Whitehead's Metaphysics

Whitehead’s Metaphysics

Eric Hoffmann

            That Whitehead’s philosophy would become more easily understood in the future was a sentiment expressed by many of Whitehead’s contemporaries; the present essay is intended to give substance to such a hope. It is the contention of this essay that the digital revolution has made some of Whitehead’s key concepts easier to understand. Instead of trying to explain Whitehead’s elegant system of fourth dimensional geometry in an intricate metaphysical context, viewing the metaphysical concept by analogy to technology shall be more fruitful. Therefore, we shall attempt to visualize some of Whitehead’s key concepts.

            The first difficulty the reader of Whitehead’s “Process and Reality” encounters is the doctrine of actual entities. Whitehead uses the terms actual entities and actual occasions interchangeably. Actual occasions are the of Whitehead’s ontology. They are the building blocks of his metaphysics that everything else depends on. Everything from electrons to galaxies is made up of actual occasions. Because of actual entities there is time and space. Actual entities do not occupy time and space, they create time and space. Geometry starts with the point Whitehead’s metaphysics starts with: actual occasions. Actual occasions are commonly described as units of process. But it is easier to visualize actual entities as pixels on a television screen. Pixels on a television screen are fixed and uniformly distributed. So Whitehead saves the uniformity of space by making actual occasions both fixed and uniformly distributed. To understand how actual occasions create time and space, one must give up dimensional thinking. Time and space are not mediums that objects reside in; instead time and space are created by the relations between objects made of actual occasions. Just as on a television screen space is created by the relations between images made up of pixels. In this way, Whitehead both avoids the infinite regression argument and stays consistent with the “Theory of Relativity”.

           To grasp how time is created, the magnetism must be stretched. The first analogy comes from E. Schrodinger. TO show how time is created by entropy, he asks us to imagine a new deck of playing cars with all the suits in perfect order. Each time the cards are shuffled, more disorder is introduced into the deck. This would be moving forward in time. To move backwards in time would be to start with a well shuffled deck. Each shuffle making the suits go in order, introducing more order in the deck. In Whitehead, time is caused by the coming into existence and passing out of existence of actual entities. To stay with our image of a television, it is not that an hour long television show fills and hour, instead it creates the hour. No time passes when the television is turned off. Many like most electronic appliances are rated for the amount of time that can be used while turned on. So time, like space, is created by the relations between actual entities.

            The last question to be dealt with is the problem of motion, since all actual entities are fixed and immobile.

            One of the persistent criticisms of Whitehead’s philosophy is: actual occasions for being the basic building block for everything have a rather rich private life. Not only is an actual occasion a uniform of its own, it also enters into relations with every other actual occasion in existence, and all past actual entities. Whitehead calls these relations prehensions. There are positive and negative prehensions. By the term “prehension” most commentators use the term “feeling” as a description. The author prefers a simpler definition of the term prehension: an actual entity can have an effect on another actual entity. Positive prehensions are when actual entities can join together to form a constellation, i.e. an object. Negative prehensions are when actual occasions cannot join together. When actual occasions can join together in a constellation, they are in the form of an eternal object. Eternal object is a colorful coinage of Whitehead’s. Eternal object means that actual occasions have joined together to form a stable object, which is recognized as a universal. Eternal objects are both transcendental and imminent. They are imminent in that their origin is in positive prehensions, and transcendental in that objects can be compared with other objects. In this way, Whitehead avoids the infinite regress argument that is associated with Platonic forms. Now to explain movement; it is the eternal object or relation that moves a field of actual occasions. Like an image moving across a pixelated screen. There are only a limited number of eternal objects, although a very large number, all the eternal objects taken together, Whitehead calls the primordial nature of god. So Whitehead’s god is not like the god of monotheistic religion. It is like a blenty spirit in neo-platonic philosophy. To use H. More’s term, a hylachic principle, the source of order in the universe.

            This is the most basic sketch of Whitehead’s metaphysics, but should give some foundation to build upon.

Bibliography

William Christian: An interpretation of Whitehead’s Metaphysics. (Yale 1967)

A.N Whitehead: The concept of nature (Cambridge 1955)

A.N Whitehead: Process and reality (Macmillian New York 1929)