The coexistence of the form and the formless helps solve the hard problem of consciousness. I am more concerned about what this knowledge will mean to humanity and the planet earth.
On this planet this knowledge is to help homo sapiens be in order and harmony.
This series on "Why Metaphysics Matters" is a prelude to a "New Metaphysics" that I will be posting as a series on the Oracle Section as we go along. The first post "four-fold topoplgy of process relations" is already up.
Appreciate these thoughts, Bonnie. Not be pedantic, but I think there's an important distinction in Whitehead's work between "pure" or "general potentiality" and "real potentiality." Eternal objects that have not yet ingressed or actualized, and so cannot be physically but only conceptually prehended (or at least only felt via hybrid prehensions of God's primordial nature), he calls "pure/general potentials."
There is an ambiguity here, however, which concerns the extent to which finite occasions of experience can access "pure/general potentiality" given the primordial conditioning of the realm of eternal objects by God. Are we finite creatures limited to an experience of Creativity as filtered by God's initial aim, or are we capable of drinking straight from the firehose? Given that finite creatures do not simply obey God's suggestions as to which possibilities have ideal relevance moment by moment, it would seem that we do in fact remain directly in touch with Creativity, with God's mediation being partial.
From PR 65: "we have always to consider two meanings of potentiality: (a) the ‘general’ potentiality, which is the bundle of possibilities, mutually consistent or alternative, provided by the multiplicity of eternal objects, and (b) the ‘real’ potentiality, which is conditioned by the data provided by the actual world. General potentiality is absolute, and real potentiality is relative to some actual entity, taken as a standpoint whereby the actual world is defined. It must be remembered that the phrase ‘actual world’ is like ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow,’ in that it alters its meaning according to standpoint. The actual world must always mean the community of all actual entities, including the primordial actual entity called ‘God’ and the temporal actual entities."
Thanks for this, Matt. I can't say that I fully understand it. Today I played around with the notion that creation as actualities are occassions "in the wake of God" meaning, that God's movement is actually ahead of us (not behind us, as in the picture of the big bang)... and that in the wake, the potentials are actualized. The sense that God was once (in the beginning) and hence forever in the future, until ... well maybe somehow creation catches up again.
I think we are limited to the potentialities that God "leaves in his wake", but which potentialities are enacted/manifested is contingent -- and it matters what kind of beings we all are. Yet also, somehow, which potentialities are actualized "in the wake" effect the field of possibilities up ahead, where God has opened a new swath of potentials.
This implies a temporal shift where God is past/origin (once-God) and God is future/creative potential (the future God) and world is the present (God as world/panentheism).
Don't really know where this is all headed. Talk soon.
I like that image of a "God ahead," if only because it shakes us free of imagining a "God behind"! But, of course, God (like the mental pole of actual occasions) is not in time but always "now," in unison of becoming with every concrescence. God is dipolar, both primordial and consequent, and incorporating what Whitehead intends by the latter pole does require that we conceive of some way that historical process comes to matter for God, even changes or at least enriches God. So in this sense, the "now" of concrescence is not a static eternity reducing change and motion to illusion, but a growing mycelial tip enriched by its ever-extending symmetry-breaking relations. No two "nows" are the same!
Very well said Bonnie.
The coexistence of the form and the formless helps solve the hard problem of consciousness. I am more concerned about what this knowledge will mean to humanity and the planet earth.
On this planet this knowledge is to help homo sapiens be in order and harmony.
creatingutopia.substack.com is my musings on the same.
This series on "Why Metaphysics Matters" is a prelude to a "New Metaphysics" that I will be posting as a series on the Oracle Section as we go along. The first post "four-fold topoplgy of process relations" is already up.
https://open.substack.com/pub/bonnittaroy/p/the-topology-of-process-relations?r=108vl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Appreciate these thoughts, Bonnie. Not be pedantic, but I think there's an important distinction in Whitehead's work between "pure" or "general potentiality" and "real potentiality." Eternal objects that have not yet ingressed or actualized, and so cannot be physically but only conceptually prehended (or at least only felt via hybrid prehensions of God's primordial nature), he calls "pure/general potentials."
There is an ambiguity here, however, which concerns the extent to which finite occasions of experience can access "pure/general potentiality" given the primordial conditioning of the realm of eternal objects by God. Are we finite creatures limited to an experience of Creativity as filtered by God's initial aim, or are we capable of drinking straight from the firehose? Given that finite creatures do not simply obey God's suggestions as to which possibilities have ideal relevance moment by moment, it would seem that we do in fact remain directly in touch with Creativity, with God's mediation being partial.
From PR 65: "we have always to consider two meanings of potentiality: (a) the ‘general’ potentiality, which is the bundle of possibilities, mutually consistent or alternative, provided by the multiplicity of eternal objects, and (b) the ‘real’ potentiality, which is conditioned by the data provided by the actual world. General potentiality is absolute, and real potentiality is relative to some actual entity, taken as a standpoint whereby the actual world is defined. It must be remembered that the phrase ‘actual world’ is like ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow,’ in that it alters its meaning according to standpoint. The actual world must always mean the community of all actual entities, including the primordial actual entity called ‘God’ and the temporal actual entities."
Thanks for this, Matt. I can't say that I fully understand it. Today I played around with the notion that creation as actualities are occassions "in the wake of God" meaning, that God's movement is actually ahead of us (not behind us, as in the picture of the big bang)... and that in the wake, the potentials are actualized. The sense that God was once (in the beginning) and hence forever in the future, until ... well maybe somehow creation catches up again.
I think we are limited to the potentialities that God "leaves in his wake", but which potentialities are enacted/manifested is contingent -- and it matters what kind of beings we all are. Yet also, somehow, which potentialities are actualized "in the wake" effect the field of possibilities up ahead, where God has opened a new swath of potentials.
This implies a temporal shift where God is past/origin (once-God) and God is future/creative potential (the future God) and world is the present (God as world/panentheism).
Don't really know where this is all headed. Talk soon.
I like that image of a "God ahead," if only because it shakes us free of imagining a "God behind"! But, of course, God (like the mental pole of actual occasions) is not in time but always "now," in unison of becoming with every concrescence. God is dipolar, both primordial and consequent, and incorporating what Whitehead intends by the latter pole does require that we conceive of some way that historical process comes to matter for God, even changes or at least enriches God. So in this sense, the "now" of concrescence is not a static eternity reducing change and motion to illusion, but a growing mycelial tip enriched by its ever-extending symmetry-breaking relations. No two "nows" are the same!
Yes, exactly. But very hard to create an adequate mental model of it.
By searching for the smallest thing, we lost the plot in the largest way, the shape of a wave.