or progress

Living:

• Describes something alive, growing, or evolving
• Implies change, development, and adaptation

Quoting Darkneos

Never mind that our ethics focuses on individuals not processes.

Well, what i've been trying to tell you is that an individual is a process. You can't have an individual that is not a process. Even things that are not individuals are processes.

Quoting Darkneos

Nature doesn't care about philosophy either so it's a moot point. Philosophy only matters in how it affects what we care about, whatever that may be. That's pretty much why people did it in the first place.

You seem to care about process philosophy, or you wouldn't be asking these questions. Why do you want to know? Nature doesn't care what you know or don't know, but it's a good idea to know what nature "cares" about. That is the point of philosophy: so that you may align yourself with it.

Quoting Darkneos

On some level I understand what it means, that since things are dynamic it makes more sense to label them as events instead of things. But on the other hand they are pretty solid and do endure, unlike events, so maybe it's somewhere in between.

That's good. At least you see the dynamism involved. Have you looked into the physics of why things feel solid?

Quoting Darkneos

I wouldn't cite Alan Watts though, the guy drank himself to death, which sorta led me to believe he didn't buy what he was selling.

This is only a problem if one believes in authoritative figures. For me, Alan Watts is a human with faults and flaws like any one of us, but he is also a very insightful individual. This is what counts in the context of philosophy. I don't judge the messenger. If it wasn't Alan Watts, would you give it more weight? That doesn't sound very robust.

Quoting Darkneos

It's not my job to make your argument.

It's your job to ask the right question. It's not an excuse, it's a reason.

Quoting Darkneos

It's like Einstein would say (to paraphrase) "if you really understood something you could explain it to a 5 year old". Don't make excuses.

If i tried to explain it to you like a 5-year-old, you'd tell me that it's more complicated than that, and that i'm oversimplifying. Isn't that right?

Quoting Darkneos

And obviously the next question philosophers would ask for such a ontology is "what does it mean and how does it apply to our lives and world". That's sorta the whole point of the pursuit, why does this matter and why should one care?

That's an individual choice, i suppose. I don't think i, or anyone else, can make you care. You've got to see it for yourself as to why you should care. Some people just don't care about anything, and some people care about too much. You already seem to at least care somewhat.

Quoting Darkneos

I'm thinking you might be taking for granted what it means to see living things as individuals versus processes. To me it harkens back to all the times humans degraded their opposition as just "monsters" or inanimate to make it easier to kill or persecute them. Pretty sure black people were regarded as less than animals and felt no pain.

So to just write humans off as just processes is cold, ice cold.

This is my own sentiment but in reverse. For me, to consider a person a static object is to consider them almost inanimate. You could burn thousands of people in an incinerator and it would be no big deal because they are static objects (as if already dead), with no process of feeling pain or suffering. I would not intentionally ever hurt anyone precisely because i know they are a process that can feel and suffer due to the processes in every one of them.

Writing humans off as just static objects is cold, ice cold. If regarding people as processes is considered cold in your view, then i would not like to be the one to change your mind about that. It is probably better that you keep it the way it is, at least for now.

Quoting Darkneos

the evidence consciousness does make "referral" to the brain states.

It provides the result of the subconscious brain process, but not the analysis.

Netflix has a great series about a new female attorney with autism spectrum disorder 'The Extraordinary Attorney Woo', filmed in Korea.

Quoting punos

Burning flames are exothermic processes releasing energy that was stored there by another process. Why would you try to apply a human emotion to a non-human entity like fire? But if you insist, then we can talk about the slow-burning fire that is in every cell in your body, which we call metabolism. Without this inner fire, you would not be alive to feel lonely.

Yeah but then what's the difference if they're both just processes? What makes one human and the other not?

Quoting punos

Well, what i've been trying to tell you is that an individual is a process. You can't have an individual that is not a process. Even things that are not individuals are processes.

Well according to that other user apparently not. Apparently we're just robots, not that I have much issue with that.

Quoting punos

You seem to care about process philosophy, or you wouldn't be asking these questions. Why do you want to know? Nature doesn't care what you know or don't know, but it's a good idea to know what nature "cares" about. That is the point of philosophy: so that you may align yourself with it.

I think nature and "Cares" don't really align, nature appears to be indifferent.

But I digress. I care just because I wanna know since some other guy I knew believed in it but when I look at it I just see treating things as events and processes as cold and heartless. Reminds me of Buddhism and "no self".

It's also kind hard to see living things as events because that just turns them into things with no "life" or "Soul" for me and so I stop caring.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

It provides the result of the subconscious brain process, but not the analysis.

Netflix has a great series about a new female attorney with autism spectrum disorder 'The Extraordinary Attorney Woo', filmed in Korea.

What does that mean?

Also I saw the show but don't see how it related to this or what you said.

Quoting punos

This is only a problem if one believes in authoritative figures. For me, Alan Watts is a human with faults and flaws like any one of us, but he is also a very insightful individual. This is what counts in the context of philosophy. I don't judge the messenger. If it wasn't Alan Watts, would you give it more weight? That doesn't sound very robust.

Well if the person who preached stuff like that ends up drinking themselves to death it does sorta poke holes in his "insights" since he clearly didn't believe it. I've read his stuff before but he gets a lot wrong because people don't know better. He's not a teacher either.

Quoting punos

It's your job to ask the right question. It's not an excuse, it's a reason.

That sounds like an excuse.

Quoting punos

If i tried to explain it to you like a 5-year-old, you'd tell me that it's more complicated than that, and that i'm oversimplifying. Isn't that right?

Well you haven't really explained it like that.

Quoting punos

That's an individual choice, i suppose. I don't think i, or anyone else, can make you care. You've got to see it for yourself as to why you should care. Some people just don't care about anything, and some people care about too much. You already seem to at least care somewhat.

Choice is an illusion. That said the onus on the one making the argument for why people should care. You can make people care, thats what words are for.

Quoting punos

This is my own sentiment but in reverse. For me, to consider a person a static object is to consider them almost inanimate. You could burn thousands of people in an incinerator and it would be no big deal because they are static objects (as if already dead), with no process of feeling pain or suffering. I would not intentionally ever hurt anyone precisely because i know they are a process that can feel and suffer due to the processes in every one of them.

Well the problem is that people don't see it like that. People are "objects" but they aren't static. I mean we are made up of things after all and those things engage in processes, hence why I said both. To consider something static isn't for it to be inanimate, and they'd still feel pain. But to write it off as a process just makes it seem like it's not a human being, an entity, or a thing. It's nothing, because processes involve things but aren't things themselves.

It sounds like you're just replacing process with thing or "human being" but that's why just calling things processes is cold.

Quoting Darkneos

What does that mean?

It doesn't explain the 'voting' process of the neurological.

Quoting Darkneos

Also I saw the show but don't see how it related to this or what you said.

It only pertains to you. The show is a lot of fun, as well as being serious about the law, and they have to figure out the process behind the incident to help defend the client.

Quoting Darkneos

Choice is an illusion.

Hey, that's good! It takes the subconscious brain about a third of a second to do its analysis, and only when it finishes does consciousness get the result.

Quoting Darkneos

What does that mean?

Hey, you finally went to sleep after all day on the forum, so I'll leave this to you and all to read the next day.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

I'll leave this to you and all to read

Which is:

The Nature of Consciousness Part 1
(Some gleaned from Gsin)

Within the Brain's vast Palace, deep and strange,
Consciousness flows, yet cannot free-range;
Like Sun or Tree, a Process, not a Thing—
A river bound within its banks of change.

(It, as a brain process can’t float around)

What fills our Minds arrives not instant-new,
But late, some half-millisecond past its due;
The Brain's swift voting finished ere we know,
Our conscious thoughts already past and through.

(A forced delay, unconscious analysis taking time )

The Map we see becomes our Territory,
While neural states write out out second story;
The basement toils unseen beneath our feet,
As upstairs dwells our conscious inventory.

(The ‘basement’ is the first storey of one’s self)

Thus Consciousness arrives too late to cause,
Though seeming master of all nature's laws;
A broadcast tape-delayed, yet feeling live—
The director speaks once action draws!

(Enjoy the play)

And when one thought has flickered through the mind,
More brain-realms answer, leaving none behind;
Thus contemplation's thread unwinds its spool,
Each moment to the next forever twined.

(The Great Stitcher; no seams)

Behold its nature's aspects five unfold:
Compositional structures manifold,
Intrinsic as our own, Informing clear,
Integrated, Exclusive in its hold.

(The whole operation)

United feels this field of conscious thought,
Though scattered be the brain-realms where it's wrought;
The qualia of sense-experience shine,
While seamless flows the change that time has brought.

(Perfect Unity!)

How can this ghost of thought move flesh and bone,
When neural deed is done and verdict known
Before awareness breaks upon our shore?
The answer in time's sequence lies alone.

(The brain does it)

Yet Consciousness brings gifts beyond mere scheme
Of reflex-action's automatic stream:
Flexibility to shape reaction's course,
And Focus sharp on what we vital deem.

(Exclusion)

It grants Evaluation's weighted scale,
Where logic, feeling, neither can quite fail;
For Survival it opens pathways new,
Where Complex choices might yet prevail.

(Evaluation)

Through Learning's endless combinations bright,
We weave perception's threads in fresh delight;
Discrimination's finest differences show
Which fruits bring health, which hold destruction's bite.

(The will is dynamic)

In Evolution's grand unfolding play,
It spurred the Cambrian dawn of nature's way;
Made predators grow keen in cunning's art,
While prey found newer paths from day to day.

(The explosion)

See Beauty bloom in flower's painted face,
As plants evolved their pollinator's grace;
While minds could ponder action's consequence
Before commitment to time's embrace.

(Actionizing)

Reality stands firm beyond our sight,
Our senses taking in its waves of light;
The Brain paints useful faces on these waves—
Makes color from mere frequency's delight.

(Just three proteins in the eye rotating according to the amount of the three primary colors)

When drugs or sleep or trauma's sudden blow
Disturb the brain, consciousness sinks below;
Change neural paths, and mind must follow suit—
For only from the brain can awareness flow.

(Consciousness is a brain process reflected)

We often miss the sea in which we swim,
Mistaking thought-stream's contents, fleeting-dim,
For consciousness itself that bears them all,
Like water bearing leaves on ocean's rim.

(The Sea in which we See)

Quoting Darkneos

Yeah but then what's the difference if they're both just processes? What makes one human and the other not?

There are different kinds of processes involved in higher states of complexity. A rock, for example, is part of geological, mineral, and atomic processes, but does not include cellular or biological processes. Beyond biological processes, there are mental and psychological processes, and further up, there are cultural and social processes. A human has all of these processes happening at once. The rock has only a fraction of these processes, which do not include the biological, psychological, or socio-cultural processes. The difference lies in the types of processes that are occurring.

Quoting Darkneos

Well according to that other user apparently not. Apparently we're just robots, not that I have much issue with that.

Robots are imitations of biological processes; this does not contradict what i'm saying. They are just much simpler than the processes they are trying to mimic or imitate in biological systems.

Quoting Darkneos

I think nature and "Cares" don't really align, nature appears to be indifferent.

Right. It is not nature's job to align with you; it is your job to align with it. Misalignment with the principles of nature leads to eventual destruction.

Quoting Darkneos

I care just because I wanna know since some other guy I knew believed in it but when I look at it I just see treating things as events and processes as cold and heartless. Reminds me of Buddhism and "no self".

Then why do you think Buddhists are so focused on compassion for all beings? Some of them go to the extreme of not washing in an effort not to kill bacteria. It appears to me, at least, that these Buddhists can have more compassion and love for other entities than you and i combined. Maybe look into why they think this way even while they believe there is no self. Apparently, it doesn't mean to them what you think it means. Why is that?

Quoting Darkneos

It's also kind hard to see living things as events because that just turns them into things with no "life" or "Soul" for me and so I stop caring.

It does not. You interpret it that way because that's how you define it. In fact, i don't understand how seeing a person as a process or as a static object would make this kind of difference, really. If i love my girlfriend/wife without knowing if she is a process or not, then why would my love change just because i now think she's a process? Nothing should change in that regard. You're just confusing yourself with words.

Quoting Darkneos

Well if the person who preached stuff like that ends up drinking themselves to death it does sorta poke holes in his "insights" since he clearly didn't believe it. I've read his stuff before but he gets a lot wrong because people don't know better. He's not a teacher either.

If his life is some sort of stumbling block for you then forget Alan Watts. Throw that sucker in the garbage, and be done with him. Moving on...

Quoting Darkneos

That sounds like an excuse.

Ok, then i'll say we both have excuses.

Quoting Darkneos

Well you haven't really explained it like that.

I'm not going to do something i know won't work. I just know it won't.

Quoting Darkneos

Choice is an illusion. That said the onus on the one making the argument for why people should care. You can make people care, thats what words are for.

Probably true, but i would need to really understand where you're coming from to make any headway. Although its not my job to make you care, and i don't care if you care or not. I'm simply entertaining myself.

Quoting Darkneos

Well the problem is that people don't see it like that. People are "objects" but they aren't static. I mean we are made up of things after all and those things engage in processes, hence why I said both. To consider something static isn't for it to be inanimate, and they'd still feel pain. But to write it off as a process just makes it seem like it's not a human being, an entity, or a thing. It's nothing, because processes involve things but aren't things themselves.

Fine, so what is the fundamental static substance on which these processes run and operate? Is it like little solid balls or objects like the atoms of Democritus?

Quoting punos

Alan Watts

I didn't watch it but he probably wisely said that all that goes on is the one big effect of the Big Bang.

I note that we impose artificial boundaries to estimate local cause and effect as best can do.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

Thus Consciousness arrives too late to cause,
Though seeming master of all nature's laws;
A broadcast tape-delayed, yet feeling live—
The director speaks once action draws!

That doesn’t seem to be the case. There is no subconscious as you are making it out to be or “layers” like you make it. The subconscious as we know it is just responsible for the automatic functions of the body. Consciousness doesn’t arrive too late.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

United feels this field of conscious thought,
Though scattered be the brain-realms where it's wrought;
The qualia of sense-experience shine,
While seamless flows the change that time has brought

Qualia doesn’t exist. Quoting PoeticUniverse

We often miss the sea in which we swim,
Mistaking thought-stream's contents, fleeting-dim,
For consciousness itself that bears them all,
Like water bearing leaves on ocean's rim.

This is also incorrect as is the whole “poem”, consciousness is a thought process. The “thought stream” is consciousness.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

It doesn't explain the 'voting' process of the neurological.

It does actually.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

Hey, that's good! It takes the subconscious brain about a third of a second to do its analysis, and only when it finishes does consciousness get the result.

Not really, the subconscious isn’t what you think it is.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

It only pertains to you. The show is a lot of fun, as well as being serious about the law, and they have to figure out the process behind the incident to help defend the client.

Again, what was the point of that.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

Yet Consciousness brings gifts beyond mere scheme
Of reflex-action's automatic stream:
Flexibility to shape reaction's course,
And Focus sharp on what we vital deem.

Not really.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

It grants Evaluation's weighted scale,
Where logic, feeling, neither can quite fail;
For Survival it opens pathways new,
Where Complex choices might yet prevail

No it does not. Consciousness doesn’t DO anything.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

I didn't watch it but he probably wisely said that all that goes on is the one big effect of the Big Bang.

I note that we impose artificial boundaries to estimate local cause and effect as best can do.

It’s more like recognition not imposition.

Like…you’ve said nothing besides errors in how the brain works.

Quoting punos

Right. It is not nature's job to align with you; it is your job to align with it. Misalignment with the principles of nature leads to eventual destruction.

That’s incorrect. You misunderstand nature.

Quoting punos

Then why do you think Buddhists are so focused on compassion for all beings? Some of them go to the extreme of not washing in an effort not to kill bacteria. It appears to me, at least, that these Buddhists can have more compassion and love for other entities than you and i combined. Maybe look into why they think this way even while they believe there is no self. Apparently, it doesn't mean to them what you think it means. Why is that?

Because it’s called cognitive dissonance. But what they have isn’t true compassion since that requires attachment. Theirs is more an abstract notion of it rather than one grounded in anything.

Quoting punos

Nothing should change in that regard. You're just confusing yourself with words.

Because you’re still seeing an individual and not a process. It’s to do with the Buddhist notion and how the lose the feeling of love when they realize no self. If you still feel love and care then you’re not seeing them as a process.

Quoting punos

Fine, so what is the fundamental static substance on which these processes run and operate? Is it like little solid balls or objects like the atoms of Democritus?

Well from what I understand it’s particles and matter. The “everything is made of fields” thing is a misunderstanding of it, it makes people foolishly think there is nothing solid.

Quoting punos

Probably true, but i would need to really understand where you're coming from to make any headway. Although its not my job to make you care, and i don't care if you care or not. I'm simply entertaining myself.

Reply to Darkneos may be just playing dumb, in order to troll forum posters who are dumb enough to take the bait : "I don't understand, and you're not smart enough to explain it to me".

Apparently, the "it" is some arcane ethical wisdom in Process and Reality. But I didn't take-away any particular ethical principle from the book, other than to be open to change in a dynamic world. He seems to be looking for a Process guru --- which I am not --- to reveal some abstruse Truth. It shouldn't take a genius to know that our world evolves, both physically and ethically. The Golden Rule never changes, but the evolving nature/culture does.

I did find this thread to be "entertaining", in the sense that it gave me incentive to get deeper into Process Philosophy, and to understand how it applies to my own personal worldview : where I'm coming from. Dark's dumb act just led me deeper into the rabbit-hole of a Reality that won't stand still for me to catch it. Like the Red Queen, you have to run faster & faster to avoid falling behind. :smile:


Process philosophy ethics is a school of thought that emphasizes the importance of change and becoming over permanence and being. It suggests that ethics and morality should be situational and adaptive, and that harmony can be achieved through evolving relationships
___Google A.I. Overview

Quoting Darkneos

No it does not. Consciousness doesn’t DO anything.

True! The brain does it.

You got one right.

Quoting Gnomon

may be just playing dumb, in order to troll forum posters who are dumb enough to take the bait : "I don't understand, and you're not smart enough to explain it to me".

I mean that’s a real thing. It’s one thing to know when you don’t understand, but it also helps to know when someone doesn’t, which doesn’t always involve you knowing better.

Quoting Gnomon

I did find this thread to be "entertaining", in the sense that it gave me incentive to get deeper into Process Philosophy, and to understand how it applies to my own personal worldview : where I'm coming from. Dark's dumb act just led me deeper into the rabbit-hole of a Reality that won't stand still for me to catch it. Like the Red Queen, you have to run faster & faster to avoid falling behind

I already knew you didn’t understand what you’re talking about because all you do is just drop links and then claim like it’s some rabbit hole when this is just a school of thought much as any other.

From the google AI (which I warned about) just sounds like moral relativism, which isn’t news. But if that’s true then it’s a bad ethical framework out of the gate. It can only be adaptive in the context of a greater framework. Whitehead is able to develop his philosophy because no one else follows it and because of normative ethics.

The problem with an adaptive and situational morality is that it’s not a framework to act on.

You’re not fooling anyone.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

True! The brain does it.

You got one right.

So then what’s your point then?

Quoting Darkneos

Not really, the subconscious isn’t what you think it is.

Then I wonder what the trillions of neurons and their billions of connections are silently doing to come up with the results displayed in consciousness…

Quoting PoeticUniverse

Then I wonder what the trillions of neurons and their billions of connections are silently doing to come up with the results displayed in consciousness…

How is this related to the thread? Like I said, the subconscious is just automatic biological processes not some hidden “you”.

Quoting Darkneos

How is this related to the thread?

I give up for now.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

I give up for now.

I mean, to be blunt, you didn’t really try? What you said seemed off topic and didn’t make sense.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

"Individuals do that" because it seems that way, which is the second story, but consciousness makes no referral to the brain state processes in the basement of the first storey.

We are discovering that we are as 'robots', but hate to think of it that way.

So what does that mean exactly? That people don’t have emotions? That they can’t love or feel pain?

Quoting punos

Fine, so what is the fundamental static substance on which these processes run and operate? Is it like little solid balls or objects like the atoms of Democritus?

I just know it’s matter and that it’s solid from what physics says. What it’s made of is uncertain.

As for the process I guess it’s just that if I see someone as a process and not an individual I just automatically render them as soulless voids with no emotions.

Quoting punos

But to write it off as a process just makes it seem like it's not a human being, an entity, or a thing. It's nothing, because processes involve things but aren't things themselves. — Darkneos
Fine, so what is the fundamental static substance on which these processes run and operate? Is it like little solid balls or objects like the atoms of Democritus?

Reply to Darkneos seems to have a thing about Things, and dismisses Processes that are not things. I'm not sure where he's coming from, but a focus on Substance seems to be inherent in Materialism : "what it is instead of what it does". Based on my experience on this forum, the antithesis of Materialism may be Spiritualism : the obvious building blocks (Substance) of the world versus the invisible causal power (Change ; Evolution) in the real world.

Ironically, the ancient Atomists imagined the fundamental elements of reality as tiny balls of hard stuff, but they reluctantly added the non-stuff Void in order to allow Atoms to move and change form. But then the question arises : what Force holds minuscule atoms together in the macro scale objects that our senses perceive?

For Democritus, the material Atoms were viewed as more real than the Void (empty space). Yet, he didn't seem to have a concept of our modern notion of Energy or Forces, and motion was just taken for granted. So, his worldview was basically rigid, static & geometric instead of fluid, dynamic & amorphous. However, modern science has been forced to make allowances for immaterial Forces that move things around and hold them together.

Apparently Whitehead was intrigued by the importance of the non-things of the world, as exemplified in Quantum Physics. So, his focus was on Change & Causation (becoming) instead of just plain Being. I find it surprising that the OP questioned the Ethical implications of Process theory (subjectivity?), presumably as contrasted with the Ethics of Objects (objectivity). Apparently, Materialists interpret Process philosophy as a non-sensical (immaterial) religious & spiritual worldview. I can see the spiritual & theological implications*1, but I'm not aware of any practical religion based on the Process Theory.

I was inspired by this thread to dig deeper into Whitehead's philosophy, that seemed to be be compatible with my own non-religious worldview --- which was also based on the New Physics of quantum theory, plus the New Metaphysics of Information theory --- not on any particular religious tradition. I call that worldview Enformationism, as an update of both Materialism and Spiritualism, that have been scientifically outdated since the 20th century. Now I have uploaded a new post to my blog, as a brief summary of how Process and Reality compares with Enformationism. If you can find the time to read and review the two-page essay*2, I'd appreciate any constructive criticism you can offer. :smile:


*1. "Process and Reality" is a philosophical work by Alfred North Whitehead that explores the concept of reality as a dynamic, interconnected web of "actual occasions" where everything is constantly becoming, essentially presenting a spiritual perspective that views the universe as a process rather than a static structure; this is often referred to as "process philosophy" or "philosophy of organism."
___ Google A.I. Overview

*2. Evolutionary Process and Cosmic Reality :
"Alfred North Whitehead’s book, Process and Reality, is a philosophical thesis, not a scientific essay. But it challenges the philosophical implications of Darwin’s mechanistic theory of Evolution. Instead of a simple series of energy exchanges, the Cosmos functions as a holistic organism. Hence, the eventual emergence of subordinate living creatures should not be surprising."
http://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page43.html

Quoting Gnomon

seems to have a thing about Things, and dismisses Processes that are not things. I'm not sure where he's coming from, but a focus on Substance seems to be inherent in Materialism : "what it is instead of what it does". Based on my experience on this forum, the antithesis of Materialism may be Spiritualism : the obvious building blocks (Substance) of the world versus the invisible causal power (Change ; Evolution) in the real world.

Spiritualism, from the evidence, appears to be nothing more than delusion. But my question is about the ethical implications of it which you keep dodging.

Quoting Gnomon

Apparently Whitehead was intrigued by the importance of the non-things of the world, as exemplified in Quantum Physics. So, his focus was on Change & Causation (becoming) instead of just plain Being. I find it surprising that the OP questioned the Ethical implications of Process theory (subjectivity?), presumably as contrasted with the Ethics of Objects (objectivity). Apparently, Materialists interpret Process philosophy as a non-sensical (immaterial) religious & spiritual worldview. I can see the spiritual & theological implications*1, but I'm not aware of any practical religion based on the Process Theory.

And you still missed the point of my original questions.

Quoting Gnomon

I was inspired by this thread to dig deeper into Whitehead's philosophy, that seemed to be be compatible with my own non-religious worldview --- which was also based on the New Physics of quantum theory, plus the New Metaphysics of Information theory --- not on any particular religious tradition. I call that worldview Enformationism, as an update of both Materialism and Spiritualism, that have been scientifically outdated since the 20th century. Now I have uploaded a new post to my blog, as a brief summary of how Process and Reality compares with Enformationism. If you can find the time to read and review the two-page essay*2, I'd appreciate any constructive criticism you can offer

Far as I can tell materialism isn’t outdated, even by modern quantum physics. People who cite that everything is just fields misunderstand what that means and that physics isn’t actually saying that. Matter is real and physical and solid, what it’s made of is being investigated.

People who cite the “philosophical implications” of this stuff don’t understand it well enough to do so.

Quoting Gnomon

"Alfred North Whitehead’s book, Process and Reality, is a philosophical thesis, not a scientific essay. But it challenges the philosophical implications of Darwin’s mechanistic theory of Evolution. Instead of a simple series of energy exchanges, the Cosmos functions as a holistic organism. Hence, the eventual emergence of subordinate living creatures should not be surprising."

I would say it doesn’t do a good job of that considering how successful Darwin’s theory was and how barely anyone uses Whitehead.

Quoting Darkneos

Spiritualism, from the evidence, appears to be nothing more than delusion.

People [like @Gnomon] who cite the “philosophical implications” of this stuff don’t understand [modern quantum physics] well enough to do so.

:up: :up:

But my question is about the ethical implications of it [process philosophy]

I don't think there are any "ethical implications" unique to either the naturalistic-chaotic (Dewey, Deleuze, Prigogine-Stengers) or the theistic-teleological (Whitehead, Hartshorne) versions of process philosophy.

Rather, as far as I can make it out, "becoming" (dynamics) is broadly conceived of as a metaphysical constraint on "being" (stasis, reification) such that, metaethically, becoming moral (via inquiry, creativity, alterity) supercedes being moral (re: dogma, normativity, totality) – and moral in the "process" sense, I guess, means Good (i.e. always striving – learning how – to treat each other (re: community & the commons) in non-zerosum/non-egocentric (i.e. dialectically holistic) ways ~my terms, not theirs).

Quoting 180 Proof

Rather, as far as I can make it out, "becoming" (dynamics) is broadly conceived of as a metaphysical constraint on "being" (stasis, reification) such that, metaethically, becoming moral (via inquiry, creativity, alterity) supercedes being moral (re: dogma, normativity, totality) – and moral in the "process" sense, I guess, means Good (i.e. always learning how to treat each other (re: community & the commons) in non-zerosum/non-egocentric ways ~my terms, not theirs).

This is why I often take the Buddhas stance on metaphysics in this; it doesn’t matter. Also why I don’t partake in philosophy often.

Just seems like needless complications.

That said even a dynamic system like they claim to have still has a static moral rule system in place to strive for, otherwise you have no ethics or morality like I said before. Even if you are adapting there is a still a goal to that adaptation based on something else.

Quoting Amity

So, what is the point of 'Process Philosophy'?

What are its ethical implications? Or any other kind, for that matter?

I can't say with any authority, what Whitehead's "point" was. But my takeaway is that he was inspired by the counterintuitive-yet-provable "facts" of the New Physics of the 20th century --- that contrasted with 17th century Classical Physics --- to return the distracted philosophical focus a> from what is observed (matter), to the observer (mind), b> from local to universal, c> from mechanical steps to ultimate goals. Where Science studies *percepts* (specifics ; local ; particles), the New Philosophy will investigate *concepts* (generals ; universals ; processes). The "point" of that re-directed attention was the same as always though : basic understanding of Nature, Reality, Knowledge, and Value*1.

Our senses & intuitions are "tuned" to macro-scale Newtonian mechanics. Which is why quantum things & processes seem weird. During the 19th century, Physical Science had been very successful in allowing one species to take control of their environment. Consequently, the pragmatic victories scored by Matter-manipulating Physics & Chemistry, had put theoretical Philosophy in a bad light. And, when their former role as the captains of academia diminished in market value, philosophers began to suffer from "lab coat envy". Consequently, today, on this very forum, speculative & argumentative philosophy is often disparaged as useless, unless it can point to empirical evidence. Many TPF posters seem to have taken the attitude : if you can't beat them (science) join them (Scientism).

On the other hand, Whitehead seemed to envision, in the light of quantum physics, a new direction for Natural Philosophy. Instead of continuing the ancient quest of Atomism (the ultimate particle of matter), philosophers should now turn their attention to Wholes instead of Parts. From this new/old perspective, the Cosmos is not just a swirling mass of matter/energy, but an evolving process metaphysically moving toward some future state. Exactly what that Omega Point might be is of course unknown, but its direction can be inferred from the trajectory of its history.

Modern materialistic Science has been superbly successful in wresting control of Nature for the benefit of a few featherless big-brain bipeds. But Metaphysical Philosophy is not concerned with such practical matters. Instead, it studies intellectual questions of Meaning & Value. By contrast, Science per se is not interested in Ethics other than Utility : such as the very successful Atom bomb project, aimed at annihilating cities. So, the Ethics of Science*2 seems to be a philosophical endeavor tacked-on after the fact : as when Oppenheimer lamented, "I have become Death, destroyer of worlds".

Whitehead's philosophy can be labeled as Spiritual*3 (intellectual instead of physical) in the sense that it recognizes invisible forces & fields*4 at work in the world. But, unlike the traditional scientific notion of local cause & effect, he speculates on universal causes that control the direction of Evolution. So, whatever Ethics is associated with Process Philosophy will be global in its effects, and teleological in its aims. :nerd:

*1. Point of Philosophy vs Science :
# Science deals in evidence while philosophy deals in arguments
# Science looks for empirical knowledge and facts, while philosophy often focuses on abstract ideas and values
# Science is about descriptive facts; philosophy is often about that, but is also about normative and evaluative truths
# Science looks at what is, while philosophy looks at why it exists.

*2. Ethics of Materialism :
Materialism is a philosophy that prioritizes material things over spiritual or intellectual ones. Materialistic ethics are ethical theories that are based on the idea that the only things that exist are matter, energy, and physical forces.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=ethics+of+materialism
Note --- By contrast, Process Philosophy understands that whole systems also exist as the "more than" matter. The whole is more than the sum of the parts.

*3. Ethics of Spiritualism :
The ethics of spiritualism are a system of moral philosophy that considers the relationship between evolution and the existence of the human spirit after death. Spiritual ethics can also refer to the principles that guide how people use their spiritual beliefs and practices in the world.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=ethics+of+spiritualism
Note --- Unlike theological religions, Whitehead's philosophical theology was not primarily concerned with an afterlife, but in our evolutionary adaptation to the evolving world.

*4. Quantum Fields are philosophical theories tacked-on to the new physics, when the long-sought ultimate particle remained elusive, and the inter-relationships of entanglement became undeniable.
"Quantum fields are not made of anything as far as we know. They just exist in the universe based on quantum field theory." https://www.quora.com/What-are-quantum-fields-made-of-and-when-were-they-formed

Quoting Gnomon

Quantum Fields are philosophical theories tacked-on to the new physics, when the long-sought ultimate particle remained elusive, and the inter-relationships of entanglement became undeniable.
"Quantum fields are not made of anything as far as we know. They just exist in the universe based on quantum field theory."

This is why you don’t go to Quora for answers.

Quoting Gnomon

Materialism is a philosophy that prioritizes material things over spiritual or intellectual ones. Materialistic ethics are ethical theories that are based on the idea that the only things that exist are matter, energy, and physical forces

It’s not…

Quoting Gnomon

Science looks at what is, while philosophy looks at why it exists.

Debatable.

Quoting Gnomon

I can't say with any authority, what Whitehead's "point" was. But my takeaway is that he was inspired by the counterintuitive-yet-provable "facts" of the New Physics of the 20th century --- that contrasted with 17th century Classical Physics --- to return the distracted philosophical focus a> from what is observed (matter), to the observer (mind), b> from local to universal, c> from mechanical steps to ultimate goals. Where Science studies *percepts* (specifics ; local ; particles), the New Philosophy will investigate *concepts* (generals ; universals ; processes). The "point" of that re-directed attention was the same as always though : basic understanding of Nature, Reality, Knowledge, and Value*1.

Again not really especially since it’s not New Physics, no one calls it that anyway. Nothing about physics then disproved materialism.

Quoting Gnomon

Modern materialistic Science has been superbly successful in wresting control of Nature for the benefit of a few featherless big-brain bipeds. But Metaphysical Philosophy is not concerned with such practical matters. Instead, it studies intellectual questions of Meaning & Value. By contrast, Science per se is not interested in Ethics other than Utility : such as the very successful Atom bomb project, aimed at annihilating cities. So, the Ethics of Science*2 seems to be a philosophical endeavor tacked-on after the fact : as when Oppenheimer lamented, "I have become Death, destroyer of worlds".

Not…really? Metaphysics for the most part hasn’t really changed anything about how reality works. Buddhism for example is pretty famous for saying it doesn’t matter.

Metaphysics doesn’t deal with meaning or value, that’s ethics (well more like existentialism). Science is concerned with ethics albeit in a roundabout manner as some research is underpinned by ethical issues and concerns.

Like I said before, you don’t understand this stuff well enough to comment on it, same with most philosophers attempting to reference physics let alone quantum physics.

You give the appearance of knowing what you’re talking about but peel it back and it’s clear you don’t.

Quoting Gnomon

Whitehead's philosophy can be labeled as Spiritual*3 (intellectual instead of physical) in the sense that it recognizes invisible forces & fields*4 at work in the world. But, unlike the traditional scientific notion of local cause & effect, he speculates on universal causes that control the direction of Evolution. So, whatever Ethics is associated with Process Philosophy will be global in its effects, and teleological in its aims.

A simple “I don’t know what it means” would suffice.

Far as I can tell he posited a God under it all as directing things, but he didn’t speculate invisible forces or fields. You don’t even understand quantum field theory and neither did he, he died before it truly took off.

His philosophy also suggests panpsychism, which is problematic enough without positing universal causes he can’t demonstrate.

I think there’s a reason his philosophy never took off.

Quoting Gnomon

So, what is the point of 'Process Philosophy'?

What are its ethical implications? Or any other kind, for that matter?
— Amity

I can't say with any authority...

Hello. I wrote that on page 1. At the end of my longer response to @Count Timothy von Icarus's substantive post, here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/963537

I then posted an informative video concerning:
Quoting Amity

Insights from Nicolas Rescher's Philosophy: Process Metaphysics (06:43)

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/963557

I disagreed with @Darkneos's opinion that it was 'dehumanising'.

Quoting Amity

People are not being labelled as 'just processes'. It seems to be a way to understand humans and their place in the world. As individuals and part of many processes, relationships and interactions, including the creative. Changing and not static.
Just as in:
Essentially it means that all is flux, nothing is static
— punos

As far as I recall, @Darkneos did not reply to @Count Timothy von Icarus.

And now the thread is on p5.
So be it. Another process along the way.

I have nothing further to contribute, here.
My attention is now on writing something for the Philosophy Writing Challenge - June 2025.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15749/philosophy-writing-challenge-june-2025-announcement/p1

Perhaps will see some of you there? In the meantime, best wishes :sparkle:

Quoting Darkneos

Science looks at what is, while philosophy looks at why it exists.
— @Gnomon

Debatable

Is it though? He sounds to me patently uninformed (as you've repeatedly pointed out); after all, "why" pertains only to actual agents and not to existence and "what" pertains to descriptions, not to explanations. Much less "debatable", I (unoriginally) propose that science seeks to testably explain how states-of-affairs – physical systems – transform (e.g. hypothetical-deductions) whereas philosophy concerns reflectively making explicit the rational and/or pragmatic limits (which include describing presuppositions as well as implications or derived prescriptions) of any given explanation ... e.g. Socratic inquiries. Clearly Whitehead's "process philosophy" fails to do either well like nearly all other flavors of idealism, imo, because he attempts to do both together confusing the disciplines' distinct levels of analysis or generality.

Quoting Amity

As far as I recall, Darkneos did not reply to @Count Timothy von Icarus.

Because they didn’t address my questions so I didn’t respond. He also pointed out the flaws with process philosophy.

Quoting Amity

And now the thread is on p5.
So be it. Another process along the way

And you still never answered my questions. All this just sorta proves to me why this philosophy never took off.

Quoting Amity

I disagreed with Darkneos's opinion that it was 'dehumanising'.

You never really explained why, you never explained anything.

:heart: :flower:

So far no one’s been able to answer the original post.

:cry: :snicker:

Quoting Amity

cry: :snicker:

I think maybe you just don’t understand it. Like when I said it was dehumanizing and all punos could really do is insist it’s not.

Even the guy you quoted in this thread acknowledged issues with process Philosophy

I've loved, I've laughed, and cried
I've had my fill, my share of losing
And now, as tears subside
I find it all so amusing

Reply to Amity :smirk:
Reply to Amity :cool:

Quoting Darkneos

So far no one’s been able to answer the original post.

How does the following fail to answer your OP?

(p.1)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/963559

plus

(p. 5)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/966863

Reply to 180 Proof Not really showing the ethical implications with the first one, though it does show how needlessly complicated they make it, not to mention the issues with panpsychism.

As for the second the whole “becoming moral” thing doesn’t really get at the issue I’m saying, on top of needlessly complicating things. I also mentioned that even an “adaptable” ethics system still has a static system underpinning it otherwise there are no ethics to it.

Quoting Amity

I disagreed with Darkneos's opinion that it was 'dehumanising

Again not explaining anything.

Do you not think it’s dehumanizing because according to process philosophy humans don’t exist? Because that’s my point pretty much.

Reply to Amity if you don’t know you don’t know, doesn’t seem anyone does.

Quoting Darkneos

Do you not think it’s dehumanizing because according to process philosophy humans don’t exist? Because that’s my point pretty much.

I'm beginning to see why Whitehead's process philosophy bothers you so much. He seems to have formulated a worldview that is closer to that of indigenous people around the world than to western science & physics. It's based on cycles & flux instead of linear time & static things.

My background was in the western traditions of both religion and science. But in my later years, I am trying to understand other ways of viewing reality. I'm currently reading a book written by a British quantum physicist, David Peat, who has studied the cultures of indigenous Americans (I'll call them Indigians instead of Indians). He says "our western minds desire to sort things out, to arrange knowledge in a logical fashion and order the world into categories. . . . it is not so much the questions themselves that are the problem, but the whole persistent desire to obtain knowledge through a particular analytical route".

He seems to find some commonalities between his sub-atomic world-model and the worldview of non-western humans. Just as quantum entities have properties of both waves and particles, human persons are both individuals and immersed in larger Holistic systems. He notes that "quantum theory stresses the irreducible link between observer and observed and the basic holism of all phenomena". That may sound like nonsense or BS to you. But it makes sense to some professional physicists --- admittedly a minority --- such as David Bohm ; whose notion of Implicate and Explicate orders of reality is not accepted in mainstream science. Probably because it is more philosophical than scientific, more holistic than analytic.

In Peat's book, he compares the two worldviews by noting that "in modern physics the essential stuff of the universe cannot be reduced to billiard-ball atoms, but exists as relationships and fluctuations at the boundary of what we call matter and energy". Also, in Whitehead's Process and Reality, he prefaces his Gifford lectures with "these lectures will be best understood by noting the following list of prevalent habits of thought, which are repudiated, in so far as concerns their influence on philosophy : 1. The distrust of speculative thought". You may consider Indigians to be ignorant savages, but Peat finds their holistic science to be compatible with his own non-mechanical, probabilistic Physics.

Apparently, your "habits of thought", and to some degree my own, make it difficult to understand the non-classical non-western holistic worldview of Quantum Physics and Indigenous peoples. Richard Feynman expressed his own "distrust of speculative thought" by advising his students to "shut-up and calculate". But this is supposed to be a Philosophy forum, in which speculative thought is de rigeur. So, if you find Whitehead's speculations to conflict with your Newtonian classical worldview, perhaps you should ignore the meaning & implications & ethics of Process philosophy, and stick to calculating abstract countable values. :wink:


Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) believed that humans are part of a fabric of reality that includes nature.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=whitehead+human+existence

Whitehead's theory of human personhood is formulated within the fabric of his highly original western metaphysical vision. Rejecting the Aristotelian doctrine of substantive being, Whitehead embraced instead an ontology of becoming that sought to categorize the things of this world within a naturalistic continuum. . . . . The focus of this paper is personal selfhood and personal identity in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.
https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/PPer/PPerYong.htm

Quoting Gnomon

I'm beginning to see why Whitehead's process philosophy bothers you so much. He seems to have formulated a worldview that is closer to that of indigenous people around the world than to western science & physics. It's based on cycles & flux instead of linear time & static things

Not really. Indigenous people had varied views on the matter. For everyone one about cycles and flux you had another about spirits and stuff. Also it’s just science, nothing “western” about it. Even in their stories there was still static stuff.

Quoting Gnomon

"our western minds desire to sort things out, to arrange knowledge in a logical fashion and order the world into categories. . . . it is not so much the questions themselves that are the problem, but the whole persistent desire to obtain knowledge through a particular analytical route".

This is not true and a very reductive notion of western thought. It’s same when people try to lump “eastern philosophy” into one group even though it’s diverse with many disagreeing with each other.

Quoting Gnomon

Just as quantum entities have properties of both waves and particles, human persons are both individuals and immersed in larger Holistic systems. He notes that "quantum theory stresses the irreducible link between observer and observed and the basic holism of all phenomena". That may sound like nonsense or BS to you

Already he’s committed the basic mistake when talking about quantum physics and observation. It’s not what most think of when it comes to the term.

Also the term holistic physicist came up which is a red flag. Even just looking at his books shows he’s less than reliable on this stuff.

Though the tying of people with the properties of particles at the quantum level is a category error and kinda shows he doesn’t understand.

Quoting Gnomon

In Peat's book, he compares the two worldviews by noting that "in modern physics the essential stuff of the universe cannot be reduced to billiard-ball atoms, but exists as relationships and fluctuations at the boundary of what we call matter and energy"

Except this is not true as we have shown at the supercollider. The essential stuff can in fact be reduced to “billiard ball” atoms.
Quoting Gnomon

You may consider Indigians to be ignorant savages, but Peat finds their holistic science to be compatible with his own non-mechanical, probabilistic Physics.

Projection on your part.

Quoting Gnomon

So, if you find Whitehead's speculations to conflict with your Newtonian classical worldview, perhaps you should ignore the meaning & implications & ethics of Process philosophy, and stick to calculating abstract countable values. :wink:

You don’t understand the philosophy or the physics well enough to explain or cite either and the sources you cite are less than reliable. I’m pretty sure an Indian shaman could put it better, I know because I’ve met a few. Though from their view you and that Peat are already wrong by trying to put it into a philosophy, it’s not really something you can work out or explain, at least from what they say.

Quoting Gnomon

Apparently, your "habits of thought", and to some degree my own, make it difficult to understand the non-classical non-western holistic worldview of Quantum Physics and Indigenous peoples.

This speaks more to your lack of understanding and inability to explain. I know folks who “get it” so to speak and they don’t blame me for it.

Like I’ve said before, you’re good at pretending like you know what you’re talking about but you know nothing of the things you cite. I’m just wanting my questions answered but you don’t seem able to. You just go off on irrelevant tangents.

I also know you don’t read the sources you cite because that last paper showed how Whitehead failed.

I don’t know why I bother responding when it’s evident you know nothing of which you speak.

Reply to Darkneos With respect to ethics, as I've stated above
Quoting 180 Proof

I don't think there are any "ethical implications" unique to either the naturalistic-chaotic (Dewey, Deleuze, Prigogine-Stengers) or the theistic-teleological (Whitehead, Hartshorne) versions of process philosophy.

Insofar as it is an a priori categorical framework (i.e. ontological paradigm), a metaphysics might constrain but does not imply an ethics, so, it seems to me, Darkneos, you're asking the wrong question – "process philosophy" is just a twentieth century (scientistic) 'metaphysics of becoming'.

Quoting 180 Proof

Insofar as it is an a priori categorical framework (i.e. ontological paradigm), a metaphysics might constrain but does not imply an ethics, so it seems to me, Darkneos, you're asking the wrong question.

Maybe. But that said no one has really been able to explain process philosophy and the last paper I read ended up showing how Whitehead failed

Reply to Darkneos :chin:

I've also pointed out how "process philosophy" fails; what more needs to be "explained" that has not already been summarized ...

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-philosophy/

Reply to 180 Proof That last challenge I think rings loudest because this doesn’t really tie into real life despite what folks here might say. All I’ve really gotta is either insistence or just blaming the person for not getting it.

Naturally that’s more a hole in the philosophy than in one’s understanding of it.

Quoting Darkneos

I don’t know why I bother responding when it’s evident you know nothing of which you speak.

Why do you bother to respond? You seem to be offended by Whitehead's ideas, as you mistakenly interpret them. Reply to 180 Proof in the next post says: "you're asking the wrong question". But I think it's a proper question to ask of any worldview*5, but based on erroneous assumptions.

I took the OP as a sincere attempt to obtain help in understanding the unorthodox philosophical worldview of an acknowledged genius, whose "magnum opus" is over the heads of most of us mortals. But instead of a philosophical dialog, this thread has become a political diatribe, on a work that you admitted you don't understand*1. Ironically, you portray Whitehead as an idiot who didn't understand Quantum Physics in the manner you prefer. And you have haughtily & sarcastically rejected all proffered opinions that don't match the world model that you are looking to support. Of course, Whitehead had little influence on modern Science, because his philosophy is mental (hypothetical) instead of material (pragmatic).

I don't know how you would characterize your personal worldview, but it sounds like matter-based Scientism (what you see is all there is), which would indeed be in opposition to Whitehead's process-based worldview. Your my-way-or-the-highway prejudice might be better served by posting on a Science forum. However, at least one poster on Philosophy Stack Exchange seems to share your literalistic mis-understanding of Process Philosophy*3. Pioneering sub-atomic physicists*4 were forced to describe the non-classical paradoxes of quantum physics in terms of metaphors, which those coming from a classical background may interpret literally and materially. FWIW, a human is not "just processes" (on-going life), but also a person (body & mind), worthy of ethical treatment.

If you would like to share philosophical opinions on interpretations of Whitehead's work, instead of denigrating them, I'm open to continuing this thread. But I suspect that some TPF posters have already been turned-off by the political us-vs-them antagonism. Most of us are not scientists, and don't offer scientific opinions. :cool:


*1. What does Process Philosophy mean exactly?
Sorry for the confusion but I guess it just highlights my lack of comprehension of the subject. I've met maybe two people who subscribe to it and seem to live regular lives, though when I asked them to explain they couldn't, which gave me doubts about it.
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/121885/what-does-process-philosophy-mean-exactly-and-the-ethical-implications-of-it

*2. Scientism is a philosophical position that claims science is the only way to obtain truth about the world. It's often used as a pejorative term to describe an exaggerated belief in the scientific method
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=scientism+philosophy

*3. I would think just seeing “things” as processes would shift the morality for folks since there wouldn’t be any reason to treat “others” well since they’re just processes. The same would go for human relationships as well. ___ Boltstorm
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/121885/what-does-process-philosophy-mean-exactly-and-the-ethical-implications-of-it

*4. Alfred North Whitehead and Werner Heisenberg were thinkers in different fields, but their work is connected in the realm of quantum mechanics and the nature of reality.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=whitehead+and+heisenberg

*5. Whitehead's Moral Philosophy :
Belaief depicts Whitehead’s view as a self-realizational ethics which reconciles the conflict between the individual interest and the general interest by appeal to morally preferable "true self-interest."
https://www.religion-online.org/article/whiteheads-moral-philosophy/

Quoting Gnomon

Most of us are not scientists, and don't offer scientific opinions.

True. And yet there's a never ending bilge of pseudo-scientific "opinions" often rationalized by incorrigibly poor reasoning / bad philosophy festooned with irrelevant quotations. Lots of woo, Gnomon sir. :up: – that's 'job security' for critical forum members who happen to be literate in modern sciences and western philosophy. :cool:

Quoting Gnomon

If you would like to share philosophical opinions on interpretations of Whitehead's work, instead of denigrating them, I'm open to continuing this thread. But I suspect that some TPF posters have already been turned-off by the political us-vs-them antagonism. Most of us are not scientists, and don't offer scientific opinions

It’s more like they haven’t been able to answer my questions, which seems to be a running theme with this philosophy.

Quoting Gnomon

I took the OP as a sincere attempt to obtain help in understanding the unorthodox philosophical worldview of an acknowledged genius, whose "magnum opus" is over the heads of most of us mortals. But instead of a philosophical dialog, this thread has become a political diatribe, on a work that you admitted you don't understand*1. Ironically, you portray Whitehead as an idiot who didn't understand Quantum Physics in the manner you prefer. And you have haughtily & sarcastically rejected all proffered opinions that don't match the world model that you are looking to support. Of course, Whitehead had little influence on modern Science, because his philosophy is mental (hypothetical) instead of material (pragmatic).

That’s an exaggeration. Just because something is difficult to understand doesn’t make it good or true.

It’s also not “in the manner I prefer” the man died before it evolved to what we know today. He literally didn’t understand it.

It also doesn’t matter if your philosophy is mental or practical, if you can’t get your point across or apply it to life then it’s worthless. That’s ultimately what philosophy is about.

Quoting Gnomon

However, at least one poster on Philosophy Stack Exchange seems to share your literalistic mis-understanding of Process Philosophy*3. Pioneering sub-atomic physicists*4 were forced to describe the non-classical paradoxes of quantum physics in terms of metaphors, which those coming from a classical background may interpret literally and materially. FWIW, a human is not "just processes" (on-going life), but also a person (body & mind), worthy of ethical treatment.

Philosophy stack exchange has mostly been disappointing. And no they weren’t “forced to” do anything. These aren’t paradoxes either. It sounds to me like you still don’t understand anything you speak on.

Like…your words are really just hardcore projection and reading into what isn’t there. Your understanding of science and other philosophies are lacking, especially with Natives. There’s not really a conversation to be had with someone who doesn’t even have the basics down. You don’t even read your links at the end.

The way I understand certain “Indian” philosophy (and the eastern ones that are similar to it) is that you can’t talk about it, only experience it. So the fact you, that guy or anyone else is talking about it is just wrong out of the gate. Unless you do it you won’t get it but it’s evident who “gets it” and who doesn’t.

I’ve just tried to understand it but so far no one knows it well enough to explain it, which casts doubt on their understanding of it.

Like I said, you’re just a pretender and your understanding insulting to those you cite. You’re not fooling anyone but you.

Reply to Darkneos Haven't read the whole thread - skimmed, and sought your most recent takes before replying.

You are alternately taking Whitehead too seriously, and not seriously enough. Gnomon has done a fairly good job, but its pricklier than I would have responded having not gone through the thread.
I think, but could be wrong, the most recent and most visible person who pushed Whitehead's process philosophy was Terence McKenna. I probably shouldn't need to say more - while I think McKenna is a much, much better thinker and writer than probably 80% of this forum, there is no chance he is giving us anything with which we could further understand, or build on the philosophy rather than the metaphor/poetry in Whitehead's work. And that's roughly where this form of philosophy has been left.

Process & Reality is an extremely hard book to get through but it's pretty much sui generis. No need to implicate it in all these other fields and ways. If it doesn't teach you anything, that's fine. It can do for those who are trying to get something from it (I would ascribe this to most Continental philosophy too, but that's a digression).

Unfortunately, the response above this one, posted while I was writing, doesn't give me hope that you will take on board the criticisms many have leveled. That's unfortunate. I came in that hot too and assumed that not hearing what I wanted amounted to being talked past. That is a difficult hurdle to jump. This forum is largely populated (the very consistent posters anyway) with ideological people who spend more time in the politics/news type threads than elsewhere. I wouldn't think this the best place to learn how to do philosophy, or even read discussion clearly. I only joined when i started my degree, and the two have come apart in a rather extreme way.

To finish, my take on process philosophy:

It is not a 'system' the most philosophies are. It is a descriptive philosophy trying to make sense of what Whitehead sees to be 'facts' about how Humans 'become' across time (whcih is, strictly, a fact - we are never stagnant, in any sense of the word, as beings). Every individual change can be (intellectually/metaphorically) compartmentalized, incorporated and subsumed by the 'being' at any given moment. It is a necessarily vague philosophy and describes a process which is patently occurring. It take it to be attempting a poetic reading of a scientific speculation (that there are 'units' making up the 'being' which come into existences independently. The point is that 'things' are actually 'events' in constant flux of 'occurring' or 'becoming' and not 'objects' to be observed or taken as-is. In this way, change or creative process per se, is a fundamental aspect of reality/existence. He then implicates God in this process as the director, in some sense, but still part of it. So, in some sense this is scientifically obvious, but his theory extends to it being the final analysis which doesn't seem possible.

Reply to 180 Proof Reply to 180 Proof Nice summations! :up:

I was drawn to Whitehead's philosophy and struggled on and off for years to penetrate what I thought must be the sense of it, only to conclude in the end that it is pretty much vacuous, unintelligible.

Quoting AmadeusD

You are alternately taking Whitehead too seriously, and not seriously enough. Gnomon has done a fairly good job, but its pricklier than I would have responded having not gone through the thread.
I think, but could be wrong, the most recent and most visible person who pushed Whitehead's process philosophy was Terence McKenna. I probably shouldn't need to say more - while I think McKenna is a much, much better thinker and writer than probably 80% of this forum, there is no chance he is giving us anything with which we could further understand, or build on the philosophy rather than the metaphor/poetry in Whitehead's work. And that's roughly where this form of philosophy has been left.

It’s sorta hard to regard this well because Gnomon not only doesn’t understand (or read) the things they cite but to think Terence McKenna is a better thinker than 80% of the forum is a red flag to me. I’ve read McKennas stuff and it’s effectively nonsense.

Quoting AmadeusD

Unfortunately, the response above this one, posted while I was writing, doesn't give me hope that you will take on board the criticisms many have leveled. That's unfortunate. I came in that hot too and assumed that not hearing what I wanted amounted to being talked past. That is a difficult hurdle to jump. This forum is largely populated (the very consistent posters anyway) with ideological people who spend more time in the politics/news type threads than elsewhere. I wouldn't think this the best place to learn how to do philosophy, or even read discussion clearly. I only joined when i started my degree, and the two have come apart in a rather extreme way.

This is more about you not about me. Like I said I’m trying to understand this but so far people are really bad at explaining it, and I’ve asked everywhere.

Quoting AmadeusD

It is not a 'system' the most philosophies are. It is a descriptive philosophy trying to make sense of what Whitehead sees to be 'facts' about how Humans 'become' across time (whcih is, strictly, a fact - we are never stagnant, in any sense of the word, as beings). Every individual change can be (intellectually/metaphorically) compartmentalized, incorporated and subsumed by the 'being' at any given moment.

Not exactly. I think recent link showed how Whiteheads philosophy fails when attempting to describe human experience especially self and identity. There is also a problem with his “becomes” as it presupposes a thing that exists already. By his own philosophy nothing becomes because nothing exists. As for us never being stagnant, that’s also not true or a fact. By Whiteheads view nothing is dynamic either because nothing would be static. There is also the issue is time and what theory of time would have to be true for his view to work.

So it doesn’t really explain the facts so much as what he wants to be true. That would explain why it never took off, apart from all his papers being burned upon his death.

Quoting AmadeusD

It is a necessarily vague philosophy and describes a process which is patently occurring.

Not really. It might appear as such but that doesn’t make it so, it also doesn’t explain the static nature of most objects despite them “never being the same”. He claims it’s in line with our intuitions but that’s clearly not the case.

Quoting AmadeusD

The point is that 'things' are actually 'events' in constant flux of 'occurring' or 'becoming' and not 'objects' to be observed or taken as-is. In this way, change or creative process per se, is a fundamental aspect of reality/existence. He then implicates God in this process as the director, in some sense, but still part of it. So, in some sense this is scientifically obvious, but his theory extends to it being the final analysis which doesn't seem possible.

Well the thing is that it’s not scientifically obvious (especially since it's not a science question). Matter does exist and so do particles, even if you want to argue for events you’d still need things. I think verbs describe actions nouns take or do, so you can’t really have no elementary particles. Change and creative process aren’t fundamental because you need source material before any of that. In short process can't be the fundamental nature of reality.

It seems like his philosophy incoherent when it comes to some aspects and breaks down in others. Even that standford entry explains that a big issue with the philosophy is its lack of application to real life let alone our lives unlike the substance philosophy.

Like I mentioned in my original post, how exactly would daily life look and function under the process view and not the substance view? That's the only question that really matters. It sorta reminds me of why Buddha didn't really answer metaphysical questions, because they weren't relevant to daily life or the path.

Like I said above, just because something is dense and hard to understand doesn’t make it good.

There are parts of this response that are going to come off combative - I would implore you to not assess every line as an attack. You have clearly misread much of comment, and are attempting things that are not open on the level of Socratic dialogue.
I have not given my own positions, other than trying to help you navigate the conversation. In terms of Whitehead/process philosophy I have been purposefully vague and indeterminate on how I think his philosophy plays out (save for one thing which I will note where it is relevant (nearer the end)). So please do you best to come into this, not as some hard-ass dismissing every attempt to convince you - that is not what is happening. Obviously, no one will convince you. I am trying to do what you asked, which has nothing to do with that.

Quoting Darkneos

It’s sorta hard to regard this well because Gnomon not only doesn’t understand (or read) the things they cite but to think Terence McKenna is a better thinker than 80% of the forum is a red flag to me. I’ve read McKenna's stuff and it’s effectively nonsense.

I apologise, but you need to carefully re-read what has been written. You are not responding to things I've actually said here. Every aspect of this response misunderstands the plain language of my comment. Please re-read and, if you want, have another go. Hint: I am in your firing line, not Gnomon).

I also note that these are assertions of your emotional responses to things, and not arguments. Poisoning the well, if you will. However, in kind, the bolded is a pretty dire red-flag to me. To turn your words:
"just because something is dense and hard to understand doesn’t make it [s]good[/s] bad (either)".

That said, we can disagree. No worries. I would just suggest something like "I've read McKenna's stuff" wont be taken too seriously with such a flippant and empty(not pejorative!) take on it. Not that you're a dick or anything, but that's nothing to chew on other than to think "Oh, this guy is predisposed to reject McKenna's thinking". Which is fine, but unhelpful - but that was a throwaway/aside remark on which absolutely nothing in the comment turns.

Quoting Darkneos

This is more about you not about me. Like I said I’m trying to understand this but so far people are really bad at explaining it, and I’ve asked everywhere.

I think you are doing what I've just said you're doing. You are not hearing that people have done what you've asked (like myself below, but your responses show you are not seeing this). You are dissatisfied. That's fine. Ironically, that is something about yourself. Not those commenters (though, your claim isn't precluded. I just don't see the evidence for it).

Quoting Darkneos

Not exactly.

This response is a side-step into territory I did not agree to. I have given you an account, as asked(inferentially and explicitly). I have not claimed it is 'good', 'successful' or even interesting Philosophy in that passage. I have given you the account you asked for. Your response goes into analysis based on reference to other people's work and an apparent assumption about my position on Whitehead's work. Does not seem an apt response to that account. If you could perhaps explain how "Not exactly" applies to my account of his philosophy (particularly given you claim to not understand it, but are telling others how it works), that would be helpful. Paradox rears its head.

Quoting Darkneos

Like I said I’m trying to understand this

This simply does not come through in your responses, like the one above. Please take note of that, and reflect on it. If you're not accurately conveying your thoughts, that's just as much a criticism that needs your attention as would be that said "you're wrong". I don't care about hte latter - but the former appears to be the consensus. Perhaps just take a moment with it..

Quoting Darkneos

Not really.

This passage is, again, a response to things I have not said. That is what his theory applies to, and wants to talk about. Your agreement or disagreement is not relevant to an account of it.

Quoting Darkneos

t might appear as such but that doesn’t make it so

Your consistent assertions to the opposite, without much to follow on, do not negate that account either. Interestingly, I'm not talking about that. That is simply an account. I do not know how many more times this will need to be pointed out... But I would really appreciate if you could refrain from commenting on a bare account as if it is some analysis. It gets us no where but thinking you are not accurately reading these comments.

Quoting Darkneos

Well the thing is that it’s not scientifically obvious.

If you can point me to any object which is unchanging, interminable and non-becoming (as it were) id be happy to hear it. But that would be an anomaly. It is scientifically obvious that all things are always in flux. That's what I've noted, and there's no serious way to disagree with this. Whitehead's account of that fact is what (may or may not.... I think almost certainly) fails to do us any good, scientifically.

Quoting Darkneos

Change and creative process aren’t fundamental because you need source material before any of that.

Argue with Whitehead about that. I didn't claim that was true. Quoting Darkneos

It seems like his philosophy incoherent when it comes to some aspects and breaks down in others.

That may be hte case. I tend to agree. Its helpful to understand experience (well, to those disposed to get much from it anyway) - not 'the world'. I agree its rather impenetrably, and where it is, there are inconsistencies. (see, this is my giving you a position on the philosophy).

Quoting Janus

?180 Proof ?180 Proof Nice summations! :up:

Thanks!

I was drawn to Whitehead's philosophy and struggled on and off for years to penetrate what I thought must be the sense of it, only to conclude in the end that it is pretty much vacuous, unintelligible.

:up:

Quoting Darkneos

It’s sorta hard to regard this well because @Gnomon not only doesn’t understand (or read) the things they cite but to think Terence McKenna is a better thinker than 80% of the forum is a red flag to me. I’ve read McKennas stuff and it’s effectively nonsense.

:up: :up:

Quoting AmadeusD

If you can point me to any object which is unchanging, interminable and non-becoming (as it were) id be happy to hear it. But that would be an anomaly. It is scientifically obvious that all things are always in flux. That's what I've noted, and there's no serious way to disagree with this. Whitehead's account of that fact is what (may or may not.... I think almost certainly) fails to do us any good, scientifically.

I would say the base level particles that make up reality. As for flux and sameness that’s a matter of interpretation, hence some of the holes in his philosophy. How do you classify dynamic. You say the word scientifically but I don’t think you know what that means. Even in science we still refer to some living things as being the same at least in biology. Like I said, it depends on definition and hence isn’t really a question for science.

I ignored most of your post because it was little more than whining. I said what I did about McKenna from being on a forum of shroomheads who still disagreed with him.

Quoting AmadeusD

Argue with Whitehead about that. I didn't claim that was true.

Yet you’re agreeing that everything is in flux which is what he says. I’m not stranger to things always changing, I read up on Buddhism. But stuff like identity is complicated hence why some say that just because it changes doesn’t mean it’s different.

Even then he denies objects so I find your agreement with him rather odd on that one.

Quoting AmadeusD

That may be hte case. I tend to agree. Its helpful to understand experience (well, to those disposed to get much from it anyway) - not 'the world'. I agree its rather impenetrably, and where it is, there are inconsistencies. (see, this is my giving you a position on the philosophy).

My main issue is how does this apply to life at large. Because that’s all that matters with philosophy, in that I agree with Buddha.

What I find odd is people trying to liken his stuff to Buddhism when anyone who knows the first thing about would tell you that trying to refer to or describe Anatta is to miss the mark. The self in Buddhism is neither true or false, neither real or unreal.

I don't really have contempt or hate for you or anyone else ultimately. I am frustrated that my questions remain unanswered despite exhausting everything.

Quoting Darkneos

I ignored most of your post because it was little more than whining.

Well that's where this ends. I suppose its good you've made clear your attitude early in your career here.

Quoting AmadeusD

Well that's where this ends. I suppose its good you've made clear your attitude early in your career here.

You never really made much of a case until the end, so there isn’t really much to respond to.

Even you said as scientifically true isn’t accurate. Science does recognize sameness, experimentation uses it after all.

Though the tone of your responses sorta gave away the sort of person you are so I can’t say I was expecting much.

Quoting Darkneos

Like…to be blunt: what does this mean and why should one care? You haven’t answered this, just saying that it contradicts current materialist understanding, which tells me nothing. You also didn’t answer my initial questions

What is the actual problem. Its just a different language choice.

The Human language is really adept at treating verbs as nouns and nouns as verbs just as easily. There are so many ordinary language analogies/metaphors we use which intermix these things all the time without issue.

You just need to go a step further and start asking whether the metaphors/analogies you use influence your thinking. You obviously think they do because one of the issues you've had so far with process philosophy has been how it makes you emotionally view other people. Clearly, the language one uses can influence that just as for you its depressing while for @punos its liberating and inspiring.

Our depictions of materialism aren't conceptually 'objective' and independent of the same kind of metaphorical speech that poets use either as its also filled with strange analogical depictions of things. This is present with analogical models and this is present with speech that talks about quantum 'particles' or 'particle wave states'.

Quoting Darkneos

Well from what I understand it’s particles and matter. The “everything is made of fields” thing is a misunderstanding of it, it makes people foolishly think there is nothing solid.

Solidity whether it be 'from fields' or 'particles' or 'matter' is always going to make itself seem illusory and nonexistent if you think that the reason we don't fall through the floor is not because there is no empty space in objects but because of their repulsive interactions. Regardless of what analogical language you use whether its 'water waves' or 'billiard balls' or 'balls & springs'. Solidity becomes something that may not be a part of the micro-constituent parts of the world around us at least as proposed.

There are also aspects of it that we've quickly abandoned such as no interpenetration which is what bosons do. Those can occupy the same place at the same time and therefore on a fundamental level lack solidity. However, if we use the strawman 'everything is fields' idea then this weirdness goes away and we can just say the field is more intense there but not that there are multiple collocated particles. The particle analogy doesn't allow you this and would have to accept multi-particle collocation or interpenetration on a fundamental level as interpreting this.

Further, how is the fields analogy a misunderstanding of this? These 'particles' have to interact with each other some how and the field is just the proposed thing that is meant to do that in rather esoteric quantum interpretations or a version of pilot wave theory. It can also been seen as being the name for the only thing doing the 'physical' work here as you can imagine in a hydrodynamical analogue model of Schrodinger's equation.

Quoting substantivalism

Solidity becomes something that may not be a part of the micro-constituent parts of the world around us at least as proposed

Well not really. The level of atoms is so small that most people couldn’t fathom it or what it means, so when you learn atoms are mostly empty space it doesn’t mean much.

Quoting substantivalism

However, if we use the strawman 'everything is fields' idea then this weirdness goes away and we can just say the field is more intense there but not that there are multiple collocated particles. The particle analogy doesn't allow you this and would have to accept multi-particle collocation or interpenetration on a fundamental level as interpreting this

It’s hard to say one way or the other because at that level it’s just math. Anything philosophical is up in the air. Field theory is just a mathematical model, physics doesn’t tell us what reality is made of, it just uses math to predict it.

Quoting substantivalism

What is the actual problem. Its just a different language choice.

Well it’s more like I’m not sure if the people talking to me really understand it. When I’m asking Punos they just insist that it’s not cold or dehumanizing but can’t really explain why while I have.

Quoting substantivalism

The Human language is really adept at treating verbs as nouns and nouns as verbs just as easily. There are so many ordinary language analogies/metaphors we use which intermix these things all the time without issue.

Not in my experience. Can you give an example?

Quoting substantivalism

You just need to go a step further and start asking whether the metaphors/analogies you use influence your thinking. You obviously think they do because one of the issues you've had so far with process philosophy has been how it makes you emotionally view other people. Clearly, the language one uses can influence that just as for you its depressing while for punos its liberating and inspiring.

Unless you’re going to answer my original question about process philosophy this isn’t really getting anywhere.

Like I told them, if they’re just a process and not an individual then they don’t exist per process philosophy, so there isn’t really regarding them any way or other. They references Buddhism as an example but Buddhism isn’t process philosophy. Even process philosophy fails when it comes to describing reality as we see and experience it per the philosophy dictionary and some papers that have been linked. You still need substance for process philosophy to work.

So unless you’re going on explain how it’s not cold or dehumanizing then this post isn’t really informative. I’ve asked that question time and again and people can’t explain how, they just insist it’s not which isn’t an argument.

Philosophy only matters if we can tie it to our daily lives and so far no one has been able to demonstrate that with process philosophy which was my original question. I know one other person who seems to live a normal life but believes in this but when I ask him to explain it he can’t.

Quoting substantivalism

Further, how is the fields analogy a misunderstanding of this? These 'particles' have to interact with each other some how and the field is just the proposed thing that is meant to do that in rather esoteric quantum interpretations or a version of pilot wave theory. It can also been seen as being the name for the only thing doing the 'physical' work here as you can imagine in a hydrodynamical analogue model of Schrodinger's equation.

All I know is from what other physicists have told me, that a lot of people misunderstand quantum field theory and think it means what it doesn’t.

But as for the bosons I don’t think that means they aren’t solid it just means quantum mechanics is weirder than we thought. But from the answers I’m reading, YES it does mean there are multiple collocated particles.

Everything you’ve mentioned are still particles, it’s just that at the level things are weird.

But my main question is what does this look like in day to day life and how one manages and interacts. That’s all I care about, what does it look like in action.

With Buddhism it’s easy (ish), it’s just doing it. Though that’s also what makes it hard but at least it’s something. But so far no one can explain what it looks like in action.

Quoting Darkneos

Well not really. The level of atoms is so small that most people couldn’t fathom it or what it means, so when you learn atoms are mostly empty space it doesn’t mean much.

Why should that stop physicists from proposing them as lacking intuitive physical properties if they are as un-fathomable as you say they are?

That would imply that they haven't gone far enough or could go farther. We've already stripped them of emotions, wants, needs, mental states, colors, or other secondary qualities. Why not get rid of solidity as well?

Quoting Darkneos

It’s hard to say one way or the other because at that level it’s just math. Anything philosophical is up in the air. Field theory is just a mathematical model, physics doesn’t tell us what reality is made of, it just uses math to predict it.

Okay. . . so why are physicists so upset about these 'misinterpretations' if they aren't meant to tell us what it's 'really' made of?

Yes, it is just math. We can agree on that.

However, there is value in a heuristically and a pedagogical sense to that speculation regardless of whether it's true or can even be shown to be true. Even Bohr's model of the atom served its role at a point in time even if without experimental investigation by naive EM that it clearly is a way the world would not behave if we demand its stability.

Quoting Darkneos

Well it’s more like I’m not sure if the people talking to me really understand it. When I’m asking Punos they just insist that it’s not cold or dehumanizing but can’t really explain why while I have.

To me its completely irrelevant. Whether process philosophy or static object substance philosophies only emphasize different aspects of the same thing.

You shouldn't be so focused on the material substance of a person because in the end it gives you only a base but not a handle on why you attach yourself to them despite their changes. It also doesn't bode well for illusory characteristic such as consciousness if the 'real' reality lacks those. Their ability to change does not make them some fleeting collection of individuals you can't make out but a process you happily indulge in. It's not like your friend losses a single strain of hair and all of sudden he is someone new to you.

Quoting Darkneos

Not in my experience. Can you give an example?

In a trivial sense there are tons of verbs that are also nouns. Then there are many examples of metaphorical/analogical speech that give things which are abstract a concrete element to them.

'Time is like a flowing river' - Time isn't really a river here and frequently the word time is treated as a noun that can do things.
'The past is behind us.' - Common spatialize temporal metaphor that is similar across cultures but also changes from area to area.
'The wave interacts with the atom.' - Technically, wave can be a verb as well as a noun as in this case. It denotes both the thing doing the waving as well as the action itself.

Quoting Darkneos

All I know is from what other physicists have told me, that a lot of people misunderstand quantum field theory and think it means what it doesn’t.

I get that. . . you won't stop talking about why this is all for nought because of those physicists you have previously read. Specifics as to why seem to be lacking on your part I have to say.

Quoting Darkneos

But as for the bosons I don’t think that means they aren’t solid it just means quantum mechanics is weirder than we thought. But from the answers I’m reading, YES it does mean there are multiple collocated particles.

Solidity is the ability to not be interpenetrated so to allow for interpenetration is what I would not take as them possessing solidity as intrinsic to them.

Unless you mean by solidity a completely different thing than our intuitions would provide but then you aren't talking about the same thing.

Quoting Darkneos

Everything you’ve mentioned are still particles, it’s just that at the level things are weird.

Oh, okay. . . so as long as the math is correct we can just make up whatever. . . right? Or is there some proper methodology as to how to do this absent the math?

____________________________________________________________________________________________

To say there is a misunderstanding of QM implies there is a right way to do this even if no experiment would showcase any of these interpretations as wrong or that they are consistent with the mathematical models. What is this mysterious philosophical methodology you are appealing to but don't make explicit?

Is the proper scientific approach to tell the philosophers to, "shut up while we calculate because you can't figure anything out!" Or is it, ". . . you aren't doing this interpretational work correctly, here is how you actually do it. . ."

Quoting substantivalism

To say there is a misunderstanding of QM implies there is a right way to do this even if no experiment would showcase any of these interpretations as wrong or that they are consistent with the mathematical models. What is this mysterious philosophical methodology you are appealing to but don't make explicit?

Is the proper scientific approach to tell the philosophers to, "shut up while we calculate because you can't figure anything out!" Or is it, ". . . you aren't doing this interpretational work correctly, here is how you actually do it. . ."

Well there is a “right way” but I’m not versed enough in it to know. We aren’t even done with it so any philosophical stab at it is moot right now.

Far as I know philosophers don’t add much to the discussion since they don’t understand the math.

What I do know is that so far it defies our intuitions about reality and maybe one of those is that solid things can’t occupy the same space. Physics models reality, doesn’t tell us what it’s ultimately made of.

Quoting substantivalism

Solidity is the ability to not be interpenetrated so to allow for interpenetration is what I would not take as them possessing solidity as intrinsic to them.

Unless you mean by solidity a completely different thing than our intuitions would provide but then you aren't talking about the same thing.

Well you’re talking classical sense.

Quoting substantivalism

Why should that stop physicists from proposing them as lacking intuitive physical properties if they are as un-fathomable as you say they are?

That’s not what I said, I said people can’t really pictures what it means for something to be that small.

Quoting substantivalism

You shouldn't be so focused on the material substance of a person because in the end it gives you only a base but not a handle on why you attach yourself to them despite their changes. It also doesn't bode well for illusory characteristic such as consciousness if the 'real' reality lacks those. Their ability to change does not make them some fleeting collection of individuals you can't make out but a process you happily indulge in. It's not like your friend losses a single strain of hair and all of sudden he is someone new to you.

It’s funny you mention that last part because that’s exactly why process Philosophy is saying. If they lose a hair they are someone entirely new. Again if they are a process then they don’t exist, per the philosophy itself.

I also wouldn’t say consciousness is illusory, that’s a funny thing to say.

Quoting substantivalism

In a trivial sense there are tons of verbs that are also nouns. Then there are many examples of metaphorical/analogical speech that give things which are abstract a concrete element to them.

Right but that’s not process philosophy.

Again none of this gets to my real questions and it doesn’t seem like you understand process philosophy either.

Quoting Darkneos

Well there is a “right way” but I’m not versed enough in it to know.

Then challenge yourself to actually figure it out. That way these conversations can go way easier.

I'm going through the process right now to finish my own physics degree and am learning the basics of Hilbert spaces as well as bra/ket notation right now.

You want to show some incentive too!

Quoting substantivalism

Then challenge yourself to actually figure it out. That way these conversations can go way easier.

I'm going through the process right now to finish my own physics degree and am learning the basics of Hilbert spaces as well as bra/ket notation right now.

You want to show some incentive too!

I just ask people who know better, I don’t have the time or money for a degree.

Not that any of this is relevant to the topic or my questions.

Quoting Darkneos

I just ask people who know better, I don’t have the time or money for a degree.

Just reposting this. For reasons.

Quoting substantivalism

Just reposting this. For reasons.

This assumes you know what you’re talking about, which from the replies wouldn’t suggest it.

@Darkneos You don't need a money or a degree. . . you need an internet connection and the will as well as the desire to dive into this.

Here is a pdf version of the Griffiths book on quantum mechanics. Get reading!

I always like watching PBS spacetime as they cover these topics for layman viewers. There are also numerous YouTube channels that cover mathematical background needed for quantum.

Here is the entirety of the Feynman lectures on quantum.

Quoting substantivalism

You don't need a money or a degree. . . you need an internet connection and the will as well as the desire to dive into this.

Here is a pdf version of the Griffiths book on quantum mechanics. Get reading!

Way to illustrate my point behind a lot of the misunderstandings behind QM.

But again none of this is relevant nor answers my questions so you’ve effectively said nothing. I don’t even know how this got to quantum physics…

You don’t understand process philosophy to answer my initial concerns so none of this means anything.

So again unless you’re telling me how this philosophy looks in daily life I don’t care. I’ve already asked everywhere else and got nowhere.

Quoting Darkneos

Way to illustrate my point behind a lot of the misunderstandings behind QM.

Except those books or lectures don't actually usually address the interpretational issue regarding it. Usually, they actually feel its irrelevant to the mathematical formulation and my textbook from the university makes that expressly clear where the math ends to where the uncertain philosophy begins.

Which is a key point that I'd like to emphasize.

Quoting Darkneos

But again none of this is relevant nor answers my questions so you’ve effectively said nothing. I don’t even know how this got to quantum physics…

You know, given process philosophy is supposed to be a more faithful interpretation of QM by its adherents its actually really tangential but close to it.

Also you already made up your mind. . .

This is why I often take the Buddhas stance on metaphysics in this; it doesn’t matter. Also why I don’t partake in philosophy often.

I also, agree. Course, I'm bored and I didn't take to heart a previous morbid thread that you had started so I'm left with a good amount of personal free time.

Quoting substantivalism

Except those books or lectures don't actually usually address the interpretational issue regarding it. Usually, they actually feel its irrelevant to the mathematical formulation and my textbook from the university makes that expressly clear where the math ends to where the uncertain philosophy begins.

Which is a key point that I'd like to emphasize.

Last time I tried to dive into it I couldn’t understand a word of it, so I just ask people.

Quoting substantivalism

You know, given process philosophy is supposed to be a more faithful interpretation of QM by its adherents its actually really tangential but close to it.

So what does that mean exactly? You’re not really telling me much with that. From what others tell me that’s not the case and that process philosophy runs into issues when applying it to reality let alone our lives.

From your earlier posts it doesn’t sound like you understand because you said your friend losing a hair wouldn’t make them a whole new person when according to process philosophy it would.

Also physics doesn’t really answer what reality is made of so…

Quoting substantivalism

I also, agree. Course, I'm bored and I didn't take to heart a previous morbid thread that you had started so I'm left with a good amount of personal free time.

I say that with Buddha but really I’m trying to understand this but people are either vague or don’t know. Like I said, I’m asking how does this look in our daily lives and no one can explain that.

Reply to Darkneos This is potentially hte most ironic post I've seen in months. Nice.

At no point in any discussion (or act of thinking) will we ever not refer to substance undergoing process. “There” means “it” and “it” means “is”, once we say anything. Plato and Aristotle were wrong if they really said otherwise; and Wittgenstein and post-modernism were wrong when they quite frankly spoke at all.

So, as far as I have experienced, if one truly only sees the process (which would be indiscernible without a substance, but ok), then you cannot possibly have anything to say about “it”, about “process” or “process philosophy.” You can’t say what the essence of process means, is, or is used for in a sentence that uses other words besides “process.” You cannot say anything else beyond “process” as every question is every answer and every thing is nothing but process. You need substance to speak as much as you need a substance to measure out (to experience, to observe) a changing process. You need relata as much as relations. To say “in between” requires two more that stake the changing field between or among “them.”

Our 3,000 year frustration with discerning something of substance has become the post-modern frustration with trying to speak anymore.

Quoting Fire Ologist

Our 3,000 year frustration with discerning something of substance has become the post-modern frustration with trying to speak anymore.

So is this an argument against process philosophy?

Quoting Darkneos

So is this an argument against process philosophy?

If someone could concisely define “process philosophy” and show it to be essentially (yes essentially, which is my first point here) different than “philosophy”, I have a feeling I would argue against them having defined anything clearly at all, so there would not yet be something to argue against.

If someone thought advocating process philosophy meant motion and change refute all permanence and refute all philosophies containing anything fixed, such as “truth” or “essence” or “knowledge” or “objective meaning”, I would not argue with them. I would say “I disagree” and ask them how can they possibly know what to say in response to that, when what I am saying now will be consumed by process before it reaches their ears let alone is “understood” in order to prompt an appropriate response? So instead of arguing to refute them, I would ask them to speak, and thereby prompt them to see if they would refute themselves by showing my essential wrongness in disagreeing with them.

But because of the ubiquity of change and process, the metaphysical and ontological reality of motion, my ultimate point is not that process philosophy is wrong and needs to be argued against. It is merely incomplete, and does not account for enough to satisfy any honest question.

Process reveals essentially different things as much as the essentially different things reveal process. There is no prior or post between them. One is not actual where the other is illusion.

So, no, I’m not trying to argue against process philosophy. I’m saying, like Heraclitus said, “the barley-drink stands, only while stirring.” I’m saying there is no need to speak of process (nor is there an ability to do so) if process is all there is to say. There’s more, or if not, there is nothing more to say.

Quoting Fire Ologist

So, no, I’m not trying to argue against process philosophy. I’m saying, like Heraclitus said, “the barley-drink stands, only while stirring.” I’m saying there is no need to speak of process (nor is there an ability to do so) if process is all there is to say. There’s more, or if not, there is nothing more to say.

I kinda got that notion from it too, that things can be process all the way down. It does explain why Whitehead had to ground his in god to make it work.

I’ll admit I don’t understand what that Heraclitus quote means though.

Quoting Fire Ologist

So, no, I’m not trying to argue against process philosophy. I’m saying, like Heraclitus said, “the barley-drink stands, only while stirring.” I’m saying there is no need to speak of process (nor is there an ability to do so) if process is all there is to say. There’s more, or if not, there is nothing more to say.

I agree that Process alone, with no Substantial change, would be meaningless. But that's not what Whitehead, or Quantum Physics, was saying. Instead, he seemed to be making a philosophical application of the scientific evidence that tangible malleable Matter is essentially a form of invisible causal Energy*1*2. And Energy is also insubstantial, consisting only of statistical relationships, between material states (hot/cold). Hence, Energy and Causation are mental concepts*3, Ideas, not material things.

Yet, Matter seems real to us --- we see, hear, touch & taste it --- while Energy is merely an intellectual concept. We only know it by what it does, not what it is. That may be why our languages are mostly materialistic*4, with an emphasis on things instead of processes. We only use verbs when something changes. But we give material objects names, just for being there. Nevertheless, Reality consists of both Matter & Energy, both Substance & Causation, both Tangible & Conceptual, both Real & Ideal*5.

Therefore, Whitehead's worldview is essentially Idealistic (concepts vs things) instead of Materialistic. So, his book, Process and Reality, implies that Processes are what's philosophically essential, not the dumb stuff (the clay) that has no intelligible form apart from causal energetic inputs (creativity of the sculptor). Hence, without Matter/Stuff there are no things to talk about, and without Energy/Mind*6, there is "nothing more to say". But. together, Substance & Process are our Reality. :smile:


*1. Matter is Energy :
Matter takes up space, has mass and composes most of the visible universe around you. Energy, on the other hand, takes multiple forms and is essentially the force that causes things to happen in the universe. Yet both matter and energy are variations of the same thing. Each can convert into the other.
https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/can-we-manufacture-matter.htm

*2. Energy is Invisible :
Yes, energy itself is considered "invisible" because we cannot directly see it with our eyes; we only perceive its effects when it manifests in different forms like light, heat, or motion, which are then visible to us.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=energy+is+invisible

*3. Energy is a Concept, not a Thing :
Yes, "energy" is considered a concept, meaning it's an abstract idea that describes the capacity to do work, and is not a physical object itself, but rather a property of matter that can be transferred and transformed into different forms like heat, light, or motion; it's a fundamental principle in physics used to explain various phenomena in the universe.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=energy+is+a+concept

*4. Language is Materialistic :
In most languages, nouns tend to be used more frequently than verbs; meaning, when analyzing a large corpus of text, you will typically find more noun occurrences than verb occurrences.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=language+nouns+vs+verbs+frequency#cobssid=s

*5. Materialism vs Idealism :
Alfred North Whitehead was a philosopher who rejected materialism in favor of a philosophy of organism, or process philosophy. He believed that reality is made up of processes, not material objects. Whitehead's philosophy views the world as a web of interrelated processes, rather than a collection of independent material objects.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=whitehead+materialism
Note --- Even quantum particles are now described as statistical states instead of substantial matter. Yet, on the macro scale those states are interpreted by our senses as solid objects.

*6. Mind is Energy :
The idea that the mind is a form of energy is a theory that's gaining traction in neuroscience and quantum physics. It suggests that thoughts and consciousness are generated by electromagnetic fields in the brain.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=mind+is+energy

Quoting Gnomon

I agree that Process alone, with no Substantial change, would be meaningless. But that's not what Whitehead, or Quantum Physics, was saying.

I am going back and looking at some more Whitehead so I might be better able to talk the whitehead talk here.

But I will admit, my general approach to all of my posts is to put things into my own words. The way I see it, the same elephant is always in the room - me - and what I believe I know, and what I can say about it. So if I say “this is what Whitehead said” and do anything besides quote him, I am only and always saying “this is what I think.” So I just skip over the middle part and say what I think. (It annoys a lot of folks who want to talk about what someone else thinks/meant/said. When I’m talking with someone, I’m really only interested in what they think, and what I think, and what we can agree on, and what we don’t understand about each other’s thoughts. Basically, since Whitehead isn’t here, between us, getting to the bottom of what he was saying is not going to happen. We will only get to the bottom of what we think and say about it. Whitehead has become the prop upon which we base a discussion of what we think.

That said, we can quote people, and take their words at face value, so I’m looking at Whitehead again to see if it helps me say what I mean here.

Quoting Gnomon

1. Yet both matter and energy are variations of the same thing.

Quoting Gnomon

3. Energy is a Concept, not a Thing :
Yes, "energy" is considered a concept, meaning it's an abstract idea that describes the capacity to do work, and is not a physical object itself, but rather a property of matter that can be transferred and transformed into different forms like heat, light, or motion; it's a fundamental principle in physics used to explain

These two points, both of which are interesting and worthy of more exploration, are either contradictory, or point to something magical/supernatural in the universe. If matter converts to energy and energy converts to matter (1), and energy is a concept (3), then matter converts to concept and concepts convert to matter. This needs more investigation before I could accept both. Let’s see where it goes:

Quoting Gnomon

reality is made up of processes, not material objects. Whitehead's philosophy views the world as a web of interrelated processes, rather than a collection of independent material objects.

Processes involve matter interacting through energy, or energy moving through matter, so how can we ignore material objects if we are referencing processes? This doesn’t help me yet.

I need to read more Whitehead here if I am to keep up with you guys.

Quoting Gnomon

Yes, "energy" is considered a concept, meaning it's an abstract idea that describes the capacity to do work, and is not a physical object itself, but rather a property of matter that can be transferred and transformed into different forms like heat, light, or motion; it's a fundamental principle in physics used to explain various phenomena in the universe

This is not true, energy is physical but not an “object”.

This dude just posts stuff from google AI (which is terrible by the way) and doesn’t actually understand how any of this works. We’ve been over that before.

Quoting Gnomon

Note --- Even quantum particles are now described as statistical states instead of substantial matter. Yet, on the macro scale those states are interpreted by our senses as solid objects.

No they are not. Physics doesn’t say anything about the subject one way or the other, it just makes mathematical models to predict reality. Physics doesn’t say what reality is “made” of and the inability to detect could just be the limits of our technology.

Also energy is very much a “thing” just not in the way most would think of it.

Quoting Gnomon

The idea that the mind is a form of energy is a theory that's gaining traction in neuroscience and quantum physics. It suggests that thoughts and consciousness are generated by electromagnetic fields in the brain.

This is also false. Again, that’s what happens when you let AI do your thinking for you. None of your “sources” mean anything, they just reinforce what YOU believe. That’s how the algorithm works.

I know because I searched the same sentence and the AI spat out 3 different results that differed from each other.

Reply to Fire Ologist Pro Tip: if Gnomon said it then it’s probably either wrong or severely misunderstood. They don’t even read their links (I know because one was a direct refutation of process thought).

Whitehead needed to create god to make his philosophy work in a similar manner Descartes did to escape doubt.

Also energy is very much real and physical, not just a concept. I wouldn’t take anything they say on QM seriously since they don’t know how any of it works.

Their sources also don’t mean anything since it’s just google ai and them prompting it with the answers they want.

All QM does is create mathematical models to predict reality, it can’t really say anything about what makes it up, energy or otherwise. Hence the various interpretations. Particle theory has issues, field theory also has issues, etc.

The reality is that we don’t really know. Anyone making definitive claims about what it “says” doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

Though they are wrong that Whitehead was an idealist, even the wiki page says as much. It’s more like panpsychism because he emphasizes experience. So they don’t even understand whitehead either…

Quoting Darkneos

Also energy is very much real and physical, not just a concept. I wouldn’t take anything they say on QM seriously since they don’t know how any of it works.

Quoting Darkneos

Though they are wrong that Whitehead was an idealist, even the wiki page says as much. It’s more like panpsychism because he emphasizes experience.

Thanks for the time savers. That's what seems the case here - confusion mounting on confusion.

The bottom line for me, just like Descartes, Whitehead, (maybe Aristotle, maybe Plato), Leibniz and Spinoza and so many others have to rig in God to stop the inquiry or finish the third act of their story, QM is being used as a similar tool in attempt to ground out the confusion.

If the conclusion being sought is "All is process; nothing is substance/identifiable thing" then there is no need to understand QM or God in order to stop the inquiry. If all is process, becoming, change, then everything else we say is bullshit (which is why anti-scientism is entertained).

People (possibly Whitehead) are taking one confused and incomplete picture, process philosophy, and using another confusing theory from physics, QM, to say some third confusing thing about substance, about what is and what we can know about it. But God and QM are merely more objects in themselves which have remained unaccounted for to any satisfaction in all of history - why should we think the picture of QM, like some picture of God, would clarify the picture of knowing the world (or not knowing the world, which we already didn't know).

Quoting Fire Ologist

These two points, both of which are interesting and worthy of more exploration, are either contradictory, or point to something magical/supernatural in the universe. If matter converts to energy and energy converts to matter (1), and energy is a concept (3), then matter converts to concept and concepts convert to matter. This needs more investigation before I could accept both. Let’s see where it goes:

The quoted words are not my opinion. You can click on the links to see the original search results. Look to the right of the screen to see links to other more technical sites on the same topic.

The interchangeability of Energy and Matter are not magic, but physics. Albert Einstein boggled minds with his E=MC^2 equation ; where E refers to causal power as in atom bombs, M (mass) is mathematical measurement of matter, and C is lightspeed : the cosmic constant. But physicists soon got used to the idea that the visible stuff of reality is ultimately a form of invisible energy.

The second Einstein quote below*1*2 implies that Photons are pure energy, but as they slow down to less than lightspeed, and expand their wavelength, they naturally, not magically, convert into particles of matter. That may sound like ancient Alchemy, but Lead is indeed a heavier form of Gold*3. Note the term "transform", meaning to change physical properties of matter.

If you are not a physicist, you don't need to concern yourself with the Energy/Matter equation. But if you are interested in accommodating modern physics into your philosophical worldview --- as Whitehead was --- a general understanding of Einstein's theories and Quantum concepts will be mandatory. What will be more mind boggling is to accept the implications of the fact that Matter is Energy, which is a mental concept. Perhaps even Mind itself, as noted in the previous post. :nerd:

*1. The most well-known quote from Einstein regarding matter and energy is: "Everything is energy and that's all there is to it.". This essentially means that matter is just a concentrated form of energy, which is encapsulated in his famous equation E=mc².
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=einstein+matter+energy+quote

*2. ___Einstein : "Concerning matter, we have been all wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been so lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter."
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/161207-concerning-matter-we-have-been-all-wrong-what-we-have
Note --- These "quotes" on the net may be apocryphal or a paraphrase, but they sound like an appropriate interpretation of technical physics for laymen.

*3. Gold is related to lead because they are both elements on the periodic table, and historically, alchemists famously attempted to "turn lead into gold" through chemical processes, believing they could transform one element into the other, although this is scientifically impossible with traditional methods; however, in extremely controlled nuclear reactions, it is possible to create small amounts of gold from lead by altering the atomic structure through nuclear bombardment.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=gold+is+related+to+lead

Note : Reply to Darkneos will argue against Process theory, because it violates his faith in metaphysical Materialism. Physical science can be interpreted to conform to that faith in the primacy of Matter, but he will present that opinion as a settled fact. For practical purposes, it doesn't matter either way. The actual world doesn't rate matter & energy for primacy. But for the impractical purposes of Philosophy it does make a difference in how you view the world : as a lump of inert things or as an evolving process. As a philosophical worldview, Physicalism is more complete, because it includes both Matter & Energy in its scope. :wink:

Quoting Gnomon

The interchangeability of Energy and Matter are not magic,

I have no issue seeing that.

You said energy is a concept. So then matter is energy and therefore matter is a concept.

So is Whitehead interchangeable with Berkeley?

Quoting Gnomon

If you are not a physicist, you don't need to concern yourself with the Energy/Matter equation. But if you are interested in accommodating modern physics into your philosophical worldview --- as Whitehead was --- a general understanding of Einstein's theories and Quantum concepts will be mandatory. What will be more mind boggling is to accept the implications of the fact that Matter is Energy, which is a mental concept. Perhaps even Mind itself, as noted in the previous post.

This is, not true, again. Matter and energy are interchangeable under certain conditions like high energy, also energy is not a concept...again.

Quoting Gnomon

The interchangeability of Energy and Matter are not magic, but physics. Albert Einstein boggled minds with his E=MC^2 equation ; where E refers to causal power as in atom bombs, M (mass) is mathematical measurement of matter, and C is lightspeed : the cosmic constant. But physicists soon got used to the idea that the visible stuff of reality is ultimately a form of invisible energy.

You're missing the speed of light, this is really only a concern at such high pressures and intense conditions, not for our everyday stuff. It does not say that it's a form of invisible energy, only that the two can be converted under intense conditions. It's why you'd need the power of the entire sun just to convert a paperclip to energy and why we can only make a few particles in the lab.

Saying everything is invisible energy is the stupid person's take, to be blunt. E=mc2 is the most cited yet misunderstood equation, poor Einstein.

Quoting Gnomon

The second Einstein quote below*1*2 implies that Photons are pure energy, but as they slow down to less than lightspeed, and expand their wavelength, they naturally, not magically, convert into particles of matter. That may sound like ancient Alchemy, but Lead is indeed a heavier form of Gold*3. Note the term "transform", meaning to change physical properties of matter.

That quote is incorrect. Not only did he never say that his entire work says the opposite, in fact his famous equation E=mc2 wouldn't even apply if that were true. This is like that quote ascribed to Aristotle that he never actually said.

Quoting Fire Ologist

I have no issue seeing that.

You said energy is a concept. So then matter is energy and therefore matter is a concept.

So is Whitehead interchangeable with Berkeley?

He's wrong on pretty much everything and you can literally google it. I told you to stop believing them as they're often either wrong or grossly butchering ideas.

Here, I'll show you per the Einstein "quote":

"While the phrase "there is no matter" is often attributed to Einstein, there is no credible evidence that he actually said this; however, his theory of relativity does suggest that what we perceive as matter is essentially concentrated energy, meaning the distinction between the two can be blurred, leading to interpretations that could be misconstrued as "no matter" exists. "

https://www.google.com/search?q=did+einstein+say+there+is+no+matter&rlz=1C1ONGR_enUS1050US1050&oq=did+einstein+say+there+is+no+matter&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIICAEQABgWGB4yDQgCEAAYhgMYgAQYigUyDQgDEAAYhgMYgAQYigUyBggEEEUYPNIBCjIyNDk2ajBqMTWoAgiwAgHxBYGtsUR7H_JO&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Literally just ignore them if they say anything about this still.

Quoting Fire Ologist

You said energy is a concept. So then matter is energy and therefore matter is a concept.
So is Whitehead interchangeable with Berkeley?

Both are considered to be idealists, but I wouldn't say they are "interchangeable", unless you want to trivialize their work as proponents of woo-woo. The link below characterizes Berkeley as a "subjective idealist", and Whitehead as "more complex", perhaps combining subjective concepts and objective percepts. For example, matter is both a tangible percept (experience) and a philosophical concept, as in Materialism.

How Matter can also be Mind may sound like woo-woo to some skeptics. And if immaterial ideas are woo-woo (can't see'em or touch'em), then this forum of sharing ideas via spooky action-at-a-distance is also mystical mumbo jumbo. :smile:


While both Whitehead and Berkeley are considered idealists, a key distinction lies in the nature of their idealism: Berkeley is considered a "subjective idealist" believing reality only exists as perceived by minds, while Whitehead's philosophy, often called "process philosophy," is more complex, suggesting that reality is composed of "actual occasions" which are essentially experiences, thus incorporating a more dynamic and interconnected view of existence, not solely dependent on a perceiving mind like Berkeley's concept.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=whitehead+and+berkeley+idealism

Quoting Gnomon

Both are considered to be idealists, but I wouldn't say they are "interchangeable", unless you want to trivialize their work as proponents of woo-woo. The link below characterizes Berkeley as a "subjective idealist", and Whitehead as "more complex", perhaps combining subjective concepts and objective percepts. For example, matter is both a tangible percept (experience) and a philosophical concept, as in Materialism.

This is incorrect. Whitehead was not an idealist nor is he considered one. His view is that of panpsychism or close to it, not idealism. Both however did have to underpin their views with god to make it work.

Quoting Gnomon

How Matter can also be Mind may sound like woo-woo to some skeptics. And if immaterial ideas are woo-woo (can't see'em or touch'em), then this forum of sharing ideas via spooky action-at-a-distance is also mystical mumbo jumbo

That’s not what spooky action at a distance means at all, that refers to quantum entanglement, the theory that particles don’t have to be near each other to impact each other. It has nothing to do with materiality. In fact there was a Nobel Prize given a few years ago for proving nonlocality, meaning particles that are entangled can impact each other across distances.

But yeah, wrong again as usual.