(Whiteheadian) Panexperientialism

"Alan Van Wyk and Michel Weber (eds.), Creativity and Its Discontents. The Response to Whitehead's Process and Reality, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Process Thought VIII, 2008. (240 p. ; ISBN 978-3-86838-018-7 ; 89 €)
“I do not expect a good reception from professional philosophers” wrote Whitehead in 1929, straight after the publication of Process and Reality. Indeed, it took nearly thirty years before scholars seriously started to try to decipher the book taken as a whole. And there remains nowadays “professional” Whiteheadians who claim that this work can—or even should—be bracketed by anyone wishing to get a clear picture of Whitehead's true speculative agenda. Creativity and Its Discontent aims to provide evidence for this state of affairs by gathering and contextualizing all the major reviews (translated where need be) of Process and Reality: its original 1929 edition, its various translations (some of them still ongoing) and its 1978 corrected edition. It is designed as the ideal tool to accompany the forthcoming Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought.
Table of Contents
Introduction : Michel Weber (Chromatiques)
1. CUP and Macmillan Editions, 1929
Mumford, December 1929
Clark, January 1930
Ginzburg, January 1930
Northrop, January 1930
Wieman, January 1930
Mabbott, March 1930
Carr, July 1930
Nagel, July 1930
Marvin, November 1930
Stebbing, October 1930
Taylor, 1930
Belgion, 1930
Moore, May 1931
Murphy, 1931
2. Macmillan Reprint, 1960
Fjellman, November 1961
3. Free Press Corrected Edition, 1978
Ogden, Fall 1979
Christian, 1979
Connor, 1979
Burke, 1981
Nobo, 1983
4. Translations
Spanish Translation by J. Rovira Armengol (1956) Reviewed by Garcia Bacca, 1956
Italian Translation (1965) Reviewed by Guzzo, 1965
Italian Translation (1965) Reviewed by Sandro Travaglia, 1966
German Translation (1979) Reviewed by Wolf-Gazo, 1979
French Translation (1995) Reviewed by Weber, 1998
Bibliographies by Linguistic sphere
American and English by Steve Hulbert and John Quiring (Claremont)
Dutch by André Cloots (Louvain)
French by Michel Weber (Chromatiques)
German by Helmut Maaßen (Geldern)
Italian by Luca Gaeta (Milano) and Luca Vanzago (Pavia), under the supervision of Carlo Sini (Milano)
Portughese by Luis de Morais (Lisboa)
Spanish by Juan Vicente Mayoral de Lucas (Toledo)
"

"Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes (eds.), Process Approaches to Consciousness in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Philosophy of Mind, Albany, New York, State University of New York Press, 2009. (484 p. ; ISBN 978-1-4384-2941-0 ; 65,32 €) (Jan 2011, paperback, ISBN 978-1-4384-2940-3)
A good part of what fuels the current boom in consciousness studies is the robust progress of cognitive psychology and neuroscience toward reaching consensus explanations of just about anything except consciousness. Despite hopes that empirical research and computational modeling would constrain theory, it seems that scholarly debate has not so much reached an impasse as remained at one reached in the 17th century. Given the massive effort currently invested in research and debate, the lack of progress towards a general (and generally accepted) theory of consciousness begins indeed to make consciousness look like a kind of 21st century Philosopher’s Stone, whose hidden nature seems to hold the key to the greatest mysteries, but continues to elude us. Accordingly, the present volume taps leading researchers and theorists in the study of consciousness and Whitehead scholars to explore an interface between process thinking and the burgeoning field of consciousness studies. In sum, the rationale for such a project has two main facets: first, the state of an educated debate that seems, first, unproductive and peculiarly burdened by its deep modernist origins; and, secondly, marked more by disciplinary rivalry than interdisciplinary synthesis.
Table of Contents
List of Contributors
Preface, Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes
1. Main Themes of the Book
2. Précis of the Contributions
I. Introductory Essays, Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes
1. Process Thought as a Heuristic for Investigating Consciousness
2. Whitehead as a Neglected Figure of 20th Century Philosophy
3. Consciousness as a Topic of Investigation in Western Thought
4. Whitehead’s Unique Approach to the Topic of Consciousness
II. Psychology and Philosophy of Mind
5. Consciousness as a Subjective Form, David Ray Griffin (Claremont)
6. The Interpretation and Integration of the Literature on Consciousness from a Process Perspective, Michael W. Katzko (Nijmegen)
7. Windows on Nonhuman Minds, Donald R. Griffin (Harvard)
III. From Metaphysics to (Neuro-)Science and Back Again
8. Panexperientialism, Quantum Theory, and Neuroplasticity, George W. Shields (Kentucky State)
9. The Evolution of Consciousness, Max Velmans (Goldsmiths)
10. The Carrier Theory Of Causation, Gregg H. Rosenberg (New York)
IV. Applications to Psychiatry: Consciousness as Process
11. The Microgenetic Revolution in Contemporary Neuropsychology and Neurolinguistics, Maria Pachalska (Lublin and Gdansk) and Bruce Duncan MacQueen (Bydgoszcz)
12. From Coma to Consciousness, Avraham Schweiger (Tel Aviv), Michael Frost (Tel Aviv) , Ofer Keren (Raanana and Tel-Aviv)
13. Consciousness and Rationality from a Process Perspective, Michel Weber (Chromatiques)
V. History (and Future?) of Philosophy
14. Consciousness, Memory, and Recollection according to Whitehead, Xavier Verley (Toulouse le Mirail)
15. Consciousness and Causation in Light of Whitehead’s Phenomenology of Becoming, Anderson Weekes (New York)"

'Peter Sjöstedt-H introduces Whitehead’s organic awareness of reality.'

Philosophy Now, no. 114, June/July 2016, pp. 22–23

I was asked by Philosophy Now magazine whether I'd like to contribute an article on speculative realism. I offered instead this article on A. N. Whitehead's organic realism. Consequently the overview of Whitehead's philosophy emphasises the realist aspects—more theological aspects are avoided. Peer-reviewed.

www.philosophynow.org/issues/114/The_Philosophy_of_Organism

Arthur Reber’s Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC) theory locates the origins of consciousness in simple cells that have flexible cell walls, sensitivity to their surrounds and a capacity for locomotion. Once consciousness exists in such organisms, one can give a non-mysterious account of how consciousness evolves with its associated material forms. According to Reber, this solves the “hard problem” of consciousness. However, Reber’s analysis (a) confounds the conditions for the existence of consciousness (of any kind) with the added conditions required to support its many forms, and (b) confounds the existence of mind (specified in terms of capacities or functions) with the existence of consciousness. The sudden appearance of consciousness in creatures with flexible cell walls and motility rather than non-flexible cells walls and no motility suggests an evolutionary discontinuity that requires a ‘miracle’ similar to that required by all discontinuity theories that link the emergence of consciousness to specific types of functioning. Continuity theories such as panpsychism and panexperientialism also accept that consciousness and biological functions co-evolve into varied forms, but they avoid the ‘miracle’ of consciousness emerging from a specific kind of functioning by accepting that, in some prototypical form, the existence of consciousness is primal in the same way that matter and energy are assumed to be primal in physics. The paper also considers the relevance of such issues to the ethical treatment of non-human animals.
This is the full version of the commentary that appears in Animal Sentience at http://animalstudiesrepository.org/animsent/vol1/iss11/6, which was heavily abbreviated to fit in with space restrictions for commentaries in that journal.

This position paper has three parts. In the first part, a brief historical background and various modern formulations of the concept of emergence are presented. A number of problems associated with the concept are identified. One outstanding problem involves the incommensurability of secondary qualities (or phenomenal qualia) with materialist (externalist) ontologies. The intractability of this problem with respect to existing scientific approaches is an indicator of ontological category error, in this case, an attempt to subsume subjectivity into objectivity. In the second part, various attempts at solving the mind-body problem (of which the subjectivity-objectivity issue is a modern incarnation) are investigated and shown to be problematic. It is argued that these problems necessitate reconsidering the metaphysical foundations upon which the concept of emergence is grounded. In the third part, the notion of emergence is reconsidered and a new theory grounded in a synthesis of Heideggerian and Whiteheadian metaphysics is outlined. Finally, the implications of this synthesis for artificing (technology) are briefly considered. It is maintained that "strong" artificiality, the artifactual realization of natural phenomena such as life and mind, is impossible and that this result follows from the essence of artificing. Thus, ontology does not entail technology. The earliest articulation of the essence of emergence may well be the ancient Greek maxim 'the whole is more than the sum of the parts' and historical links to the notion of self-organization are traceable to the writings of the pre-Socratics Thales and Anaximander. The first serious attempt at investigating the concept of emergence was not made until the middle of the nineteenth century when G.H.Lewes distinguished between resultants and emergents: in the former, the sequence of steps which produce a phenomenon are traceable while in the latter they are not. Lewes could be interpreted as identifying emergence with the epistemological limitations of an observer. In C.L.Morgan's Emergent Evolution (1923), emergence was identified with novelty while J.C.Smuts', writing in Holism and Evolution (1926) identified it with the generation of stable wholes. Samuel Alexander's Space, Time and Deity (1920), in which emergence is identified with the tendency for things to arrange themselves into new patterns which as organized wholes possess new types of structure and properties, provides the basis for information-theoretic and computationalist interpretations of the concept (Baas,93) (Darley,94). Nagel (1961), following Lewes, defines emergence in epistemological terms. This position is consistent with the adoption of a scientific (materialist) metaphysics and reflected in a commitment to ontological reductionism, the view that emergent phenomena do not contradict physical laws and, moreover, are causally determined by such laws. Non-materialistic theories of emergence are rejected a priori on the grounds that "emergents are regarded as spiritual creations emanating from an unknown shadowy world." (Kenyon,41) However, ontological reductionism does not entail epistemological reductionism: for example, Mayr (1982) defines emergence as the appearance of new characteristics in wholes that cannot be deduced from the most complete knowledge of the parts, taken separately or in other partial combinations.

The question under discussion is metaphysical and truly elemental. It emerges in two aspects – how did we come to be conscious of our own existence, and, as a deeper corollary, do existence and awareness necessitate each other? I am bold enough to explore these questions and I invite you to come along; I make no claim to have discovered absolute answers. However, I do believe I have created here a compelling interpretation. You’ll have to judge for yourself.

What follows is the presentation of three essays I have worked on over the past several years seeing publication for the first time. “Hollows of Experience” was written first as an invited chapter for a collection on the ontology of consciousness. However, when cuts became necessary, my chapter got the knife. Its length has prohibited it from publication in any print journal. “Myth and Mind” was written next as a journal article, but as my involvement with it grew so did its length, so it has also idled on my website awaiting its call. “From Panexperientialism to Conscious Experience” was written most recently, but it is the only one to have been available to the public elsewhere than my own website. Under the name, “The Continuum of Experience”, it was Target Article #95 on the re-cently closed Karl Jaspers Forum.

Nürnberg, that provided the opportunity and other support for this work. The author is also grateful for the invitation to present the bulk of his conclusions in the Universidade dos Açores, Ponta Delgada. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z41iv3Lh9sw La philosophie de Whitehead est-elle une philosophie écologique ? 1. Oui, comme en atteste son panpsychisme (lato sensu) : on peut faire l'expérience de la continuité qui existe entre les règnes minéral, végétal, animal et humain. Le flux, ou l'élan, vital qui traverse toutes ces formes de vie devient palpable dès lors que l'on se soucie de ses perceptions et que l'on réforme son rapport au corps. Ce moment expérientiel est de la plus haute importance, et il gagne en force lorsqu'il est thématisé rationnellement. 2. Oui ; cela se reflète dans sa théorie épochale du temps. Afin de mieux saisir la continuité qui existe entre toutes ces formes de vie et la spécificité de chacune d'elles, il fait sens de parler de contiguité et de soutenir la théorie épochale qui est propre à Whitehead (bien que directement inspirée de la « bud theory » de James). Chaque moment d'expérience est unique et se produit dans un contexte environnemental qui le précède. 3. Son bagage mathématique et scientifique est précieux pour convaincre — voire persuader — les interlocuteurs qui ont trop souvent l'habitude de ne se fier qu'aux discours scientifiques et à leur violence symbolique. 4. De plus, Whitehead répète qu'il n'a somme toute fait qu'exprimer systématiquement les enseignements du sens commun. La solidarité diachronique et synchronique qui existe entre toutes les formes de vies a toujours été au coeur du sens commun. On ne peut exercer ses responsabilités que si on est animé par un respect profond de toutes les formes de vie — à commencer par la sienne. 5. En conséquence, il ne fait aucun doute que la funeste aventure thermo-industrielle ne doit pas être poursuivie et que le chemin de la décroissance doit être emprunté dans l'urgence. Rien ne justifie plus les prétentions de la techno-science occidentale.