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References
Hartshorne’s notion of God as the cosmic organism is expounded and developed in hisMan’s Vision of God (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books 1964). See especially Chapter V. Also, see my article, ‘Hartshorne’s Argument for God’s All-Inclusiveness’,Sophia, Vol. 27, 1988.
Charles Hartshorne, ‘The Immortality of the Past: Critique of a Prevalent Misinterpretation’,The Review of Metaphysics 7, (1953), 100.
Panpsychism is committed to a monistic ontology, because it asserts that only mental stuff exists Mental stuff is of two sorts—ideas, images, etc., in minds, on the one hand, and minds themselves, on the other. A piece of rock is not a physical thing, but a loose colony or association of mind-ful entities or individuals, which physicists call sub-atomic particles. In this regard, panpsychism, although it is an idealistic monism, must be differentiated from Berkeley’s idealism, which is committed to the view that what we call stones, tables, trees, and so on, are only clusters of ideas or sense-data in our minds, having no independent reality outside the minds of perceivers. Whereas, on the contrary, they have an independent reality outside the minds of perceivers for panpsychism, but this reality that they have is purely mental in character.
Charles Hartshorne, ‘A New Look at the Problem of Evil’,Current Philosophical Issues: Essays in Honor of Curt John Ducasse F.C. Dommeyer (ed.) (Springfield, Ill: Charles C. Thomas Publisher, 1966), 205.
The main difficulty with panpsychism is how it could be established that sub-atomic particles are mind-ful or mind-like entities or individuals. Many panpsychists, like Hartshorne, have appealed to quantum physics to substantiate their claim—in particular the principle of indeterminacy. Here, they take the view that because you cannot predict the behavior (or action) of a subatomic particle individually, it follows that the individual particle’s behavior (or action) must be indeterminate in the sense of not being totally caused by factors external to the particle itself. The conclusion is that the behavior (or action) must be also in part the result of the exercise of a power residing within the particle itself, which exercise of power is not itself predictable, (for obviously if it is predictable, there will be no indeterminacy, at all). Since there is an unpredictable exercise of power, there is free-will. And since this exercise of power comes from within the particle itself, there is self-determination. It something has free-will and self-determination, it would have to be something similar to us—individuals with minds. Hence, panpsychism.
Charles Hartshorne,Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), 16.
Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), 16.
Hartshorne, ‘A New Look at the Problem of Evil’, 208.
Ibid., 207.
Ibid., 207.
Ibid., 207.
Hartshorne, ‘A New Look at the Problem of Evil’, 208.
Ibid., 205.
Charles Hartshorne, ‘Freedom Requires Indeterminisms and Universal Causality’,The Journal of Philosophy, 55, (1958)., 797.
Ibid., 798.
Ibid., p. 799. For Hartshorne, of course, the chance or indeterminism he is advocating is not incompatible with universal causality. He is only advocating a ‘relative indeterminism’. According to him, ‘Every event has its cause or causes … But not every event—indeed some of us would say, notany event in its concrete actuality—is fully and absolutely determined by its causes. In other words, an indeterminist … rejects a certain definition of ‘causes’, namely that it is a condition, or set of conditions, from which only one outcome is possible, or from which, in principle or ideally, the outcome is wholly predictable. To be substituted for this is a definition which, whatever else it includes, involves the following requirement: the cause is a state of affairs, granted which something more or less like what happens subsequently was ‘bound to happen’ or (if you prefer) could safely have been predicted.’
Ibid., 799.
Ibid., 795.
Ibid., 798.
Hartshorne, ‘A New Look at the Problem of Evil’, 208.
Ibid., 208.
Ibid., 208.
Hartshorne, ‘Freedom Requires Indeterminism and Universal Causality’,, 795.
Ibid. 795.
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Chew, H.H. Process theism and physical evil. SOPH 31, 16–27 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02772484
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02772484