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.

A Precis on Chapter 1 of Process and Reality

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

Process and Reality is the seminal work from Alfred North Whitehead that has influenced the philosophical world greatly, spawning off all sorts of secondary literature. Originally a lecture series given at the University of Edinburgh in the late 1920s, Process and Reality sets out his metaphysical musings and in Chapter one Whitehead focuses on setting the stage by discussing large picture views on the very nature of philosophy itself. He divides his chapter into six parts which I will individually discuss and look at the main themes he espouses and lays importance upon.

Like any good philosopher Whitehead begins his first section with a definition, and will continue to focus on defining his terms throughout the chapter. His first is of speculative philosophy which he sees as a “endeavor to frame coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of every element of experience.” A definition that, may encompass it’s meaning, far from elucidates its underlying impact upon the discussion. I took it to mean a type of philosophy that looks at the world and attempts to draw generalized, logical, systems of explanation for everything that is around. This system includes both rational and empirical study and will face certain difficulties due to it’s intention to apply generally.

In the second section Whitehead explores just what generalization means. He says that philosophic generalization should be understood as a means to utilize specific notions, applying to a restricted group of facts, for the divination of generic notions which apply to all facts. These in their final form ought to be rationalistic ideals which bring coherence and logical perfection. This, however, is no simple task.

He writes in his third section that many philosophers attempt generalized theories but few successfully avoid two fallacies he points out. The fallacy of misplaced concreteness comes about when the philosopher forgets how much you can actually abstract the thing worked upon. This leads into the second which is a false estimate of the logical procedure in respect to certainty and in respect to the premises. Essentially what that can boil down to is by abstracting too far from those specific facts, philosophers are want to build large generalizations on weak foundations. This can compound when philosophers fail to heed his advice in section four in which he argues that in a similar way to how the Newtonian physics had to be updated as time continued, so too our foundational generalized principles should also be updated and changed. He says that one aim of philosophy should be to challenge this first principles of both science and previous philosophical thought.

In section five he discusses the tools of the philosopher, namely language. This he believes is a powerful tool but limited in that by using it in the form we have it we can allow language to hide complex diverse meanings in a simple subject predicate statement. This impact is most clearly felt when we forget that metaphysical systems should only be approximations of the general truths sought.

Finally he writes about philosophy in relation to science and religion. He has been referencing how philosophy and rationality can critique each other but now he puts a finer point on it by suggesting that philosophy should be the conjoining point between science and religion bringing those both into one rational thought.

Coming away from this chapter I feel excited by his focus on the problem of generalization. The first paper I wrote on philosophy, back at the start of my college career, was on the nature of truth and relativity and the largest problem I found there was the ability to generalize a position. To do a deep dive, then, with Whitehead into what problems generalization has for metaphysics at large will be gripping and help to elucidate some issues I have felt with the discipline in the past.