Abstract

Whitehead's basic philosophical position is that events, rather than material stuff, constitute the basis of reality. This basis is characterized by the uniform significance of events. It is necessary in order to refute Berkeley's idealism and Hume's skepticism. It does so by building into each existent necessary connections with all else. Consequently, Whitehead is committed to internal relations. However, analysis reveals Whitehead's evidence for his basic position, that it is directly given in perception, to be on the same level as his refutations of Berkeley and Hume. Rather than being the result of direct evidence, Whitehead's position arises out of a desire to fulfill certain philosophical needs. ;In his early works Whitehead claims that events are directly revealed in nature. However objects, fundamentally different entities from events, are also revealed. This inconsistency is not resolved until Process and Reality. ;In his later works Whitehead collapses the categories of object and event into that of actual entity, which is neither. Objects are characterized as societies of actual entities, but events are not mentioned. Accordingly, we define a "natural event" to be the intersection of a society with a duration thereby committing Whitehead to the theory of temporal parts. Whitehead's theory of prehensions also has similarities to the theory of tropes. ;Whiteheadian objects have essences . This allows Whitehead's version of the theory of temporal parts to resist Chisholm's attacks although Taylor's version of the view does not. ;In Whitehead's system Lemmon's spatio-temporal criterion of event identity and Van Inwagen's "truncated" causal criterion collapse into one prehensive criterion of actual entity identity. Whitehead avoids objections to Davidson's "complete" causal criterion only by giving up his claim for the essentiality of the relation of objectification. ;Whitehead's merging of the categories of event and object and insistence on internal relations commits him to the essentiality of an object's spatio-temporal location, an untenable position. This is a consequence of his misconstrual of the nature of natural knowledge. Whitehead is mistaken in believing natural knowledge to involve necessary connections, as does mathematical knowledge