Ethan Somers on Process and Reality Ch2

Find this book here, and find a great resource on Whitehead here.

In chapter two of Process and Reality Whitehead attempts to set out the different building blocks of his philosophical theories. At the very end of the chapter in section four he refers to these categories he sets out as explanatory of everything else he will cover, or as the solution to every other question he will discuss. As such each idea he describes and category he goes over is very dense and I hope he will spend more time delving into each. He starts however with a discussion of just what makes up speculative philosophy and how it endeavors to frame the logical and necessary general ideas we need to describe our surroundings.

To best understand these general ideas, he writes, we must depart from using the kinds of terms philosophy did at the time of his writing. He draws a comparison to regular science where in the past more flimsy terms, which he refers to as old faculties, were used to describe those functions and abilities of the body and human experience we didn’t quite comprehend. It’s his analysis that these same less than substantive terms have made their way into philosophy, and while science has weeded them out philosophers still lean upon them.

He proposes that we do away with them then, and begin to refer to such things as actual entity, prehension, nexus, and ontological principles. These will replace those very abstract notions such as “mere awareness, mere sensation, mere emotion, mere purpose, mere appearance, mere causation.” By failing to replace these, he fears, we build our systems of philosophy upon weak grounds.

These changes he feels also get to the purpose of philosophy. Philosophy ought to focus on drawing explanation from abstract ideas that can be pulled from the physical around us and in order to do that we must have a strong system for organizing the world into categories which he explores in sections two through four. The top line categories are that of the ultimate, existence, explanation, and obligations. Each breaks down further, with existence having eight categories below it, explanation having twenty-seven and so on.

A thought he returns to regularly during this chapter is the idea of limitation around what can and can not be abstracted from and towards the end he writes that “every entity pervades the whole world.” (28) I read this as arguing that some things are not able to be abstracted from the rest of existence and must be considered in concert with the rest of reality. This comes out of the fourth category of explanation where it seems that the idea of "complete abstraction” is a self contradiction. I think that’s because he thinks that every ultimate actuality has a principle of unrest within it which is Whiteheads way of saying those things are in the state of becoming.

This also leads to his discussion of a thinker not thinking the same thing twice. He extends the principle behind the sentiment that no one crosses the same river twice (referring to the qualitative identity of a being) which comes from Locke’s understanding of ‘perpetual perishing.’ He ends the chapter by tying this all up as his fight to push back against the Aristotelian logic that has been ruling in the metaphysical world he thinks since the classical period. In reading his thoughts I found myself a little lost with the number of new concepts but I think by referring back to this chapter regularly throughout the rest of the readings will help in understanding it’s importance immensely.