Pub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.5406/processstudies.48.2.0198
Palmyre M. F. Oomen
The way Whitehead speaks of God in his “philosophy of organism,” and the evaluation thereof, is the subject of this article. The background of this issue is the position—broadly shared in theology, and here represented by Aquinas—that one should not speak “carelessly” about God. Does Whitehead violate this rule, or does his language for God express God’s otherness and relatedness to the world in a new, intriguing way? In order to answer this question, an introduction into Whitehead’s philosophy is given, and especially into his category of existence, the “actual entity.” For Whitehead, God is an actual entity, and so is the most trivial puff of existence. His perception of the similarity and greater dissimilarity between God and the worldly actual entities (and clusters thereof) is analyzed. In the main and final section of this article, these insights are used as tools to decrypt Whitehead’s God-language. Here, I compare the status of Whitehead’s and Aquinas’s statements about God, discuss Whitehead’s ideas concerning the analogical character of concrete language, and argue that in Whitehead’s philosophy too there is no discourse about God without a shift or breakdown of the “ordinary” meaning of language.
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Pub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.5840/process201948220
B. Macallan
This article explores the thesis that novelty is central to a wide and diverse range of French philosophers in the twentieth century. Often these philosophers are seen on different sides of philosophic divides, but novelty brings them together. I will explore some of the fruitful areas for dialogue between French and process philosophy, particularly around the theme of novelty.
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Pub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.5406/processstudies.48.2.0239
Matthew T. Segall
This article brings media ecology into conversation with Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism in an effort to lure the former beyond its normally anthropocentric orientation. The article is divided into two parts. Part 1 spells out the way Whitehead’s approach can aid media ecology in developing a less anthropocentric theory of communication. Part 2 engages more specifically with Mark B. N. Hansen’s Feed-Forward: On the Future of Twenty-First-Century Media. Hansen’s work is an example of the exciting new directions opened up for media theory by Whitehead’s panexperientialist ontology, but I argue that Hansen’s attempt to “invert” Whitehead’s theory of perception is based on a terminological confusion.
本文将媒介生态学与阿尔弗雷德·诺斯·怀特海的有机体哲学进行对话，试图吸引前者超越其通常的人类中心主义取向。本文分为两部分。第一部分阐明了怀特黑德的方法可以帮助媒介生态学发展出一种不那么以人类为中心的传播理论。第二部分更具体地介绍了Mark B. N. Hansen的前馈:关于21世纪媒体的未来。汉森的工作是怀特黑德的全经验主义本体论为媒体理论开辟的令人兴奋的新方向的一个例子，但我认为，汉森试图“颠倒”怀特黑德的感知理论是基于术语混乱。
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Pub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.5840/process201948218
Benjamin Andrae
This article is an attempt to examine and clarify the truth theory of American pragmatism. Three central ideas of this truth theory will be considered in light of Whitehead's metaphysics: a rejection of the correspondence theory of truth, a defense of fallibilism, and a recognition of the temporality of truth.
{"title":"Three Ideas from American Pragmatism Interpreted in Terms of Whitehead's Metaphysics","authors":"Benjamin Andrae","doi":"10.5840/process201948218","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/process201948218","url":null,"abstract":"This article is an attempt to examine and clarify the truth theory of American pragmatism. Three central ideas of this truth theory will be considered in light of Whitehead's metaphysics: a rejection of the correspondence theory of truth, a defense of fallibilism, and a recognition of the temporality of truth.","PeriodicalId":315123,"journal":{"name":"Process Studies","volume":"78 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122994612","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-01DOI: 10.5406/processstudies.48.2.0219
D. Adams
This essay contends that reality is a creative evolutionary process by which the virtual is transformed into the actual and argues that our critical conception of realism in literature needs to be altered to reflect this purposive and progressive living reality in contrast to the static and dead actuality assumed by the conventional notion of realism as mimesis. Realist fiction writers who are profound creators have strategically employed metaphysically dipolar and ethically earnest literary genres in tandem with mimetic realism, resulting in complexly interactive alternative and prophetic realisms that function as catalytic agents for progressive change in our world.
{"title":"The Creativity that Drives the World: Prophetic Realism","authors":"D. Adams","doi":"10.5406/processstudies.48.2.0219","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/processstudies.48.2.0219","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This essay contends that reality is a creative evolutionary process by which the virtual is transformed into the actual and argues that our critical conception of realism in literature needs to be altered to reflect this purposive and progressive living reality in contrast to the static and dead actuality assumed by the conventional notion of realism as mimesis. Realist fiction writers who are profound creators have strategically employed metaphysically dipolar and ethically earnest literary genres in tandem with mimetic realism, resulting in complexly interactive alternative and prophetic realisms that function as catalytic agents for progressive change in our world.","PeriodicalId":315123,"journal":{"name":"Process Studies","volume":"12365 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132524441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The three theories considered here, real continuous time (Bergson), real serial time (Whitehead), and unreal time (McTaggart), are each in some sense a reaction to Hume’s theory of serial or “spatialized” time. Hence, Hume’s theory is elaborated on as a foundation for the discussion and comparison of the subsequent three. This brief excursion into the nature of time may help to illuminate the differences among these three and to suggest some of their possible implications, particularly with regard to (1) the existential difference between intuited or transcendent time and experienced or immanent time and (2) the qualitative or ontological difference between the eternal and the temporal.
{"title":"Three Paradigm Theories of Time","authors":"E. Luft","doi":"10.5840/PROCESS20194817","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/PROCESS20194817","url":null,"abstract":"The three theories considered here, real continuous time (Bergson), real serial time (Whitehead), and unreal time (McTaggart), are each in some sense a reaction to Hume’s theory of serial or “spatialized” time. Hence, Hume’s theory is elaborated on as a foundation for the discussion and comparison of the subsequent three. This brief excursion into the nature of time may help to illuminate the differences among these three and to suggest some of their possible implications, particularly with regard to (1) the existential difference between intuited or transcendent time and experienced or immanent time and (2) the qualitative or ontological difference between the eternal and the temporal.","PeriodicalId":315123,"journal":{"name":"Process Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127411459","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In God of Empowering Love: A History and Reconception of the Theodicy Conundrum, David Polk proposes that the power of God should be understood as love that empowers rather than overpowers and that the process-relational metaphysics of Whitehead, Hartshorne, and subsequent Whiteheadian thinkers justifies this conception of God’s power as empowering love. I argue instead that, while Polk’s thesis cannot, strictly speaking, be philosophically justified within the conventional parameters of Whitehead’s metaphysical scheme, the latter could be modestly altered so as to justify divine power as empowering love. In what follows, I lay out my argument for a systems-oriented approach to the God-world relationship in which God as Trinity is both the transcendent origin and ultimate goal of the cosmic process (understood as an ongoing structured society of finite subsocieties and nexuses).
{"title":"A New Process-Oriented Approach to Theodicy","authors":"J. Bracken","doi":"10.5840/PROCESS20194818","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/PROCESS20194818","url":null,"abstract":"In God of Empowering Love: A History and Reconception of the Theodicy Conundrum, David Polk proposes that the power of God should be understood as love that empowers rather than overpowers and that the process-relational metaphysics of Whitehead, Hartshorne, and subsequent Whiteheadian thinkers justifies this conception of God’s power as empowering love. I argue instead that, while Polk’s thesis cannot, strictly speaking, be philosophically justified within the conventional parameters of Whitehead’s metaphysical scheme, the latter could be modestly altered so as to justify divine power as empowering love. In what follows, I lay out my argument for a systems-oriented approach to the God-world relationship in which God as Trinity is both the transcendent origin and ultimate goal of the cosmic process (understood as an ongoing structured society of finite subsocieties and nexuses).","PeriodicalId":315123,"journal":{"name":"Process Studies","volume":"135 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132621018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We pose a foundational problem for those who claim that subjects are ontologically irreducible, but causally reducible (weak emergence). This problem is neuroscience’s notorious binding problem, which concerns how distributed neural areas produce unified mental objects (such as perceptions) and the unified subject that experiences them. Synchrony, synapses, and other mechanisms cannot explain this. We argue that this problem seriously threatens popular claims that mental causality is reducible to neural causality. Weak emergence additionally raises evolutionary worries about how we have survived the perils of nature. Our emergent subject hypothesis (ESH) avoids these shortcomings. Here, a singular, unified subject acts back on the neurons it emerges from and binds sensory features into unified mental objects. Serving as the mind’s controlling center, this subject is ontologically and causally irreducible (strong emergence). Our ESH draws on recent experimental evidence, including the evidence for a possible correlate (or “seat”) of the subject, which enhances its testability.
{"title":"How Subjects Can Emerge from Neurons","authors":"Eric LaRock, Mostyn W. Jones","doi":"10.5840/PROCESS20194814","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/PROCESS20194814","url":null,"abstract":"We pose a foundational problem for those who claim that subjects are ontologically irreducible, but causally reducible (weak emergence). This problem is neuroscience’s notorious binding problem, which concerns how distributed neural areas produce unified mental objects (such as perceptions) and the unified subject that experiences them. Synchrony, synapses, and other mechanisms cannot explain this. We argue that this problem seriously threatens popular claims that mental causality is reducible to neural causality. Weak emergence additionally raises evolutionary worries about how we have survived the perils of nature. Our emergent subject hypothesis (ESH) avoids these shortcomings. Here, a singular, unified subject acts back on the neurons it emerges from and binds sensory features into unified mental objects. Serving as the mind’s controlling center, this subject is ontologically and causally irreducible (strong emergence). Our ESH draws on recent experimental evidence, including the evidence for a possible correlate (or “seat”) of the subject, which enhances its testability.","PeriodicalId":315123,"journal":{"name":"Process Studies","volume":"140 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126752777","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines the process theodicies of David Ray Griffin and Philip Clayton. It explains their differences on such issues as God’s primordial power and voluntary self-limitation, creativity as an independent metaphysical principle that limits God, creation out of nothing or out of chaos, and God’s voluntary causal naturalism. Difficulties with their positions are discussed. The Clayton-Knapp “no-not-once” principle is explained, and a more comprehensive theodicy is outlined.
{"title":"Conflicting Process Theodicies","authors":"R. Edwards","doi":"10.5840/PROCESS20194813","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/PROCESS20194813","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the process theodicies of David Ray Griffin and Philip Clayton. It explains their differences on such issues as God’s primordial power and voluntary self-limitation, creativity as an independent metaphysical principle that limits God, creation out of nothing or out of chaos, and God’s voluntary causal naturalism. Difficulties with their positions are discussed. The Clayton-Knapp “no-not-once” principle is explained, and a more comprehensive theodicy is outlined.","PeriodicalId":315123,"journal":{"name":"Process Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123298803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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