It might be thought that an overarching commitment to connection will result in some conflict between the way experience of the world seems to us and the way the world might actually be. It would be easy to simply conclude that “seeming” necessarily falls short of conveying the nature of reality, though I am attempting to avoid this in the present work. Starting with an overarching commitment to the actuality of experience does not guarantee that this problem is avoided, however, since Whitehead and the
Metaphysics, 56 (1), 19-36 (pdf pagination differs; Pp.1-12).
273
Process and reality, p.20.
274Process and reality, p.23. 275
A point made in the very first published analysis of Process and Reality, by Everett W. Hall in 1930 (see Hall, 1963, “Of what use are Whitehead’s eternal objects?” In Kline, pp. 102-16.
pragmatists came to quite different conclusions about the appearance-reality relationship. Whitehead expresses this conflict frequently, and it is his attempts to be precise about the relation between apparent atomicity and a less apparent continuity which have disconcerted his commentators. One such attempt runs as follows:
Thus the ultimate metaphysical truth is atomism. The creatures are atomic. In the present cosmic era there is a creation of continuity. Perhaps such creation is an ultimate metaphysical truth holding of all cosmic epochs, but this does not seem to be a necessary condition…But atomism does not exclude complexity and universal relativity. Each atom is a system of all things.276
A central objective of this chapter will be to make the apparent conflict between Whitehead’s commitment to both atomism and continuity less metaphysically intractable. It will become apparent that he was well aware of in-discrete approximations to continuity, as were many of his predecessors.
In the years before Whitehead’s gradual adoption of the philosophy of organism, pragmatists such as Peirce, James and Dewey struggled with this problem. What they all wished to avoid, at one extreme, was a metaphysics which granted quite different criteria of reality to experience and nature. At the other extreme lay the apparently eccentric metaphysics of Bergson, which had no particular problem with all things being, in some degree, durational. The problem has been interpreted by most commentators as a dispute about the nature of time, but as Whitehead adopts Locke’s view that the passage of time is “perpetual perishing”277 it seems that the experience of time as traditionally understood is merely a by-product of process. In what follows I will not directly address the issue of the nature of time as I do not wish to take a stand, my interest being in the way discreteness and continuity are reconciled.
Zeno’s paradox of the arrow in flight is often dismissed as having no substantive mathematical or physical implications. Whitehead took it seriously, though he generalised the argument from motion to becoming. The paradox is interpreted by most commentators (Aristotle being a notable exception) as showing that motion is
276 Process and reality, pp.35-6. van Haeften (2001, n.31) draws attention to Whitehead’s apparent
uneasiness about this conclusion, as he underlined the first “not” and added a question mark in his personal copy. He also annotated his copy to refer back to this passage – I will have more to say about this later.
impossible because it cannot begin278. Before the arrow can cover half the distance it must cover one-quarter, before it can traverse this distance it must travel one-eighth … before it can traverse an infinitely small distance it must travel half that … hence motion cannot commence. It is in his analysis of this problem that the difference between Whitehead and Bergson becomes apparent279. Whitehead’s reading is that a genuinely contradictory conclusion is reached – either in a process of becoming, nothing (that is, something without temporal extension) becomes; or becoming is not always divisible into parts that are themselves divisible becomings. Bergson dropped the first assumption in favour of the view that becoming is everything; that nothing ever really is. This would mean that the world does not consist of real individuals with a distinct identity, a conclusion that Whitehead found unacceptable as it implies a world immune from rational analysis. Instead Whitehead gave up the second assumption, to conclude that Zeno was groping for an argument which distinguishes between the necessity for every act of becoming to have a successor, which is clearly implied by something already existing, and every such act of becoming having a predecessor, which cannot be established without an additional premise. Whitehead was happy to supply this premise, by concluding that every act of becoming results in a “creature” with temporal extension, but the act itself is divisible into acts without temporal extension.280
It is at this point that Whitehead offers William James as an authority, citing a passage which can be seen as a development of the earlier “flight of a bird” image of the stream of consciousness. My interpretation conflicts with that of those who see James’ analysis of experience as significantly contributing to Whitehead’s problematic disjunction between continuous possibility and discrete actuality, or as it is also known, epochal becoming281. James says “Either your experience is of no content, of no change, or it is of a perceptible amount of content or change. Your acquaintance with reality
277
Process and reality, p.147.
278
In Physics, Book 6, Ch 9, 239b, Aristotle dismisses this “paradox” as being essentially the same as Achilles racing the tortoise, which is generally interpreted as showing that the race will never end.
279 Chappell (1963), “Whitehead’s theory of becoming”, in Kline, p.73. 280
Process and reality, p.69.
281
Rosenthal refers to the problematic use made of James by “Whiteheadian scholars” (2000, p.123) then proceeds to give her own more continuity-friendly interpretation of James; John Buchanan (2000, “A process, pluralistic universe.” Concrescence: The Australasian Journal of Process Thought, 1, 1-12) takes all of James on drops or buds of experience as consistent and relatively unproblematic: Felt (2002) refers to Whitehead making “much – arguably too much” use of James’ analysis, while van Haeften (2001) does not refer to James at all.
grows literally by buds or drops of perception. Intellectually and upon reflection you can divide these into components, but as immediately given, they come totally or not at all.”282 To some extent James is simply repeating Peirce’s understanding of durational cognition as illustrated using the inverted triangle dipped in water – recall that Peirce points out that, given that a cognition exists, there can be no shortest duration; that is, there either is cognition or there is not. However in a later work, not quoted by Whitehead, James is clearly distancing himself from a discrete interpretation when he says “The concrete pulses of experience appear pent in by no such definite limits as our conceptual substitutes for them are confined by. They run into one another continuously and seem to interpenetrate”283 This description contains two obvious pointers to in-discreteness: the lack of “definite limits”, and interpenetration. Are there any analogues to these in Whitehead’s own descriptions of process? Before I look at this, the case for Whitehead’s problematic disjunction needs to be made clearer.
How in-discrete is process?
We have already seen that duration has fundamentally in-discrete characteristics, when conceived rightly as (a) multiple, (b) heterogeneous, and (c) overlapping. This formulation works for Bergson, who is comfortable ascribing the “cuts” in the flow of experience to mental activity of an everyday nature; he is quite clear that apart from these acts the flow of duration is continuous. He says “The apparent discontinuity of the psychical life is then due to our attention being fixed on it by a series of separate acts: actually there is only a gentle slope.”284 Whitehead too has a conception of duration that is not so different in its emphasis on indivisibility; as noted already, the culmination of his analysis of Zeno’s arrow paradox is “the conclusion … that in every act of becoming there is the becoming of something with temporal extension, but that the act itself is not extensive…”285 This conclusion has caused significant problems for commentators
282
From James, Some Problems of Philosophy, Ch.10. Quoted in Process and reality, p.68. My introduction of this quote rather sympathetically links it directly to the idea of duration, but curiously Rosenthal chooses a different quote to illustrate James’ influence on Whitehead, one which emphasises the apparent discreteness of the “drops”.
283 From James, A Pluralistic Universe, p.127. Quoted in Buchanan (2000), p.2. 284
From Creative Evolution, p.3. Quoted in Felt (2002), p.4.
285 There is a question about the differing understanding of the length of duration, since Bergson accepts
that duration is individual and of varying length up to the macro-temporal. Whitehead’s durations are infinitesimal, though of varying lengths.
because it results in time having a double aspect – understood from within, from the perspective of the becoming occasion, it will seem continuous, while from without, from the perspective of the world, it will seem atomic.
Sandra Rosenthal, in her reconstruction of Whitehead’s theory of time, suggests that his commitment to reconciling experience with the findings of science results in a variety of pressures towards atomicity – from the need to derive the point- like abstractions of space-time from experienced duration; from the need to preserve the arrow of time; and from the need to preserve the absolute fixity of the past286. Together these result in the absolute definiteness of perishing actual occasions, and a view of time as constituted by discrete stages, or epochs. The process of concrescence of a new actual entity can be considered in two distinct ways which respect the distinction between possibility and actuality; as Whitehead says: “Genetic division is division of the concrescence; coordinate division is division of the concrete.” From within, the process is seen as growth from phase to phase, and it is appropriate to speak of one phase being “later” than another; “this genetic passage from phase to phase is not in physical time … it can be put shortly by saying, that physical time expresses some features of the growth, but not the growth of the features.” Coordinate analysis, on the other hand, relates to the final complete feeling of the actual entity, or its “satisfaction”. “The actual entity is the enjoyment of a certain quantum of physical time”, and the quantum in question is an extensive region of space-time287. Hence the tensed language suitable to the succession of phases in becoming is troublingly incompatible with Whitehead’s frequent assertion that the process is not “in” objective, physical time.
Rosenthal critiques a number of attempts to interpret and reconstruct Whitehead’s position, including Jorge Nobo’s move from the “extensive continuum” of real possibility to the atomicity of actual occasions; and Donald Sherburne’s attempt to argue that actual occasions share an interface, which is a complementary move from discreteness to continuity288. Both these and other attempts fail, she says, because they ultimately rely on contiguity as the mediator between discreteness and continuity – “From such a welding together of atomic units there can arise only a pseudocontinuity of
286
Rosenthal (2000), pp.11-12.
287 All Whitehead quotes are from Process and reality, p.283. Emphasis in the original. 288
Jorge Nobo, Whitehead’s Metaphysics of Extension and Solidarity (SUNY, 1986), and Donald Sherburne, “Whitehead without God”, in Process and Christian Thought (Bobbs-Merrill, 1971). Quoted
contiguous parts.”289 Some other attempts have been made to reconcile discreteness and continuity in process, and at least one of the ones I will consider discovers in-discrete mechanisms in Whitehead’s system. Chris van Haeften concludes that both continuity and discontinuity have their place in Whitehead’s system, and that time can be considered in both ways, while James Felt pursues a similarly inclusive aim in looking at Whitehead’s atomistic conception of a person.
Felt’s analysis will not keep us long – he looks at the prospects for human freedom if Whitehead’s analysis of the ever-perishing actual entity which is a person is true. How can such a person act intentionally and make morally binding decisions on behalf of later instantiations of themself? Felt’s proposed solution appears not to be true to the metaphysics of process as such, but is rather informed by the differing methodologies of Bergson and Whitehead, as these famously result in differing conceptions of continuity. According to Felt, Bergson’s method of intuition, his “direct attunement to immediate experience”, which eschews spatialising, reveals a continuity that includes its parts within a whole and where the parts differ qualitatively – this is his idea of multiplicity. Conceptual analysis, on the other hand, leads Whitehead to consider the parts of experience as spatialised and homogeneous290. Allied to this distinction are two theses about knowledge influenced by phenomenology; that it is relational, or not free of our own requirements for it, and that it is perspectival, or horizon-granting and world-making. On Felt’s analysis, not only is Whitehead clearly misguided, and has failed to abide by his own injunctions to avoid the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness, but he has also indulged in bad phenomenology.
Van Haeften zeroes in on what he terms the “duality” in the structure of reality; that on the one hand it exhibits the characteristics of process, while on the other hand it exhibits individuality. Individuality is relative, so an enduring individual “consists of the retention of a characteristic pattern with a certain value for itself and for its environment.”291 In effect, the pattern is the object, or at least, there is a dominant pattern that keeps its identity throughout the successive time parts, otherwise the individual disintegrates. Thinking about the relative influences on the individual of
in Rosenthal, (2000), pp.16-19. 289 Rosenthal (2000), p.23. 290 Felt (2002), p.7. 291
external and internal factors leads van Haeften to consider the role that unity “for itself” plays, and he cashes this out in terms of the relational character of the individual’s dependence on its environment. Curiously, the ontological principle plays no part in this analysis, and yet it would seem quite deliberately to provide the basis for the character of an “in itself”. This character, van Haeften points out, is oriented towards the future: In Whitehead’s words, “An event has anticipation”292. The endurance of an object therefore consists of the same spatial pattern being passed from epoch to epoch. The “pattern” is not instantaneous, so its initial realisation has duration; in addition, since the pattern’s efficacy depends upon it being passed on as a whole, this too cannot be instantaneous – hence Whitehead’s dictum that an epoch is not realised via its successive parts but is given with its parts293.
Van Haeften carries on looking at process from an object perspective, using the same section of Process and Reality quoted from above, and highlights the role that extension plays generally in the causal holism of the world. As Whitehead points out, this causal role has dual aspects:
This orderly arrangement of a variety of routes of transmission, by which alternative objectifications of an antecedent actuality A can be indirectly received into the constitution of a subsequent actuality B, is the foundation of the extensive relationship among diverse actual entities. But this scheme of external extensive relationships links itself with the schemes of internal division which are internal to the several actual entities.294
Van Haeften is thereby able to find a resolution to the apparent standoff between continuity and discontinuity, and to make use of the nested continuity I identified above: He claims that the unity of the epoch, from which the discontinuity (the “drops or buds” of experience) flows, lie in its prospective direction, while the continuity lies in its retrospective direction.
292
van Haeften (2001), p.63, quoting Science and the Modern World, p.73.
293 van Haeften (2001), p.67, quoting Science and the Modern World, p.125. Emphases from van Haeften.
Couple this with a statement expressing “genetic unity”, and you have something which looks very like a nested continuity – Whitehead notes that “The atomic actual entities individually express the genetic unity of the universe. The world expands through recurrent unifications of itself, each, by the addition of itself, automatically recreating the multiplicity anew.” (Process and reality, p.286) Here the continuity lies not immediately in the objects themselves, but in the ongoing context to which they contribute and from which their successive phases emerge, of which more below.
From the retrospective point of view there are no smallest durations, hence there is a continuity, but from the prospective point of view there must be a minimum duration. The realisation of the enduring pattern requires a certain lapse of time295. The nested continuity paradigm allows us to restate this, by saying that retrospectively continuity ensues because all prior epochs are incorporated in (ie, have contributed to) the current phase, which as duration is characterised by a certain retrospective completeness coexisting with a certain prospective incompleteness; while prospectively the succeeding phase will represent the completion of the current minimum duration.
While this is a satisfactory resolution as far as it goes, it does not go far enough. The outstanding matter for van Haeften is the unresolved relation between extension and atomicity in the actual occasion, and the extent to which Whitehead’s sharp distinction between them might mean that epochs are in fact non-temporal. His resolution of this, presented below, will complete discussion of the nature of continuity in process. There is still an outstanding matter for me, and this relates to the pattern that is passed on from epoch to epoch; it is an apparent requirement that the pattern be complete. Succession is only possible if the epochs are passed on to their successors as wholes296, which would seem to set a high value on identity, a discrete concept, and to reduce the relevance of duration. I will discuss this further in a later section that focuses on the role of eternal objects.
Van Haeften’s issue: Atomicity vs extension in the actual occasion. Although there are apparently contradictory statements in Whitehead’s work about the relation between extension and atomicity, such as the one already mentioned about the genetic process not being in physical time (that is, where “physical time expresses some features