Alfred North Whitehead

According to Whitehead’s rectified principle, two individuals are connected just in case there is something self-connected which overlaps both of them, and every part of which overlaps one of them. Roberto Casati and Achille Varzi have offered a counterexample to the principle, consisting of an individual which has no self-connected parts. But since atoms are self-connected, Casati and Varzi’s counterexample presupposes the possibility of gunk or, in other words, things which have no atoms as parts. So one may still wonder (...) whether Whitehead’s rectified principle follows from the assumption of atomism. This paper presents an atomic countermodel to show the answer is no. (shrink)

In this chapter, I consider Whitehead’s writings on education, emphasizing the aesthetic element that is found therein. The aesthetic dimension of Whitehead’s philosophy opens a fruitful pathway between his metaphysics and his ideas about education and it offers a refreshing vision of what we should aim to do as educators. What I offer here is a Whiteheadian vision of education and its metaphysical ground. An exploration of practical details is, for reasons that will become apparent, beyond the scope of this (...) chapter. Two themes I take up are the vitalizing role of education in life and the importance of imagination and freedom in cultivating this vitality. (shrink)

In this paper I explore some of the reasons why Whitehead 'atomizes' time as well as offer an interpretation of this 'atomization of time' that does not banish continuity. Thought I do not discuss it in this paper, saying that Whitehead 'atomizes' time is a misnomer given most understandings of that word.

This article deploys Whitehead's systematic metaphysics as the basis for a philosophical hermeneutics. Whiteheadian hermeneutics are then compare and contrasted with Schleiermacher's own hermeneutics.

Jacob Klapwijk’s book Purpose in the Living World? (Cambridge 2998) is examined with special attention given to the scholarly background from out of which it emerges as a significant contribution to reformational philosophical reflection. As an initial step to clarify some important issues raised by Klapwijk’s critical comments about Dooyeweerd’s “essentialist” concept of species, the article probes facets of the way Jan Lever incorporated reformational philosophical concepts into his biological theory and considers the 1959 review written by Herman Dooyeweerd of (...) Lever’s Creation and Evolution. The analysis focuses specifically upon the social responsibilities of these two scholars and the confrontation of their respective views. With the work of Lever and Dooyeweerd we sense something of the ambiguities when reformational philosophy confronts an evangelical scholasticism. This confrontation is an important facet of the context in which Klapwijk has set forth his discussion of creation and emergent evolution. Purpose is also the fruit of scholarly collaboration across disciplines, providing a welcome stimulus for a deepened understanding of the corporate character of the student vocation. (shrink)

This book introduces a new category, in-between, that will have a far-reaching impact on classic ways of thinking. Husserl's description of consciousness and Whitehead's criticism of the prejudice of simple location are two starting points. Relativity theory's radical changes in the conception of space and time also motivate some of the lines of thought.

Euclid’s definition of a point as “that which has no part” has been a major source of controversy in relation to the epistemological and ontological presuppositions of classical geometry, from the medieval and modern disputes on indivisibilism to the full development of point-free geometries in the 20th century. Such theories stem from the general idea that all talk of points as putative lower-dimensional entities must and can be recovered in terms of suitable higher-order constructs involving only extended regions (or bodies). (...) Here I focus on what is arguably the first thorough proposal of this sort, Whitehead’s theory of “extensive abstraction”, offering a critical reconstruction of the theory through its successive installments: from the purely mereological version of ‘La théorie relationniste de l’espace’ (1916) to the refined versions presented in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge (1919) and in The Concept of Nature (1920) to the last, mereotopological version of Process and Reality (1929). (shrink)

Whitehead and Dewey called for a deep reform of philosophy. Although they respected one another, Dewey can be read as criticizing Whitehead for hisadherence to a traditional, and unfortunately conservative, way of conceiving of the discipline. This article provides an in-depth reconstruction as well as a qualified defense of Dewey’s charge.

The article attempts to clarify the appeal to the Benedictine ideal that Alfred North Whitehead makes in The Aims of Education and Other Essays as a way to renew the life of the spirit in education. In particular, the essay will consider St. Benedict's three central themes of Whitehead's philosophy: freedom and discipline, the teacher as artist and the art of life, and universities as workshops or homes of creative energy. The aim is to bring about a harmony of thought (...) and action, the mind to the feelings of the heart, to subordinate scientific or critical pedagogy to aesthetic‐spiritual instruction. This deserves our attention because today's educational theories and practices emphasize the technical, the critical, and the social sides to the neglect of the aesthetic‐spiritual side. On both its practical and theoretical side, the educational theory of Whitehead falls within the Benedictine tradition of ora and labora. (shrink)

My purpose in this essay is to provide a critical survey of arguments within recent analytic philosophy regarding the so-called “mind-body problem” with a particular view toward the relationship between these arguments and the philosophy of A.N. Whitehead.1In course, I shall argue that Whitehead’s panexperientialist physicalism avoids paradoxes and difficulties of both materialist-physicalism and Cartesian dualismas advocated by a variety of analytic philosophers. However, and I believe that this point is not often sufficiently recognized, analytic philosophy of mind is no (...) monolith, and there are those who have found some form of panexperientialism to be attractive enough to merit serious consideration or even full-fledgedacceptance. A critical discussion of such thinkers should beincluded in any adequate survey of the relation between process panexperientialism and the analytic tradition. Moreover, the revisionary strain of the analyticaltradition which looks to natural science for its construction of worldviews would move us in the direction of examining arguments concerning Whitehead’s view and contemporary empirical scientific considerations. Here I shall argue that Whiteheadian panexperientialism very naturally accommodates important aspects of quantum theory, including the top-down causation involved in neuroplastic phenomena under a quantum mechanical interpretation of brain processes and in so-called Quantum Zeno Effect. The overall picture which emerges is that Whitehead’s position is a strongly plausible alternative in philosophy of mind.While I must confess that this essay can only represent the merest sketch—indeed an adequate treatment of the richly complex interpretive, comparative, and substantive philosophical issues here requires at the very least a monograph—I nonetheless hope to present a coherent and useful précis of major arguments and comparative conceptual relationships, especially for the reader who may not be readily familiar with this terrain. I thus hope that this essay will serve as a short expository and critical introduction to the interface between process and analytic philosophy of mind, and a presentation of the several theoretical advantages gained by listening to Whitehead’s theory as it connects with concerns of analytic philosophers.I shall proceed by first working though the main outlines of John Searle’s important and widely reaching “The Recent History of Materialism,” an essay which exposes critical flaws in a variety of materialist theories in ways which Whiteheadians should find especially fitting and congenial. I shall then examine defenses of dualism and the relation of Whitehead to such defenses, followed by a separate section on Chalmers, Nagel, and Pred. I will then consider a number ofimportant objections to process panexperientialism, including objections arising from the work of Jaegwon Kim and John Searle. I close with a discussion of thementioned empirical scientific arguments. (shrink)

What I call ambiguities of system due to the sheer complexity of Whitehead’s metaphysics and his analysis of process in terms of concrescence and transition threaten its coherence in terms of what we know empirically of the quantum and classical dimensions of nature. Ambiguities of equivocation pertaining to Whitehead’s use of the terms “contemporary” and “objectification,” as the latter is employed in relation to prehension and satisfaction, also threaten its coherence. The article proposes ways to reduce these threats and uncertainty (...) about coherence by clarifying ambiguities and by attending to the way Whitehead’s terms are predicated on the quantum and classical dimensions. (shrink)

Whitehead was critical with respect to Poincaré’s conventionalism. However, Whitehead stood closer to Poincaré than Bertrand Russell when Russellinvoked Poincaré’s conventionalism to highlight that the choice between Arthur Eddington’s orthodox interpretation of Einstein’s general theory of relativity on the one hand, and Whitehead’s alternative interpretation on the other, is not a matter of empirical fact, but a matter of convention. Whitehead shared two of the premises of Poincaré’s conventionalism: the physics-independence of geometry, and the choice of a physical geometry amongst (...) geometries of constant curvature. This contributed significantly to his philosophical critique of Einstein, who held that the geometry of space-time depends on the physical distribution of matter, and that the non-homogeneity of this distribution implies that the appropriate physical geometry is variably curved. Russell’s conventionalism, contrary to Whitehead’s view, did not take Poincaré’s premises into account, was shared by the logical positivists, and led to a philosophical defense of Einstein. (shrink)

The way in which Stengers thinks “with” rather than “about” Whitehead is explained through an examination of the transformational function of speculative propositions. The article then investigates the significance of the recurrent theme of “coherence” throughout Whitehead’s philosophical and socio-organizational writings. This theme guides and unifies his thought through its various conceptual adventures.

David R. Griffin’s new Whitehead’s Radically Different Postmodern Philosophy: An Argument for Its Contemporary Relevance contains a chapterlong Whiteheadian response to several criticisms I have leveled against process theology. While encouraging his attempt to promote Whitehead as a preferred alternative to foundationalist modernism and postmodernism, I undertake to rebut Griffin’s arguments through discussions of the following topics: the one and the many, the finite versus infinite character of God, creation ex nihilo, the nature of determinateness and the need for every (...) determinate thing to have a creator, the applicability of the Ontological Principle to explaining a complex of first principles, the inclusion of time within ontological eternity, the goodness versus wildness of God, the nature of religious experience, and the uses of religious language. (shrink)

There is a good deal linking Whitehead’s and Emerson’s deepest in-tuitions, starting with their shared emphasis on intuition and flux—and despite the fact thatin sharp contrast with Whitehead, Emerson carefully avoided anything resembling a metaphysical system. Following Stengers, I distinguish between Whitehead’s “scheme” and his “intentionality”: he is “less the author of the scheme and of the concepts he articulates than he is obliged by them, compelled by them, in a process of empirical experimentation and verification which has about it (...) something of the experience of a trance because the thought in question is taken, captured, by a becoming—something about to be.” The bulk of the essay concerns the central role played by “interstitial wagers” of this sort in Whitehead’s contribution to what he termed “the romance of human thought.”. (shrink)

If, after a century of analysis there is a turn to synthesis, Hua-yan and Whitehead will become important resources. Especially given the radical difference of their historical contexts, their similarity is striking, but they differ on time. Whitehead is clear that relations to the future always differ in kind from those to the past, and Theravada Buddhists agree. But Hua-yan is open to a greater symmetry in enlightened experience.

Alfred North Whitehead’s metaphysics provides a means for overcoming the dualism embedded in J. Baird Callicott’s “postmodern” axiology. Indeed, the lessons Callicott draws from the new physics and ecology imply Whitehead’s position. While Callicott holds that subjectivity and valuing require consciousness, Whitehead argues that subjectivity and valuing characterize all metaphysically basic entities, conscious and non-conscious. Removing the constraint that valuing requires consciousness is a slight shift, but it makes all the difference. By jettisoning this constraint, we can develop a robust (...) account of intrinsic value that overcomes Callicott’s duality, while retaining his insights that valuing requires a valuer and fluent energy is more fundamental than discrete entities. (shrink)

Notwithstanding these and many other differences, in Process and Reality Whitehead recognises his debt towards Bradley. He emphasises the importance of the doctrine of feeling and goes so far as to qualify his whole cosmological system as an approximation to Bradley.

Perhaps more than any other aspect of his thought, Alfred North Whitehead’s rejection of the notion of “independent existence” or substance has been taken to define his philosophy of organism. Moreover, it is this rejection of substances which has been the source of some of the most significant objections to Whitehead’s thought. Many commentators often indicate sympathy with Whitehead’s project but ask, if the world is composed exclusively of microscopic events which neither endure nor have histories, then how can Whitehead (...) account for enduring, macroscopic individuals such as ourselves? That is, having rejected the notion of unchanging subjects of change, how can Whitehead’s account adequately capture the unity and self-identity of macroscopic individuals? The contemporary Neo-Thomist W. Norris Clarke gives voice to this potentially damaging objection. A close analysis of aspects of Clarke’s work will prove rewarding in several respects. Not only does Clarke provide a clear challenge to a non-substantial model of individuality by explicitly formulating and defending the objection that Whitehead’s system only allows for an attenuated conception of macroscopic individuality, Clarke’s own dynamic interpretation of the classical notion of substance seriously calls into question the very need for Whitehead’s “process turn” toward what Clarke sees as a misguided metaphysical atomism. Thus, engaging Clarke’s objection provides a valuable opportunity not only to evaluate the adequacy of his dynamic notion of substance, but also to respond to the common criticism that Whitehead’s system does not do justice to the unity of macroscopic individuals. (shrink)