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Eternal Objects and the Philosophy of Organism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

George Gentry*
Affiliation:
University of Texas

Extract

In what follows our purpose is to make clear the reasons which lie back of Whitehead's appeal to eternal objects in his explanation of the emergence of actual entities and to show that so long as one operates within his scheme of ideas no other consistent explanation is available. A thoroughgoing reconstruction of the scheme is necessary if this presupposition is to be eliminated. If the project is successful, it will be demonstrated that the theory of actual entities provides no basis for the explanation of the emergence of novel things, which is one of the major tenets of the organic philosophy. The argument will develop by way of an analysis of the theory of “physical relatedness.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association 1946

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References

Notes

1 A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, P. 361. The terms physical feeling, physical experience, physical prehension, and physical perception are identical in meaning.

2 Ibid., PP. 143, 208; Ideas P. 251.

3 A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, PP. 362–363, 364, 365, 375.

4 The subjectivist principle, or better, reformed subjectivist principle is that “… apart from the experiences of subjects there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness.” Process and Reality, P. 254.

5 Conceptual prehensions are divided into positive prehensions or conceptual feelings and negative prehensions. Physical prehensions are positive and therefore feelings; physical feeling and physical prehension are the same.

6 A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, P. 35.

7 Typical subjective forms are “… emotions, valuations, purposes, adversions, aversions, etc.” Process and Reality, P. 35.

8 As suggested previously, the unifying factor in concrescence is a “subjective aim.” In its capacity of final cause this aim is the basis of the organic or integrative character of the concrescence; it is principle and pattern of integration, and in the satisfaction is actualized, i.e., the satisfaction is the concrete embodiment of the subjective aim of the concrescence. “The actual entity is the product of the interplay of physical with mental pole … it is now obvious that blind prehensions, physical and mental, are the ultimate bricks of the physical universe. They are bound together within each actuality by the subjective unity of aim which governs their allied genesis and their final concrescence.” Process and Reality, P. 470; Cf. also PP. 233, 249, and 159.

9 The explanation of organic process or concrescence in terms of the notion of subjective aim is but one phase of the universalization of the categories of experience which flowers in Whitehead's later writings, and which enormously complicates the task of the commentator. The major difficulty arises out of the fact that Whitehead attempts in such writings to synthesize an interpretation of nature in terms of psychological categories with an interpretation of nature developed in terms of non-psychological conceptions. As a consequence, one frequently meets with two interpretations of the same fact, and sometimes with a description involving both sets of descriptive terms.

10 A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, PP. 135–136.

11 By recalling the basic features of an act or instance of causation, we can bring to attention the pattern to which a physical feeling must conform. From Whitehead's point of view a causal act is not a transaction which eventuates in the production of some change, etc., in an entity in existence at the time of the occurrence of the transaction as such. Causation is generative. To be a causal agent is to contribute to the genesis of the entity said to be effected. Reproduction, or recurrence involves the transmission or passing on of the content of the cause. This operation is a transitive and temporal phenomenon involving a transition from completed actuality to actuality undergoing genesis. The causal object is by definition an ancestor of an entity effected and necessary to its existence as such.

12 A. N. Whitehead, Adventure of Ideas, P. 289.

13 A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, P. 35.

14 A. N. Whitehead, Adventure of Ideas, P. 277.

15 A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, P. 234.

16 Ibid., P. 355.