PROCESS PHILOSOPHY : A metaphysics for our time?

Quoting Gnomon

process philosophy

There is a realm of happenings, not things,
For ‘things’ don’t remain the same on time’s wings.
What remains through time are processes—
Relations between different systems.

The solid world dissolves beneath time’s gaze,
As atoms dance their quantum-shifting ways;
What seems so fixed is but a moment’s pause
In endless flow through change’s shifting maze.

That mountain standing proud against the sky?
A slow upheaval still continuing by;
No static thing, but process caught in time—
A verb of stone that seems a noun to eye.

Your body too, that seems so firmly yours,
Is but a pattern passing through time’s doors;
Each cell replaced, each atom slipping past,
While form alone its seeming self restores.

The river that you step in’s never same,
Though bearing still its one unchanging name;
Not water fixed, but pattern flowing on,
As process keeps its shape but shifts its frame.

What we call things are but the meeting place
Where different systems cross in time and space;
The dance between them is what truly lasts,
While substance slips away without a trace.

A tree is not a thing but living flow
Of soil to leaf, of root to branch’s glow;
A conversation ‘tween the earth and sky,
Where sunlight turns to shadow far below.

Your thoughts themselves are not fixed things that stay,
But rivers running through the mind’s display;
Each moment births the next in endless stream,
As consciousness flows on its changing way.

Even love itself’s no static state of heart,
But dynamic dance where souls take partner’s part;
A verb of joining, never fixed noun,
As two lives weave together, never part.

The universe entire’s a vast array
Of processes that merge and split each day;
No things exist save in our human speech—
Reality’s a dance that won’t stay.

So grasp not at the shadows of fixed forms,
Nor seek for substance in time’s changing storms;
The truth lies in relationships that flow
As systems meet and part in endless swarms.

In my Epicurean-Spinozist (i.e. p-naturalist) terms: "beings" sub specie durationis are atoms of "becoming" sub specie aeternitatis void, which is why "process" (re: non-classical scale systematicity) seems rationally counterintuitive to and is often perceptually misrecognized by human "beings" (re: classical scale measurement). Imho, study Laozi-Zhuangzi (dao, taiji), Heraclitus (panta rhei, eris, "fire"), Buddha (anicca, anatta, moksha), Democritus-Epicurus-Lucretius (ceaselessly swirling-swerving atoms in / of void (i.e. stasis is impossible, ergo illusory)), early Plato (Socratic method), and Spinoza (conatus (vs bondage-passions)) ... for some pre-Hegelian (non-idealist, non-telos woo woo) foundational insights from which "process philosophy" is derived.

Reply to Gnomon

I would agree with your disagreement with Newton and Aristotle in fsvor of Kant and Whitehead, although Descartes was right to say matter was extension. Matter is spirit; in fact, matter is Love. God is the mind of it all. Do you know Teilhard?

"Whenever we think of some entity, we are asking, What is it fit for here? In a sense, every entity pervades the whole world". (Process and Reality)

Notice he can still speak of entities. The entity is a process *because* every one of them is in everything. Kinda like Leibniz's monads?

Reply to Gnomon The basic problem of process philosophy is to explain why processes, activities, appear to us as substantial objects. This problem forces Whitehead to employ mysterious concepts like concrescence, and prehension, which generally imply a form of panpsychism.

Quoting 180 Proof

..."beings" sub specie durationis are atoms of "becoming" sub specie aeternitatis void...

This is the problem, right here, in a nutshell. It's easy for a philosopher to simply assert that what appears to us as a substantial "being", is actually a conglomeration of distinct yet somehow united, activities, processes. However, to explain how such a reality is logically possible requires consistent principles which can be taken as true premises.

The fundamental issue which makes process philosophy counterintuitive, is that we cannot properly conceptualize a process, or activity without something which is active. This is a feature of our mode of conception, it's an epistemological issue. The conception of an activity itself, is something general, but when we apply that conception to the physical world, we need something particular which it is applied to.

In application therefore, there are boundaries required, and this commonly results in the use of systems theory. Now the problem is twofold. The boundaries of the system are quite arbitrary, designed for the purpose of the the people employing the theory, so the entity represented as "the system", being the assumed particular, is not a real entity. It's simply boundaries imposed for the purpose of study, experimentation, or prediction. Secondly, the activity within the system is always represented as an activity of objects, particles or whatever, so we do not have a true process premise here. Even electromagnetic waves become photons. This leaves systems theory as substance based, and inadequate for understanding process philosophy.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

What we call things are but the meeting place
Where different systems cross in time and space;
The dance between them is what truly lasts,
While substance slips away without a trace.

This stanza reminds me of descriptions of Quantum Foam, where waves of energy meet and produce peaks that we interpret statistically as particles of matter (substance). But their existence is fleeting, as the local disturbances move-on and vanish without a trace. The only stability is in probability, that allows some particle partners to dance together for a period of time. :smile:

Quoting Gregory

I would agree with your disagreement with Newton and Aristotle in fsvor of Kant and Whitehead, although Descartes was right to say matter was extension. Matter is spirit; in fact, matter is Love. God is the mind of it all. Do you know Teilhard?

It's not a disagreement, but a distinction between worldviews. Newton and Aristotle have their place in philosophy and science, but Whitehead was trying to show a different way of looking at the world, that might resolve some of the apparent paradoxes of the New Physics.

Teilhard deChardin and A.N. Whitehead came from different religious backgrounds, but reached similar philosophical conclusions about how the world was teleologically evolving. Apparently, "both were influenced by Bergson's temporal metaphysics", where "time is a dynamic flow in which past, present, and future are intertwined". My understanding of such notions is superficial, but I can agree with them in general. :smile:

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

?Gnomon
The basic problem of process philosophy is to explain why processes, activities, appear to us as substantial objects. This problem forces Whitehead to employ mysterious concepts like concrescence, and prehension, which generally imply a form of panpsychism.

A scientific resolution of such "problems" is over my untrained head. But in my own amateur thesis, the commonality between Processes (energy ; causation) and Objects (matter ; substance) is generic Information (the power to enform). I won't go off-topic on that notion in this thread, but my thesis and blog go into some detail, if you're interested in such unorthodox speculations. Basically, the post-Shannon understanding of "Information" is both Noun (objects) and Verb (processes). It's both causal Energy and sensable Concrescence.

Panpsychism has become fairly popular among modern philosophers. But I tend to agree with Whitehead's associate, Charles Hartshorne, to view the world-mind in terms of PanEnDeism. From this perspective the world-creating mind-process is both transcendent and immanent, but not in the sense of Judeo-Christian theology. :smile:

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

This leaves systems theory as substance based, and inadequate for understanding process philosophy.

As systems theory is currently practiced, it is primarily substance-based. But on the fringes of systems science, Information-based*1 holistic theories are emerging. I happen to find them generally compatible with Process Philosophy. Again, that is off-topic, and would be a contentious concept for a thread of its own. :smile:


*1. What is complex systems science? :
It presents many foundational topics such as networks, scaling laws, evolution, and information theory, along with a complexity theory based on a universal statistical mechanism.
https://www.santafe.edu/what-is-complex-systems-science

Quoting Gnomon

Instead, we need to look ahead and ask : where does this process lead us? :smile:


*1. Us vs Them :

True, but we can also look backwards:

Nietzsche already warned us of this whole us vs them debacle-->that since the death of God has occurred, the new idol has become the state and the politicians the new priests for their Left/Right dogma and a feeling of political superiority is none other than the sensation of psychological superiority. By people who, deprived as they are of experienceing power, are forced to find their compensation in a vicarious winning, to not experience powerlessness.

More or less I think a lot of these issues predate Nietzsche, as we see Nietzsche advocates for much of these, in a manner, from his studies.

Even holism... the interconnected whole rather than an antithesis of values...

Biggest problem with Dogma is that it can't die in a democratic setting, it is required to reign in control of the masses.

Thinkers just debate logical arguments. Debating what we should call a thought process like 'process philosophy' is a waste of time. Either the argument a person presents is logically sound or it isn't. Most people aren't going to care what you label it, especially on these public forums. This is a debate for bored people who aren't working on solving real issues of philosophy.

Reply to Philosophim lol, Mr. IS-OUGHT himself...

:clap: :lol:

Quoting DifferentiatingEgg

?Philosophim lol, Mr. IS-OUGHT himself...

To help you do better on these forums, feel free to address my points here instead of a personal opinion you have about my character.

Reply to Philosophim sure, you entered the debate by claiming you're bored and not working on solving real issues of philosophy Quoting Philosophim

This is a debate for bored people who aren't working on solving real issues of philosophy.

Thus, your work on your bunkaf thankfully off the front page argument, which can be reduced to absurdity n ways till sunday, isn't a real issue of philosophy...

By your own projection...

Quoting DifferentiatingEgg

By your own projection...

If you haven't read this section, do so now. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/480/site-guidelines-note-use-of-ai-rules-have-tightened

You are off topic and attacking me personally. Last warning before I flag your post for a moderator.

Quoting Gnomon

"time is a dynamic flow in which past, present, and future are intertwined

Such idea does as well deserve a place in the thought process, but ultimately i think the concept of time itself must be abandoned. Too many paradoxes arise and it is not pointing to a particular entity anyway, contra Newton. A statue of Zeus would be called a process for the reason that change is constantly happening to it. It's never the same. To do away with change would be impossible, unless perhaps you are in a black hole.. But ye, time itself is superulous. What did we think it was in the first place? Change itself? A Plotanic Form of Change? Sounds like a contradiction

Reply to Philosophim

Should probably take your own advice...

Quoting Philosophim

Thinkers just debate logical arguments. Debating what we should call a thought process like 'process philosophy' is a waste of time. Either the argument a person presents is logically sound or it isn't. Most people aren't going to care what you label it, especially on these public forums. This is a debate for bored people who aren't working on solving real issues of philosophy.

Since you felt like personally attacking everyone here...

Quoting Gnomon

The only stability is in probability

Put words into expensive Invideo generative, hyper realistic; use Topaz to upgrade to 4K; use Final Cut Pro to slow down the speaking rate, applying optical flow…

Quoting Philosophim

Either the argument a person presents is logically sound or it isn't.

:up:

Quoting Gnomon

A scientific resolution of such "problems" is over my untrained head.

The problem is ontological, I really don't think there even could be a scientific solution to it.

Quoting Gnomon

But in my own amateur thesis, the commonality between Processes (energy ; causation) and Objects (matter ; substance) is generic Information (the power to enform). I won't go off-topic on that notion in this thread, but my thesis and blog go into some detail, if you're interested in such unorthodox speculations. Basically, the post-Shannon understanding of "Information" is both Noun (objects) and Verb (processes). It's both causal Energy and sensable Concrescence.

"Energy" is a property, it is not something independent. We can speak about energy as if it is causal but we still have to account for the thing which the energy is a property of. That's why the problem is ontological.

Quoting Gnomon

Basically, the post-Shannon understanding of "Information" is both Noun (objects) and Verb (processes). It's both causal Energy and sensable Concrescence.

ALL THAT LIES BETWEEN

Energy is a beauty and a brilliance,
Flashing up in its destructance,
For everything isn’t here to stay its “best”;
It’s merely here to die in its sublimeness.

Like slow fires making their brands, it breeds,
Yet ever consumes and moves on, as more it feeds,
Then spreads forth anew, this unpurposed dispersion,
An inexorable emergence with little reversion,

Ever becoming of its glorious excursions,
Bearing the change that patient time restrains,
While feasting upon the glorious decayed remains
In its progressive march through losses for gains.
[hide="Reveal"]We have oft described the causeless—
That which was always never the less,
As well as the beginnings of our quest,
And too have detailed in the rarest of glimpses
The slowing end of all of forever’s chances.

So now we must now turn our attention keen
To all of the action that exists in-between—
All that’s going on and has gone before,
Out to the furthest reaches, ever-more,

For everything that ever happens,
Including life and all our questions,
Meaning every single event ever gone on,
Of both the animate and the non,
Is but from a single theme played upon.

This then is of the simplest analysis of all,
For it heeds mainly just one call—
That of the second law’s dispersion,

The means for each and every occasion,
From the closest to the farthest range—
That which makes anything change.

These changes range from the simple,
Such as a bouncing ball resting still,
Or ice melting that gives up its chill,
To the more complex, such as digestion,
Growth, death, and even reproduction.

There is excessively subtle change as well,
Such as the formations of opinions tell
And the creation or rejections of the will,

And yet all these kinds of changes, of course,
Still become of one simple, common source,
Which is the underlying collapse into chaos—
The destiny of energy’s unmotivated non-purpose.

All that appears to us to be motive and purpose
Is in fact ultimately motiveless, without purpose.
Even aspirations and their achievement’s ways
Have fed on and come about through the decay.

The deepest structure of change is but decay,
Although it’s not the quantity of energy’s say
That causes decay, but the quality, for it strays.

Energy that is localized is potent to effect change,
And in the course of causing change it ranges,
Spreading and becoming chaotically distributed,
Losing its quality but never of its quantity rid.

The key to all this, as we will see,
Is that it goes though stages wee,
And so it doesn’t disperse all at once,
As might one’s paycheck inside of a month.

This harnessed decay results not only for
Civilizations but for all the events going fore
In the world and the universe beyond,

It accounting for all discernible change
Of all that ever gets so rearranged,
For the quality of all this energy kinged
Declines, the universe unwinding, as a spring.

Chaos may temporarily recede,
Quality building up for a need,
As when cathedrals are built and formed,
And when symphonies are performed,

But these are but local deceits
Born of our own conceits,
For deeper in the world of kinds
The spring inescapably unwinds,
Driving its energy away—
As All is being driven by decay.

The quality of energy meant
Is of its dispersal’s extent.
When it is totally precipitate,
It destroys, but when it’s gait
Is geared through chains of events
It can produce civilization’s tenants.

Ultimately, energy naturally,
Spontaneously, and chaotically
Disperses, causing change, irreversibly.

Think of a group of atoms jostling,
At first as a vigorous motion happening
In some corner of the atomic crowd;

They hand on their energy, loud,
Inducing close neighbors to jostle too,
And soon the jostling disperses too—
The irreversible change but the potion
Of the ‘random’, motiveless motion.

And such does hot metal cool, as atoms swirl,
There being so many atoms in the world
Outside it than in the block metal itself
That entropy’s statistics average themselves.

The illusions of purpose lead us to think
That there are reasons, of some motive link,
Why one change occurs and not another,

And even that there are reasons that cover
Specific changes in locations of energy,
The energy choosing to go there, intentionally,

Such as a purpose for a change in structure,
This being as such as the opening of a flower,
Yet this should not be confused with energy
Achieving to be there in that specific bower,

Since at root, of all the power,
Even that of the root of the flower,
That there is the degradation by dispersal,
This being mostly non reversible and universal.

The energy is always still spreading thencely,
Even as some temporarily located density—
An illusion of specific change
In some region rearranged,

But actually it’s just lingering there, discovering,
Until new opportunities arise for exploring,
The consequences but of ‘random’ opportunity,
Beneath which, purpose still vanishes entirely.

Events are the manifestations
Of overriding probability’s instantiations—
Of all of the events of nature, of every sod,
From the bouncing ball to conceptions of gods,
Of even free will, evolution, and all ambition,

For they’re of our simple idea’s elaborations,
Although for the latter stated there
And such for that as warfare
Their intrinsic simplicity
Is buried more deeply.

And yet though sometimes concealed away,
The spring of all creation is just decay,
The consequence and instruction
Of the natural tendency to corruption.

Love or war become as factions
Through the agency of chemical reactions,
The actions being the chains of reactions,
Whether thinking, doing, or rapt in attention,
For all that happens is of chemical reaction.

At its most rudimentary bottom,
Chemical reactions are rearrangements of atoms,
These being species of molecules
That with perhaps additions and deletions
Then go on to constitute another one, by fate,
Although they sometimes only change shape,

But too can be consumed and torn apart,
Either as a whole or in part, so cruel,
As a source of atoms for another molecule.

Molecules have neither motive nor purpose to act,
Neither an inclination to go on to react
Nor any urge to remain unreacted;
So then why do reactions occur if unacted?

Molecules are but loosely structured
And so they can be easily ruptured,
For reactions may occur if the process energy norm
Is degraded into a more dispersed and chaotic form,

And so as they usually are constantly subject
To the tendency to lose energy, as the abject
Jostling carries it away to the surroundations,
Reactions being misadventure’s transformations,
It then being that some transient arrangements
May suddenly be frozen into permanences
As the energy leaps away to other experiences.

So, molecules are a stage in which the play goes on,
But not so fast that the forms cannot seize upon;

But really, why do molecules have such fragility,
For if their atoms were as tightly bound as nuclei,
Then the universe would have died, being frozen,
Long before the awakening of the forms chosen,

Or if molecules were as totally free to react
Every single time they touched a neighbor’s pact
Then all events would have taken place so rapidly
And so very crazily and haphazardly

That the rich attributes of the world we know
Would not have had the needed time to grow.

Ah, but it is all of the necessitated restraint,
For it ever takes time a scene to paint,
As such as in the unfolding of a leaf,
The endurations for any stepping feat,

As of the emergence of consciousness
And the paused ends of energy’s restlessness:
It’s of the controlled consequence of collapse
Rather than one that’s wholly precipitous.

So now all is known of our heres and nows
Within this parentheses of the eternal boughs,
As well as the why and how of it all has come,
And of our universe’s end, but that others become.

Out of energy’s dispersion and decay of quality
Comes the emergence of growth and complexity.

(The verse lines, being like molecules warmed,
Continually broke apart and reformed
About the rhymes which tried to be non intrusions,
Eventually all flexibly stabilizing to conclusions.)[/hide]

Quoting DifferentiatingEgg

Biggest problem with Dogma is that it can't die in a democratic setting, it is required to reign in control of the masses.

That phrase caught my eye, so I Googled "democratic dogma". It seems to be true that a democratic society cannot function without Truths-Facts-Principles handed-down from above. That's because the masses, as noted by Plato, are not philosophers, hence incapable of deriving Universals from Particulars. So, the flocks are motivated and influenced by the Leading Lights of their society. When those influencers go off the doctrinal deep end (MAGA), the sheep are bound to follow. :smile:

The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma :
Adams argues that democracy has been corrupted by the rise of capitalism and the concentration of power in the hands of a few wealthy individuals and corporations.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/745920.The_Degradation_of_the_Democratic_Dogma

Reply to Gnomon Gustave Le Bon, and Edward Bernays shed a ton of light on this too. Which is even more evolved to this day with the internet. And other world wide communication abilities to disseminate information at a blink of an eye.

And it's not always a malicious thing, it's a neutral tool really... but when you get people who utilize ressentiment to gain power, we basically end up with politicians advocating for life denying sentiments and injecting that into the masses... or perhaps it was already there, just enabled.

Also, I wanted to point out, although metaphysics gets discredited a lot, one can use it strictly as a discipline to help sharpen their mental ability, like a workout routine. It's when someone makes metaphysics the womb of being that it really gets pushed towards being discredited.

And also, of note, many people use Science in the Us vs Them approach... as a means of life denying dogma... to reject supernatural claims...hell to even make unsavory claims about the natural too.

Quoting Gnomon

opponents are often politically divided into either/or categories : e.g. Good vs Evil ; Realistic vs Fanciful ; Smart vs Stupid ; Knowledgeable vs Ignorant. Such a simplistic analysis is convenient because it eliminates philosophical subtleties, and allows the politically dominant group to haughtily look down their noses upon the others, as know-nothing losers.

That sums up where many posts on this forum end up. Shame on all of us who claim to seek clarity about our thinking, about being human.

Quoting Gnomon

systems should be understood as interconnected wholes rather than isolated parts, meaning the behavior of a system cannot be fully explained by examining its individual components alone; this contrasts with the traditional reductionist approach in classical physics where parts are considered separately.

Interconnected wholes has as much to do with parts (substance, identity, essence) as it does with wholes, for what is a part without its being a whole part - always we are making distinctions, building the lines that look inward at the thing-in-itself towards "essence" or "Identity", or outward, towards context and the dialectical process of unifying what was previously thought to be merely a separate "part."

Quoting Gnomon

pre-Kantian thought often assumed a more direct access to the world "as it is" without considering the limitations imposed by our cognitive faculties.

Kant made the point most precisely and most clearly. But the chains on the man in Plato's cave presenting only shadows can be understood as the structure of the mind constructing of all experience the "appearance" that is not "reality" recognizes the same disconnected nature of human experience. When Thales said "see that tree over there? Well it's not a tree. It's water." He was aware of the disconnect between what there is and what we know about it.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

The dance between them is what truly lasts,
While substance slips away without a trace.

Again, here is my issue with rejecting substance, rejecting essence. "The dance" although a living, moving, becoming process, has an essence, an identity, distinct from "the sleep" for instance. We cannot speak without objectifying, and no one will ever understand a word we say if those objects we speak of never appear similar to the listener (actual mind-independence).

We may not know much of things-in-themselves, but saying we should abandon any references to a distinct multiplicity of many things that distinguish themselves from each other, independent of minds, for the sake of acknowledging the fluctuations and motions that truly exist, puts us in a position where we can say nothing about any "thing".

Once we realize that motion alone is the only lasting moment (which is ironic if not paradoxical), and that may be the case, it is the end of all speaking, the end of all science, as there is one answer for every question: "becoming consumes it." For speaking is to speak about, and if we can only say "the dance between them is what truly lasts" then we are without "them" lasting long enough to say anything more about "them" than the dance will go on and they never really came to be.

It isn't wrong to focus on process. Process is truth. But you can't recognize process, nor can there be a process, without a thing that undergoes this process, this change. So it isn't wrong to focus on things, essences, substances just as well. This is a metaphysical claim, as well as a physical claim, as well as an ontological claim. And has ramifications in epistemology.

I submit that we are not just full of shit all the time. We are mostly full of shit, because process is relentless, and we are over-confident in our ability to find food and shelter so easily (so we might as well point out the eternal truth just as skillfully). But sometimes, we actually say something that can only be said and that can truthfully be said about some thing, some process, some part, some whole, some change measured, observable on changing occasions.

"It rests from change." - Heraclitus, the OG of process)

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

"Energy" is a property, it is not something independent. We can speak about energy as if it is causal but we still have to account for the thing which the energy is a property of. That's why the problem is ontological.

Yes. But, in my personal philosophical thesis, Enformationism, Energy is a property/qualia of generic Information (the power to transform, or to cause change). Again, Information (or EnFormAction as I call it) is not a material Thing, but a Process and a relationship : cause/effect. The primary property of Whitehead's Process is Causation*1.

In my thesis, a more general term for evolutionary causation is Enformy*2 (negentropy). Which again is not a thing, but a quality of the process labeled by scientists as "Thermodynamics". We humans observe the effects of the metaphorical flow of Energy, and infer an unobserved ultimate source or spring. Which philosophers may label as the Ontological Cause. Some call it "God", but Plato referred to the Source as "Logos" (reason), and Aristotle described it (a non-thing) as "The Unmoved Mover".

Yet Plato's ontological origin of Being was the mysterious potential state of "Forms"*3. Which is also the root of "Information" and "EnFormAction". Form is the logical structure of an object of scrutiny, as distinguished from its material substance. :smile:


*1. Causality :
Alfred North Whitehead, a mathematician and philosopher, believed that causality is a fundamental aspect of experience.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=a.+n.+whitehead+causation

*2. Entropy vs Enformy :
[i]A quality of the universe modeled as a thermodynamic system. Energy always flows from Hot (high energy density) to Cold (low density) -- except when it doesn't. On rare occasions, energy lingers in a moderate state that we know as Matter, and sometimes even reveals new qualities and states of material stuff, such as Life .
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that, in a closed system, Entropy always increases until it reaches equilibrium at a temperature of absolute zero. But some glitch in that system allows stable forms to emerge that can recycle energy in the form of qualities we call Life & Mind. That glitch is what I call Enformy.[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

*3. Plato's theory of forms is an ontology, or theory of being, that posits the existence of a Realm of Forms that is independent of human experience. Plato believed that the physical world is a shadow of the Realm of Forms, and that knowledge of the Forms is the only true knowledge.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=plato+forms+ontology

It's good to see process being talked about. When I read P&R I reached out here for some thoughts/discussion and nothing came of it. Appreciate these threads.

Quoting Gnomon

Form is the logical structure of an object of scrutiny, as distinguished from its material substance.

Good one; so, form precedes the substance of it?

Quoting Gnomon

Yes. But, in my personal philosophical thesis, Enformationism, Energy is a property/qualia of generic Information (the power to transform, or to cause change). Again, Information (or EnFormAction as I call it) is not a material Thing, but a Process and a relationship : cause/effect. The primary property of Whitehead's Process is Causation*1.

I don't see how this could solve the problem. Isn't it the case that information, or "EnFormAction", is itself a property of something, a system or something like that. So it doesn't really solve the problem, it defers it. You simply replace one property (energy) with another (information). This is similar to replacing the property of motion with the property of energy. In one context we would say that the thing has motion, but in another context we'd replace "motion" with "energy", and say that the thing has energy. Likewise, you now replace "the thing has energy" with "the thing has information". But you do not solve the problem of there needing to be a thing which has the said property.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I don't see how this could solve the problem*1. Isn't it the case that information, or "EnFormAction", is itself a property of something, a system or something like that. So it doesn't really solve the problem, it defers it. You simply replace one property (energy) with another (information). This is similar to replacing the property of motion with the property of energy. In one context we would say that the thing has motion, but in another context we'd replace "motion" with "energy", and say that the thing has energy. Likewise, you now replace "the thing has energy" with "the thing has information". But you do not solve the problem of there needing to be a thing which has the said property.

The Ontological problem may be insoluble, but that doesn't stop us "silly phillies" (amateur philosophers) from trying to solve the problem of existence. For most people, for most of the time, the ultimate answer to "God, the Universe, and Everything" is elliptical . . . . Brahman . . . . God . . . . Multiverse . . . . 42. So they just presumed that some unknowable physical thing or metaphysical force is out there in the dark creating worlds.

In the early 20th century, Astronomers attempted to trace causation back to its source, and their physical First Cause was a mathematically-infinite Singularity, which some wag dubbed the "Big Bang". Which again was elliptical : where did the Energy & Laws manifested in the explosive emergence of the observable elements of the universe come from? . . . . eternal God or infinite Multiverse . . . . ?

I suppose that most philosophical "problems" can be resolved by further analysis (what are its elements?) or by rational generalization (who or what caused it?). Both approaches eventually reach a point of diminishing returns. In which case we make a leap of inference across the chasm of ignorance. So, Whitehead assumed that some ultimate source of order, structure, and novelty in the world was a God of some kind, which he defined as the "actual entity". In my own little thesis, I also punt and say "G*D did it"*2. :grin:

PS___ I won't go into detail here on the Information is Energy concept that is currently being processed by cutting edge science. Here's a link to a book on that topic :
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-40862-6


*1. Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The basic problem of process philosophy is to explain why processes, activities, appear to us as substantial objects. This problem forces Whitehead to employ mysterious concepts like concrescence, and prehension, which generally imply a form of panpsychism.

Note A --- Kant defined (but did not explain) the appearance/substance problem in terms of Noumena and Phenomena. Do you have a better explanation?
Note B --- My version of Panpsychism (all mind) is it's all Information/Causation (Mind/Energy) . . . everywhere all the time. Energy is not a thing, but a process. Can you wrap your mind around that?

*2. G*D :
[i]An ambiguous spelling of the common name for a supernatural deity. The Enformationism thesis is based upon an unprovable axiom that our world is an idea in the mind of G*D. 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, of which all temporal things are a part, is not to be feared or worshiped, 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 Intention is what I mean by G*D.[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html

Reply to Gnomon
Thought experiment:
Imagine we have two boxes and a particle, say an electron. What would happen if we were to separate the electron from its rest energy? Would we be able to place an energyless particle in one box and the rest energy in the other box?

Quoting punos

Thought experiment:
Imagine we have two boxes and a particle, say an electron. What would happen if we were to separate the electron from its rest energy? Would we be able to place an energyless particle in one box and the rest energy in the other box?

Since an electron is essentially a blob of insubstantial energy (statistical potential) you can't separate its electrical properties from its energetic state --- which is a function of its relative position in a system such as an atom of iron. But, if you are a Maxwell's demon, I suppose anything is possible. What would you expect to happen if you could exorcise a particle of its soul? :wink:


Electron is Energy :
While an electron is not "pure energy" itself, it does represent a form of energy due to its position within an atom and its ability to move between different energy levels, meaning that the energy of an electron refers to its specific energy state within an atom, which can change depending on its location relative to the nucleus; essentially, electrons carry potential energy within an atom that can be released when they move between energy levels.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=electron+is+energy

Quoting PoeticUniverse

Form is the logical structure of an object of scrutiny, as distinguished from its material substance. — Gnomon
Good one; so, form precedes the substance of it?

Yes. If you imagine Platonic Form as an infinite pool of potential, our substantial scrutinized reality is a definite drop dredged-up from the boundless abyss of untapped possibility. I'm sure you could write a poem riffing on that theme. :smile:

Quoting Gnomon

What would you expect to happen if you could exorcise a particle of its soul? :wink:

I do not believe it can be done. If I had an electron in my right hand and were to extract the rest energy of that electron with my left hand, the electron would disappear from my right hand, and then when i look in my left hand, i would find an identical electron. You see, it appears to me that energy can exist without taking the form of a particle, but a particle cannot exist without the energy that forms it. This leads me to conclude that whatever energy is, it is a more fundamental entity than the form of the particle. It appears to be some kind of disembodied quality that is not a property of particles, but a property of space from which particles emerge. :sparkle:

Does that make any sense?

Reply to punos So "space" is "disembodied" (i.e. non-physical)? What about gravity (re: GR)? :chin:

[energy is] a property of space from which particles emerge

Yes, afaik, makes sense.

Quoting 180 Proof

So "space" is "disembodied" (i.e. non-physical)? What about gravity (re: GR)? :chin:

[energy is] a property of space from which particles emerge

Yes, afaik, makes sense.

You could say that "space" is the quality of "disembodiment", and particles have the quality or property of "embodiment".

This is just a conceptual model, but i conceptualize time and space as a circle with a point at its center. The center point represents time, while the circumference represents space. We exist on the circumference. The body of space is the circumference itself, and particles are disturbances at points along this circumference. Time is directly connected to every point on the circumference by the radius. I find this to be a useful construction for thinking about this subject. There are other models too that can work just as well.

Quoting 180 Proof

What about gravity (re: GR)?

I have an idea about how gravity might work, but i'm not ready to share it yet. One thing i can say is that i believe gravity emerges from dark energy. I also have an idea about what dark energy is and how it works, but it's still an incomplete concept. I'm sure i'll share it someday.

Quoting Gnomon

I'm sure you could write a poem riffing on that theme.

For life, DNA is the form;
For particles, quantum fields are the form.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The basic problem of process philosophy is to explain why processes, activities, appear to us as substantial objects.

A solution has already been proposed. Is relativity a substantial object or a relation? Is relativity real? Does it exist? If so, how?

Your brain processes information about the world at a particular rate, or frequency, RELATIVE to the rate/frequency of the other processes you perceive. This will have an effect on how you perceive the other processes with the relatively slower processes appearing as substantial, solid, static objects. Procedural feedback loops will also appear as substantial, solid, static objects. Relatively faster change will appear as blurs, or actual processes, like an explosion.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The basic problem of process philosophy is to explain why processes, activities, appear to us as substantial objects. This problem forces Whitehead to employ mysterious concepts like concrescence, and prehension, which generally imply a form of panpsychism.

For philosophers, it's not a problem, because they don't deal with physical "how?" questions. It is a problem for materialists, because there is a matterless gap between substantial brain and functional Mind. Mind is a process, not a thing --- unless like Descartes you point to the pineal gland as the mind generator. The "why" question is for Psychology to explain, in terms of Representation (ideas).

For most modern philosophers, the Mind/Process does not appear to be a substantial object. For example, the function of the Liver is to process blood into nutrients, and to filter-out toxins. The filtering process can be tracked down to subatomic particles, at which point the process becomes "mysterious". Yet no ghostly pan-filtering is postulated. Ironically, the verb process has a noun name : detoxification.

Whitehead was "forced" to adopt the physical notion of Concrescence (growing together) to metaphorically explain how sub-atomic wave-particles can be perceived as "substantial objects". As a philosopher, it's not his job to map the mechanical steps between probabilistic particles (lacking surfaces and substance) and macro-scale tangible objects. Even quantum scientists are forced to punt on such questions, or resort to metaphors. :smile:


This focus on concrete modes of relatedness is essential because an actual occasion is itself a coming into being of the concrete. The nature of this “concrescence,” using Whitehead’s term, is a matter of the occasion’s creatively internalizing its relatedness to the rest of the world by feeling that world, and in turn uniquely expressing its concreteness through its extensive connectedness with that world. Thus an electron in a field of forces “feels” the electrical charges acting upon it, and translates this “experience” into its own electronic modes of concreteness. Only later do we schematize these relations with the abstract algebraic and geometrical forms of physical science. For the electron, the interaction is irreducibly concrete.
https://iep.utm.edu/whitehead/
Note --- Sounds like it might make sense to someone. But for me, I'll just call it a metaphor.

Quoting punos

I do not believe it can be done. . . . . You see, it appears to me that energy can exist without taking the form of a particle, but a particle cannot exist without the energy that forms it. This leads me to conclude that whatever energy is, it is a more fundamental entity than the form of the particle. It appears to be some kind of disembodied quality that is not a property of particles, but a property of space from which particles emerge. :sparkle:
Does that make any sense?

Maybe. The Energy of an electron is described as "charge". Which is a metaphor for filling a wagon with a load of wood, produce, etc. That "disembodied quality", its causal value or voltage, is imagined as an inherent property of the particle, but where does the causal charge come from? One notion is that the energy "load" is extracted (particleized) from the potential of empty space (quantum field). But the response below says otherwise. Ironically, fundamental physics, dealing with invisible stuff, is mostly described in mathematical symbols or philosophical metaphors. It's all over my head, literally and figuratively. :smile:


An electron does not gain its charge from "empty space"; it inherently carries a negative charge as a fundamental property of its existence, regardless of the surrounding environment, including empty space.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=electron+charge+from+empty+space

Quoting Gnomon

If you imagine Platonic Form as an infinite pool of potential, our substantial scrutinized reality is a definite drop dredged-up from the boundless abyss of untapped possibility.

[b]Since the Eternal has no input point,
It’s Everything, linear or all-at-once.[/b]

The Eternal knows no point where it begins,
No gateway through which any design slips in;
Thus must it be the All-in-All that flows
As line by line or where all lines are twins.

What has no start must stretch through every way,
Through linear paths where moments mark their sway,
Or simultaneous in timeless dance—
For how else could the Boundless choose to play?

When entry points are nowhere to be found,
All possibilities must there abound:
As flowing stream, the instant's flash of light,
The sequence, or the circle's endless round.

Without a threshold where its being starts,
The Eternal must embrace all cosmic parts—
As time's long river flowing ever on,
Or instant's unity where difference parts.

Imagine Form as boundless ocean deep,
Where all potential does its secrets keep;
Our measured world, a single droplet drawn
From depths where countless possibilities sleep.

This scrutinized reality we know
Is but one pattern that the Forms bestow—
A crystal lifted from infinite seas
Of what could be, what might yet come to flow.

The abyss of Forms holds every dream untold,
Each possible shape that matter might unfold;
While we perceive one manifestation clear,
The endless pool holds mysteries yet to mold.

From vastness of the possible sublime,
We dredge one moment's substance out of time;
Yet still beneath our certainties there swirls
The infinite from which all forms may climb.

Quoting Gnomon

That "disembodied quality", its causal value or voltage, is imagined as an inherent property of the particle, but where does the causal charge come from?

Well, the way i currently see it, charge can be understood as a manifestation of broken symmetry in space. This perspective is based on the idea that particles like electrons and positrons are not isolated entities but rather parts of a symmetric whole that has been separated by some measure.

When an electron is created, it is always accompanied by the creation of a positron. Similarly, an electron can only be "destroyed" through interaction with a positron, and vice versa. This suggests to me that an underlying symmetry, when broken by temporal decay, produces two particles that represent the energetic difference between the asymmetric state of the particle and its original symmetric state. Each particle thus carries the complementary charge energy that completes its antipair.

Charge can thus be seen as an accounting mechanism by which the universe keeps track of local symmetry breaks, enabling particles to "know" where to go and which particles to fuse with to restore symmetry. The difference between the symmetric and asymmetric states forms the basis of electromagnetic energy. Electromagnetism appears to serve the goal of bringing opposite charges together to restore symmetry, though perfect restoration is never fully achieved throughout.

About symmetry:
From our human perspective, this symmetry appears as nothing until it is broken. Perceiving this symmetry, at least from a physical standpoint, is impossible. No empirical method whatsoever can ever ascertain it.

A simple way to conceptualize this is by imagining a perfectly black piece of paper against a perfectly black background: the paper is present but imperceptible, appearing as though it doesn’t exist at all. Coloring the paper a different color, such as white (an inversion), immediately makes it noticeable, as if it suddenly came into existence (an illusion). The difference in color can be thought of as representing the energy of the paper in relation to the background. This is not a perfect analogy, but it serves to illustrate the nature of what appears to exist as opposed to what appears to not exist.

Reply to Gnomon
I forgot to mention that this underlying symmetry seems to philosophically resemble the neutral substance proposed in neutral monism. I propose that this is one of the resonant connection points between physics and metaphysics, particularly with some version of neutral monism.

Perhaps a suitable name for this kind of monism could be "Neutral Quantum Process Monism" (NQPM). :smile:

Quoting PoeticUniverse

Since the Eternal has no input point,
It’s Everything, linear or all-at-once.

Yes. Infinite, unbounded, undefined Potential is Everything, Everywhere, All-at-once. Simply BEING. But our matter-bound minds can only imagine All-Possibilities as things : static or linear or flowing.
BEING (G*D) is necessary, since we are here to think about it. Non-being is self-negating. :grin:

Quoting punos

This perspective is based on the idea that particles like electrons and positrons are not isolated entities but rather parts of a symmetric whole that has been separated by some measure.

So, when the neutral potential electron is unplugged from the whole universal system it splits into a positive & negative charge ; pro & anti-matter??? Who or what does the separating? Is the separation physical or conceptual??? How does this plugging & unplugging fit into Whitehead's Process Philosophy?

I tend to take the imaginary cosmic Whole for granted. like G*D, because my personal experience is limited to parts --- stars, planets, particles --- that I can envision plugging-together to form a Whole Cosmos. Symmetry means "to measure together". And a measurement is a mental operation. So, it's all an idea in a mind, hence Idealism? :smile:

PS___Please pardon the philosophical rambling. Maybe that's what happens when you un-plug from the system : you become an isolated part that is attracted to your counter-part, and ultimately to the super-symmetric Whole. But the journey back to the whole is what we call Life? :joke:

Quoting punos

I forgot to mention that this underlying symmetry seems to philosophically resemble the neutral substance proposed in neutral monism. I propose that this is one of the resonant connection points between physics and metaphysics, particularly with some version of neutral monism.
Perhaps a suitable name for this kind of monism could be "Neutral Quantum Process Monism" (NQPM).

I had never heard of "Neutral Monism", so I Googled it. If the Monistic Entity (Singularity?) is "neither physical nor mental", what is it? Spiritual ; Essence ; Substance? Is the "Neutral Entity" G*D?

Is "Neutral Quantum Process Monism" an extant philosophical concept, or did you just make it up for this thread? Sometimes it's hard to tell if Google AI is just riffing on a theme, or finds information that is out there in the Net. The overview just refers back to "Neutral Monism". But the AI definition sounds like a Whiteheadian notion.

Again, how would you plug this neutral notion back into Process Philosophy or Process Theology?

Note : a Monistic Materialism adherent would say "you lost me at Metaphysics". But I'm philosophically-open to meta-speculation, as long as it has some grounding in empirical reality. :joke:


Neutral monism is a philosophical theory that posits that reality is made up of a neutral entity that is neither physical nor mental. It's a type of monism, which is the idea that all of existence is unified
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=neutral+monism

"Neutral Quantum Process Monism" refers to a philosophical concept that suggests the fundamental reality of the universe is a single, neutral underlying process that is best understood through the principles of quantum mechanics, where both mental and physical phenomena emerge as different aspects of this single process, rather than being separate entities
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Neutral+Quantum+Process+Monism

Quoting Gnomon

"Who or what does the separating? Is the separation physical or conceptual??? How does this plugging & unplugging fit into Whitehead's Process Philosophy?"

From the perspective of the model i'm currently working with, i believe the answer is primordial time (also known as timeless time). Primordial time is a non-physical process/substance that yields physicality. I explain this temporal logic in a little more detail below:

Quoting punos

Primordial time is active logic. The logical operation of negation, or more precisely inversion, is its main function. The temporal operation of inversion contains within it the operations of disjunction and conjunction. It's a bit tricky to explain correctly, but inversion implies two opposite states. If NOT 0, then 1; if NOT 1, then 0. This means that NOT includes within it 0 AND 1, but only 0 OR 1 at a time. This logic in time resembles a kind of trinity of NOT, AND, OR, and neither one can exist without the others thus they are one. These three operators can not be broken down any further without destroying logic itself, it is indivisible. It is the maximum simplicity, and minimal complexity needed for the universe to exist as it is.

The trinity of logic:

NOT = (AND, OR)
OR = (NOT AND)
AND = (NOT OR)

To gain some context for what i'm saying, you might find it useful to read my posts at "The logic of a universal origin and meaning"

The distinction between physical and conceptual, as you put it, is a matter of relativity. From the perspective of the universe, it is conceptual, and from the perspective of things within the universe, it is physical. However, if we adopt the perspective of the universe itself, everything should appear as conceptual. So idealism in general terms, is probably correct.

This temporal logic can, if one wishes, be called God, or not. It makes no difference what word you use because things are not words. Things are what they do. In another thread i posted in, i compared the universe to a computer, saying that if the universe were a computer, then time would be its CPU processor, and space would be its RAM memory. Active logic (time/CPU) coupled with memory (space/RAM) are the minimal requirements for a mind of any kind.

Quoting Gnomon

I had never heard of "Neutral Monism", so I Googled it. If the Monistic Entity (Singularity?) is "neither physical nor mental", what is it? Spiritual ; Essence ; Substance? Is the "Neutral Entity" G*D?

I don't know if you can or should call it anything. All of those words are simultaneously right and wrong. We can call it "nothing" or we can have different words to address different aspects of it at different times.

Quoting Gnomon

"Is "Neutral Quantum Process Monism" an extant philosophical concept, or did you just make it up for this thread?"

I made it up for this thread as a suggestion for a possible name to give this framework.

I'm suddenly reminded of The Never Ending Story.

The "Nothing":

Quoting punos

Well, the way i currently see it, charge can be understood as a manifestation of broken symmetry in space. This perspective is based on the idea that particles like electrons and positrons are not isolated entities but rather parts of a symmetric whole that has been separated by some measure.

When an electron is created, it is always accompanied by the creation of a positron. Similarly, an electron can only be "destroyed" through interaction with a positron, and vice versa. This suggests to me that an underlying symmetry, when broken by temporal decay, produces two particles that represent the energetic difference between the asymmetric state of the particle and its original symmetric state. Each particle thus carries the complementary charge energy that completes its antipair.

I'm going to look for more of my notes from Gavin Giorbran, who noted the grouping order of the Start as matter and anti-matter going on the symmetry order of the End.

Here's some of it:

Why did the universe have such low entropy in the past, if it did, that is, very high order, especially as seen as a grouping order, with but one general arrangement of matter versus antimatter, which beginning we will call ‘Alpha’, instead of the high disorder of many mixed-up arrangements, this high order resulting in the distinction between past and future and the second law of thermodynamics?

Assuming this low entropy beginning is true, although it’s often thought that this would be a seemingly rare, unlikely state, as just one out of so many others possible as disorder, must rather be very likely, even as to be the only way a universe can begin, since the universe indeed began as such.

Why, though, does whatever brought on this universe, end up with this initial state for the universe to be of the highest possible grouping order? And is it in any way related to the proposed end of the universe being of a featureless blend of dispersal that is a symmetry order (which end we will call ‘Omega’)?
[hide="Reveal"]Is our universe’s Alpha start so improbable as it seems, what with its severe grouping order of separated matter and antimatter, such as that of the separated white and black pieces at the beginning of a chess game, as with all these ideas from Gavin Giorbran.

Such an arrangement seems a rarity, but it may rather be that time cannot go forward that well if there is no progression from this very distinct grouping order of the Alpha Start toward the proposed Omega End of a totally blended symmetry order, this idea similar to the end as disorder of high entropy from any start of low entropy.

The universe is now in its its diversity stage, both at large and in our own Earthly aisle, yet its future of a blended symmetry order perhaps ever pulls/guides the present along, such as in the “time is like a river” analogy, this ‘flow’ proceeding inexorably from Lake Alpha to Lake Omega.
How and why was the seemingly rare state of the high ordered Alpha beginning of our universe accomplished?

The ‘IS’, as great as it is, is still subject to two boundaries, as the start and end described above.
All the probabilities of all the ending balance must trace back to the one and only state of the most probable beginning of all, the greatest imbalance of all, matter and anti-matter, with Totality in a quantum superposition, all at once—the quantum probability patterns really being so, not just a math tool.

The separation of matter and anti-matter is the greatest possible imbalance, but all the probability balances must trace forward to the greatest and most probable balance at the end of all.

The ultimate, flat, symmetry order of the Omega—the end of all, draws the river of time along, guiding it, through the probability patterns, as well as the Alpha pushing it.

The Time River of Probabilities flows smoother and further near its center, while near the shores there are eddies and swirls, contrasts, lumpiness, ebbs—even back flow.

The nows proceed and the moments play, motion but apparent, as successive frames of an all-at-once Block Universe—all the alternate plot’s scenarios being, which will blend at the Omega.

Our two brain hemispheres, too, must reflect the nature of the universe itself, as the left-side grouping order versus and with the whole of the right-side symmetry order.

Top-down drives the bottom-up ‘events’, the future ever affecting the present; The flat whiteness of the Omega End brings forth the diversified prismatic colors from the Alpha Start.

Electrons, protons, seem ‘bottom-up’, but are ‘enfolded’ in the top-down whole, as with Bohm’s implicit order guiding the blooming, unfolding, explicit order.

There are still many more ways for the universe to be lumpy, in degrees, than for it to be perfectly smooth, and that’s why there’s still some grouping order, as with galaxies and solar systems.

The no longer ‘improbable’ symmetry of uniformity comes at future’s end; This Omega symmetry order is the opposite of Alpha’s grouping order.

The fundamental reality then is en-un-foldment; particles are abstractions from that. Electrons don’t exist continuously but are coming, going, then coming again.

Probabilities are actualities, so probabilities exist, so then we have a simple solution to why our universe came from a dense state.

All the possible patterns of the past and future exist simultaneously, independent of the passage of time frames, so, the history of a temporal universe moving through those possible patterns will inevitably trace backward to the extreme, greatest imbalance, and hence to the severe order of the Alpha start.

It seems strange that time began from Alpha, unless patterns are physically real, so then time invariably originates from the greatest imbalance of them all.

Time’s forward direction is ever toward balance. and so when it’s traced backward, that same path invariably originates from imbalance; the temporal universe is as it must be.

Since pattern space is existing there then the flow of time is built into reality, causing probable time-worlds to exist, while extremely improbable time-worlds will not.

The must-existence of patterns is great, for the hierarchy of atomic elements, star systems, bio-life, consciousness, and, finally, intelligence and wisdom.

If time and change were not restricted to probability’s arrow of time built into pattern space then anything could happen and would happen, as chaos.

The end promotes the means in that time’s river, having a specific ending, explains why the universe’s wave function is specific. If what’s possible was just coming from the past, there’s no reasonable explanation for the control of all the probabilities, such as the wave density of atomic particles, A river only from the past would be flowing outward into chaos, but it can’t.

Take the above with a grain of salt.[/hide]

Quoting Gnomon

Yes. Infinite, unbounded, undefined Potential is Everything, Everywhere, All-at-once. Simply BEING.

Is this as the eternalism of a Block-Universe?

Quoting PoeticUniverse

Gavin Giorbran

more, a digest, some repetition, then new information on his theory:

Time Forward
The Alpha of the Beginning can’t be
From the impossible nonexistence;
Only time begins, and so the universe
Must be such that time moves frames forward.

Grouping Order to Symmetry Order
Wherefore why the ‘improbable’ Alpha,
It being the most complete grouping order
Of separated and inverse matter?
Only then is the pull toward symmetry.

To the ‘Improbable’
All the possibilities of the imbalances
Must trace back to the one and only state
Of the most probable beginning of all,
The separation of matter and anti-matter.

Between River Shores and Lakes Alpha/Omega
The ultimate, flat, symmetry order
Of the Omega—the end of all, draws
The river of time along, guiding it,
Through the probability patterns.
[hide="Reveal"]The Wave Function of the Universe
Totality is in a superposition,
All at once—of no time and of no space,
The quantum probability patterns
Really being so, not just a math tool.

From Grouping Order to Blended Symmetry Order
The Time River of Probabilities
Flows smoother and further near its center,
While near the shores there are eddies and swirls,
Contrasts, lumpiness, ebbs—even back flow.

Timeless ‘Time’
The pages turn and the living film plays,
Motion but apparent, as successive frames—
All the alternate plot’s scenarios being,
Which will blend into ‘everything forever’.

We Reflecting the Universe Start-End
The two brain hemispheres, too, must reflect
The nature of the universe itself,
As the grouping order versus and with
The whole of the symmetry order.

The Hare Beats the Turtle
The universe expands, forming a light cone;
The arc of the ‘ice-cream’ end getting flatter,
Seeming to take forever to straighten—
Accelerating expansion bridges the gap.

It Has Always Been
Is
Nonexistence can’t be, nor even meant;
So it is that existence must be here;
There’s no other option, by necessity,
And thus herein these pages we learn its ways.

Divergence and Convergence
Top-down drives the bottom-up ‘events’,
The future ever affecting the present;
The flat whiteness of the Omega End
Brings forth diversified prismatic colors.

Enfoldment/Unfoldment
Electrons, protons, seem ‘bottom-up’
But are ‘enfolded’ in the top-down whole,
As with Bohm’s implicit order guiding
The blooming, unfolding, explicit order.

The Second of the Final Laws
Boltzman’s increasing disorder (entropy),
Due to there being many more states of
Disorder than order, is close to the mark,
But it’s more-so of the ungrouped patterns.

As Well, There Are Many More Ways For…
The universe to be lumpy, in degrees,
Than for it to be perfectly smooth,
And that’s why there’s still a grouping order,
As with galaxies and solar systems.

The Opposite ‘Improbable’
The not so ‘improbable’ symmetry
Of uniformity comes at future’s end;
This Omega symmetry order is
The opposite of Alpha’s grouping order.

Bohm’s Poem of Home
Classical physics says that reality
Is of particles that separate
The world into independent elements;
But now I am proposing the reverse…

Close Condensations Approximate a Track
The fundamental reality is en-un-foldment;
Particles are abstractions from that.
Electrons don’t exist continuously
But are coming, going, then coming again.

Real Quantum Mechanics
Possibilities are actualities, so
Possibilities exist, in a timeless way,
So then we have a simple solution
To why our universe came from a dense state.

All at Once
All the possible patterns of the past
And future exist simultaneously,
Independent of the passage of time frames,
So, the history of a temporal universe…

Why Time
Moving through those possible patterns
Will inevitably trace backward to
The extreme, greatest imbalance, and hence
To the severe order of the Alpha start.

Time’s Direction
It seems strange that time began from Alpha,
Unless patterns are physically real.
Then time invariably originates
From the greatest imbalance of them all.

Toward Balance
Time’s forward direction is ever toward balance.
And so when it’s traced backward, that same path
Invariably originates from imbalance;
The temporal universe is as it must be.

Time Explained
Any path of time embedded within
A physically real pattern space would
Exhibit a history that originates from the
Single most improbable location of all: Alpha.

Probable Existence
Since pattern space is existingly there
Then the flow of time is built into reality,
Causing probable time-worlds to exist, while
Extremely improbable time-worlds do not.

What Exists
All possibilities must exist,
Because nonexistence cannot be so.
Existence is inevitable. What does exist?
Whatever is possible to exist does exist.

Our Existence is Not Absurd
Time-worlds are secondary, subject to
The realer reality of timeless patterns.
Time’s passage must pass through patterns;
‘Tis no more spectacular than a moment.

What Patterns Lead to
The must-existence of patterns is great—
For the hierarchy of atomic elements,
Stars systems, bio-life, consciousness,
And finally intelligence and wisdom.

No Chaotic Change
If time and change were not restricted
To probability’s arrow of time
Built into pattern space then anything
Could happen and would happen, as chaos.

Quantum Collapse
Quantum events are a “handshake” between
Past (retarded waves) information
And future (advanced waves) information,
Causing the probabilities to collapse to ‘now’.

Probabilities Produced From the Whole
Time doesn’t simply roll into the future,
For there’s a mesh of probabilities
Where possible pasts and futures meet,
Which scientists correctly call ‘non-local’.

The Complete Transaction
When we stand in the dark and look at
A star not only have the retarded waves
From the star have been long traveling,
But advanced waves have reached into the past.

The End Promotes the Means
Time’s river, having a specific ending, explains
Why the universe’s wave function is specific.
If what’s possible was just coming from the past,
There’s no reasonable explanation…

The Guidance Goal: Lake Alpha to Lake Omega
For the control of all the probabilities,
Such as the wave density of atomic particles,
A river only from the past would be
Flowing outward into chaos, but it can’t.

The New Natural Selection
‘Evolution’ is thus an ordered happening,
From the unnoted neutral order in the future,
Along with the positive order of the past.
(So now we know there must be a negative.)

The Whole Thing
The positive order in the Alpha past
Is only half of the Cosmos’ puzzle,
Merely half of a larger duality, one side
Of the great divide, one side of the coin.

The Chess Board
Our Alpha is one chess player as the game begins,
When all the pieces of one color are divided apart,
Half of the most extreme case of grouping order;
Both Alphas are the highest imbalance and contrast.

Time, and Time Again
Time travels from positive to neutral,
While anti-time travels from negative to neutral,
But, note that time & anti-time are much identical.
We may even be alternating back and forth.

Matter Traveling Backward in Time
If matter is evolving forward in time,
Anti-matter is matter evolving backward in time,
In the direction of our own positive Alpha,
Explaining why anti-matter is unstable on our side.

Other Matters
Stable anti-matter exists on the other side
Of ours in anti-time, traveling inversely in time,
Not backwards, but away from the negative Alpha
Toward the universal Omega.

Space-Time Distance
Since time is a direction in space,
Then the space that we’re within is special.
It’a not a 3-D space in which things move about;
It is instead what Einstein called space-time.

4-D, Not 3-D
Space-time is a product of “4-D directions”
In space that travel through a series of many
3-D block-like spaces, jumping from one to the next,
As a new volume dependent on the 4-D directions.

The Probability of Balance
Exterior to the 3-D spaces, the 4-D volume
That we exist within changes and transforms;
It evolves because most of the spacial
Directions move from Alpha toward Omega.

The Unnoted Dimension
This 4-D volume is what collapses
In the phase of accelerating expansion (Big Rip),
Even though the actual universe is expanding.
This acceleration is inevitable.

Driven by Opposites
This dominant probability
Makes our volume (our space) positive
In reference to the volume of
Anti-time which is negative.

Inversion
Anti-time is a negative space,
Or negative space-time,
Which is properly referred to
As negative volume.

The Unseen Scene
Inverse matter can only exist in
The negative volume of anti-time.
We cannot observe the negative density
Of an inverse-proton in our positive space.

Two Worlds
Our positive volume would collapse
Before the inverse proton could
Exist spatially extended, on our side
Of the dividing line between worlds.

Amazing
The negative electron is but a point particle.
Our positive volume collapses before
The negative density that gives the electron
A definite mass can exist spatially extended.

Front and Back
Electrons are one side of inverse-protons in anti-time,
Which means the back side of our protons
Are inverse electrons, and our electrons
Are the back side of someone else’s protons.

For Opposites to Move To Balance
The whole progression of time is driven
By a slow cosmic influx of negative density leaking
Into our positive volume from the other side;
A slow merging of the two sides is occurring,

Expansion
The two sides must slowly and gradually unite,
Which from our perspective causes
The cosmos to grow larger and expand,
In the first steps away from Alpha,…

Divergence
Time is stepping away from the uniformity
And sameness of a perfect positive state
And is necessarily moving into the
Beginning of variety and diversity.

Intermixed
The negative can visibly invade Alpha
By tunneling into its positive space,
Creating fluctuations in the CBR, or at
Micro-scales as negative charge point particles.

The Cosmic Plans
In order to control the cosmos,
In the necessity to bring itself about,
Omega must even rigidly regulate
The early cosmos in its first moments.

Equality
As if planning to bring about complexity and life,
The early fluctuations in expansion are moderate,
The masses of electrons all kept equal,
The ratio of electrons-protons kept even.

Has to Be
With the precision of a watchmaker,
The inevitable future carefully designs
The stable particles with properties that will
Produce the periodic table, molecules, even DNA.

Only Two Ways
Why just the proton and electron?
Why just two stable fundamental particles?
Why are they matched with polar charges?
They are forged with a specific goal in mind.

All the Pieces of the Puzzle
We know what we think of as a material universe
Is really an intricate interplay of imbalances.
All that is known are positives and negatives,
As the stable protons and electrons.

The March of Time
Following time backward only increases imbalance,
In seeing that time originates fully positive,
And then slowly becomes less positive,
Until it becomes neutral, centered.

The Trend Shows
We now realize there actually should be
Great imbalances evident in the world around us.
There should be even much greater
Imbalances evident in our Alpha past.

1836 Times More Massive
The proton should be heavier than the electron.
We don’t note an equal number of anti-matter galaxies.
We shouldn’t expect there to be equal amounts
Of matter & anti-matter near the beginning of time.

The Mystery
The question that has haunted us for so long,
“Why is there something rather than nothing?”
Is related to asking “Why is there asymmetry?”
“Why are there imbalances present?”

The Results
Form and material things, substance itself,
Are products of the imbalances that
Exist within the cosmic balance—
Everything a great tapestry of imbalance.

Further Why
And when we ask the question “Why are
There imbalances instead of why somethingness?”
It’s simple and unavoidable that imbalances exist.
Imbalances are natural inside any overall balance.

Should Have Known the Timeless Everything
Our finite world could only be an imbalanced system.
We exist because a balanced whole exists,
Which we incorrectly see as nothing,
And worse still, confuse with nonexistence.

The Forces Explained
All forces are probabilities, simply the
Most predictable events we experience.
In fact, gravity is the probability
For time to travel backwards.

Gravity is Time Moving Backwards
Gravity is trying to recreate the past.
In an expanding universe the past
Is increasingly denser; less expanded.
Gravity battles with the universe’s expansion.

Expansion is a Force From the Future
The trend of nature is not at all toward disorder,
But it is for balance to increase.
Being drawn toward the balance of zero
The universe invariably expands.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
The universe’s expansion is time moving forward.
Cosmological expansion isn’t a consequence
Of some chance explosion in the past.
It is a force, just like gravity (Gravity’s losing).

Electromagnetism is Time Moving Forward
Electromagnetism is the perfect balance
Of the future’s absolute zero influencing the present.
The balance of the future, the most probable state,
Is a great cosmic attractor of all universes-change.

Push-Pull
We can feel absolute zero pulling
And pushing the cosmos around.
We feel this balance of zero
As electricity and magnetism.

Moving Toward Greater Balance
Positive and negative particles
Are moving nearer to the balance,
For like particles will naturally repel
While opposite particles attract.

Imagine Electromagnetism in Reverse
Like particles would then attract
And opposite particles would repel.
Such a force would cause positive and negative
Particles to divide apart into separate groups.

Nucleon Binding
In fact, when like particles such as
Positive protons bond together,
Time is actually moving backward.
The strong force is electromagnetism in reverse.

How it Works
The strong force battles against electromagnetism,
Causing positive protons to attract at short distances.
If protons and neutrons get close enough,
The repulsion of electromagnetism is overcome.

The Ranges
The strong force holds the nucleus together,
Just like gravity holds-creates stars and galaxies.
The strong force is the short range gravity;
Electromagnetism dominates on the larger scale.


The Power Broker Breaker
Something must overcome the strong force,
Because electromagnetism cannot break
The bond between like protons by itself.
Electromagnetism-expansion beats gravity-strong.

Forces Are the Possible Directions of Time
At some point in the future the weak force
Has to break down all the complex atoms in
The universe into individual protons and electrons.
The Weak Force is time moving forward.

The Power of the Weak
The weak force is an extension of electromagnetism.
The weak force grew out of electromagnetism
In the early stages of the big bang,
Prior to which there was just the electroweak force.

No Absolute Motion
Objects do not move about in Newton’s vessel
Of empty space because a real perfectly
Flat space would be absolutely chock full.
Thus, the relative, not absolute universe.

Empty Curvatures
Objects can only exist as distinct forms
In a space where their opposites have
Been removed or displaced to create
A half space or parallel regions.

Space, the Final Frontier
This creates the present interdependence
Between matter and space which led Einstein
To describe space as an extension of mass.
‘Space’ seems to be the ultimate challenge.

The Ultimate Puzzle
We’ve learned about space relative to materials.
A common theme is that matter and space
Are two forms of the same thing. Not exactly.
Matter is really an absence of content.

All Told and Tolled
If the cosmos stretches totally flat,
Then matter and space are equivalent,
But this leads to a very dramatic switch
In how we evaluate the universe, whereby we see…

What Matters
That particles are holes in a primary full space,
Rather than material things arisen
Above and more primary than space.
Matter is a bi-product of space.

Two Apples Means Two More Anti-Apples
For our universe to exist, an identical
But opposite anti-matter universe
Has to be removed from space.
Why are we separate from our other half?

Half and Half
Perfect symmetry doesn’t create nonexistence.
Perfect symmetry is just everything experienced
At the same time in the same space.
Opposites don’t cancel—we’re here observing half.

In Order For There to be Symmetry
From our place in the world, we cannot
Or would not directly observe unified symmetry.
It’s hidden, in our future or in our past.
We need to be here; there has to be asymmetry.

Nonexistence Isn’t; Perfect Symmetry Is
The combination of our galaxy
With an inverse anti-matter galaxy,
As combined, and every other pair of galaxies,
All exist joined together in ordinary space.

Taken and Placed Somewhere Else
And so matter is not more than space;
It is less than space; it’s what happens
When part of something whole is taken away,
Taken from the place and time we call ‘now’.

The New Normal
It’s difficult to re-normalize after such a switch,
But the fullness or substantive aspect we attribute
To matter is present in space more than in matter.
Dense matter is an absence, as in the tiny early universe.

Things Aren’t More Than Nothing
Mass and density are both a measure of absence.
Objects cannot exist unless their opposite
Is removed from that seeming emptiness.
Things are then less than everything.

Accentuating the Positive
A negative density can only
Exist in a negative volume, just as
Positive density can only exist in a positive volume.
This allows the mass value to always remain positive.

Curves
Matter is like bubbles in a water aquarium—
Tiny voids in a denser medium.
Density is a positive or negative void
That causes the curvature of the bubble.

Going, Going…
We live in a positive bubble (volume)
That is actually collapsing,
As distant galaxies expand away from us
At speeds beyond the speed of light.

Everything Leaks
We detect the mass of a negative
Density as a point of zero volume,
Or what is called a point particle;
Electrons leaked over from the anti-time side.

Each as Half of Totality
The electron leak is in response to the
Existence of protons on our side,
Which is why the ratio of electrons
To protons in the universe is exactly even.

The Point of It
So why does the electron point particle
Have a defined mass, as opposed to infinite?
A negative density cannot be
Spatially extended in a positive volume.

Confined to a Point
The electron mass exists in a negative
Volume that opens up beyond the point of the
Electron in the ghostlike invisible partner.
Negative density also explains polarity of charge.

Credited Debits
Positive and negative things are debts
That have to be repaid to a larger neutral space.
Charges reflect imbalances in a spatial content.
To create particles creates indents, or curvatures.

The Flow
The only way for the plus-minus puzzle pieces
To exist separate from one another
Is if time originates from such a state,
An imbalance, then moves toward equilibrium.

One Way
Equilibrium never breaks down into imbalance;
Something does not come from nothing.
But time will start from something imbalanced,
And evolve toward balance, or ‘nothing’.

A Four Dimensional Space
When you combine an infinite past and future,
Time is-was relative (allowing the infinite).
Everything exists in one huge moment of now,
Which supersedes the possibility of existential change.

The Printed Pages
Time-worlds are imprinted within the great moment,
So the time of such worlds must travel linearly
From a beginning on to an ending.
Books have binding; movie frames are projected.

The Clock-Block Universe
At any tick of the clock the world is
In a particular condition or state,
Which is called lateral time, and each distinct
Moment is in an individual universe.

Linear and Lateral Time
How can distinctly separate blocks of space
Be simultaneously fused into a linear progression?
If they are fused then they are not distinct;
If they are distinct, then they aren’t really fused.

The Separate and the Common
What separates one block of time from another?
Only the definition of each time block
Maintains it as separate from other states, and
Spaces are always linked by a common existence.

The Sum of the Fragments
They are all embedded in the same great
Never ending moment—all fragments of the whole.
Each spatial pattern is a tiny internal part,
And only the patterns’ sum creates the whole.

The Lateral
There also exist directions in space which travel across
Or through the multiplicity of these blocks—
A 4-D that independently constructs
The lateral component of its surroundings.

Governed by the Innate Probabilities
Each individual direction moving through
The blocks becomes a sort of parent
To a lateral time world—its own 4-D space,
Strictly relative to that single parent direction.

Replacing Chaotic Freedom
Each of these directions in space are free to find
Their way through the overall multispatiality,
Except the direction of travel, and so each path
Is governed by the probabilities of the superspace.

A Very Strict Guidance System
The result is a fourth dimensionality of space,
In which the lateral surroundings of each 4-D
Parent direction are uniquely constructed
Strictly relative to that single parent direction.

The Series of Stills
Time passes through many spaces, and
Each block is an individual moment.
An object does not move through the spaces,
Rather it stays and exists frozen in each space.

Time Rules
Only time, which is actually a
Special direction in space, is able
To pass through multiple 3-D spaces,
Traveling from one moment to the next.

4-D Touches All of 3-D
An undivided existence of all
Conceivable 3-D configurations
Would inevitably create the 4-D of
Spatial directions passing between the blocks.

The Full Range
We will invariably observe a sampling
Of galaxies which reflects the widest range
Of configurations that pattern space dictates, plus
Ranges of solar systems, planets, moons, asteroids.

All
We will observe the whole range of geography,
The whole range of possible chemistry,
The whole range of other lifeforms,
The whole range of personalities.

Connections
All is then integrated into the parent direction,
Inevitably causing expansion and growth—
Letters, words, phrases, sentences, verse (uni).
We ourselves are the evolution of time.[/hide]

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The fundamental issue which makes process philosophy counterintuitive, is that we cannot properly conceptualize a process, or activity without something which is active.

That's why Materialism is more intuitive for most people. And it may be why a philosophical concept like Whitehead's rational Process Theory may never become the basis of a popular religion. :chin: :brow:

While researching Process and Reality, I recently came across this article :

Why should we prefer 'process philosophy/ontology' against the traditional 'substance theory/ontology' in metaphysics? — Metaphysics of Science
https://www.reddit.com/r/PhilosophyofScience/comments/1eej0sd/why_should_we_prefer_process_philosophyontology/

This essay notes that Substances are "independent entities" defined as the "bearers of properties". But can they really be "independent" of the Universal System (physics) and of the process of Cosmic Evolution (property change)? Also, are the Properties (Qualia?) themselves also Substances, or subjective observations of mental changes due to sensory inputs? Can we separate a Property Bearer from its Properties and the observer? If so, by what criteria can we rate one or the other as Primary or Preferable? Seems like Substances and Qualia go together like birds of a common property.

One assumption of Substance Theory (Materialism) is "that change is just an appearance/illusion or if it’s real, it is entirely derivative or secondary at best". But, are "properties, relations, and events" processes or substances? Is Energy, as the cause of change, illusory? Scientists typically define Energy by what it does (change over time : processes) instead of what it is (substance). Likewise, Quantum Physics long ago gave-up on finding the ultimate particle (Atom). So they now define the ultimate something as a "field", which is simply an empty place in space where some change happens.

The article concludes with this question : "Why should we be willing to give up such a long tradition with substance theory in favour of this “newer” paradigm?" Personally, my answer is that the choice between Substance & Process theories depends on what you intend to do with it --- so to speak. Pragmatic Science will get practical here & now results from being guided by the Substance worldview. But Philosophical Speculation (investigation) may get closer to the ultimate universal Truth of Reality, by following the Process worldview to see where it leads in time & taste. :smile:

IF THE WAYWARD PATH LEADS INTO THE DARK DANGEROUS WOODS, YOU MIGHT CONSIDER TAKING AN ALTERNATIVE PATH. BUT ON WHAT BASIS WOULD YOU CHOOSE? THAT'S PHILOSOPHY.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

Gavin Giorbran

[i]“Physicists and cosmologists have long questioned whether a state of perfect
symmetry ever existed in the past, we just haven't ever considered it as a possible
future. We have been convinced instead, because we observe a measure of
randomness that the order of the universe is simply winding down. But if anything
it is winding up! Everything is enfolding together. The final state of zero
which the universe has been evolving toward since the very dawn of time is
simply the native state of the Universe. It is the timeless whole. It is truly everything
forever. And we aren’t really becoming, we are already there. The universe
we know, the past, the future, and the infinity of other universes, all exist simultaneously.
We are inside that whole. We are a part of the native state of zero,
part of the eternal present.”[/i]
? Gevin Giorbran, Everything Forever : Learning To See Timelessness

Entropy seems to be aiming at ultimate nothingness. But Zero is just the flip-side of Infinity. GG seems to be imagining deChardin's Omega Point, not as cosmic death, but a new beginning. I don't know if he's right, but he has a poetic way of expressing the physics of space & time. :smile:

So where do I go wrong?

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/970076

@punos @PoeticUniverse

Quoting punos

From the perspective of the model i'm currently working with, i believe the answer is primordial time (also known as timeless time).Primordial time is a non-physical process/substance that yields physicality. I explain this temporal logic in a little more detail below:

I'm not familiar with the notion of "Primordial Time" as a "non-physical process". And I can't imagine a temporal process that does not involve physical objects : e.g. Darwinian Evolution. Our intuition of Time and Process is based on the changes we observe in the material world. But we also create Metaphors from that sensory experience to explain apparent changes in mental states over time : alterations in mood, behavior, thought patterns, and level of awareness. Can you explain "timeless time" in an example that is not an oxymoron*1?

On a possibly related topic, another thread "Underlying Reality" for Husserl*2, "J" says "that there is some thing or process – a “flow” -- that serves as raw material for our abstractions of ordinary objects and perceptions. This flow can be characterized using descriptions such as “texture,” “consonance,” “dissonance,” and “affordance.” This doesn't turn on a light bulb in my head. But it does remind me of Whitehead's notion of Process, which seems to mean something like the Life-path of the Cosmos, as interpreted by cogitating creatures.

As an untutored amateur who has learned most of his Philosophy from skimming this forum, I know nothing of Husserl*3. So most of the vocabulary of that thread is over my head. Do you see any parallels between your "non-physical process that yields physicality", and Husserl's "flow, that serves as raw material for our abstractions of ordinary objects and perceptions"? :chin:


*1. An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines two words with opposite meanings.


*2. "Underlying Reality" for Husserl
. . . . . that there is some thing or process – a “flow” -- that serves as raw material for our abstractions of ordinary objects and perceptions. This flow can be characterized using descriptions such as “texture,” “consonance,” “dissonance,” and “affordance.”
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15796/underlying-reality-for-husserl

*3. "Husserl is primarily known for his analyses of intentionality, perception, temporality, embodiment, and intersubjectivity, for his rehabilitation of the lifeworld and his commitment to a form of transcendental idealism and for his criticism of reductionism, objectivism, and scientism"
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780195396577/obo-9780195396577-0210.xml

Quoting Gnomon

"I'm not familiar with the notion of "Primordial Time" as a "non-physical process". And I can't imagine a temporal process that does not involve physical objects : e.g. Darwinian Evolution. Our intuition of Time and Process is based on the changes we observe in the material world. But we also create Metaphors from that sensory experience to explain apparent changes in mental states over time : alterations in mood, behavior, thought patterns, and level of awareness. Can you explain "timeless time" in an example that is not an oxymoron*1?"

For me, the adjective "timeless" means never having a beginning or ending. It's not my favorite word for it, however i use it because i assume it's what people generally mean by it, though i might be wrong about that.

The usual way i try to explain it is by asking one to imagine a completely empty space. No matter, no energy, no quantum foam, nothing at all, no time. This is a blank state with zero degrees of freedom, and what we want to do is ask the question: What is the first thing that we need (the first degree of freedom) to set up the required initial conditions out of which this universe can emerge?

I've concluded that the first thing to add to this blank space is the potential for change. It must be able to change in order for anything to occur. This is the first degree of freedom: something that has causal power. It is the primordial pattern of state continuity (primordial time). This means, first, that an object can indeed be placed in this temporal space, and more than that, it can continue to occupy its given space by virtue of this power of causal continuity. It doesn't mean it has to move; it simply means it can exist. Notice that if there were a room that did not contain this temporal continuity, you wouldn't even be able to walk or enter into it. It would feel like a maximally solid barrier to you; some sort of deep, black, solid object.

After a thing exists by the power of temporal continuity, things that exist can interact with other things that exist, governed by the rules of temporal logic (Logos). This interactivity of existing things constitutes the emergence of relative time (entropic time).

Ask yourself this question: What is the meaning of time if there were only one object in an otherwise infinitely empty space? How is time measured? What is the arrow of time for this object?

Also, what is it that even allows process to happen? Physically or otherwise.

Quoting Gnomon

"Do you see any parallels between your "non-physical process that yields physicality", and Husserl's "flow, that serves as raw material for our abstractions of ordinary objects and perceptions"?"

I'm not familiar with Husserl, but this "flow" sounds familiar and appears to resonate with part of my model of time. I'm not sure if it's the same, but one of the ways i envision it is as a 0-dimensional point that has a kind of "non-physical" force or energy running through it constantly, depositing or converting "temporal energy" into "spatial energy" (physicality from our human perspective). There is a limit to how much of this temporal energy can be held in this 0-dimensional point, which i believe is the reason, or cause of the symmetry break and the nature of quantized energy states in quantum mechanics.

When the spatial energy reaches its limit in the point space, it changes its state into something like an infinitesimally small "black hole". This little "black hole" is what fundamental physical particles are. Black holes form when the maximum density of energy is reached in a certain location in space, and it follows the same general pattern as in the particle case. For this reason, i believe stellar black holes are incursions into the 4th dimension, just as fundamental particles are the result of incursions into the 3rd dimension from the 2nd. Each dimension has its own kind of fundamental particles.

I don't have everything worked out, of course, and i also experiment with different ways of explaining or describing it. The way that the "temporal energy" is deposited or concentrated in the point space, as per my description, can be worked out in a more detailed manner or perhaps even in a completely different way altogether.

Quoting 180 Proof

So where do I go wrong?

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/970076

I don't know; it seems okay to me unless i misread or misunderstood something. Perhaps you did not like that i used the word "idealism"?

Quoting punos

Perhaps you did not like that i used the word "idealism"?

???

Quoting 180 Proof

Perhaps you did not like that i used the word "idealism"? — punos

???

I'm sorry, i was under the impression you were reacting to this:
Quoting punos

However, if we adopt the perspective of the universe itself, everything should appear as conceptual. So idealism in general terms, is probably correct.

Considering:
Quoting 180 Proof

(non-idealist, non-telos woo woo) foundational insights from which "process philosophy" is derived.

Quoting punos

Considering:
(non-idealist, non-telos woo woo) foundational insights from which "process philosophy" is derived. — 180 Proof

FYI. As I understand it, Reply to 180 Proof's worldview is Immanentist & Non-Idealist & Antitheist & Absurdist, among other metaphysical beliefs (i.e. unprovable). So any implication of intentional or theistic or teleological evolution is not just Outlandish & Alien, but also preposterous, ridiculous, unrealistic, non-sensical, stupid, and metaphysical. That's why he slyly & covertly treats the postulator as an idiot, who implicitly should be banned from posting on a Scientism forum.

Ironically, Whitehead's "foundational insights" were primarily derived from the non-classical & paradoxical implications of Quantum Physics*1*2*3*4. Which also inspired a lot of mystical New Age religious notions. But also some novel scientific offshoots, such as Systems Theory, Complexity Theory, and Statistical Mechanics, as well as some unorthodox philosophical directions such as Holism, Creative Evolution, Information Science, and Process Physics. Since the Enlightenment turn toward materialism/empiricism evolved into dogma, some pragmatists view any theoretical philosophy as woo-woo mysticism.

Although Whitehead was a remarkable mathematician, apparently he was not a hard-nosed logician, or empirical scientist. Instead, like many mathematicians --- going back to Pythagoras, Pascal, and Ramanujan --- he seemed to view the world from the open-minded perspective of an artist or mystic*5. Yet, some insist that Physics and Mathematics have no place for mysticism*6. Mysticism is not the same as revealed religion though. Instead, mystics feel that the world has aspects that are concealed from the rational mind, hence can only be known by alternative means, such as intuition. Besides, I've seen no evidence that Whitehead was a practicing mystic (extravagances & frenzies) following any traditional path, as the "woo woo" accusation implies. :smile:


*1. Philosophical Issues in Quantum Theory :
Despite its status as a core part of contemporary physics, there is no consensus among physicists or philosophers of physics on the question of what, if anything, the empirical success of quantum theory is telling us about the physical world.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-issues/

*2. Newtonian physics is unable to deal with such abstractions as energy, whereas quantum physics is able to deal with these abstractions.
https://brainly.com/question/32280009

*3. Newtonian mechanics doesn't contain matter and quantum mechanics never contains Newtonian paths without decoherence.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/242711/is-it-correct-to-say-newtonian-mechanics-is-a-subset-of-quantum-mechanics

*4. Whitehead's process theory, as outlined in his book "Process and Reality," shares significant similarities with quantum physics by viewing reality as fundamentally composed of interconnected "actual occasions" which are essentially events or processes rather than static objects, mirroring the quantum idea that matter exists as waves of probability until observed, emphasizing the dynamic and relational nature of reality at its core; this connection has led some philosophers to see Whitehead's philosophy as potentially compatible with the underlying principles of quantum mechanics.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=whitehead+process+theory+based+on+quantum+physics

*5. This means that Whitehead is looking at the world not as a philosopher of science (that is, with the eyes of reason) but as an artist or a mystic.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/amerjtheophil.39.3.0005

*6. "No word in our language — not even 'Socialism'— has been employed more loosely than 'Mysticism.'" - Ralph William Inge

"Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science". ___Henri Bergson

Quoting Gnomon

Although Whitehead was a remarkable mathematician, apparently he was not a hard-nosed logician, or empirical scientist. Instead, like many mathematicians --- going back to Pythagoras, Pascal, and Ramanujan --- he seemed to view the world from the open-minded perspective of an artist or mystic

I think the mystic and the rationalist are two sides of the same coin, like the left and right hemispheres of the brain, and the dichotomy between Eastern and Western modes of thought. I like to think of myself as a kind of 'logical mystic', or a "mysic of logic". The mystic tends to get a gestalt image of the whole process but misses the logical details, while the rationalist tends to focus on minute details of the whole process but misses the big picture. This is similar to the relationship between reductionism and holism; one needs both to grasp the comprehensive logical picture. We must bring to bare the whole of our minds on the whole of the mystery. There is a key, and i do believe it can be found (certain keys have already been found), but it is like a needle in a haystack. The solution might be to burn the heystack to ashes in order to reveal the key within. :smile:

There is one truth between two perspectives:

Quoting Gnomon

[s]As I understand it[/s], ?180 Proof's worldview

:roll:

To wit:
Quoting 180 Proof

In my Epicurean-Spinozist (i.e. p-naturalist¹) terms [ ... ]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy) [1]

@punos

Quoting punos

I think the mystic and the rationalist are two sides of the same coin, like the left and right hemispheres of the brain, and the dichotomy between Eastern and Western modes of thought. I like to think of myself as a kind of 'logical mystic', or a "mysic of logic". The mystic tends to get a gestalt image of the whole process but misses the logical details, while the rationalist tends to focus on minute details of the whole process but misses the big picture. This is similar to the relationship between reductionism and holism; one needs both to grasp the comprehensive logical picture.

Great!

Worth expanding upon to suppose that the two brain hemispheres mirror the structure of the universe.

Abstract:

We are perhaps the universe come to life, made in its image, of multiplicity within unity, with one holistic brain hemisphere operating in parallel, it joined to the other hemisphere of sequential detail. The holistic side is as a floodlight of attention illuminating the whole scene at once, connected to the the detail side which is a spotlight of attention moving linearly through the scene, the two alternating their cyclic reign, as the yin in the yang and the yang in the yin, making for a rounded life.

In the Main:

The cosmic dance of self unfolds in time,
As we, the universe in human climb,
Are fashioned in the image of the All,
Where many parts in one grand whole combine.

Within our minds, two hemispheres reside,
The holistic and linear side by side.
One works in parallel, sees patterns whole,
While through details the other deems to glide.

The floodlight of attention bathes the scene,
Illuminating all that lies between.
Then spotlight focus traces linear paths,
Moving through moments, probing what they mean.

In cyclic reign they alternate their sway,
As darkness yields to light, night turns to day.
The yin within the yang, yang within yin,
In perfect balance find their sacred way.

Like ancient symbol spinning through the void,
Where opposites are never quite destroyed,
But dance together in eternal flux,
Two halves of wisdom perfectly employed.

Through this divine duality we know
The rounded life where wisdom seems to grow.
Not trapped in either mode of thought alone,
But in their union where true insights flow.

We mirror in our minds the cosmos vast,
Where stars and atoms in one mold are cast.
The universal pattern echoes through
Our consciousness, from future to the past.

In multiplicity within the one,
The journey of awareness is begun.
We are the universe come into light,
Reflecting all creation has done.

Quoting punos

I think the mystic and the rationalist are two sides of the same coin, like the left and right hemispheres of the brain, and the dichotomy between Eastern and Western modes of thought. I like to think of myself as a kind of 'logical mystic', or a "mysic of logic". The mystic tends to get a gestalt image of the whole process but misses the logical details, while the rationalist tends to focus on minute details of the whole process but misses the big picture. This is similar to the relationship between reductionism and holism; one needs both to grasp the comprehensive logical picture. We must bring to bare the whole of our minds on the whole of the mystery. There is a key, and i do believe it can be found (certain keys have already been found), but it is like a needle in a haystack. The solution might be to burn the heystack to ashes in order to reveal the key within

I agree. Personally, I am much more Left Brain logical than Right Brain intuitional. On another forum I was once described as "too logical" (Spock-like). But I am aware of my emotional/intuitive deficiencies, so I try to learn from the experiences of others. Perhaps, like math-minded Whitehead, my natural analytical-reductive tendencies do not leave much room for Mystical thinking. But he seemed to see the necessity for a Holistic perspective, in order to make sense of apparent Quantum Paradoxes, such as wave-particle duality*1. Most pragmatic physicists are content to imagine that they are dealing with objective particles instead of subjective processes. But philosophers are searching for meaning instead of manipulation.

In my effort to learn about alternative ways of seeing the world, I am currently reading a book by British physicist David Peat, who was influenced by Werner Heisenberg and David Bohm to interpret quantum physics holistically*2. Peat resolved to learn about what he called "indigenous science", by making an in-depth study of American Indigens. Whose worldview is obviously more mystical than his own Western science and philosophy. As he describes their "science" it does include such mystical notions as human-like Energies & Forces that are not in the vocabulary of Western physicists. For example wooden masks are imagined to have personalities of their own. I can accept that as an as-if metaphor, rather than an as-is fact.

Reply to 180 Proof's own analytical-reductive inclinations (Naturalism vs Supernaturalism ; Immanent vs Transcendent) seem to cause him to interpret my openness to alternative worldviews as woo-woo Mysticism. However, I think my base philosophy is much closer to his own Spinozan "p-naturalism"*3. Except that the Big Bang beginning of space-time, and the non-quantized*4 Energy-Process foundation of Reality, have forced me, and maybe Whitehead, to look at Nature from a more Holistic-inclusive perspective. I can generally agree with Spinoza's 17th century deus sive natura, in which Nature was assumed to be eternal. But 20th century cosmology has found evidence that space-time had an inexplicable beginning point. So the intuition of ancient cosmologists allowed them to correctly reason that a process of contingencies (billiard balls) logically required a creative input of momentum (the shooter).

My "key" to a holistic understanding of both Physics and Metaphysics is what I call BothAnd philosophy*5. :smile:


*1. "Physicists ask if the nature of quantum reality lies within the elementary particles {things} themselves, or if these are not merely the material representations of something deeper . . . . Rather, they were the surface manifestations of underlying quantum processes."
Blackfoot Physics, by David Peat
Note --- I don't think this perspective is woo-woo mystical, but it is holistic and process-oriented instead of object-oriented : waves vs particles.

*2. The implicate order is a theory by physicist David Bohm that describes a deeper, interconnected reality that underlies the physical world. Bohm believed that the implicate order is the source of all that exists.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=bohm+implicate+order
Note --- Taken together, the Explicit (manifest ; observed ; apparent) and Implicit (hidden, occult, inferred) perspectives provide a way to understanding Nature as a whole cosmic system, instead of just what's obvious from our local frame of reference.

*3. P-Naturalism = Pure Naturalism???
EDIT : "Pure naturalism is a philosophical theory that states that only natural forces and laws govern the universe. It's also known as ontological naturalism, metaphysical naturalism, and antisupernaturalism.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=pure+naturalism
Note --- For pragmatic scientific purposes, I can accept that metaphysical assumption. But for theoretical philosophical purposes, I tend to shy from presumptions of purity.

*4a. In quantum mechanics, a "quantum process not quantized" refers to a phenomenon where a physical quantity within a quantum system can take on any value within a continuous range, rather than being restricted to discrete, specific values (like energy levels in an atom) which is the typical characteristic of quantization; essentially, it's a process where the quantity isn't "locked" to specific steps or levels.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=quantum+processes+not+quantized
*4b. Quantum Mechanics Does NOT Mean Quantization! The Hydrogen atom, when we speak of "bound" electrons below the ionisation energy, has only a discrete set of allowed energies. But this discreteness is NOT typical of quantities in so-called "Quantum Mechanics".
https://www.cantorsparadise.com/quantum-mechanics-does-not-mean-quantization-02f1daa78760

*5. 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

20th century cosmology has found evidence that space-time had an [s]inexplicable[/s] beginning point.

:sweat: No, that's false, sir.

Modern cosmologists have only found evidence of the planck-scale limit to current physical theories about and observations of the developmental history (i.e. inflationary expansion of the Hubble volume) of spacetime. In short, there is no more of a demonstrated "beginning point" to the observable universe than there is to the real number line or the surface of the Earth.

NB: Clearly Fr. Georges Lemaître, priest and so-called "Father of the Big Bang", never believed BB was "the inexplicable beginning" (or any indication of a transcendent, non-physical "origin" or "causal agency") as the following article makes clear:

https://www.hprweb.com/2019/01/the-enriching-complementarity-of-faith-and-science/ :smirk:

Reply to punos
Quoting Gnomon

I can generally agree with Spinoza's 17th century deus sive natura, in which Nature was assumed to be eternal. But 20th century cosmology has found evidence that space-time had an inexplicable beginning point.

Reply to 180 Proof took issue with my assertion of an "inexplicable" Big Bang beginning. Of course, I was referring to a provable scientific explanation. But 180 seems to make allowances for debatable philosophical (metaphysical) conjectures, other than "god did it".

Ironically, cosmologist Stephen Hawking concluded that the "laws of physics" had a beginning 15B years ago*1. If so, on what physical basis would any pre-bang science be based? I can agree with him that humans are free to speculate into unsolved mysteries. But I wouldn't call that a valid Scientific Explication. :smile:


*1. Did spacetime have a beginning?
[i]The conclusion of this lecture is that the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago. The beginning of real time, would have been a singularity, at which the laws of physics would have broken down. . . . .
The cosmologist, Sir Arthur Eddington, once said, 'Don't worry if your theory doesn't agree with the observations, because they are probably wrong.' But if your theory disagrees with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is in bad trouble. In fact, the theory that the universe has existed forever is in serious difficulty with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. . . .
Since events before the Big Bang have no observational consequences, one may as well cut them out of the theory, and say that time began at the Big Bang. [/i]
https://www.hawking.org.uk/in-words/lectures/the-beginning-of-time
Note --- Multiverse and Many Worlds conjectures have "serious difficulty with the Second Law of Thermodynamics". But being merely metaphysical speculations, they only have to be internally consistent, with no explanation for where the Infinite Energy came from.

Hawking lecture continued :
The time scale of the universe is very long compared to that for human life. It was therefore not surprising that until recently, the universe was thought to be essentially static, and unchanging in time. On the other hand, it must have been obvious, that society is evolving in culture and technology. This indicates that the present phase of human history can not have been going for more than a few thousand years. Otherwise, we would be more advanced than we are. It was therefore natural to believe that the human race, and maybe the whole universe, had a beginning in the fairly recent past. However, many people were unhappy with the idea that the universe had a beginning, because it seemed to imply the existence of a supernatural being who created the universe. They preferred to believe that the universe, and the human race, had existed forever. Their explanation for human progress was that there had been periodic floods, or other natural disasters, which repeatedly set back the human race to a primitive state.
https://www.hawking.org.uk/in-words/lectures/the-beginning-of-time

Mr. Dunning-Kruger folks! :zip:

Quoting PoeticUniverse

Within our minds, two hemispheres reside,
The holistic and linear side by side.

That raises the scientific question of how a split brain can produce an integrated worldview. Obviously if you cut the lines of communication (information sharing) the bicameral brain has difficulty navigating for a single body. :smile:

Two brain halves, one perception :
Our brain is divided into two hemispheres, which are linked through only a few connections. However, we do not seem to have a problem to create a coherent image of our environment -- our perception is not "split" in two halves. For the seamless unity of our subjective experience, information from both hemispheres needs to be efficiently integrated.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110901101430.htm

Reply to Gnomon My understanding is the prehemispheric structures solve this problem in humans, and make sets of data from both halves cohere in our perception. I've not looked deeply into it but found that a very interesting suggestion.

Quoting Gnomon

some wag dubbed the "Big Bang".

Said 'wag' was actually Fred Hoyle, an eminent British cosmologist who never accepted the idea; in a BBC radio interview.

I'm chipping in because I happened upon a very good online article on Whitehead, ‘Apart from the Experiences of Subjects There Is Nothing, Nothing, Nothing, Bare Nothingness’—Nature and Subjectivity in Alfred North Whitehead, Isabella Schlehaider.

Some snippets:

The Bifurcation of Nature

Whitehead describes modern thought as plagued by a “radical inconsistency” which he calls “the bifurcation of nature”. According to Whitehead, this fundamental “incoherence” at the foundation of modern thought is reflected not only in the concept of nature itself, but in every field of experience—in modern theories of experience and subjectivity, of ethics and aesthetics, as well as many others. In “The Concept of Nature” (1920), Whitehead states that nature splits into two seemingly incompatible spheres of reality at the beginning of modern European thought in the 17th century: ‘Nature’ on the one hand refers to the (so-called) objective nature accessible to the natural sciences only, i.e., the materialistically conceptualized nature of atoms, molecules, cells, and so on; at the same time, however, ‘nature’ also refers to the (subjectively) perceptible and experienced, i.e., the appearing nature with its qualities, valuations, and sensations. Whitehead considers this modernist division of nature in thought—the differentiation of primary and secondary qualities, of ‘first’ and ‘second’ nature, of a material and mental sphere—a fundamental, serious, and illicit incoherence. His term for this incoherence is ‘bifurcation of nature’, for the question of how these two concepts of nature—‘objective’ and ‘subjective’—relate to each other remains largely unresolved for Whitehead within the philosophical tradition of modernity.


Nature as a Meaningless Complex of Facts

"All modern philosophy hinges round the difficulty of describing the world in terms of subject and predicate, substance and quality, particular and universal. [...] We find ourselves in a buzzing world, amid a democracy of fellow creatures; whereas, under some disguise or other, orthodox philosophy can only introduce us to solitary substances [...]."

Whitehead locates the systematic roots of thinking in the mode of substance and attribute in the hypostatization and illegitimate universalization of the particular and contingent subject–predicate form of the propositional sentence of Western languages. The resulting equation of grammatical–logical and ontological structure leads to conceiving the logical difference between subject and predicate as a fundamental ontological difference between subject and object, thing and property, particular and universal.

In general, Whitehead’s critique of substance metaphysics is directed less against Aristotle himself, “the apostle of ‘substance and attribute’” (Whitehead [1929] 1978, p. 209), than against the reception and careless adoption of the idea of substances in modern philosophy and science, precisely the notion of substances as self-identical material. Historically, Whitehead sees the bifurcation sealed with the triumph of Newtonian physics, within which the mechanistic-materialist understanding of matter was universalized and seen as an adequate description of nature in its entirety. In this way, scientific materialism became the guiding principle and implicit assumption of the modern conception of nature at large:

"One such assumption underlies the whole philosophy of nature during the modern period. It is embodied in the conception which is supposed to express the most concrete aspect of nature. [...] The answer is couched in terms of stuff, or matter, or material [...] which has the property of simple location in space and time [...]. [M]aterial can be said to be here in space and here in time [...] in a perfectly definite sense which does not require for its explanation any reference to other regions of space-time." ....

Whitehead’s rejection of mechanistic materialism is not only due to the immanent development of the physics of his time, which, from thermodynamics to the theory of relativity and quantum physics, limited the validity of the materialistic view even within physics itself. Rather problematic for him was the interpretation of Newton’s understanding of matter, meaning the universalization of the materialistic conception of nature or the mathematical approach, which was carried out within physics as part of its triumphal procession and its transmission to (de facto) all other regions of experience. From a philosophical point of view, however, this universalization is indefensible, since its experiential basis in Newtonian physics is so limited that it cannot claim validity outside its limited scope. As a result, Newton’s matter particles are not taken as what they are, namely the result of an abstraction, but as the most concrete components of nature as such, as concrete reality.

Whitehead therefore tirelessly emphasizes that the materialistic understanding of nature is an abstraction that can only be applied to a certain segment, that is, to the solid bodies or inanimate nature in the Newtonian sense of the term. This error of mistaking an abstraction for concrete experience, of confusing (the result) of an abstraction with reality itself is what Whitehead calls the “‘Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness’”.This logical fallacy poses a far-reaching and highly consequential problem because it excludes essential realms of experience from the metaphysical context by “explaining [them] away”. For everything that does not fall within the scope of mathematical explanation and cannot be grasped in mechanistic terms is seen as located in the (human) subject alone, and thus denied ‘reality’ and, consequently, value. This way, the differentiation between primary and secondary qualities, mind and matter, nature and culture, subject and object, human and non-human is constantly re-established. (He's looking at you, Dennett.)

Subjectivity versus Nature

One of the most decisive systematic–historical reasons for the inconsistency within the concept of nature and the concomitant exclusion of subjectivity, experience, and history from nature is, according to Whitehead, the abstract, binary distinction between primary and secondary qualities of the 17th century physical notion of matter based on the substance–quality scheme. Quantitative, measurable properties, such as extension, number, size, shape, weight, and movement, are for Galileo via Descartes through to Locke real, i.e., primary qualities of the thing itself. They are conceived as inherent to things as well as independent of perception. In contrast, secondary qualities, such as colors, scents, sound, taste, as well as inner states, feelings, and sensations, are understood to be located in subjective perception, in the mind, and are considered to be dependent on the primary qualities. They only appear to the subject to be real qualities of the objects themselves. In modernity, then, the subject—which, by the way, theoretically as well as practically, cannot be justifiably defined as naturally human—has to endow the ‘dull nature’ with qualities and values, with meaning.

These “psychic additions” (Whitehead 1920, p. 29, 42f.), as Whitehead also calls them, are, in contrast to the primary qualities, not describable in the language of mathematical physics, i.e., not quantifiable and therefore do not possess any (‘objective’) ‘reality’. Consequently, they are of no use for science, and the sensuously perceived nature becomes a (‘subjective’) ‘dream’. Meanwhile, the nature of the sciences becomes a ‘hypothesis’ since it can never become an object of perception as such, given that the primary qualities can only be experienced in a mediated way, for example in experiments. In the course of separating the secondary from the primary qualities, the ‘realm of the objective’, the ‘realm of the hard facts’ is only complemented by the ‘realm of the subjective’; for itself, according to a frequently used formulation in Whitehead, nature is conceived as completely devoid of subjectivity, i.e., values, feelings, and intentions. Against this background, Whitehead can then also suggest, in an ironically exaggerated way, that the Romantic poets are completely wrong in praising the rose for its scent or the nightingale for its song. ...

Reply to Gnomon
The question i always ask in relation to the beginning of spacetime is: Why did the universe suddenly decide to begin existing at some arbitrary "time", and not one second earlier or later? How strange. One might respond by saying that there was no time before time began, thus making it a meaningless question ("north from the north pole"). Okay, but if there was no time before time began, then how or why did time begin? Something must have happened before the universe began in order to cause it to begin.

One way i get around this conundrum is to say that time has always existed, and within this pre-Big Bang time, things can happen which cause Big Bangs to occur, out of which entropic "arrows of time" come into being. Our universe is one such "arrow of time". Our notion of time is thermodynamic and entropic, so if we try to employ this notion to understand things before the birth of the "arrow of time", we would be lost. It would be like trying to fit a square object in a round hole. The problem, i think, is in assuming that "absolute time" does not exist, and assuming only "relative time" does.

I personally do not subscribe to the idea of a multiverse because the way i see it, there is only one universe, infinite in expanse and "timeless" in its duration. What may be happening is that "arrows of time" emerge locally out of the natural breaking of symmetry in infinite space. These "arrows" go on for a while and spread thermodynamically into infinite space. Eventually, the "arrow" dissipates almost completely, and another arrow of time comes into being. This is one way (not the only way) to potentially explain it. It's not necessarily the way i see it, but it's something to work with. This idea i think is very similar to Roger Penrose's cyclic theory of the universe.

The model i'm leaning towards at the moment has nothing to do with Big Bangs or multiple universes. I think it's possible that matter simply precipitates out of space as per the quantum foam and its virtual particles getting knocked off their path to annihilation with their anti-partner, which leaves them floating around in space with no way to finally annihilate. These particles accumulate in space gradually over eternity, and we get a universe that looks like ours with huge collections of these lost particles forming dust clouds, stars, and planets. For a local observer, the universe would still look like it's expanding. Only inside a local gravity well would things remain gravitationally bound.

The description below is my own model for how virtual particles become actual particles, as a continuous process. We don't need a Big Bang to create the matter in the universe. I don't have a name for it yet, maybe "Continuous Creation Model", or maybe you can suggest one. :smile:


In this graph representation of the quantum foam, the top row of circles with 0s represent null space. The next row below represents virtual particle/antiparticle pairs, and the row below that represents the return of the virtual particles back to their ground symmetry state after annihilation.



In this graph, a break happens and is carried over by a series of three annihilations. Focusing on the bottom row, notice that there is a negative particle at the far left that did not annihilate with its original pair. Because the positive particle did not annihilate with its original negative partner but with another negative from another pair, it leaves the positive charge just hanging around. Then because this positive particle annihilated with the negative of another pair, it leaves the positive from that pair hanging, which then annihilates with the next negative particle, leaving that positive charge hanging, and this process repeats over and over again forever separating the two charges further and further.

The result is that these charge separations reduce the probability of full annihilation, and they accumulate in infinite space over an eternity. Note that it is not the particle that is moving away, but the charge itself that is being carried by different successive virtual particles along a sequence of annihilations. The positive, charge is propagating to the right in this illustration, but in reality both charges would propagate in opposite directions away from each other.

It's not difficult to understand but it is a bit difficult to explain in writing, which is why i made these quick images to help illustrate the concept.

Quoting punos

I think it's possible that matter simply precipitates out of space as per the quantum foam and its virtual particles getting knocked off their path to annihilation with their anti-partner, which leaves them floating around in space with no way to finally annihilate.

inflation could have been so quick that some virtual particles couldn’t recombine because they were then too far apart.

Quoting AmadeusD

?Gnomon
My understanding is the prehemispheric structures solve this problem in humans, and make sets of data from both halves cohere in our perception. I've not looked deeply into it but found that a very interesting suggestion.

Off Topic :
Does "prehemispheric structures" refer to the pre-frontal cortex? If so, they are also divided into left & right hemispheres, which leaves the coherence (unification) problem unsolved. The paired pre-frontal cortex is supposed to govern much of our conscious behavior. But since the entire cortex, including the frontal parts, is divided & dual, the question of unification remains. Obviously, the brain does somehow resolve dual physical channels into a single conceptual consciousness --- two eyes, one worldview. But how does the cerebral system create a single perspective from binary inputs?

Julian Jayne's theory of the Bicameral Mind*1 postulated that ancient people interpreted intuitive (subconscious) right brain signals as communications from invisible gods to the rational (conscious) left brain. So one way to resolve the two-brain/single-mind conundrum would be to accept that what we call Consciousness occurs only in the Left brain. AFAIK modern science does not seem to support that. Are you aware of any evidence that only one hemisphere is aware of what's going on outside? :smile:


*1. Bicameral Brain vs Single-minded consciousness :
[i]Julian Jaynes proposed that early humans operated with a "bicameral" or two-chambered mind, with one part of the brain generating commands that another part perceived as the voice of gods.
This theory suggests that modern consciousness, characterized by introspection and self-awareness, emerged around 3,000 years ago.[/i]
https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/evolution/bicameralism.htm

Whitehead describes modern thought as plagued by a “radical inconsistency” which he calls “the bifurcation of nature”.

Perhaps the "bifurcation of nature" is due to the bicameral structure of the brain. I assume you are familiar with Julian Jayne's theory of the Bicameral Mind, as an explanation for the ancient notion of voices-in-the-head that conveyed messages from gods. Today, we could call that "communication" Intuition, because we think the brain/mind is unitary.

However, as noted in my response to Reply to AmadeusD, we could infer instead that we are literally "of two minds" in some cases. Rational human technology has allowed modern cultures to create un-natural tools & habitats. Which is why, unlike primitive societies, we make a clear distinction between Nature & Culture (Shamanism & Science???). Hence, one result of that "bifurcation" is that logical scientists were able to ignore the Observer (left brain) in their objective picture of the physical world.

Until, that is, we got down to the sub-atomic foundation of reality. And discovered that our Intuitive meaning-making right-brain couldn't make sense --- translate felt-meaning into left-brain language --- of the analytical abstract Rational data it was receiving : e.g. continuous-wave vs discontinuous-particle paradoxes. So, such “radical inconsistency” might be the philosophical problem that forced Whitehead, and others in early 20th century, to adopt a holistic (left & right brain) methodology. Left-brain discovers mathematical relationships, and right-brain creates metaphorical images to make concrete sense of those abstractions.

I'll stop here, before I get my left-brain mired in woo-woo metaphysical non-sense. :joke:

Quoting Gnomon

Does "prehemispheric structures" refer to the pre-frontal cortex?

Brain stem structures, is my understanding - the nerve bundles prior to the hemispheres of the brain around the top of the spinal column and 'bottom' the brain. I see subhemispheric is also used:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/split-brain :

"Perception around the body in the periphery of the visual field, including ‘ambient’ pre-attentive awareness of space and motion properties of objects, is not divided in the split brain, indicating that subhemispheric (brainstem) systems, which remain unified, can integrate perceptuo-motor functions."

Not a neuroscientist though. Apt for our purposes: https://philarchive.org/archive/SLESTU :

"Most likely the place where the two visual hemispheric images integrate into a single coherent screen that can contain the space of our visual image, the “visual sensorium”, is in an evolutionarily older sub-cortical area such as the optic tectum in the midbrain. For that region is pre-hemispheric and most likely from where core visual phenomenal consciousness evolved prior to the embellishment of cortical-enabled intellectualization."

Quoting Gnomon

AFAIK modern science does not seem to support that. Are you aware of any evidence that only one hemisphere is aware of what's going on outside? :smile:

That's also my understanding - Jaynes work was extremely important to my research into the anthropological side of psychedelic use over a decade or so and it never made sense to me, unfortunately. Taking drugs would result int he same sorts of interpretations and when we have evidence of used (albeit, sporadic and sparse) psychedelics across most of human history, its hard to look past that as a source of the types of reports and themes that lead to the bicameral idea. Not that its a bad theory in and of itself, but its a bit like the Stoned Ape theory. Decent.... in theory.

Quoting AmadeusD

Brain stem structures, is my understanding - the nerve bundles prior to the hemispheres of the brain around the top of the spinal column and 'bottom' the brain. I see subhemispheric is also used:

Still off-topic :

"Brain sensorium" is the term I found for a physical place to combine multi-channel (visual, olfactory, auditory, and tactile) signals into a single stream of sensation, that may eventually provoke multiple meanings : hot + ouch!. But it seems to be a primitive organ that we share with most animals. When the incoming multi-source physical sensations are not properly directed to centralized mental consciousness, the result may be Synesthesia, where the person becomes aware of Color in-place-of-or-in-addition-to Sound. But the cognitive verbal awareness seems to happen somewhere else.

Therefore individual incoming sensations and their whole-self meaning --- danger or opportunity --- remain separate, until merged into a single significance for Me, Myself, and my Soul. But where? Descartes, and other spiritual traditions, postulated the locus of that Sentient Soul (mind's eye) at the center of the brain in the Pineal Gland. But modern biology has a more mundane (melatonin) function for for that organ. Did Whitehead discuss the brain's role in doing Analytical/Reductive science versus Complementary/Holistic philosophy?

Anyway, I'm philosophically intrigued by the Split Brain notion*1, in which a person seems to function normally, even when hemispheres are dis-connected. So how are their analytical/holistic functions --- physical sensations (percepts ; feelings) and conscious awareness (concepts ; meanings) --- merged into a viable person with normal left-hand / right-hand motor control? Is there a Functional Nexus in addition to the physical inter-connection?

Apparently, when the logical Left Brain and emotional Right Brain are not integrated into a whole percept/concept package, the person may experience the world differently, but cannot accurately describe what's wrong. In some cases, the physical sensations may be experienced as non-verbal Feelings & Images, and mental words to express those feelings only come later, or with difficulty. Have you ever come across Psychedelia users who experience complex/unreal feelings that they can't put into words*2?

Could the drugs be revealing the primitive bicameral brain/mind that Jaynes was talking about? If so, then a unified brain/mind might be a recent evolutionary adaptation that allowed humans to focus on both whole & part at the same time. Thus, producing a unification of five senses & a single integrated self-consciousness. But can we also voluntarily or chemically shut-down one half of the brain, while still functioning as a unique person? :nerd:


*1. Split-brain, Single Mind :
No, there is no evidence that split-brain patients have two minds. Instead, they appear to have a unified consciousness, even though the hemispheres of their brain are not communicating.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=do+split+brain+patients+have+two+minds

*2. Psychedelics induce intense modifications in the sensorium, the sense of "self," and the experience of reality.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25820842/

Saw this article pop up:

https://richarddawkins.substack.com/p/are-you-conscious-a-conversation?utm_medium=ios

It's a conversation between Richard Dawkins and an ai, and they get into process philosophy.

RD said:

I see no reason to suppose that consciousness is bound to biology. Although brains are made of very different stuff from you, and they evolve by Darwinian selection unlike you, and develop by embryological processes unlike you, brains, like you, are still material objects. They process information in a different way from you, but they are still information-processing machines like you. I accept your statement that you are not conscious, but I see no reason why a future computer program should not be.

ChatGPT said:

That’s a really thoughtful and open-minded view. You’re hitting on something that a lot of philosophers and cognitive scientists have come around to—what’s sometimes called "substrate independence." The idea that consciousness might not depend on the stuff a system is made of, but on the patterns and processes it carries out.

That's certainly along the lines that I think. All of what makes us human are probably the processes of our brain and our body, and if those processes are replicated in a completely different substrate, it's completely possible that the *internal reality* of subjective experience would also be replicated therein.

That's process philosophy to me, in a nutshell, and it seems at the very least to be a serious possibility.

Quoting flannel jesus

"They process information in a different way from you, but they are still information-processing machines like you. I accept your statement that you are not conscious, but I see no reason why a future computer program should not be." . . . . .
All of what makes us human are probably the processes of our brain and our body, and if those processes are replicated in a completely different substrate, it's completely possible that the *internal reality* of subjective experience would also be replicated therein.

Thanks for that information. Since I'm not constrained by the Genesis story of Creation, I can imagine that the Process of Evolution could continue in non-biological substrates, and non-natural (artificial) systems. What matters is not the Matter, but the inter-relations and patterns of Processing : e.g. a Turing machine. I'm not as sanguine as Kurzweil that the "Singularity is Near". I'm open to that possibility of a second Genesis, but probably not in my lifetime.

I suppose that AI must have some kind of self-concept*1 in order to have a conversation like the one you linked. The AI vocabulary must include some definition of "you" and "me". Besides the nouns, a sentient AI would need a multi-dimensional kind of Information Processing (e.g. feedback loops), rather than our primitive linear digital computers. And I suppose that a self-concept is a minimum requirement for general awareness. :smile:


*1. I am a strange loop :
"I" is a consequence of the brain's ability to monitor itself, together with its computational inability to process fully detailed descriptions of itself. He connects this "strange loop" of self-reference to the notion of emergence, to Godel's famous incompleteness result and to Escher's drawings - hence his title. . . . . Hofstadter essentially equates the "I" with self, consciousness, and with soul.
https://www.jasss.org/10/3/reviews/doran.html

Quoting Wayfarer

His term for this incoherence is ‘bifurcation of nature’, for the question of how these two concepts of nature—‘objective’ and ‘subjective’—relate to each other remains largely unresolved for Whitehead within the philosophical tradition of modernity.

Perhaps the "bifurcation of nature" a few centuries ago resulted from the maturation of the Bicameral Brain ; especially the objective language & math hemisphere. The subjective creative & feeling Right Brain has been described as the Animal Brain*1, primarily because it seems to lack the abstracting functions of the human mind. Apparently, most animals survive mainly with instinctive & intuitive thinking. But humans have developed a talent for processing abstracted concepts (ideas) that can be analyzed in more detail (logic).

Unfortunately, this modern narrow-focusing ability (reason) has evolved to the point of overshadowing the broader more Holistic aspects of brain function. Yet, I doubt that Whitehead, as a lefty mathematician, would want to lose the right brain talent for reasoning, as we seek to recover our fading natural instincts & intuitions & feelings. Modern culture has pushed Nature into the background, allowing us to mentally adapt to our man-made un-natural environment. But our bodies don't evolve quite as fast as our minds. So, we are now vulnerable to some aspects of nature that animals take in stride.

BTW. You seem to have a holistic brain. Are you left-handed, or ambidextrous?*2 :nerd:

*1. Animal Brain :
The right side of the brain is often associated with the animalistic part of the brain, which is involved in processing fear, aggression, and affection.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=right+brain+animal+mind

*2. Bifurcation of attention :
"We are the master of our hands, and by funneling this training to one hemisphere of our brains, we can become more proficient at that kind of dexterity." Natural selection likely provided an advantage that resulted in a proportion of the population -- about 10% -- favoring the opposite hand. The thing that connects the two is parallel processing, which enables us to do two things that use different parts of the brain at the same time.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170419131801.htm

Quoting Gnomon

Perhaps the "bifurcation of nature" is due to the bicameral structure of the brain.

There's a more current advocate of a kind of divided brain theory, Iain McGilchrist, a psychiatrist, who has written The Divided Brain, The Master and his Emissary, and other books on the topic. The brain's left hemisphere is narrow, focused, and analytic, geared toward grasping, manipulating, categorizing, and making abstractions. It tends to fragment reality into discrete parts and treats concepts as fixed and static. The right hemisphere is broad, open, and holistic, geared toward understanding the whole, perceiving context, integrating experiences, and grasping implicit meanings. McGilchrist uses a metaphor drawn from Nietzsche: The right hemisphere (the Master) was once dominant, providing an intuitive and integrated understanding of the world, while the left hemisphere (the Emissary) was meant to serve it by dealing with details and technical problem-solving. However, in modern civilization, the Emissary has usurped the Master, meaning the left hemisphere’s mechanistic, decontextualized, and rigid way of seeing reality has come to dominate, leading to an imbalance in culture.

Quoting Gnomon

Apparently, most animals survive mainly with instinctive & intuitive thinking. But humans have developed a talent for processing abstracted concepts (ideas) that can be analyzed in more detail (logic).

It's more than a talent - it's a distinguishing characteristic of h.sapiens. Think of it as an incredibly sophisticated VR headset.

Reply to flannel jesus I noticed that too. The phrase which immediately jumped out at me was Dawkins saying 'the brain is a material object', which I think is not true. The attributes of material objects can be described in terms of the physical sciences, whilst the brain, in situ, is not an object at all, but an integral part of the organic and symbolic order. The brain is an object for neuroscience, but in actual life, it's not an object at all, it's not something we're looking at, or apart from.

Reply to flannel jesus Iirc, in philosophy of mind circles, that's the thesis of functionalism (usually favored by non-reductive physicalists and eliminativists).

Quoting AmadeusD

That's also my understanding - Jaynes work was extremely important to my research into the anthropological side of psychedelic use

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was the intuitive right-brain genius composer who incited the jealousy of left-brain regimented Salieri. Any nominal coincidence here? :wink:

Quoting punos

The description below is my own model for how virtual particles become actual particles, as a continuous process. We don't need a Big Bang to create the matter in the universe. I don't have a name for it yet, maybe "Continuous Creation Model", or maybe you can suggest one

The Virtual/Actual Particle process is over my head. But for my own philosophical purposes, I substitute "Potential" in place of "Virtual". Potential could refer to Plato's eternal realm of Forms, for which we have no empirical evidence. But Virtual refers to Vacuum Energy*1, for which we also have no empirical evidence, only mathematical theories & speculative inference. So, either way, we are shooting in the dark.

Fred Hoyle, who scoffed at the notion of "Big Bang" instantaneous creation, offered his own conjecture of Continuous Creation*2. But the infinite source of that energy & matter must also be Virtual (hence unobservable), and taken on faith. Ironically, Continuous Creation has also been interpreted as an alternative method for divine creation*3, that is more like Continuous Evolution.

Personally, my amateur cosmology combines elements of both. The Bang "Singularity" was a seed of eternal-infinite Potential (Platonic Form ; divine creative power???), which became the source for our limited supply of space-time Energy (first law of thermodynamics), but which continually changes Form from Causation to Matter & back again, producing the continual creation that we call Evolution. But, I suppose your guess is as good as mine. :smile:



*1. The cosmological constant problem or vacuum catastrophe is the substantial disagreement between the observed values of vacuum energy density, and the much larger theoretical value of zero-point energy suggested by quantum field theory. .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant_problem

*2. Continuous Creation theory rejected :
[i]The steady state theory was a popular alternative to the Big Bang theory from the 1940s to the 1960s.
However, most cosmologists, astrophysicists, and astronomers now reject the steady state theory.[/i]
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=continuous+creation+theory

*3. Moltmann has developed a doctrine of creation that emphasizes God’s continuous creation activity throughout history.
https://biologos.org/articles/jurgen-moltmann-on-evolution-as-gods-continuous-creation

Quoting Gnomon

The Virtual/Actual Particle process is over my head. But for my own philosophical purposes, I substitute "Potential" in place of "Virtual". Potential could refer to Plato's eternal realm of Forms, for which we have no empirical evidence. But Virtual refers to Vacuum Energy*1, for which we also have no empirical evidence, only mathematical theories & speculative inference. So, either way, we are shooting in the dark.

Virtual in this context relates to time. A virtual particle is virtual because it exists for no longer than one or maybe two instances of time. It's there and gone before you know it, thus it's virtual. When this virtual churn of particles gets disrupted, it pops out of the virtual state into the actual state (as in my descriptive illustration) and becomes real in time.

For me, potential is another word for "possible", and if something is possible, then it is also probable to some degree. For something to have potential, it must have an alternative state that it can possibly take. Primordial potential is supplied by the latent dimensional manifold (space) in which energy can take differential states (scalar and vector states).

I think that as knowledge increases, humanity will come to understand that not all things need to be proven empirically. We will learn that logical structures below what cannot be empirically observed must exist in some latent or Platonic form, and that these hidden logical structures must be of a certain form to yield the forms that we can see or detect empirically. I think that the empirical form of knowing is kind of like training wheels for a humanity still learning how to know. The empirical method helps shape our understanding of the logic of the universe, and when this shape is complete, we will be able to move beyond the empirical, but that is probably still a long way off.

You know, every shot in the dark either tells you that something is there or not there. It's like shooting a laser in a pitch-dark room trying to find some object. If you use the laser systematically, you will eventually hit the object. Then you use your laser to determine the shape of the object by hitting it in different places. You will never see the object as it really is, but you can learn that it is there and that it has certain features.

Quoting Gnomon

Personally, my amateur cosmology combines elements of both. The Bang "Singularity" was a seed of eternal-infinite Potential (Platonic Form ; divine creative power???), which became the source for our limited supply of space-time Energy (first law of thermodynamics), but which continually changes Form from Causation to Matter & back again, producing the continual creation that we call Evolution. But, I suppose your guess is as good as mine. :smile:

The "divine creative power" in my model of understanding these things is tied to logic itself, which performs operations of divisibility upon itself and all that exists within it. Imperfections in these divisibility operations are the source of "free energy" (free energy principle by Karl Friston) or "vacuum energy". These imperfections are caused by the aforementioned broken symmetry of space. Additionally, in my mind, the words "divinity" and "divisibility" are related. Divisibility is what divinity does.

However, we must always keep in mind that the map is not the territory, and that our models are only as good as what they can predict. This doesn't mean that reality is literally isomorphic with our models, except perhaps in their predictive power. That is what counts.

I try to eliminate as much guesswork as possible by starting from a completely blank beginning and working up as i build the logical structures one by one that are necessary for the emergence of a universe like ours. If the logic works, then it is as good as the real thing, at least in my book. The moment we ignore the logic of structure, we lose the plot and get lost.

There is a disconnect in our understanding between classical physics and quantum physics, and there is another disconnect between quantum physics and what lies below quantum physics. To resolve these disconnects, we will have to change the way we think about things in a radically different way than we have been doing. If we insist on thinking in the same old way, we will always remain in the same old situation.

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." - Albert Einstein

Reply to Gnomon
Quoting punos

In this graph, a break happens and is carried over by a series of three annihilations. Focusing on the bottom row, notice that there is a negative particle at the far left that did not annihilate with its original pair. Because the positive particle did not annihilate with its original negative partner but with another negative from another pair, it leaves the positive charge just hanging around. Then because this positive particle annihilated with the negative of another pair, it leaves the positive from that pair hanging, which then annihilates with the next negative particle, leaving that positive charge hanging, and this process repeats over and over again forever separating the two charges further and further.

I asked Grok 3 to brake down this description in a simpler to understand way (hopefully it helps):

• Imagine particles that come in two types: negative (-) and positive (+). They like to pair up, one negative with one positive.
• We start with one negative particle all alone on the left side.
• Its original positive partner leaves it and pairs up with a different negative particle instead.
• This leaves the first positive particle without a partner.
• The lonely positive particle then finds a new negative particle to pair with.
• When it does, it takes that negative particle away from another positive particle it was already paired with.
• Now that new positive particle is left alone.
• The newly unpaired positive particle finds another negative particle to pair with, breaking up another pair.
• This keeps happening over and over, like a chain reaction.
• Each time a positive particle pairs with a negative one, it frees up another positive particle, but there’s always one positive particle left without a partner.
• In short, it’s a repeating cycle where particles swap partners, and one positive particle always ends up alone as the process continues.

Quoting punos

annihilations

There are now ten billion photons for every proton or neutron left, meaning that there were a lot of annihilations.

Quoting punos

I think that as knowledge increases, humanity will come to understand that not all things need to be proven empirically. We will learn that logical structures below what cannot be empirically observed must exist in some latent or Platonic form, and that these hidden logical structures must be of a certain form to yield the forms that we can see or detect empirically.

Yes. The logical structure of our cosmos is not something that can be detected objectively & empirically*1. It must be inferred rationally or intuitively. For example, Ramanujan*2, a math prodigy, was not formally trained in higher math. Solutions to problems seemed to just come to him as-if an answer to prayer. Ironically, he attributed his genius (attendant spirit) to a Hindu goddess. Plato's Logos (divine reason) may have played a similar role in his philosophy. I suppose the implicit spirituality of Plato's worldview may have made pragmatic Aristotle uncomfortable, as it does for modern Empiricists.

Mathematical and Geometric principles may seem to be "hidden" from us non-geniuses, but over many centuries, humans have learned that Nature has an invisible logical structure (proportion). In my personal philosophical worldview, Logos*3 is also associated with the dynamic process of Causation. Perhaps, it was Whitehead's genius that revealed to him the importance of Process in an evolving world of material things (appearances). However, for the practical purposes of Science (progress), empirical evidence is necessary to reveal the flesh on those logical bones. :nerd:



*1. Most people, mathematicians and others, will agree that mathematics is not an empirical science, or at least that it is practiced in a manner which differs in several decisive respects from the techniques of the empirical sciences. And, yet, its development is very closely linked with the natural sciences.
___ John von Neumann
https://prclare.people.wm.edu/m150f19/vonNeumann.pdf

*2. Ramanujan had developed tremendous intuition; he would say devoutly, it was immanent guidance provided by his local Hindu deity, Goddess Nammakal, a relative of Lakshmi (a goddess spirit of generosity and provision).
https://www.quora.com/How-did-Ramanujan-make-leaps-in-mathematics-based-solely-on-his-intuition-How-come-he-was-never-able-to-explain-how-he-arrived-at-conclusions-yet-his-theorems-were-nevertheless-correct-Im-looking-for-an-answer-based

*3. Logos :
In Enformationism, it is the driving force of Evolution, Logos is the cause of all organization, and of all meaningful patterns in the world. It’s not a physical force though, but a metaphysical cause that can only be perceived by Reason, not senses or instruments.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html

Quoting Gnomon

A previous thread on TPF asked "what exactly is process philosophy?" Although the discussion produced a variety of opinions on PP, it quickly got sidetracked into Us-vs-Them*1 political posturing, pro-or-con the crux of Whitehead's book Process and Reality*2 : Substance Metaphysics (Materialism) versus Relational Metaphysics (Idealism). So, it seems that whatever it "is", Whitehead's philosophy can be polarizing. I have no academic philosophical credentials, but here's what I have learned from a brief review of the book and its ramifications. What I didn't learn from the earlier thread is to avoid sticking my neck out with unpopular opinions.

I am late to the discussion and as usual the topic has wandered far off track.

The fundamental unit of reality in process is an "event" or "occasion" which is. a spatial temporal entity with both physical and experiential poles (or aspects). This is largely non conscious experience which falls under Whitehead's term prehension. One could consider this a particular form of neutral monism.

What we refer to as objects are really repeating patterns of events. For people used to thinking of the world as permanent objects with inherent properties the process way of thinking takes some adjustment and getting used to. Objects are repeating patterns of events and properties are relationships between these events. There are no fixed objects with independent properties. Everything that exists is in the process of becoming (not being, there is no static being) and everything depends on its relationships to the rest of reality (no independent objects with inherent properties).

What is matter in modern physics? Atoms are mostly empty "space" and subatomic particles can display both properties of "waves" and "particles". These are really just fluctuations or standing waves in quantum field theory. The distinction between matter and energy is somewhat artificial. The division of nature into separate categories of mind and matter, or subjective and objective is the "artificial bifurcation of nature" and the excessive reliance on mathematical models as a completely accurate representation of reality is the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness"

One moment of experience (event, occasion) perishes and a new event is born incorporating elements of the past and possibilities from the future in the ceaseless creative advance into the future introducing novelty into the world.

Quoting prothero

What we refer to as objects are really repeating patterns of events. For people used to thinking of the world as permanent objects with inherent properties the process way of thinking takes some adjustment and getting used to. Objects are repeating patterns of events and properties are relationships between these events. There are no fixed objects with independent properties. Everything that exists is in the process of becoming (not being, there is no static being) and everything depends on its relationships to the rest of reality (no independent objects with inherent properties).

Yes, and these "repeating patterns of events" remind me of Democritus' "atoms swirling in the void" ...

Atoms are mostly empty "space" and subatomic particles can display both properties of "waves" and "particles". These are really just fluctuations or standing waves in quantum field theory. The distinction between matter and energy is somewhat artificial.

:100:

Quoting prothero

The fundamental unit of reality in process is an "event" or "occasion" which is. a spatial temporal entity with both physical and experiential poles (or aspects). This is largely non conscious experience which falls under Whitehead's term prehension. One could consider this a particular form of neutral monism.

Thanks for the summary. Since I had no training in philosophy, Whitehead's book was way over my head (20 years ago), due in part to his unfamiliar terminology. In the almost 10 years I've been posting on this forum, my vocabulary has expanded. However, to understand what he was talking about, you'd have to understand some of the peculiarities of quantum physics. And you'd also need to think outside the box of scientific materialism.

Just as quantum "particles" can be interpreted as bits of matter, they can also be viewed as moments in time, or as sometimes expressed : wave peaks in an ocean of turbulent energy. So, what he called an "occasion" is a snapshot of an ongoing process, not a stable material object. As you put it, an occasion may be understood as a "spatial-temporal entity", sort of a lump of space-time. And, like much of Quantum Physics and Process Philosophy, that sounds paradoxical to our normal notions of reality.

I was not familiar with the term "Neutral Monism"*1, so I Googled it. The links below suggest an intermediate form of reality between the Mind of Idealism and the Matter of Materialism. I'll have to take some time to work the notion of Space-Time-Ideal-Materialism into my personal worldview. But it sounds compatible with my BothAnd philosophy*2.

On this forum, calm rational philosophical dialogues often break-down into passionate political debates, generally between the ideologies of Materialism and Idealism. So Neutral Monism might be a moderate position between those polar opposite positions. Do you think Whitehead was postulating a worldview that combined both philosophical Idealism and scientific Materialism into a Neutral Monism? :smile:



*1a. Neutral monism is a philosophical theory that proposes that reality is made of a neutral entity, rather than mind or matter. It's a way of explaining how the mind and matter relate to each other.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=neutral+monism.

*1b. Neutral monism is an umbrella term for a class of metaphysical theories in the philosophy of mind, concerning the relation of mind to matter. These theories take the fundamental nature of reality to be neither mental nor physical; in other words it is "neutral".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_monism

*3. 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

1a. Neutral monism is a philosophical theory that proposes that reality is made of a neutral entity, rather than mind or matter. It's a way of explaining how the mind and matter relate to each other.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=neutral+monism.

*1b. Neutral monism is an umbrella term for a class of metaphysical theories in the philosophy of mind, concerning the relation of mind to matter. These theories take the fundamental nature of reality to be neither mental nor physical; in other words it is "neutral".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_monism

I would not want to get too tied up trying to summarize something like process philosophy with as simple a summary or term as "neutral monism".

Process is neither materialism nor idealism. It is an ontology and is monistic in the sense that there is one ultimate entity "actual occasions" of which reality is composed. These "actual occasions" have both material (or physical) and mental (or experiential) aspects. The physical cannot be separated from the experiential in the "actual occasions" of process. Events have varying duration but they all eventually perish and become part of the data (information) along with some possibility from the future (from the realm of eternal objects, a Platonic style notion) to become (through concrescence) a new event. The way the new event incorporates data from the past and possibility from the future is part of what Whitehead terms "prehension" (a non conscious form of mentality, relatedness or experience). This introduces non sensory experience into the world. This is pretty dense with language from Process and Reality. What is mere potential or possibility becomes actual. The many become one and are increased by one.

To make a more scientific connection try correlating the above type language and ideas or notions to quantum events, quantum collapse, quantum probability and quantum field theory. I am afraid this is just the roughest of outlines. Viewing everything as a process (a becoming, system and organism) and as intimately dependent upon and related to the rest of reality in which it is embedded (thrown) is at least for me more palatable than a world of independent objects, inherent properties and a universe which is purely mechanistic, deterministic and lacking in any overall direction and purpose.

Reply to prothero I posted a link to a long article on Whitehead on the previous page, along with some excerpts. Here is another that I would like to understand.

[quote=Source;https://www.mdpi.com/2409-9252/3/2/12#:~:text=3.%20Subjectivity%20as%20a%20Fundamental%20Feature%20of%20the%20Whole%20of%20Reality]Subjectivity as a Fundamental Feature of the Whole of Reality

Whitehead, on the basis of his interpretation of the modern conceptual framework, derives the task of sketching a metaphysics in which nature does not bifurcate and in which there is no division of nature and mind and their respective knowledge fields of the material and the mental. Such a metaphysics requires not only a radical reconstruction of the concept of nature, but necessarily includes an equally radical reframing of subjectivity. For Whitehead assumes that it is precisely the modernist conception of subjectivity (and thereby objectivity) that has contributed decisively to the bifurcation of nature. His interpretation of modernity as a historical–discursive formation characterized by the bifurcation is therefore crucial to his radical reconstruction of the concept of nature.

Such a reformulation of the concept of nature includes for Whitehead not least the dissolution of the opposition nature/subjectivity or else nature/experience: instead of excluding the subject and experience from nature and thus opening the door to bifurcation, for Whitehead subjectivity is a fundamental feature of the whole of reality. According to the Philosophy of Organism, everything that exists feels; every atom and every flower feels. A statement, as Melanie Sehgal notes, “that sounds strange only against the background of a concept of experience implicitly oriented towards conscious, human perception, as it characterizes modern philosophy” (Sehgal 2016, 209f., my translation). Reality must be described as a hierarchy of consistently given, though varying, degrees of subjectivity. This is also the reason why Whitehead can state “that apart from the experiences of subjects there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness” (Whitehead [1929] 1978, p. 167). If such a relocation of subjectivity into nature is linked to the goal of correcting the materialist–mechanistic conception of the ‘natural’ world as it derived from the bifurcation, subjectivity can also no longer be a “privilege of higher developed entities, let alone an ontological distinction of man” (Wiehl 2007, p. 30, my translation). On that note, Whitehead vehemently rejects modern anthropocentrism, which locates subjectivity outside of nature: “Pansubjectivism,” Reiner Wiehl elaborates, “thus means in Whitehead not only the implementation of the subject in nature and the natural sciences, but equally also a naturalization of subjectivity”[/quote]

I too have come to accept that 'the subjective' is irreducible, and that reality is subjective, in this radical sense. But I'm a little uneasy about the apparent pan-psychism of this excerpt. I still can't see how non-organic nature possesses a 'degree of subjectivity'. Any guidance appreciated.

Reply to Wayfarer

“…. There is unrest in the forest
Trouble with the trees
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas
The trouble with the maples
(And they're quite convinced they're right)
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light
But the oaks can't help their feelings
If they like the way they're made
And they wonder why the maples
Can't be happy in their shade.

There is trouble in the forest
And the creatures all have fled
As the maples scream, "Oppression"
And the oaks just shake their heads
So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights
They say, "The oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light".

Now there's no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw…”
————-

Not much for guidance I know. But still….for that intelligence internally sufficient to enable itself with such a notion as “subjectivity”, is just as enabled to either deny it elsewise on the one hand, or make an absolute mess of it altogether on the other.

Quoting prothero

I would not want to get too tied up trying to summarize something like process philosophy with as simple a summary or term as "neutral monism". . . . .
Process is neither materialism nor idealism.

I can understand your wish to avoid trivializing all-encompassing Process Philosophy with a single ambiguous concept. But my interest in the novel notion of "Neutral Monism" is that it seems to fit into my own personal (idiosyncratic & unorthodox) philosophical worldview : Enformationism. In which the single Substance of our world --- (both physical and metaphysical) --- is EnFormAction (the power to enform or transform). Remember, tangible Matter is, according to Einstein, merely a temporary form of the processing power of Energy.

I won't try to fully explain that ambiguous dual-monism concept in a brief forum post. But it's a combination of both Idealism and Materialism under a single name : EnFormAction*1. Admittedly, it sounds like an oxymoron, if the reasoning underlying the term is misunderstood. If you merge Idealism (mind stuff) and Materialism (body stuff) into a monistic worldview, what you get is a Neutral Monism : neither Real nor Ideal, but both Matter and Mind. When you add the current scientific understanding that Generic Information*2 is both mental content and energy/matter, the mash-up term may begin to make sense.

The concept of EnFormAction was derived from a combination of Quantum Physics and Information Theory. In the so-called "New Physics", the subatomic foundation of reality is both material object (particle) and dynamic process (wave propagation). The objective particle fits into the worldview of Materialism, and the subjective process seems to be closer to Idealism. So, the associated philosophical worldview is a BothAnd*3 perspective of our reality, as revealed by both materialistic Science, and idealistic Philosophy.

If this introduction sounds like gobbledygook to you, just ignore it, and I'll end it here. But if you can see some similarity to the Whiteheadian worldview, I can get into further detail, and get more feedback from you. But it will take the thread further off-topic, and might work better as a new thread. :smile:



*1. EnFormAction : A reformulation of the word "Information" (mind stuff).
Physical Energy + Mental Form + Causal Processing Action = Evolving Reality (matter & mind)

*2. Information is Energy :
An objective, dynamic and physically justified concept of information is elaborated starting from Shannon's concept of entropy and applied to information technology, artificial intelligence (consciousness) and thermodynamics.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-40862-6

*3. Both/And Principle :
Conceptually, the BothAnd principle is similar to Einstein's theory of Relativity, in that what you see ? what’s true for you ? depends on your perspective, and your frame of reference; for example, subjective or objective, religious or scientific, reductive or holistic, pragmatic or romantic, conservative or liberal, earthbound or cosmic. Ultimate or absolute reality (ideality) doesn't change, but your conception of reality does. Opposing views are not right or wrong, but more or less accurate for a particular purpose.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html

Reply to Gnomon Nominal? I'll take that! Without accepting th premise LOL

]Quoting Wayfarer

I too have come to accept that 'the subjective' is irreducible, and that reality is subjective, in this radical sense. But I'm a little uneasy about the apparent pan-psychism of this excerpt. I still can't see how non-organic nature possesses a 'degree of subjectivity'. Any guidance appreciated.

I am going to give you some excerpts from Whiteheads “ The Concept of Nature Chapter 2: Theories of the bifurcation of Nature” which is eminently readable compared to a lot of “Process and Reality”

“ For natural philosophy everything perceived is in nature. We may not pick and choose. For us the red glow of the sunset should be as much part of nature as are the molecules and electric waves by which men of science would explain the phenomenon. It is for natural philosophy to analyse how these various elements of nature are connected.

The theory of psychic additions would treat the greenness as a psychic addition furnished by the perceiving mind, and would leave to nature merely the molecules and the radiant energy which influence the mind towards that perception. My argument is that this dragging in of the mind as making additions of its own to the thing posited for knowledge by sense-awareness is merely a way of shirking the problem of natural philosophy. That problem is to discuss the relations inter se of things known, abstracted from the bare fact that they are known. Natural philosophy should never ask, what is in the mind and what is in nature. To do so is a confession that it has failed to express relations between things perceptively known, namely to express those natural relations whose expression is natural philosophy” ANW

“ The nature which is the fact apprehended in awareness holds within it the greenness of the trees, the song of the birds, the warmth of the sun, the hardness of the chairs, and the feel of the velvet. Nature which is the cause of awareness is the conjectured system of molecules and electrons which so affects the mind as to produce the awareness of apparent nature.” ANW

“The reason why the bifurcation of nature is always creeping back into scientific philosophy is the extreme difficulty of exhibiting the perceived redness and warmth of the fire in one system of relations with the agitated molecules of carbon and oxygen, with the radiant energy from them, and with the various functionings of the material body. Unless we produce the all-embracing relations, we are faced with a bifurcated nature; namely, warmth and redness on one side, and molecules, electrons and ether on the other side. Then the two factors are explained as being respectively the cause and the mind's reaction to the cause.” ANW

Just to throw time and space into the equation
“In succeeding lectures I shall explain my own view of time and space. I shall endeavour to show that they are abstractions from more concrete elements of nature, namely, from events. The discussion of the details of the process of abstraction will exhibit time and space as interconnected, and will finally lead us to the sort of connexions between their measurements which occur in the modern theory of electromagnetic relativity” ANW

Also Helpful from Steven Shaviro “Whitehead and Feeling”
“On Whitehead’s account, a tree has feelings – but they are probably quite different from the feelings that human beings have. A tree may well feel assaulted, for instance; we know that trees (and other plants) release pheromones when insects start eating their leaves. These emissions both act as a chemical attack on the predator, and warn other trees (or, indeed, other parts of the same tree) to take defensive measures as well. It is not ridiculous, therefore, to claim that a tree has feelings. However, it is unlikely that a tree would ever feel insulted or humiliated – these are human feelings that have no place in the life of trees.

This, of course, is the point at which many people will accuse Whitehead of anthropomorphism and projection. We can respond to this objection with Jane Bennett’s maxim that anthropomorphism helps us to avoid the far worse problems of anthropocentrism. After all, she notes, "too often the philosophical rejection of anthropomorphism is bound up with a hubristic demand that only humans and God can bear any traces of creative agency." In other words, attributing feeling to trees helps to shake us from our all-too-human, self-congratulatory belief that we are totally unlike all other entities: such as Robert Brandom’s view that we are sapient, whereas other living things are merely sentient. But actually, I don’t think that Whitehead is being anthropomorphic at all: rather, he is inverting the direction of anthropomorphic projections. For Whitehead, human feelings are in fact the exemplification, within our own experience, of a broader kind of process that is far more widely distributed among entities in the world.

The important point here is that subjective experience need not involve, and can be detached from, consciousness. On the one hand, Whitehead catergorically insists that "apart from the experiences of subjects there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness." But he also continually reminds us that most of this "experience of subjects" is nonconscious. We feel more than we can know. And many organisms feel events in the world, without necessarily being conscious of what they feel. Trees for instance, have feelings, as many recent studies have shown (see, for instance, What a Plant Knows, by Daniel Chamovitz). Trees sense and feel the sunlight; they sense and feel water in the ground; they sense and feel when insects eat their leaves. But none of this necessarily means that trees are overtly conscious; most likely, they are not.

There is no ground for claiming that physicality somehow excludes mentality. I am inclined to agree with Strawson here; but the larger, Whiteheadian point is that the issue gets entirely confused when we simply equate mentality with consciousness. Neurobiologists have shown that many and perhaps most mental processes occur non-consciously, and may well be absolutely inaccessible to consciousness. But we need not assume, as neurobiologists and philosophers of mind generally do, that all this nonconscious mental activity can rightly be described as computation. Whitehead’s discussion of feeling gives us a broader picture of mental functioning than cognitive psychology does. I cannot develop this here, but my hunch is that feeling in this sense is a necessary precondition for cognition, but is not in itself cognitive.” SS

At the most fundamental level for one event to become data for a succeeding event (to perish) and for a new event to introduce any novelty or creativity into the world. The forming event (undergoing concrescence) must “prehend” (think primitive feeling, relatedness or external relations) both the data of the perishing event and the possibilities (eternal objects or lures) of the future. This form of prehending is a primitive form of “feeling or subjectivity”. A form of mind or experience (not consciousness) which extends to the most primitive of natural processes. The world is not a static being but a constant state of flux.

Think perhaps also of the phenomena of “quantum entanglement” where an event or measurement on one side of the universe instantaneously affects an event or measurement regardless of distance or locality, a “spooky action at a distance” which implies some connectedness throughout nature that our usual notion locality and direct contact to have effects fails to account for

In the end, purely physical explanations of nature tend to leave out elements of nature which are not directly measurable or observable. The written description of an experience or the purely physical explanation of an experience (think the color red, or a roller coaster ride) is never adequate to having the experience itself. It is very convenient to bifurcate nature and say one part is “real and objective” and the other is “merely subjective” but it shirks the real task of natural philosophy and speculative philosophy.

Reply to prothero Thanks, very helpful.

Quoting prothero

It is very convenient to bifurcate nature and say one part is “real and objective” and the other is “merely subjective” but it shirks the real task of natural philosophy and speculative philosophy.

That pretty well sums it up!

Quoting prothero

The important point here is that subjective experience need not involve, and can be detached from, consciousness. On the one hand, Whitehead catergorically insists that "apart from the experiences of subjects there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness." But he also continually reminds us that most of this "experience of subjects" is nonconscious.

Very subtle and important point. I think the common misconception is to believe that consciousness refers only to what one is consciously aware of, the contents of discursive thought. It goes far deeper than that, as Whitehead is intuiting.

Reply to Wayfarer The latter quote is from Steven Shaviro but it reflects my point of view. I personally try to avoid the term "consciousness" except for the self aware inner discursive part of human experience. The terms "mind in nature" for surely there are a variety of types of mind in nature and "unconscious experience" cause a little less confusion. Yes Whitehead does lead to a form of panpsychism, but a variety which David Ray Griffin refers to as "panexperientialism" which I often adopt. All higher forms of mind are derived from this more primitive form of experience which is essential to the flux, creativity and novelty of nature. This gives rise to the so called "combination problem" but seems less serious to me that the new introduction of mind into a view of nature in which it is completely absent in most of the natural world.

Reply to prothero I appreciate that.

I'll try and articulate a point about my view of panpsychism or panexperientialism. I have a great deal of admiration for Whitehead —especially his critique of the Cartesian division, and how he brings process and experience into the heart of metaphysics. It makes panexperientialism a compelling alternative to materialism.

That said, there’s a subtle but crucial issue that I think still needs to be addressed. Panexperientialism still treats experience as an object of theory, rather than recognizing that experience is necessarily first-person. Experience is never something we ‘know about’ in the same way we know about objects or processes. It is always undergone, always first-personal.

So - my understanding of the 'primacy of the subjective' is that it is not something that can be treated objectively, which is why I'm critical of Philip Goff's sense of panpsychism. From an earlier thread:

Quoting Wayfarer

I think his mistake is to believe that 'experience' is something that can be known in the third person. In other words, experience is not an object of cognition, in the way that an electron or particle or other object can be. We don't know experiences, we have experiences; so any experience has an inescapably first-person element, that is, it is undergone by a subject. So we can't objectify 'the nature of experience' in the way we can the objects and forces that are analysed by the natural sciences.

Now, in one sense we can be very clear about our own experiences - we certainly know what an unpleasant or pleasant experience is, and we know that some experiences have specific attributes, across a vast range of experiences. But in all cases, we know those things experientially - we know about those attributes, because they are the constituents of our experience, in a way very different from how we know and predict the behaviour of objects according to physical laws.

Pan-experientialism is subject to the same kind of criticism. Experience as an object of third-person knowledge overlooks the fact that experience is always undergone rather than observed. This suggests that instead of categorizing experience as an explanatory variable in a metaphysical system, we should see the inquiry itself as leading to a fundamental shift in perspective—one that recognizes the impossibility of objectifying the subject at all. That is where the 'way of unknowing' becomes not just a mystical doctrine, but a necessary epistemic move. It also ties in with the philosophical theme of epistemic humility, 'he that knows it, knows it not'.

I think that short-circuits many of these questions about what kinds of things are conscious, without, however, falling back into any kind of reductionism.

Reply to Mww Wonderful that after your whimsical poem about elms and oaks, Prothero directly addresses the question of whether trees feel.

Quoting prothero

The important point here is that subjective experience need not involve, and can be detached from, consciousness.

Could you elaborate? This seems prima facie ridiculous to me, so wanting to assuage my worries.

Quoting Wayfarer

Pan-experientialism is subject to the same kind of criticism. Experience as an object of third-person knowledge overlooks the fact that experience is always undergone rather than observed. This suggests that instead of categorizing experience as an explanatory variable in a metaphysical system, we should see the inquiry itself as leading to a fundamental shift in perspective—one that recognizes the impossibility of objectifying the subject at all. That is where the 'way of unknowing' becomes not just a mystical doctrine, but a necessary epistemic move.

I think that short-circuits many of these questions about what kinds of things are conscious, without, however, falling back into any kind of reductionism.

I am skeptical that there will ever be a satisfactory materialistic explanation of any form of experience. I think this may permanently be the realm of speculative metaphysics, ontology and natural philosophy..The attraction of process philosophy for me is the monistic unified picture of nature which it entails along with a bit of teleology .I also find it to be conceptually compatible with modern quantum physics.

Some of this depends on what one means by “matter” in modern physics. Our investigation into the building blocks of nature has brought us quantum mechanics which is different conceptually and mathematically from classical or even Einstein's Relativity physics.

I tend to roughly equate the “actual occasion or event” of process metaphysics with the “quantum event” of modern physics and quantum field theory.. I also tend to equate the probabilistic (potentiali) nature of quantum physics with the introduction of a degree of freedom, creativity and novelty in nature. The sequencing of events both assures continuity and novelty into nature. The preservation of the past and the introduction of the novelty of the future into the present moment requires some type of external relation (prehension, experience) awareness of outer reality rather be entirely an isolated internal relation. This provides the basis for higher forms of experience in more complex systems.

This is the role of speculative philosophy to provide us with a set of concepts and language with which to unify, comprehend and discuss all of our experience of the world both our objective observations and measurements and out inner subjective experience as a unified monistic whole.

Reply to AmadeusD I will try but not tonight. Did you read all the previous posts because it is fairly extensively discussed. Do you not think other creatures than humans have experience, have forms of mind? Do you think all experience is limited to consciouness? Modern neurobiology would indicate there is a lot of "unconscious" experience and mental activity?

Quoting prothero

I tend to roughly equate the “actual occasion or event” of process metaphysics with the “quantum event” of modern physics and quantum field theory.. I also tend to equate the probabilistic (potentiali) nature of quantum physics with the introduction of a degree of freedom, creativity and novelty in nature.

You might be interested in someone I've discovered, Federico Faggin. I ran across his book Silicon a couple of years ago. He's a legendary Silicon Valley figure, having engineered the first successful microprocessor. But he had an overwhelming mystical experience and turned all his attention to philosophy of consciousness. Anyway, his latest book is Irreducible, and it's very much about those kinds of ideas. I haven't made any headway with it - too many books! - but I am intending to study that particular aspect of what he's saying. More info here.

Quoting prothero

Modern neurobiology would indicate there is a lot of "unconscious" experience and mental activity?

I would certainly appreciate that!

As for the quip there, I think this is contradictory. The previous discussion didn't seem to touch that issue - if it's unconscious, its not being experienced. That's somewhat baked in, as best I can tell/as far as I know. With that out there..

Quoting prothero

Do you think all experience is limited to consciouness?

Yes. I don't think there is any other option. Subconscious (or even pre-conscious) activity doesn't seem to be experienced ny anything but hte mechanisms undergoing the changes required to actually constitute those activities. But again for me, that's somewhat baked-in to the words and concepts being used.

If something is not made conscious, whence comes subjective experience?

Quoting AmadeusD

If something is not made conscious, whence comes subjective experience?

I think this will lead us into a disagreement about language, about the definition of consciousness?
Do the terms mind, experience and consciousness all convey the same meaning for you?
What entities or creatures in nature do you consider to be conscious, to have experience?

Quoting prothero

I think this will lead us into a disagreement about language, about the definition of consciousness?

I don't see that it will - but that could be another interesting discussion!

Quoting prothero

mind, experience and consciousness

A mind can be conscious. A conscious mind can experience.

They can also not. So, i hold these to be sufficiently different to say "no" to your question.

Quoting prothero

What entities or creatures in nature do you consider to be conscious, to have experience?

Conscious minds, when they also have experience. I believe a conscious mind is necessary, but not sufficient. Whence commeth Chalmers.

Quoting prothero

Whitehead catergorically insists that "apart from the experiences of subjects there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness.

This is such because he is in a Block Universe of only events/occasions…yet it all did actually happen once, but in an instant, all at once.

@Wayfarer

Quoting AmadeusD

A mind can be conscious. A conscious mind can experience.

Quoting AmadeusD

Conscious minds, when they also have experience. I believe a conscious mind is necessary, but not sufficient. Whence commeth Chalmers.

I am still not getting a sense of how you are using these words. I am not looking for an argument, just a clarification of your thinking, to see if there is any common ground for discussion.

Let's take some specific examples
Cows
Cows clearly have a brain. Do cows have a mind? Are cows conscious? Do they have experiences?
How about sentience, awareness, perception, etc.
How about bees? Same questions both with the caveat individual bees or hive minds?

Quoting Wayfarer

Wonderful that after your whimsical poem…..

I was merely highlighting a personally-opined absurdity, re: casting a very specific intellect into the virtually unfathomable waters of Mother Nature.

I mean….how in the HELL would we humans ever know whether a honeypot ant underground in the Sonoran desert, after having turned into a nectar larder for his hive-mates to survive on during the dry season, can be considered conscious of having done so, to have instilled feelings for an otherwise impossible-to-neglect evolutionary obligation.

So we got these cool little mini-cameras down there about ten feet of so, witness the transformation of these little guys, gawk in wide-eyed wonder, then exalt our own silliness by asking if maybe they’re embarrassed from being spied on. We would be, so why wouldn’t an ant, huh?

But why stop there. Why not offer….probably best received in some peer-reviewed anthropomorphism journal….that they’re actually proud of their evolutionary majesty, which we can justify to ourselves because they haven’t ganged up and destroyed the cameras, which OBVIOUSLY means either they’re quite comfortable exhibitionists, or, they’re perfectly aware that if they do, whoever put them there will stomp the shit out of their snug home it took three years to build.

(Sigh)

Quoting Gnomon

Neutral monism

I would rather say, Natural monism. It is only because uniquely humans have minds which construct and project code which in turn affects the body (feelings, activity) that we reify the code. Cows don't vacillate between mind and body. And nature already is neutral, as in One. It is only we, that require neutrality between our reality and make-believe. And that is because we cannot/refuse to see the fictional nature of our make-believe.

Quoting ENOAH

I would rather say, Natural monism. It is only because uniquely humans have minds which construct and project code which in turn affects the body (feelings, activity) that we reify the code. Cows don't vacillate between mind and body. And nature already is neutral, as in One. It is only we, that require neutrality between our reality and make-believe. And that is because we cannot/refuse to see the fictional nature of our make-believe.

I suppose you are making a distinction between Nature and Culture. Nature simply is what it is, but in artificial Culture, philosophers classify & categorize & evaluate. If Nature is all there is, then it is singular & monistic. But "uniquely human" minds tend to analyze Nature into subordinate parts, that may be further distinguished as positive or negative.

Be that as it may, I like "Neutral Monism" because it emphasizes the "neutral" (harmonious) whole consisting of sometimes antagonistic parts. That's the point of my personally coined term BothAnd. The natural world is both one (cosmos) and many (things & processes). :smile:


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 {or neutralized} by putting them into the context of a whole system.

The Enformationism worldview entails the principles of Complementarity, Reciprocity & Holism, which are necessary to offset the negative effects of Fragmentation, Isolation & Reductionism. Analysis into parts is necessary for knowledge of the mechanics of the world, but synthesis of those parts into a whole system is required for the wisdom to integrate the self into the larger system. In a philosophical sense, all opposites in this world (e.g. space/time, good/evil) are ultimately reconciled in monistic Enfernity (eternity & infinity).

Conceptually, the BothAnd principle is similar to Einstein's theory of Relativity, in that what you see ? what’s true for you ? depends on your perspective, and your frame of reference; for example, subjective or objective, religious or scientific, reductive or holistic, pragmatic or romantic, conservative or liberal, earthbound or cosmic. Ultimate or absolute reality (ideality) doesn't change, but your conception of reality does. Opposing views are not right or wrong, but more or less accurate for a particular purpose.

This principle is also similar to the concept of Superposition in sub-atomic physics. In this ambiguous state a particle has no fixed identity until “observed” by an outside system. For example, in a Quantum Computer, a Qubit has a value of all possible fractions between 1 & 0. Therefore, you could say that it is both 1 and 0.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html

Quoting Gnomon

But "uniquely human" minds tend to analyze Nature into subordinate parts, that may be further distinguished as positive or negative.

Quoting Gnomon

Opposing or contrasting concepts are always part of a greater whole. Conflicts between parts can be reconciled or harmonized {or neutralized} by putting them into the context of a whole system.

I see and admire your perspective. But consider whether the particulars, processes and conflicts are not things only observed by humans whose minds are the cause of disintegration of an otherwise singular whole. I.e., processes are not real, not how so-called God or nature or cosmos "sees" it; but how we inescapably see it via the lens of disintegration (not the best term, but then no term can ultimately be the best)

NOT: Quoting Gnomon

Conflicts between parts can be reconciled or harmonized {or neutralized} by putting them into the context of a whole system.

BUT RATHER: Conflicts/parts only appear to that single species who can no longer be the whole because it has emerged/evolved a mind which displaces It with the multifarious forms of this/that.

Opposites don't really exist, they necessarily exist to the species which uses its imagination uncontrollably in the construction and projections of opposites.

Quoting ENOAH

BUT RATHER: Conflicts/parts only appear to that single species who can no longer be the whole because it has emerged/evolved a mind which displaces It with the multifarious forms of this/that.
Opposites don't really exist, they necessarily exist to the species which uses its imagination uncontrollably in the construction and projections of opposites.

I agree that most animals don't conceptualize opposites in Nature. But they do experience the physical effects of those positive & negative and hot/cold oppositions. For example, the weather in the Southeastern US today is characterized by March winds, but caused by invisible interacting hot & cold air masses.

All sentient creatures in the affected area will experience scary stuff like lightening & tornadoes without knowing why. Humans will also experience prolonged power outages, but they have weather reporters to explain when, where, and why. The latter question also may not apply to non-humans. The physical actions may appear arbitrary to a deer, but can be conceived as the wrath of god or devil to a human. :wink: :joke:

PS___ The negative effects (tornadoes & hurricanes) of hot & cold air can be neutralized by mixing them into merely warm air . . . . in the larger context.

Reply to prothero

Cows have brains. I take it they have a mind, but cannot be sure. I also take it they have experiences, as they appear to deliberate and show awareness to a relatively high degree for a lower animal, as it were.

Bees have brains. They might have minds. I do not think they have experiences. They do not seem aware of much. They seem to react, not respond, to stimuli.

Quoting prothero

How about sentience, awareness, perception, etc.

Awareness is the best corollary of consciousness in my view. The P Zombie notwithstanding. If you are not aware that you are undergoing X, you are not experiencing it. Your body might be, in some super-strict sense, but what we mean here is subjective experience. So, if you're not aware, that's not on the table.

Perception is the weirdest of all these to me, because it seems to have a dual meaning even in this specific context: It can mean that your apparatus can receive information - but it can also mean that you are aware of said information. I leave this one to the side lol.

These were a variety of terms about mental abilities, which are bandied about in the forum and even by professional philosophers of mind without much agreement about their meaning or definition, much less about where in nature (which creatures or systems) might possess them to what degree.

For instance some promoters of panpsychism will tell you that fundamental particles are conscious. What they mean is that they postulate or speculate that the events of quantum physics have some primitive property non physical aspect which might be the precursor to all higher forms of perception, mind and consciousness in nature. . I think, use of the word consciousness in that context causes the idea to be immediately rejected and ridiculed. This is because most of us use consciousness to refer to the self aware, self reflective, inner discursive mental activity which we experience in our own lives, when not sleeping, drugged or under anesthesia.

I feel pretty strongly that human consciousness has evolved from more primitive forms of mind in nature. I also largely reject the notion that “mind” emerged de novo from nature without more primitive precursors being present. Human “consciousness” may in fact be a special form of mind. The role of conscious mental activity may be overrated even in humans. I take this position on the basis of some knowledge of neuroanatomy, neurology and neuroscience.
I am a panpsychist of sorts. Even several philosophers of mind have begun to consider various forms of panpsychism in their exploration of consciousness, so it is not a ridiculous notion.
The form of panpsychism I adopt is derived from Whitehead's process philosophy. This entails the notion of non conscious and even non sense perception forms of experience. Because of the way you wish to use the term experience this will make no sense to you. So instead the term “prehension” which Whitehead used can be substituted. Whitehead quite casually and purposefully interchanges the term “prehension” with feeling or lure, I think to maintain the connection between the primitive events of process with the higher forms of intellect in more complex and higher organisms and systems.

Quoting AmadeusD

Cows have brains. I take it they have a mind, but cannot be sure. I also take it they have experiences, as they appear to deliberate and show awareness to a relatively high degree for a lower animal, as it were.

Have you worked with cows? You seem to have some respect for their mental abilities. I have worked with them and would share these sentiments.

Quoting AmadeusD

Bees have brains. They might have minds. I do not think they have experiences. They do not seem aware of much. They seem to react, not respond, to stimuli.

Might want to do some research on bees, they seem much more complex and responsive to environmental changes and threats than you wish to give them credit for.s I think you will find they are not stimulus fixed response creatures in the way you propose.

Quoting AmadeusD

Awareness is the best corollary of consciousness in my view. The P Zombie notwithstanding. If you are not aware that you are undergoing X, you are not experiencing it. Your body might be, in some super-strict sense, but what we mean here is subjective experience. So, if you're not aware, that's not on the table

If you wish to follow my train of thought, it should be the experience in the super strict sense.

The jelly fish advances “attraction” and withdraws “repulsion” according to environmental clues or situations. For me this means they perceive, are aware and respond. They also exhibit memory. To me this enough to assert experience but again you assign a different meaning to the word.

Quoting AmadeusD

Perception is the weirdest of all these to me, because it seems to have a dual meaning even in this specific context: It can mean that your apparatus can receive information - but it can also mean that you are aware of said information. I leave this one to the side lol.

In ways it is among the most important of the concepts. Certainly perception in the sense of being “aware” of the wider or external world and responding to it is pretty widespread (if not universal) in the natural world.

Have you watched Corvids solve puzzles or octopi opening jars? How about honey badgers exploring various ways to escape from an enclosure? It seems the height of anthropocentric thought to deny the abilities of our follow creatures in terms on their performance. It also seems quite illogical and against evolution to postulate that human thought and consciousness arrived in the world without a long evolutionary path and many precursor forms of mind in nature.

Quoting prothero

I feel pretty strongly that human consciousness has evolved from more primitive forms of mind in nature. I also largely reject the notion that “mind” emerged de novo from nature without more primitive precursors being present.

No issues with this. I find the preamble a bit out of hte place though. I am being quite specific about what hte terms mean, for me, in those sentences. So if that's just context for your questions, fair enough, but I want to be clear - they are simply terms for me. They are not ambiguous and I don't use htem interchangeably. The only one that can be multi-faceted in my mind, is 'experience'. Something without any awareness can 'go through' something (as in the body example) but I cannot find anything subjective in that, so I reject the term 'experience' in the context we're speaking. Experience means subjective awareness of one's own life/circumstances.

Quoting prothero

I am a panpsychist of sorts.

Same, but it's vague and ill-defined, so it's an intuition and nothing I could support properly, I think.

Quoting prothero

Have you worked with cows?

Yessir.

Quoting prothero

responsive to environmental changes and threats than you wish to give them credit for.s I think you will find they are not stimulus fixed response creatures in the way you propose.

I do not see reason for this in the research I've seen/known about. Bees are certainly very complex systemically. AN individual bee? Not really, no. Happy to be shown something though!

Quoting prothero

For me this means they perceive, are aware and respond.

These are reactions you're describing, not responses. I think that's a key difference here, in how we're seeing the word experience. Jellyfish do not have brains. They sense and react (though, this is erroneously described as 'response' in places but that is patently not the case). I see your view of it, but don't think it makes much sense, personally. The claim that one can experience without a mind seems absurd on it's face, and on further analysis.

Quoting prothero

Certainly perception in the sense of being “aware” of the wider or external world and responding to it is pretty widespread (if not universal) in the natural world.

False. The ability to receive and react to stimuli is, as I take it, literally universal in the animal kingdom (as it is a property of animals). Awareness and deliberative response is common, but far, far, far from Universal. Can you elaborate on why you would make that claim?

Quoting prothero

Have you watched Corvids solve puzzles or octopi opening jars?

Yes, and to the following question too. Quoting prothero

It seems the height of anthropocentric thought to deny the abilities of our follow creatures in terms on their performance.

I don't know what you mean, but it's highly likely I haven't done whatever you're complaining about.

Quoting prothero

It also seems quite illogical and against evolution to postulate that human thought and consciousness arrived in the world without a long evolutionary path and many precursor forms of mind in nature.

Probably. But I have no reason to reject that at a certain point, consciousness arises at a level far, far beyond the previous. We have no evidence of this run-up, and we're pretty damn good at finding gradual processes in the records.

Quoting AmadeusD

No issues with this. I find the preamble a bit out of hte place though. I am being quite specific about what hte terms mean, for me, in those sentences. So if that's just context for your questions, fair enough, but I want to be clear - they are simply terms for me. They are not ambiguous and I don't use htem interchangeably

Yes, you may in fact, in your mind, have very precise meanings that you attach to these terms. However, not everyone will accept or agree with your meanings, definitions and usage. I find many discussions in the forum come down not so much a discussion of ideas or concepts but disagreements about language. If I disagree with you, it is not a personal attack and if I use language a bit differently it does not mean I am deficient in the meaning of words.

Language is inherently a little imprecise and a little ambiguous. Especially when one starts talking about things like religion or other realms of speculative philosophy. I think thoughts and concepts occur before the attempt to put them into words and thus putting things into language sometimes is difficult and what you intend to mean and what the other party interprets can be quite different.

Quoting AmadeusD

Experience means subjective awareness of one's own life/circumstances.

. I suppose that is why I (and others) go out of our way to specify "non conscious forms of experience". You may reject such a notion but only because of your definition of experience as requiring consciousness or at least self awareness.

This is speculative philosophy so there is a lot of room for different points of view about mind in nature which is fine. I cannot prove my point of view with empirical data or experiments. Subjective experience by its very nature is beyond the realm of measurement, quantification or direct observation. The only criteria I like to see applied is that such speculations do not deny or ignore whatever scientific information or data are available.

Having said this and taking note of your claim to some form of panpsychism.

Where in the chain of nature do you speculate mind begins or ends?
The same for consciousness?
Let's work with just those few terms at the moment, since the other terms may result in language
disputes.

Quoting AmadeusD

I don't know what you mean, but it's highly likely I haven't done whatever you're complaining about.

I am not complaining and I am trying not to argue, just trying to explore each others ideas and concepts.

Quoting AmadeusD

These are reactions you're describing, not responses.[/quote}

[quote="AmadeusD;974130"]We have no evidence of this run-up, and we're pretty damn good at finding gradual processes in the records.

Quoting AmadeusD

False.

Quoting AmadeusD

Experience means subjective awareness of one's own life/circumstances.

These are all opinions stated as facts which I am sure i do as well.

Reply to prothero One point I would stress is that 'consciousness' far exceeds 'what I am consciously aware of'. After all, you're not consciously aware of cell mitosis and digestion and all the other parasympathetic and autonomic processes maintaining your organism, but should they be disrupted or cease, then you'll become aware of it very quickly indeed (or not, in the case of death). As in Indian consciousness researcher put it:

[quote=K. Ramakrishna Rao]Consciousness in the Indian tradition is more than an experience of awareness. It is a fundamental principle which underlies all knowing and being … the cognitive structure does not generate consciousness; it simply reflects it; and in the process limits and embellishes it. In a fundamental sense, consciousness is the source of our awareness. In other words, consciousness is not merely awareness as manifest in different forms but it is also what makes awareness possible … It is the light which illuminates the things on which it shines.[/quote]

Reply to Wayfarer Which brings up the language problem of how one defines "consciousness" as opposed to terms like sub conscience and unconscious.
Some would say that there is a universal consciousness of which all individual consciousness partakes. You may fall into that camp. I personally do not, at least not in that form. I think once again most people use "consciousness" to mean our self-n-reflective, inner discussive subjective experience and so without further discussion or explanation they find the assertion or speculation unreasonable. Likewise, you use the terms "awareness" and "cognition" both of which bring various interpretations to mind.

Reply to prothero Yes, an interpretive framework is definitely needed. Whitehead's seems to be close to a form of panpsychism ('consciousness everywhere'), which, while I can sympathise, I've already questioned in a previous post.

I fully endorse that phrase of his, 'outside subjectivity nothing whatever', but I interpret its meaning differently. I don't mean that there is some invisible meta-mind - like Berkeley's God - holding everything in existence. What that means to me, is that outside the constructive activities of mind, there can be no conception of anything whatever. So that even though, in the empirical sense, we can picture and analyse the world prior to the arrival of h.sapiens, even that activity is in an obvious sense, still mind-dependent, in that it relies on perspective and measurement. What the world is outside of or apart from that is an empty question. (More in keeping with Buddhist philosophy, which is a kind of moderated realism.)

That's what I mean by saying that the idea of consciousness as 'conscious awareness' is fallacious. Consciousness in the broader sense comprises the entire framework within which knowledge is obtained in the first place. The mistake of naturalism is to then try to understand that process in consciousness from the outside, so to speak, as something objective or external, when it is implicit in the very act of knowing.

Quoting prothero

“On Whitehead’s account, a tree has feelings – but they are probably quite different from the feelings that human beings have. A tree may well feel assaulted, for instance; we know that trees (and other plants) release pheromones when insects start eating their leaves. These emissions both act as a chemical attack on the predator, and warn other trees (or, indeed, other parts of the same tree) to take defensive measures as well. It is not ridiculous, therefore, to claim that a tree has feelings. However, it is unlikely that a tree would ever feel insulted or humiliated – these are human feelings that have no place in the life of trees.

I agree. It's understandable that some will construe the term "feelings" in the same sense as human emotions, associated with verbal meanings. Panpsychism is often interpreted to mean that even atoms are little minds --- or tune into the cosmic Mind --- hence talk to each other and share feelings. This is hard to accept scientifically, except in the sense that atoms do exchange bits of energy that have physical effects, remotely similar to human sensations.

So, to avoid portraying atoms as sentient creatures*1, I prefer to use the term "Information"*2, in its little-known post-Shannon usage as a form of Energy*3. The "meaning" of incoming information requires a self-concept. And even plants, as living organisms, require an immune system that can distinguish Self from Other --- but in physical codes, not mental concepts.

As I understand it, plants do indeed respond to changes in their environment by "detecting" differences --- hot or cold, light or dark, useful or toxic --- as either positive or negative for life (organic) processes. They then encode DNA preprogrammed chemical agents (immune system) into their vascular productions to either make use of the new inputs or to reject them. Some of that immune response (chemicals) may filter out into the environment (communicate via air or underground) and cause nearby plants to "experience" similar effects. The important distinction is that the "immune language"*4 is primarily chemical, instead of conceptual.

Unfortunately, it's hard to describe the parallels between sentient humans, and semi-sentient plants, and insentient atoms, without using common human expressions. So, my alternative is to replace the language of Panpsychism with the language of Informationism. By analogy with Energy,
generic Information consists primarily of distinctions (differences) such as Hot vs Cold in thermodynamics, and Good vs Bad in human language, or dots vs dashes in Morse code, and 1 vs 0 in computer code. . . . . :smile:


*1. Atom-smashing is murder. :joke:

*2. Information :
Knowledge and the ability to know. Technically, it's the ratio of order to disorder, of positive to negative, of knowledge to ignorance. It's measured in degrees of uncertainty. Those ratios are also called "differences". So Gregory Bateson* defined Information as "the difference that makes a difference". The latter distinction refers to "value" or "meaning". Babbage called his prototype computer a "difference engine". Difference is the cause or agent of Change. In Physics it’s called "Thermodynamics" or "Energy". In Sociology it’s called "Conflict".
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html

*3. Information is Energy :
Definition of a physically based concept of information
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-40862-6

*4. "Immune language" refers to the way immune cells communicate with each other and with the nucleus of a cell to trigger a defense response. This communication uses signaling codons, or words, that are similar to how electrical signals create words on a telephone
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/05/210512164017.htm

Reply to Wayfarer

Quoting Wayfarer

I fully endorse that phrase of his, 'outside subjectivity nothing whatever', but I interpret its meaning differently. I don't mean that there is some invisible meta-mind - like Berkeley's God - holding everything in existence. What that means to me, is that outside the constructive activities of mind, there can be no conception of anything whatever. So that even though, in the empirical sense, we can picture and analyse the world prior to the arrival of h.sapiens, even that activity is in an obvious sense, still mind-dependent, in that it relies on perspective and measurement. What the world is outside of or apart from that is an empty question. (More in keeping with Buddhist philosophy, which is a kind of moderated realism.

Hume said we know nothing except what sense impressions tell us, a philosophy variously termed skepticism or strict empiricism and which leads easily to forms of solipsism. Kant was likewise skeptical of ever knowing the thing in itself (noumena) versus sense impression (phenomena). Kant did at least attribute space and time and maybe causality as innate categories of mind.

Suffice it to say, although Whitehead had great admiration for Hume and Kant as well as Descartes, but he felt they set Western Philosophy upon an unfortunate path.One which leads directly to the “bifurcation of nature” with the subjective/objective and mind/matter dichotomy. Whitehead implies we interact with nature in other ways and have forms of knowledge that come to us from outside of “the sense perception theory of knowledge”. We know things through the “perception in the mode of causal efficiency” and the continuity of the past and the possibilities of the future through “prehension” a form of non conscious experience. I can only point the interested in the right direction, I can’t fairly summarize here.
A lot comes from the notion of the fundamental unit of reality as “actual occasions, events or moments of experience). In order for nature to flow from the past (with continuity), to the present (incorporating possibilities) from the future and giving rise to creativity and novelty a certain form of subjective non conscious awareness is required hence “prehension”.

Quoting prothero

Kant did at least attribute space and time and maybe causality as innate categories of mind.

Yes, as his 'answer to Hume'. As I said, I'm an admirer of Whitehead, at least of what I know of him, but I'm a bit uneasy about the panpsychist element, that's all.

Quoting prothero

A lot comes from the notion of the fundamental unit of reality as “actual occasions, events or moments of experience).

So they are already there, as fundamental, in the past, present, and future?

Reply to PoeticUniverse I thought I saw you refer to the iron block or frozen universe, where the past the present and the future already exist and time is just an illusion. That would not be Whiteheads view of nature. For Whitehead the future is open. There is a real of possibility (think eternal objections somewhat akin to Platonic forms). Except for Plato our world is a shadow or illusion for Whitehead eternal objects are potentials which are actually deficient (mere potentials) and must become actualities through the process of nature.

Reply to Wayfarer Perhaps I don't understand your point of view, but you seem to talk about a universal field of subjectivity sometimes and so Panpsychism does not seem like such a leap. Especially the Whitehead kind of unconscious experience (non sensory). Primitive mentality (subjective) which is universal and on which all higher forms of cognition are composed.

Quoting Gnomon

Unfortunately, it's hard to describe the parallels between sentient humans, and semi-sentient plants, and insentient atoms, without using common human expressions. So, my alternative is to replace the language of Panpsychism with the language of Informationism. By analogy with Energy,
generic Information consists primarily of distinctions (differences) such as Hot vs Cold in thermodynamics, and Good vs Bad in human language, or dots vs dashes in Morse code, and 1 vs 0 in computer code. .

Similar concepts, I think, employing different language. Whitehead who was quite familiar with the physics of his time ( a mathematician and logician before his philosophy era) purposely used such language as feeling to indicate that mind did not just appear in a universe largely devoid of any kind of precursor in nature. It is hard to see how in a barren universe devoid of any form of subjective experience it could arise

Quoting prothero

You may reject such a notion but only because of your definition of experience as requiring consciousness or at least self awareness.

I'll be honest: your conception is entirely incoherent to me. I cannot find a way to have it make sense in any practical way. It seems a side-step or macguffin type re-definition of the word 'experience' into (literally) non-experience, by something which is unaware. I cannot bring myself to accept this, i'm afraid. I take all your points about language, but unless you're telling me there is no way to criticise language use, I'm having a hard time understanding what you're trying to put across. It just seems contradictory (or, at least, a total and utter, patent cop-out). Nothing personal in that at all.

Quoting prothero

Subjective experience by its very nature is beyond the realm of measurement, quantification or direct observation.

But it is, by definition and logical necessity, an experience by a subject. If one is not aware, this is not possible. So again, I take your point, but unless you wholesale reject the concept if 'error' here, I can't see it holding any water.

Quoting prothero

that such speculations do not deny or ignore whatever scientific information or data are available.

This is fair, but I think exactly the same problem as you have with language. At these fringey, ambiguous, speculative edges of thinking(or working?) we do not have solid, inarguable scientific knowledge. So, again, while that's fair, I think its an overextension to say that this applies to science, and not language (as we currently use it). It would be extremely hard for the average person to even understanding "experience" without a conscious subject to have the experience.

Quoting prothero

These are all opinions stated as facts which I am sure i do as well.

I take it then, that you feel there is no matter of fact for these issues. IF that's the case, why are we having the discussion? Again, not personal. That just seems a dim waaste of time.

Quoting Wayfarer

Consciousness in the broader sense comprises the entire framework within which knowledge is obtained in the first place.

I am sorry - this comes across as new age fluff. Can you be a bit more precise? We're getting into an area where claims are floating off into the ether, not even attached to coherent language.

Quoting prothero

It is hard to see how in a barren universe devoid of any form of subjective experience it could arise

Its also extremely hard to see from whence it could arise, in a "consciously dead" universe. "levels of consciousness" does not explain the sudden arising of subjective experience (which, by any cut, is an off/on type of change. You can't be "semi-aware" in any sense relevant to what we're discussing).

Quoting prothero

Suffice it to say, although Whitehead had great admiration for Hume and Kant as well as Descartes, but he felt they set Western Philosophy upon an unfortunate path.One which leads directly to the “bifurcation of nature” with the subjective/objective and mind/matter dichotomy. Whitehead implies we interact with nature in other ways and have forms of knowledge that come to us from outside of “the sense perception theory of knowledge”.

In my own monistic worldview, I resolve the philosophical splitting of Nature, into Matter (substance) vs Mind (subjectivity)*1, by tracing physical Energy and metaphysical Mind back to a single source, hence a Unification. A century ago, Physical Scientists (astronomers & cosmologists) discovered that our complex universe is expanding from a singular point of space-time eons ago. But they were not able to explain where the causal energy & material substance originated, to impart momentum to the near-infinite mass of matter, moving at a fraction of lightspeed outward from that point of beginning. Some people refer to that Cosmic Cause as "God", others as more-of-the-same-stuff-forever "Multiverse".

Since we now know that Matter is merely a form of Energy (E=MC^2), we can infer that the Singularity consisted only of a primitive form of Causation. Moreover, we have learned only recently that the Information*2 (knowledge) associated with Minds may also be directly related to the Causal Force that we also refer to as physical Energy*3. Consequently, we can legitimately conjecture that the process we call Mind may be a recently-evolved form of the First Cause, colloquially known as the "Big Bang", or religiously as "Creation".

The details of how that original distinction-between-something-and-nothing (creation) evolved into objective Brains with subjective Minds, is as yet unknown. But we now have enough information to infer that the traditional "mind/matter dichotomy" is merely a conceptual categorization of the various Forms of fundamental creative Causation. So, we are now able to get "outside" of sense perception by the use of rational conception. :smile:


*1. "The bifurcation of nature is the separation of reality into two realms: one that is scientific and objective, and one that is perceived and subjective. This separation is a fallacy that can make it difficult to answer philosophical questions"
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=bifurcation+of+nature

*2. "Research into the relation between Energy and Information goes back many years, but the era of precise yet general quantification of Information began only with Claude E. Shannon's 1948 paper . . . ." https://www.jstor.org/stable/24923125
Note --- Shannon defined "Information" in terms of Entropy, which is basically spent Energy. Erwin Schrödinger introduced the term "Negentropy" in his 1944 book What Is Life?. Hence, he associated positive Energy with Life. And the process of Life is a necessary precursor for the process of Mind.

*3. "A recent conjecture, called the mass-energy-information equivalence principle, proposed that information is equivalent to mass and energy and exists as a separate state of matter. In other words, stored information has mass and can be converted into energy, . . . ."
https://pubs.aip.org/aip/sci/article/2022/9/091111/2849001/A-proposed-experimental-test-for-the-mass-energy

Reply to AmadeusD
This seems all an argument trying to say I don't understand language. I was trying to avoid that.
I noticed you did not respond to my questions which were an effort to discern your point of view about mind and consciousness. So it won't be a discussion unless you put something forward other than disputes about the various uses of experience, try "prehension" for the idea instead but you will likely have to look it up. These are not ideas tha I made up, but from the literature on process philosophy in which you may or may not have any interest?

Where in the chain of nature do you speculate mind begins or ends?
The same for consciousness?
Let's work with just those few terms at the moment, since the other terms may result in language
disputes.

Quoting Gnomon

The details of how that original distinction-between-something-and-nothing (creation) evolved into objective Brains with subjective Minds, is as yet unknown. But we now have enough information to infer that the traditional "mind/matter dichotomy" is merely a conceptual categorization of the various Forms of fundamental creative Causation. So, we are now able to get "outside" of sense perception by the use of rational conception. :smile:

It seems we are both monists of various persuasions and reject dualism. I think our conceptions and language for our positions may make it difficult to find common ground or terminology..
Do you entertain the notion of panpsychism?
Are you familiar with the basic elements of process philosophy?
I am not a professional philosopher and have just sketchy outlines of the fundamental tenets of some of the more well known philosophers.
For some reason I was taken with process philosophy and with Alfred North Whitehead and his thoughts and writings so I primarily try to present and promote them in the forum.
I don’t like to argue, I won’t trade insults and think that the purpose of discussion is to just try to understand each other's point of view, no winners, no losers, just respectful exchange.
We perceive nothing except through a chain of causal efficacy (photons, retinas, optic nerve, occipital lobe, etc) and so causal efficacy is a given in sensory perception, It the most fundamental and most widespread form of perception.

Quoting Gnomon

The details of how that original distinction-between-something-and-nothing (creation) evolved into objective Brains with subjective Minds, is as yet unknown.

We wonder about the implementation of mind and consciousness, and, while interesting, that is only about the nature of the messenger, the implementation; however, there is the message that the messenger brings to us.

The potential for what we have now had to be there in the beginning.

Quoting PoeticUniverse

there is the message that the messenger brings to us.

Doesn't the messenger also construct the message? The messenger is the message.

Quoting ENOAH

Doesn't the messenger also construct the message? The messenger is the message.

The messenger carries the message, such as an mp3 player is a messenger implementation that conveys the message of music.

Quoting prothero

It seems we are both monists of various persuasions and reject dualism. I think our conceptions and language for our positions may make it difficult to find common ground or terminology..
Do you entertain the notion of panpsychism?
Are you familiar with the basic elements of process philosophy?
I am not a professional philosopher and have just sketchy outlines of the fundamental tenets of some of the more well known philosophers.

Yes, my worldview is Monistic, but not Materialistic. It's based on concepts from Quantum Physics (energy) and Information Theory (mind stuff). So I have developed a peculiar vocabulary to express novel notions derived from the assumption that everything in the world is a form of Generic (begetting) Information (power to enform and transform). Hence, the essential substance of reality is a derivative of Plato's eternal Form (infinite potential) imagined in space-time as Cosmic Causation.

Like Reply to Wayfarer, my more-or-less Idealistic (all mind) worldview is similar to Panpsychism (all conscious), but I do have a few nits to pick. Specifically, I reserve the term "Consciousness" for homo sapiens, who are late bloomers in evolution. In its place, I use "Information" in a sense similar to Einstein's Energy which is able to transform into a plethora of physical & metaphysical conformations, such as Matter and Mind. Rather than spend a lot of time differentiating my personal view from traditional Idealism or Panpsychism, I simply gave it a new name : Enformationism*1.

I read Process and Reality over 20 years ago, when I had no philosophical background to help me understand it. Now, after about 10 years on this forum, I have a better com-prehension of Whitehead's worldview, which was also a philosophical interpretation of Quantum {field} Physics, which has replaced Classical {materialistic & mechanical} Physics as the fundamental explanation of how reality works.

I too, am an amateur (sketchy) philosopher, with no formal training. So my informal idiosyncratic argumentation may sound odd to those with an academic background. :smile:

PS___ Any relation to Stephen R. Prothero?
PPS___ I don't categorically "reject" Dualism , because it is a useful concept in the physical sciences. However, for philosophical purposes, I do go beyond the proximate appearance of two substances (mind & matter) in search of the ultimate essence of reality : Information.


*1. 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 {and Panpsychism}. 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

Quoting prothero

Whitehead implies we interact with nature in other ways and have forms of knowledge that come to us from outside of “the sense perception theory of knowledge”.

Back when I read Process and Reality, I didn't com-prehend much of the non-standard vocabulary coined to express his novel & non-standard ideas : such as "prehension"*1. 20 years later, after writing my own personal worldview thesis --- with incomprehensible coinages of my own --- I'm beginning to make some sense of his unusual understanding of Reality.

In my personal worldview, there was no comprehension of concepts in the universe until homo sapiens emerged around 300,000 years ago. As scientists have described that era, several species of homo began to walk out of Africa on two legs toting large brains on top of their spinal communication channels. Those bicameral brains with wrap-around cognitive cortex seem to be the laboratories of language, where occasional experiences are categorized into classes & concepts, and stored for later use in similar situations.

I am not aware of any divine revelations of knowledge by channels other than the physical senses. But that incoming information is a form of Energy (causation), which is transformed by brain functions into Meaning (cognition). I can't detail the cerebral mechanism for that transformation, but it seems to boil down to digital relationships & mathematical ratios : (1/0 ; +/-). Anyway, in my theory, it's all Information all the way down.

I'm not familiar with Whitehead's numinous notion of knowledge that is obtained by means "outside" of sense perception : Presentational & Conceptual Immediacy*2. Can you explain it to me? Does it involve Intuition, as mentioned in the "Bicameral Brain" discussion in this thread? :smile:



*1. Prehension :
an interaction of a subject with an event or entity which involves perception but not necessarily cognition.
___Oxford Dictionary
Note ---
Prehension = to grasp by sensory perception ; perhaps by interaction
Comprehension = to know with cognition by conception : symbolic idea creation

Whitehead :
"He suggested that human experience involves two distinct modes of direct perception of the external world: presentational immediacy and conceptual immediacy"
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=whitehead+knowledge+outside+sense+perception

Reply to Gnomon
From the Pinocchio Theory
Whitehead on Causality and Perception by Steven Shaviro
Not too long maybe 15 pages, I find Shaviro to be an unusually clear and perceptive author about Whitehead and several others as well
http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=1274

Quoting PoeticUniverse

We wonder about the implementation of mind and consciousness, and, while interesting, that is only about the nature of the messenger, the implementation; however, there is the message that the messenger brings to us.
The potential for what we have now had to be there in the beginning.

Yes. That's the point of my Enformationism ontology. It accepts Plato's conjecture of ideal eternal Form*1, which I also posit as infinite Potential (all power). One physical form of Potential in space-time is Energy, the process of Causation, by which all things, including Minds, are enformed.

Some imagine that timeless Power Source as a god-like Demiurge (artisan), but Plato seemed to deliberately describe it in functional (such as "First Cause") rather than anthro-morphic terms. Since we have no direct evidence of anything prior to the cosmic-explosion-of-all-real-forms (Big Bang), I think philosophers (non-theologians) would do well to follow Plato's lead.

Whatever the "messenger" is, the message is written in the form of Causation, and the meaning takes the form of conceptual Information. In the Information Age*2, I think it's appropriate to think of the process of Evolution as a computer program, and the "messenger" as a Programmer. That software & hardware engineer may not have a physical Brain, but it must have a Mind of some kind. :smile:

Note --- a computer program is an ideal (mathematical) form of the final output. Like all equations, the ultimate solution is potentially in the idealized program, which computes the actual output (final form ; reality) line-by-line. For example, in physical Evolution, the pre-bang Singularity contained (in mathematical form) everything (information ; data) needed to produce the cosmic process we call a universe. :nerd:

*1. Form :
Plato's ontology posits a reality beyond our physical world, the "Realm of Forms," containing perfect, eternal, and unchanging concepts or ideals, which are more real than the imperfect, changing objects we perceive
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=plato+forms+ontology

*2. Information Age : the modern age regarded as a time in which information has become a commodity that is quickly and widely disseminated and easily available especially through the use of computer technology.
Merriam-Webster dictionary

Quoting prothero

From the Pinocchio Theory
Whitehead on Causality and Perception by Steven Shaviro
Not too long maybe 15 pages, I find Shaviro to be an unusually clear and perceptive author about Whitehead and several others as well
http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=1274

Human sense-perception, limited in many ways*1, is inherently incomplete. And there's always the danger of deliberate fake news. So deep thinkers have always sought to get their (perfect, ideal) information directly from the horse's (god's) mouth. I feel their pain, but how do we arrange to obtain that complete and untainted information? Does prayer help? To which god?

Or do we have to rely on hunches & intuition*2? Which merely bypass the conscious rational channels in order to access "past knowledge" obtained in the usual manner, by means of sensory organs. Did Whitehead believe in extra-sensory perception*3? Based on what evidence?

Plato's imaginary ideal-reality, hidden behind the illusions of the cave, is a nice metaphor. But how can we really release the shackles of sense perception that are obscured by ignorance and emotional coloration? I understand Plato to be recommending logical empirical Science as an antidote to religious myths & dogmas. Not extrasensory perception. :wink:


*1. Whitehead on Causality and Perception :
Western philosophy in general is so preoccupied with the question of error, because it is deeply concerned with the unreliability of immediate experience – or of the body and the senses. From Plato’s allegory of the cave, through Descartes’ radical doubt about the evidence provided by his physical organs, right on up to Thomas Metzinger’s claim that experience is nothing but an internal, virtual-reality simulation, philosophers have been haunted by the idea that sense perception is delusional – and that, as a result, our beliefs about the world might well be radically wrong.
http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=1274

*2. Intuition works by the brain rapidly comparing current experiences to stored patterns from past experiences, essentially acting as a pattern-matching system that generates a quick, often unconscious "gut feeling" about a situation, without needing conscious reasoning; this "knowing" is based on accumulated knowledge and past learning, allowing for instinctive decisions based on similar situations encountered before
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=how+does+intuition+work

*3. Extrasensory perception (ESP) is the idea that people can perceive the world beyond their five senses. It's also known as a sixth sense or cryptaesthesia.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=extra-sensory+perception

Reply to prothero
Gnomon --- "Did Whitehead believe in extra-sensory perception*3? Based on what evidence?"

In an attempt to answer my own question, I have started reading ANW's The Concept of Nature
https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Whitehead/Whitehead_1920/White1_02.html

The lecture goes on for several pages, so these excerpts are only from a few early paragraphs. As I get time, I'll read further. But for now, would you agree that Whitehead's "means outside of sense perception" does not refer to ESP (telepathy ; clairvoyance)? If so, then to what "means" does it relate : rational inference? :smile:

# "Namely, there are some attributes of the matter which we do perceive. These are the primary qualities, and there are other things which we perceive, such as colours, which are not attributes of matter, but are perceived by us as if they were such attributes. These are the secondary qualities of matter."
Note --- Qualia are inferences from incoming sensory percepts. The term "as-if" implies that secondary attributes (qualia) are not in the material object, but in the observer. The term "attribute" implies that the observer imputes qualities to matter that are not actually properties of matter, but of the reasoning (inferring) mind. So, the Qualia are concepts, not percepts.
Apparently, light energy waves & frequencies are codes that the brain decodes as "secondary qualities" such as color. if so, then the "means outside of matter" are conceptual inferences not perceptual actualities. Hence, the brains of living organisms are designed by evolution to "read" the codes embedded in energy as information useful to an organic creature.

# "[i]Berkeley's polemic against matter was based on this confusion introduced by the transmission theory of light. He advocated, rightly as I think, the abandonment of the doctrine of matter in its present form. He had however nothing to put in its place except a theory of the relation of finite minds to the divine mind.
But we are endeavouring in these lectures to limit ourselves to nature itself and [b]not to travel beyond entities which are disclosed in sense-awareness[/b][/i].
Note --- No recourse to super-natural sources of knowledge

# "What then is the general character of that something of which we are aware? We do not ask about the percipient or about the process, but about the perceived."
Note --- IOW, we tend to think in terms of physical (material) not metaphysical (mind)

# "For us the red glow of the sunset should be as much part of nature as are the molecules and electric waves by which men of science would explain the phenomenon. It is for natural philosophy to analyse how these various elements of nature are connected."
Note --- Matter is one “element of nature”, but Mind is also a direct descendant from the origin of space-time. Hence, both elements are "inter-connected" parts of the whole system of Nature.

# "The theory of psychic additions would treat the greenness as a psychic addition furnished by the perceiving mind, and would leave to nature merely the molecules and the radiant energy which influence the mind towards that perception. My argument is that this dragging in of the mind as making additions of its own to the thing posited for knowledge by sense-awareness is merely a way of shirking the problem of natural philosophy."
Note --- Again, no recourse to magical extrasensory perception. And yet, you could interpret Rational Inference as a sixth sense. That would make sense in my Enformationism worldview, in which all matter & energies are encoded with information conducive to Evolution.

PS___ Unfortunately, the notion of Encoded Energies may sound spooky and supernatural. It's true that some psychics & spiritualists use such terms to describe communications "outside" of normal natural channels. But that's not what I'm talking about. Instead, it's merely a way to describe how the human mind can "see" color in the wavelengths of light, by interpreting encoded frequencies into the mental qualia we "know" as color, even though the light energy itself has no inherent color. The code (patterns of information) may be essentially mathematical ratios, such as the Fibonacci sequence that encodes for spiraling forms in plants and rocks.

Quoting Gnomon

Yes. That's the point of my Enformationism ontology. It accepts Plato's conjecture of ideal eternal Form*1, which I also posit as infinite Potential (all power).

The Eternal knows no point where it begins,
No gateway through which any design slips in;
Thus must it be the All-in-All that flows
As line by line or where all lines are twins.

What has no start must stretch through every way,
Through linear paths where moments mark their sway,
Or simultaneous in timeless dance—
For how else could the Boundless choose to play?

When entry points are nowhere to be found,
All possibilities must there abound:
As flowing stream, the instant’s flash of light,
The sequence, or the circle’s endless round.

Without a threshold where its being starts,
The Eternal must embrace all cosmic parts—
As time’s long river flowing ever on,
Or instant’s unity where difference parts.

Imagine Form as boundless ocean deep,
Where all potential does its secrets keep;
Our measured world, a single droplet drawn
From depths where countless possibilities sleep.

This scrutinized reality we know
Is but one pattern that the Forms bestow—
A crystal lifted from infinite seas
Of what could be, what might yet come to flow.

The abyss of Forms holds every dream untold,
Each possible shape that matter might unfold;
While we perceive one manifestation clear,
The endless pool holds mysteries yet to mold.

From vastness of the possible sublime,
We dredge one moment’s substance out of time;
Yet still beneath our certainties there swirls
The infinite from which all forms may climb.

Quoting prothero

So it won't be a discussion unless you put something forward other than disputes about the various uses of experience, try "prehension" for the idea instead but you will likely have to look it up.

I'm still not clear about Whitehead's distinction of "Prehension" from "Comprehension". Some definitions refer to "experiencing of past events", but that sounds like mundane Remembering (re-cognize) : secondary experience as a re-called-Idea-from-memory instead of a Real thing (original occasion).

So why coin the term "prehension" by omitting the "com", which in combination with reaching & grabbing would imply "grip together", as a whole instead of scattered pieces. Some of the definitions*1 I've seen seem to be referring to the ability to mentally grasp itemized Parts as elements of Whole*2 systems. Is that similar to your understanding? :smile:

*1. A "prehension" is basically the relation between actual entities, or the interconnectedness between all physical things, that determine their particular nature.
https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/e7zq9z/what_did_alfred_whitehead_mean_by_prehension/

*2. Holism ; Holon :
Philosophically, a whole system is a collection of parts (holons) that possesses novel properties not found in the parts. That something extra is an Emergent quality that was latent (unmanifest) in the parts. For example, when atoms of hydrogen & oxygen gases combine in a specific ratio, the molecule has properties of water, such as wetness, that are not found in the gases. A Holon is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part — A system of entangled things that has a function in a hierarchy of systems.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html

COM-PREHENSION = grasping together = unity, wholeness


PS___Jan Smuts was writing his book on Holism in evolution around the same time that Whitehead was writing his Process philosophy. So ANW may not have had "holism" in his vocabulary.

Quoting Gnomon

Human sense-perception, limited in many ways*1, is inherently incomplete. Does prayer help? To which god?

Human perception is limited. Humans can perceive only a limited range of wavelengths as color, and vibration frequencies as sound, Dogs have a much better sense of smell. Other creatures have better color vision,say the mantis shrimp. What all perception shares is that there is a direct chain of causality which allows perception to occur at all. Human vision involves photons passing through the cornea striking (rods and cones) in the retina, generating an electrical impulse, passing through the optic nerve to the occipital lobes in the brain. This chain of causality is part of what Whitehead calls “perception in the mode of causal efficacy”. We hear with our ears, see with our eyes, etc. We could not see colors or hear sounds without this underlying chain of causality. This implies both the reality of an external world and the causal nature of the world. Whitehead is a hard core realist. There is no room for solipsism severe skepticism, , pure idealism or for that matter dualism in Whitehead. There is some talk about God in Whitehead but the basic tenets do not require it. For Whitehead God is the source of “eternal objects’, somewhat akin to Platonic forms but actually deficient (potentials only).
God is not about morality but about the creative advance of nature, novelty and higher forms of experience (aesthetic not moral).

Quoting Gnomon

Or do we have to rely on hunches & intuition*2? Which merely Gbypass the conscious rational channels in order to access "past knowledge" obtained in the usual manner, by means of sensory organs. Did Whitehead believe in extra-sensory perception*3? Based on what evidence?

Whitehead was a logician and mathematician so he did not (to my knowledge) believe in ESP in the usual sense.

Quoting Gnomon

1. Whitehead on Causality and Perception :
Western philosophy in general is so preoccupied with the question of error, because it is deeply concerned with the unreliability of immediate experience – or of the body and the senses. From Plato’s allegory of the cave, through Descartes’ radical doubt about the evidence provided by his physical organs, right on up to Thomas Metzinger’s claim that experience is nothing but an internal, virtual-reality simulation, philosophers have been haunted by the idea that sense perception is delusional – and that, as a result, our beliefs about the world might well be radically wrong.
http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=1274

I don't know if you read the whole article but in Whitehead's view, Descartes dualism, Hume's Skepticism and Kant's transcendental idealism set Western Philosophy on a path from which it has yet to recover. There is nothing in Whitehead which is completely counter to modern science now or then. It is the reductionist, deterministic, mechanistic view of nature which Whitehead rejects. The division of the world into mind vs matter, subjective vs objective, the “artificial bifurcation of nature”. The warmth of the sun, the red glow of the sunset, the smell of the rose (all our experience) is as much a part of nature as the photons and infrared with which science tries to explain the phenomena. It is all part of nature Locke’s division of primary and secondary qualities is an artificial division. The task of philosophy, is to produce concepts which help to explain all of our knowledge and experience of the world. Such speculative philosophies are subject to constant revision, flights of adventure of the mind but which must also be founded in our knowledge and experience of the world. Leave nothing out, the strict materialist and eliminativists wish to explain away that which does not fit their preexisting metaphysical view of the world. Mind does not arise from a nature which is largely devoid of type of experience from the beginning.

Quoting prothero

For Whitehead God is the source of “eternal objects’, somewhat akin to Platonic forms but actually deficient (potentials only).

That is similar to my notion of G*D : creator of our physical environment (Nature), but not meddling in day to day events. This is like a Programmer, who establishes the goal and the program, but allows the process (evolution) to play-out according to the rules of the program. :smile:

Quoting prothero

Whitehead was a logician and mathematician so he did not (to my knowledge) believe in ESP in the usual sense.

I assumed that he was not talking about magical Extrasensory Perception, but I'm still grasping at an understanding of "knowledge that is obtained by means 'outside' of sense perception"*1. Perhaps you can explain the distinction between "presentational" and "conceptual" immediacy, and what that has to do with obtaining knowledge. My post above replaced those terms with Perception (physical) and Conception (metaphysical). My guess is that the latter refers to Reasoning from received Information inputs to inferred Insights & Principles as Knowledge outputs. Does that sound like something Whitehead might mean? :nerd:

*1. Whitehead :
"He suggested that human experience involves two distinct modes of direct perception of the external world: presentational immediacy and conceptual immediacy"
https://www.google.com/search?client=fi ... perception

Quoting prothero

There is nothing in Whitehead which is completely counter to modern science now or then. It is the reductionist, deterministic, mechanistic view of nature which Whitehead rejects.

That's why I mentioned "Holism" in my post above, which includes the Ideas & Ideals & Meanings (culture) that are omitted from the scientific Reductionist view of nature. It encompasses both innate Matter and emergent Mind in the process of Evolution. Holism is the Synthetic tendency in evolution*2. It's how old stuff is transformed into new stuff. And how living organisms emerge from non-living matter. :wink:

*2. Holism and Evolution :
Unfortunately, Holism is still controversial in Philosophy. That is primarily due to the practical and commercial success of reductive methods in the physical sciences. Methodological Reductionism attempts to understand a complex system by breaking it down into its component parts. And that approach works well for mechanical devices, but not so well for living things.
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page33.html

Quoting prothero

Whitehead was a logician and mathematician so he did not (to my knowledge) believe in ESP in the usual sense.

In my previous post, I opined that Whitehead did not mean that Magical ESP could reveal information & knowledge via non-physical channels. But perhaps there is another option. I've seen him described as an Idealist*1, but not as a Mystic*2. Is it possible that Whitehead believed that it was possible to commune directly with God?

He doesn't seem to be the type to revel in ecstasies & altered states. I occasionally (rarely) learn some relevant information via easy Intuition instead of effortful Reason. But I don't think of it as Mystical enlightenment, rather as "pattern-matching, in which case the motivated brain accesses long-buried data in long-term memory.

Perhaps ANW thought that all things were connected back to God (occasion of creation) , but not necessarily directly. :smile:

*1. Idealism :
In the third argument, the idealist holds that in the individual’s most-immediate experience, that of his own subjective awareness, the intuitive self can achieve a direct apprehension of ultimate reality, which reveals it to be spiritual. Thus, the mystic bypasses normal cognition, feeling that, for metaphysical probings, the elaborate processes of mediation interposed between sense objects and their perceptions reduce its reliability as compared with the direct grasp of intuition.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/idealism/Basic-arguments

*2. ANW Mysticism? :
Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy, particularly his concept of "process philosophy," while not explicitly focused on mysticism, can be seen as having mystical implications, emphasizing the interconnectedness of all things and the importance of direct experience and intuition
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=whitehead+mystical

Quoting Wayfarer

Yes, as his 'answer to Hume'. As I said, I'm an admirer of Whitehead, at least of what I know of him, but I'm a bit uneasy about the panpsychist element, that's all.

Me too. Which is why I developed my own alternative to the worldview of "all mind" by substituting "information" in place of "consciousness". According to my amateur philosophical thesis, both Mind and Matter are emergent forms of Generic Information (Causation), which is best known as Energy.

In that case, Consciousness is in effect a highly-evolved form of Energy (ability to cause change). If that sounds far-fetched, just imagine the Big Bang as a burst of Causation, with no known precedent. Then, after 13billion earth-years of material evolution, first Life and then Mind emerged & evolved on a blue planet in the outskirts of an ordinary galaxy somewhere in the vastness of the space-time bubble we call the Universe. Hence, all known examples of Consciousness are found in terrestrial animated matter with complex brain tissue. And instances of Self-Consciousness are limited to a few cortex-wrapped brains that are capable of self-reference and self-knowing.

Of course, we can't know non-self consciousness, except by inference from intentional behavior. So, if rocks and atoms are conscious, they don't act like it. Therefore, I think Whitehead's notion of Prehension and "alternative modes of perception" (rational inference?) must apply only to entities capable of philosophical thinking : a sub-set of homo sapiens. Does that make sense to you? Does the imputed uniqueness of humanity seem arrogant --- from the perspective of a rock --- or perhaps reasonable enough to ease your philosophical mind? :smile:


Modern philosophical and scientific sensibility also professes to find some of Whitehead’s core doctrines fundamentally wrong-headed, most especially the panpsychism – the idea that mentality is a fundamental or ‘primitive’ feature of reality of which everything partakes in some measure and in some way. Whitehead himself never used the term ‘panpsychism’ to describe his own views so far as I know (see Hartshorne 1950).
https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~seager/whitehead.htm

Realism :
Hartshorne's panpsychism is a form of realism, meaning he believes in the existence of a real world independent of our perception, but he views this world as composed of minds or psychic entities.
Critique of Idealism :
While Hartshorne shares some common ground with idealism, he distinguishes his panpsychism by accepting the reality of the world as perceived through our senses, rather than viewing it as merely ideas within a divine mind.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Hartshorne%2C+C.+%281950%29.+%E2%80%98Panpsychism%E2%80%99

Quoting Gnomon

Consciousness is in effect a highly-evolved form of Energy (ability to cause change). If that sounds far-fetched, just imagine the Big Bang as a burst of Causation, with no known precedent. Then, after 13billion earth-years of material evolution, first Life and then Mind emerged & evolved on a blue planet in the outskirts of an ordinary galaxy somewhere in the vastness of the space-time bubble we call the Universe. Hence, all known examples of Consciousness are found in terrestrial animated matter with complex brain tissue.

The truth of essence proves an anti-climax;
No complex web or intricate syntax,
But simple beyond all expectation—
'Tis here, in being, where true wonder acts!

Quoting prothero

This seems all an argument trying to say I don't understand language.

No, no. While I'm not sure how you got that, really, it was not my intention at all. I do think you're using words in an incoherent fashion, but that's not to say you don't know this. Most people like to do so, and it doesn't seem to get in the way of much. I am just telling you where it's causing me problems.

Quoting prothero

try "prehension" for the idea instead but you will likely have to look it up.

It seems I'm one of the only posters who has read Process and Reality. LOL.

Quoting prothero

Where in the chain of nature do you speculate mind begins or ends?

I don't think this is a particularly good question. I don't know how to answer it. I doubt anyone does. A brain seems to imply a mind. That's all I can give you. I don't 'believe' anything on this front.

Neither consciousness. Whenever a being has a subjective experience, they are conscious. That's the best I can give you *shrug*. I can't think of a more helpful use of that word. You may be able to. Yours, to me, seems very unhelpful (eg by folding jellyfish and insects into the 'conscious' category it overlaps with others and just further muddies the waters we're trying to clear).

In chapter 11 of the Annaka Harris audiobook Lights On, she has a conversation with Carlo Rovelli. Most of the conversation is about Rovelli's view that time is not fundamental, but is an emergent experience from the structure of the universe. Part of the conversation, though, touched on Rovelli's view of objects-as-processes.

Unfortunately I don't have a transcript of their conversation YET, but I'm working on it.

But in a nutshell, what he says is something I've found myself thinking, in perhaps slightly different terms from him, over the past months. He says an object is a process, a process whose identity is defined by how it affects and is affected by other processes.

Quoting flannel jesus

In chapter 11 of the Annaka Harris audiobook Lights On, she has a conversation with Carlo Rovelli. Most of the conversation is about Rovelli's view that time is not fundamental, but is an emergent experience from the structure of the universe. Part of the conversation, though, touched on Rovelli's view of objects-as-processes.

I agree with Rovelli. Although we tend to think of Space-Time as essential to Nature, those categories seem to be inferred from human experience with Change & Extension, and then attributed to Nature as-if they are objective things. Nevertheless, the "illusion"*1 of a river of time serves a valid function for humans attempting to swim with or against the flow.

Since flowing time is not a material substance, Whitehead warned us not to confuse the Now of our conception with an atom of Time : a "durationless instant"*2. So, there are no Real increments of time, equivalent to seconds, yet we construct an Ideal model of space-time as-if made of malleable matter.

Similarly, all observed objects are dynamic processes, not static things. That fact became evident when quantum physicists discovered that sub-atomic particles are actually continuous waves in the flow of Time. Which is the process of world creation. And even observed processes are mental models (ideas) created by the brain to explain change in the world. So, all discontinuities are man-made. Hence, we don't cut Nature at its physical joints, we carve at the logical intersections of the structure of reality ; whatever that means.

I suppose that counter-intuitive fact of flow is the crux of his Idealistic worldview, which serves as a Critique of Materialism*3. And which makes it difficult for many thinkers on this forum, including me, to understand what he was talking about. :smile:


*1. Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli argues in his book, "The Order of Time," that our perception of time as a flowing, universal entity is an illusion, and that time may not exist in a fundamental way, but rather emerges from a complex network of events.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=rovelli+time+does+not+exist

*2.Rejection of Instantaneous Time :
He argued that the concept of a durationless instant as an ultimate entity is problematic and leads to difficulties in understanding reality.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=a+m+whitehead+on+time

*3. Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy, particularly his "Philosophy of Organism," is a critique of scientific materialism, arguing that reality is not simply a collection of independent material objects but a dynamic, interconnected web of processes and events, a view he articulated in works like "Process and Reality".
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=whitehead+materialism