Cosmology Study Guide - third part

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Excerpts from Alfred North Whitehead's work Process and Reality with explanatory illustrations consisting of Krazy Kat comic strips by George Herriman. Footnote defining many terms

may be found in a previous post here.

 

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Process and Reality by Alfred North Whitehead; text drawn from the

Corrected Edition 1978 The Free Press Ó Respective copyright holder.

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Krazy Kat by George Herriman   ÔKFS Ó Respective copyright holder.

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(15)  That a proposition is the unity of certain actual entities in their potentiality for forming a nexus, with its potential relatedness partially defined by certain eternal objects which have the unity of one complex eternal object. The actual entities involved are termed the ‘logical subjects,’ the complex eternal object is the ‘predicate.’

(16)  That a multiplicity consists of many entities, and its unity is constituted by the fact all its constituent entities severally at least one condition which no other entity satisfies.

  Every statement about a particular multiplicity can be expressed as a statement referent either  (a)  to all its members severally, or  (b)  to an indefinite some of its members severally, or  (c)  as a denial of one of these statements. Any statement, incapable of being expressed in this form, is not a statement about a multiplicity, though it may be a statement about an entity closely allied to some multiplicity, i.e. systematically allied to each member of some multiplicity.

 

 

(17)  That whatever is a datum for a feeling has a unity as felt. Thus the many components of a complex datum have a unity: This unity is a ‘contrast’ of entities. In a sense this means that there are an endless number of categories of existence, since the synthesis of  entities into a contrast in general produces of ‘human understanding,’ it is sufficient to consider a few basic types of existence, and to ‘lump’ the more derivative types together under the heading of ‘contrasts.’ The most important of such ‘contrasts’ is the ‘affirmation-negation’ contrast in which a proposition and a nexus obtain synthesis in one datum, the members of the nexus being the ‘logical subjects’ of the proposition.

 

 

(18)  That every condition to which the process of becoming conforms in any particular instance has its reason either in the character of some actual entity in the world of that concrescence, or in the character of the subject which is in process of concrescence. This category of explanation is termed the ‘ontological principle.’ It could also be termed the ‘principle of efficient, and final, causation.’  This ontological principle means that actual entities are the only reasons; so that to search for a reason is to search for one or more actual entities. It follows that any condition to be satisfied by one actual entity in its process expresses  a fact either about the ‘real internal constitutions’ of some other actual entities, or about the ‘subjective aim’ conditioning that process.

   (…^†).  Also the ordinary logical account of ‘propositions’ expresses only a restricted aspect of their role in the universe, namely, when they are the data of feelings whose subjective forms are those of judgments. It is an essential doctrine the philosophy of organism that the primary function of a proposition is to be relevant as a lure for feeling. For example, some propositions are the data of feelings with subjective forms such as to constitute those feelings to be the enjoyment of a joke. Other propositions are felt with feelings whose subjective forms are horror, disgust, or indignation. The ‘subjective aim,’ which controls the becoming of a subject, is that subject feeling a proposition with the subjective form of purpose to realize it in that process of self-creation.

 

 

 

(19)   That the fundamental types of entities are actual entities, and eternal objects; and that the other types of entities only express how all entities of the two fundamental types are in community with each other, in the actual world. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(20)   That  to ‘function’ means to contribute determination to the actual entities in the nexus of some actual world. Thus the determinateness and self-identity of one entity cannot be abstracted from the community of the diverse functioning of all entities. ‘Determination’ is analyzable into ‘definiteness’ and ‘position,’ where ‘definiteness’ is the illustration of select eternal objects, and position is ‘relative status’ in a nexus of actual entities.

(^†here I excised reference to variations on John Locke.)