Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures, 1929) — Alfred North Whitehead

Metaphysical Propositions; One and One Make Two.

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V. Induction, Probability, Statistical Theory, Ground, Sampling, Finite Numbers.

VI. Suppressed Premises in Induction, Presupposition of Defi- nite Type of Actuality Requirmg Definite Type of Envi- ronment; Wider Inductions Invalid; Statistical Probability within Relevant Environment.

VII. Objectification Samples Environment.

VIII. Alternative Non-Statistical Ground; Graduated Appetitions,
Primordial Nature of God; Secularization of Concept of
God’s Functions.

Chapter X. Process

1. Fluency and Permanence; Generation and Substance; Spa- tialization, Two Kinds of Fluency, Macroscopic and Micro- scopic, from Occasion to Occasion and within Each Occa- sion.

II. Concrescence, Novelty, Actuality; Microscopic Concrescence.

III. Three Stages of Microscopic Concrescence; Vector Charac- ters Indicate Macroscopic Transition; Emotion, and Sub- jective Form Generally, is Scalar in Microscopic Origina- tion and is the Datum for Macroscopic Transition.

IV. Higher Phases of Microscopic Concrescence.

V. Summary,

CHAP TE Rs.

Fact and Form

Aut human discourse which bases its claim to consid- eration on the truth of its statements must appeal to the facts. In none of its branches can philosophy claim immunity to this rule. But in the case of philosophy the difficulty arises that the record of the facts is in part dispersed vaguely through the various linguistic expres- sions of civilized language and of literature, and is in part expressed more precisely under the influence of schemes of thought prevalent in the traditions of science and philosophy.

In this second part of these lectures, the scheme of

Fact and Form 63

thought which is the basis of the philosophy of organism
is confronted with various interpretations of the facts
widely accepted in European tradition, literary, philo-
sophic, and scientific. So far as concerns philosophy only
a selected group can be explicitly mentioned. There is
no point in endeavouring to force the interpretations of
divergent philosophers into a vague agreement. What
is important is that the scheme of interpretation here
adopted can claim for each of its main positions the
express authority of one, or the other, of some supreme
master of thought—Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke,
Hume, Kant. But ultimately nothing rests on authority;
the final court of appeal is intrinsic reasonableness.

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them. His personal endowments, his wide opportunities for experience at a great period of civilization, his inheritance of an intellectual tradition not yet stiffened by excessive systematization, have made his writing an inexhaustible mine of suggestion. Thus in one sense by stating my belief that the train of thought in these lectures is Platonic, I am doing no more than expressing the hope that it falls within the Euro- pean tradition. But I do mean more: I mean that if we had to render Plato’s general point of view with the least changes made necessary by the intervening two thousand years of human experience in social organization, in esthetic attainments, in science, and in religion, we should have to set about the construction of a philosophy of organism. In such a philosophy the actualities con- stituting the process of the world are conceived as exem- plifying the ingression (or ‘participation’) of other things which constitute the potentialities of definiteness for any actual existence. The things which are temporal arise by their participation in the things which are eternal. The

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two sets are mediated by a thing which combines the actuality of what is temporal with the timelessness of what is potential. This final entity is the divine element in the world, by which the barren inefficient disjunction of abstract potentialities obtains primordially the efficient conjunction of ideal realization. This ideal realization of potentialities in a primordial actual entity constitutes the metaphysical stability whereby the actual process exemplifies general principles of metaphysics, and attains the ends proper to specific types of emergent order. By reason of the actuality of this primordial valuation of pure potentials, each eternal object has a definite, effec- tive relevance to each concrescent process. Apart from such orderings, there would be a complete disjunction of eternal objects unrealized in the temporal world. Nov- elty would be meaningless, and inconceivable. We are here extending and rigidly applying Hume’s prin- ciple, that ideas of reflection are derived from actual facts.

By this recognition of the divine element the general Aristotelian principle is maintained that, apart from things that are actual, there is nothing—nothing either in fact or in efficacy. This is the true general principle which also underlies Descartes’ dictum: “For this reason, when we perceive any attribute, we therefore conclude that some existing thing or substance to which it may be attributed, is necessarily present.” * And again: “For every clear and distinct conception (perceptio) is without doubt something and hence cannot derive its origin from what is nought. . . .”* This general principle will be termed the ‘ontological principle. It is the principle that everything is positively somewhere in actuality, and in potency everywhere. In one of its applications this principle issues in the doctrine of ‘conceptualism.’ Thus

* Principles of Philosophy, Part I, 52; translation by Haldane and Ross. All quotations from Descartes are from this translation. * Cf. Meditation IV, towards the end.

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the search for a reason is always the search for an actual fact which is the vehicle of the reason. The ontological principle, as here defined, constitutes the first step in the description of the universe as a solidarity * of many actual entities. Each actual entity is conceived as an act of experience arising out of data. It is a process of ‘feeling’ the many data, so as to absorb them into the unity of one individual ‘satisfaction.’ Here ‘feeling’ is the term used for the basic generic operation of passing from the objectivity of the data to the subjectivity of the actual entity in question. Feelings are variously specialized operations, effecting a transition into subjectivity. They replace the ‘neutral stuff’ of certain realistic philosophers. An actual entity is a process, and is not describable in terms of the morphology of a ‘stuff.’ This use of the term ‘feeling’ has a close analogy to Alexander’s* use of the term ‘enjoyment’; and has also some kinship with Bergson’s use of the term ‘intuition.’ A near analogy is Locke’s use of the term ‘idea,’ including ‘ideas of par- ticular things’ (cf. his Hssay, III, III, 2, 6, and 7). But the word ‘feeling,’ as used in these lectures, is even more reminiscent of Descartes. For example: “Let it be so; still it is at least quite certain that it seems to me that I see light, that I hear noise and that I feel heat. That cannot be false; properly speaking it is what is in me called feeling (sentire); and used in this precise sense that is no other thing than thinking.” °

In Cartesian language, the essence of an actual entity
consists solely in the fact that it is a prehending thing
(i.e., a substance whose whole essence or nature is to
prehend).° A ‘feeling’ belongs to the positive species

®The word ‘solidarity’ has been borrowed from Professor Wildon Carr’s Presidential Address to the Aristotelian Society, Session 1917- 1918. The address—“The Interaction of Body and Mind”—develops the fundamental principle suggested by this word.

*Cf. his Space, Time and Deity, passim.

meh. VM editation II, Haldane and Ross translation. ° For the analogue to this sentence cf. Meditation VI; substitute ‘Hns

prehendens’ for ‘Ens cogitans.’

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of ‘prehensions.’ There are two species of prehensions, the ‘positive species’ and the ‘negative species. An actual entity has a perfectly definite bond with each item in the universe. This determinate bond is its prehension of that item. A negative prehension is the definite exclu- sion of that item from positive contribution to the sub- ject’s own real internal constitution. This doctrine involves the position that a negative prehension expresses a bond. A positive prehension is the definite inclusion of that item into positive contribution to the subject’s own real internal constitution. This positive inclusion is called its ‘feeling’ of that item. Other entities are required to express how any one item is felt. All actual entities in the actual world, relatively to a given actual entity as ‘subject,’ are necessarily ‘felt’ by that subject, though in general vaguely. An actual entity as felt is said to be ‘objectified’ for that subject. Only a selection of eternal objects are ‘felt’? by a given subject, and these eternal objects are then said to have ‘ingression’ in that subject. But those eternal objects which are not felt are not therefore negligible. For each negative prehen- sion has its own subjective form, however trivial and faint. It adds to the emotional complex, though not to the objective data. The emotional complex is the sub- jective form of the final ‘satisfaction.’ The importance of negative prehensions arises from the fact, that (i) actual entities form a system, in the sense of entering into each other’s constitutions, (ii) that by the ontologi- cal principle every entity is felt by some actual entity, (iil) that, as a consequence of (1) and (ii), every entity in the actual world of a concrescent actuality has some gradation of real relevance to that concrescence, (iv) that, in consequence of (iii), the negative prehension of an entity is a positive fact with its emotional subjective from, (v) there is a mutual sensitivity of the subjective forms of prehensions, so that they are not indifferent to each other, (vi) the concrescence issues in one concrete feeling, the satisfaction.

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That we fail to find in experience any elements intrin- sically incapable of exhibition as examples of general the- ory, is the hope of rationalism. This hope is not a meta- physical premise. It is the faith which forms the motive for the pursuit of all sciences alike, including meta- physics.

In so far as metaphysics enables us to apprehend the
rationality of things, the claim is justified. It is always
open to us, having regard to the imperfections of all
metaphysical systems, to lose hope at the exact point
where we find ourselves. The preservation of such faith
must depend on an ultimate moral intuition into the
nature of intellectual action—that it should embody the
adventure of hope. Such an intuition marks the point
where metaphysics—and indeed every science—gains
assurance from religion and passes over into religion.
But in itself the faith does not embody a premise from
which the theory starts; it is an ideal which is seeking
satisfaction. In so far as we believe that doctrine, we
are rationalists.

There must, however, be limits to the claim that all
the elements in the universe are explicable by ‘theory.’
For ‘theory’ itself requires that there be ‘given’ elements
so as to form the material for theorizing. Plato himself
recognizes this limitation: I quote from Professor A. E.
Taylor’s summary of the Timaeus:

“Tn the real world there is always, over and above ‘law,’ a factor of the ‘simply given’ or ‘brute fact,’ not accounted for and to be accepted simply as given. It is the business of science never to acquiesce in the merely given, to seek to ‘explain’ it as the consequence, in virtue of rational law, of some simpler initial ‘given.’ But, however far science may carry this procedure, it is always forced to retain some element of brute fact, the merely given, in its account of things. It is the presence in nature of this element of the given, this surd or irrational as it has

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sometimes been called, which Timaeus appears to be personifying in his language about necessity.” *

So far as the interpretation of Plato is concerned, I
rely upon the authority of Professor Taylor. But, apart
from this historical question, a clear understanding of
the ‘given’ elements in the world is essential for any
form of Platonic realism.

For rationalistic thought, the notion of ‘givenness’ carries with it a reference beyond the mere data in ques- tion. It refers to a ‘decision’ whereby what is ‘given’ is separated off from what for that occasion is ‘not given.’ This element of ‘givenness’ in things implies some activity procuring limitation. The word ‘decision’ does not here imply conscious judgment, though in some ‘decisions’ consciousness will be a factor. The word is used in its root sense of a ‘cutting off.’ The ontological principle declares that every decision is referable to one or more actual entities, because in separation from actual entities there is nothing, merely nonentity—‘The rest is silence.’