"This does not necessarily undermine the utility of mathematics in science but suggests caution in assuming that mathematical models provide direct access to the ultimate nature of reality. They may instead offer useful approximations within the constraints of our perceptual and cognitive capacities, useful precisely because there is some degree of resonance between these capacities and the environing cosmic rhythms from out of which they have emerged."
Thanks, and very well said! Pure mathematics is the closest we can get to a 'clean' experience of the spiritual realm through intellectual thinking. In mathematical reasoning/modeling, we find thinking that supports itself and makes its own movements into its object of contemplation, independent of sensory perceptions that normally anchor our intuitive orientation to reality. The mathematical thoughts are determined entirely through their inner relations with one another, which is where we gain the most intuitive certainty about the flow of perceptual experience. This is why all science naturally gravitates toward expressing their theories/models in mathematical format.
This is a prelude to what the ego secretly yearns for but doesn't yet have the inner courage to approach - the wider spiritual world, of which mathematical thinking is only a dequalitative, rigidified, and aliased instance. Hoffman and others would make the most progress when they focus less on the meaning of their mathematical thoughts, which generally point to some 'external' material or spiritual reality, and more on the flow of their real-time mathematical activity. In that way, we can attain to inner experience of the 'network of conscious agents' that we normally can only abstractly imagine is responsible for the "interface" of ordinary perceptual experience.
Do you have any comment on counter-intuitive truths discovered seemingly through non-participatory means/models? Examples would be: that Earth is spherical; that Earth revolves around the sun; that gravity is a curvature in space-time caused by massive objects; that material strata are 99% empty space, etc.? Doesn't this lead to a decoherence between organism and their environment? What would be the motivation for discovering such things, or are they all accidental? The majority of humans ignore these facts of their 'reality' in their day-to-day, but nonetheless, as Galileo reputedly said of the Earth, 'And yet it moves.'
The ancient Pythagoreans knew the Earth was spherical, and discovered this via geometry, which has an irreducibly intuitive source. The Sun moves, too, and so strictly speaking it is not accurate to say that the Earth revolves around it. The true movement of the Earth, Sun, and planets is rather more complex than the picture we are given in grade school. Einstein's theory of general relativity is one of dozens of empirically equivalent models of gravity (Whitehead has an alternative that avoids the idea of curved space, which he argued was epistemologically self-undermining--let me know if you are curious to hear more about why). There is no such thing as empty space (all space is full of electromagnetic radiation and/or quantum fluxuations). So no, in all these cases, I see no reason to believe that science has undermined intuition. You have listed a bunch of models, not facts. Science depends upon intuition at every step and quickly loses its way when it pretends otherwise.
Thanks for the response. I’m not sure how the Earth being a sphere is a model and not a fact, yet your assumption of quantum flux is presented in your reply I guess as a fact, though it is itself predicated on a model which is easily the most ready-at-hand counter-intuitive example of modern inquiry (quantum mechanics). Another counterintuitive fact would be that two bodies in a vacuum fall at the same rate irrespective of mass.
Regarding general relativity, perhaps it has always been up for debate conceptually, but its measurement for gravitational time dilation is needed for satellites to communicate with one another for the sake of GPS; it also allows for accurate deduction of mass of bodies in space, and the rate of expansion of the universe. Special relativity—likewise counterintuitive—is relied upon even more widely, for MRIs, police speed radar, spectroscopy, atomic clocks, nuclear reactors, etc.
I wasn’t trying to ‘get ya’, and I wasn’t expecting a defensive reply. I only thought counter-intuitive facts that we discover about our environment would be interesting phenomena to consider, given your article. I haven’t read as much Whiehead as you, so I was curious.
My apologies for coming across as defensive. I think we sell space and time short when we assume one particular model has an explanatory monopoly.
Earth is not a perfect sphere. The fact is far weirder, deviating ever so slightly from every model.
I wouldn't say I've assumed a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics. Common sense experience already exhibits flux as the fundamental fact before any mathematical models come along to instrumentalize it.
I grant there are surprising facts. That anything exists at all is already a surprise! In addition to flux, experience appears to be fundamentally paradoxical. To return experience to pride of place in science is not to deny counterintuitive discoveries, but to insist that these discoveries could only be experiential reattunements.
If, as you say, 'common sense experience already exhibits flux as the fundamental fact before any mathematical models come along to instrumentalize it,' then would you also say that eternity, and so eternal laws (mathematical, moral, or other), are counter-intuitive concepts? Because that is fascinating!
The history of religious experience strongly suggests that human beings can, in certain special states of consciousness, directly intuit eternity. But it is not our usual mode of awareness. Does that make it counterintuitive? I would just say it is uncommon.
When it comes to "eternal laws," I am skeptical. What we call laws of physics seem far more like deep habits that emerge in the course of cosmic history. Morality also evolves.
I unpack many of these ideas in other essays on my substack (eg, on Whitehead or Peirce, both of whom understood physical laws as cosmic habits).
To me this leaves out the most interesting and clarifying manner in which Whitehead's philosophy explains how this reciprocal relationship between mind and world occurs. All action occurs in the present tense, between the fixed past and open future. Thus in the actions of judging or asserting propositions, there is a tensed distinction at play. The past world is independent of the present mind, whereas the future world is possibly (and even plausibly, or maybe even necessarily) dependent on it. The past provides a fixed reference point to which propositions may correspond in a straightforward manner (that is, the present mind can in no way influence or affect the truth-relation between proposition and past actual world): the future, on the other hand, only offers a set of possibilities, incompatible alternatives, as perhaps conditioned by the past, in a manner the present mind may influence--thus introducing a realm of agential concepts and ethical responsibilities. In my opinion, it's only when we've made this tensed distinction that our discussion really begins to accurately discuss this issue, and provide helpful concepts. There's been rigorous work done on this in the realms of temporal logic and the logic of agency--like Nuel Belnap's stit logic as he has combined it with his branching space-times metaphysics (a development from Prior's work that in many ways agrees with Whitehead).
Certainly there is much more to unpack. Most importantly, perhaps, would be the criteria for determining false propositions. But the tensed distinctions you raise are part of that.
I wonder about this line, though: "The past world is independent of the present mind, whereas the future world is possibly (and even plausibly, or maybe even necessarily) dependent on it."
If we stay strictly within Whitehead's scheme, by "*the* past world" we can only mean the past as God's consequent nature experiences it (otherwise we could only refer to *a* past world of some particular occasion of experience). In either case, what counts as past depends on the perspective of a subject. So I fail to see how it can be described as independent of the present subject. Though both would seem to me to be dependent on and relative to a subject, we can still distinguish past and future as determinate and indeterminate (or merely definite), respectively.
While I'd agree that the present occasion cannot change the truth relations of already actualized past occasions, this isn't the end of the story: the reality is that those past occasions, once perished and per the ontological principle, can only exist in the experience (the physical pole) of some presently occurring entity or entities. In fidelity to Whitehead's texts, I find myself unable to fully sever propositions as such from their being felt by some entity. Propositions are not free floating logical angels untethered from the ground of the eternally present process of actualization. Yes, the distinction between propositions as datum and as subjectively felt is important, but it cannot be a full dissociation. Thus, again, we must make reference to the consequent nature to secure Whitehead's concept of truth.
For finite occasions like us, *the* past is always *my* past or *your* past. Even if we are in nearly overlapping inertial reference frames, due to the multiplicity of spacetime systems, I can imagine scenarios wherein true propositions about my past are false propositions about your past, and vice versa. There is still a fact of the matter, perhaps, but that awaits the judgment of God. This divine judgment of Truth is something it seems we finite occasions can only partake in by perishing to our partial perspectives. But in that case, we are no longer ourselves.
I agree that "the past world” is relative to a present, so that there is only such a thing as “the past world of some present subject.” I believe this is what Whitehead defines as “the actual world”: “The nexus of actual entities in the universe correlate to a concrescence† is termed ‘the actual world’ correlate to that concrescence” (PR 23). “The nexus of all actual entities felt by a” serves as a definite description for the actual world of a, and we can thus more generally define, for any actual entity x, “the actual world of x” to be “the nexus of all actual entities felt by x.” This, however, is only a description that thereby denotes, or picks out, what we are talking about: it is not the complete or essential description of the entity. We are simply stating that one and only one item in our universe of discourse will answer to this description—and we are then free to make further statements about this one item.
As many Whiteheadians would typically put it, an actual entity is internally related to its past and externally related to its future. Thus, the intrinsic determination of an actual entity involves how it prehends its past, whereas how it is prehended by its future is an extrinsic determination. In this sense, the intrinsic determination of any actual entity x’s actual world is by definition not affected by how that actual world is prehended by x. It is thus the intrinsic determinations of an actual entity’s actual world that would be describable independently of said actual entity. The definition of “the actual world of x” offered above involves, however, a description of what would be an extrinsic determination of the nexus that is said actual world. We are thus describing an extrinsic determination as a means of picking out the set of actual entities we have in mind—but we may then make statements about the intrinsic determinations of said actual entities.
Furthermore, I would argue that an actual world is in a sense definable, and thus denotable, independently of any particular actual entity. This is because “each actual world is relative to standpoint” (PR 193), i.e., an actual entity’s standpoint determines its actual world. A standpoint is a region in the extensive continuum, i.e., an eternal object, and “[t]he concrescence presupposes its basic region, and not the region its concrescence” (PR 283). To cash out this phrasing even more, the intrinsic determinations of a region do not involve the actual entity located at said region. We can thus talk about regional standpoints and their properties independently of talking about any particular actual entities being located at said standpoints. Thus for any region x, we can talk about “the actual world belonging to some actual entity located at region x”, for an entirely hypothetical actual entity (and this is analogously what coordinate division more or less is but for some specified parent actual entity and its subregions).
This much is just a clarification of some points we might agree on. As for your suggestion, that the actual world in a more absolute sense is “the past as God's consequent nature experiences it”—I find this problematic. Any actual world is a nexus, and thus “a set of actual entities in the unity of the relatedness constituted by their prehensions of each other” (PR 24). A set has an extensional identity, however, so that if you added (or subtracted) members from the set, it would be a new set. The phrase, “God’s actual world” thus does not pick out any single set; rather, with each step of the creative advance there is a new, increasingly larger set. We are thereby right back to relying on a standpoint (and, thus, a position in the creative advance) to pick out the right set of actual entities we have in mind. Furthermore, the intrinsic determinations of those actual entities will (qua intrinsic determinations) not involve their being felt by God.
I would dispute your claim that “past occasions, once perished and per the ontological principle, can only exist in the experience (the physical pole) of some presently occurring entity or entities.” I do not believe that Whitehead’s ontological principle entails that entities only exist qua their being presently prehended. Rather, the ontological principle states “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 actual world of that concrescence, or in the character of the subject which is in process of concrescence” (PR 24). As stated here, it in fact reinforces that the actual world is its own reason independently of the concrescing subject—this being, of course, because the actual world is a set of actual entities that are thus each final realities in their own right.
I also find this suggestion, that an entity’s existence is reducible to its actually being felt, to be problematic insofar as it reduces down statements about said entity qua potential. Whitehead’s principle of relativity states that every entity is a potential for feeling: “it belongs to the nature of a ‘being’ that it is a potential for every ‘becoming’” (PR 22), that is, that it may possibly be prehended (in various ways) by any future actual entity. Thus each entity’s own nature involves its existence beyond any present concrescence, for the possible future.
I am really interested in this in the context of 'validity' in collaborative forms of inquiry generally, and our work drawing on living cosmos panpsychism to engage with Land as sentient. In relation to this, Freya Mathews writes ‘the presuppositions and beliefs we bring to our encounter with the world act as a kind of invocation – they call up reality under a particular aspect or aspects, so that this is the aspect that reality will reveal to us in the course of the encounter’ which seem to reflect a similar participatory view.
With regard to Organism-Environment Coevolution, you point to several examples at species level. But Gaia theory would apply this to Earth as a whole: it is the close coupling of living and non living spheres that creates and then maintains the conditions suitable for live on Earth. Life creates the conditions for its own well being on a grand sacle
Are you familiar with Adam S. Miller? I would be highly interested in a recorded conversation, or any other form of collaboration, between the two of you. This piece—and I suppose it's also relevant to your recent musings on "Metamodern Christianity"—reminded me in particular of section 4, "What if truth is an ongoing process, not a static product?", from his essay "Network Theology: Is it Possible to be a Christian but not a Platonist?" in the 2016 collection "Future Mormon: Essays in Mormon Theology", which reads as follows. (His work is much of what made me realize that the widespread mainstream tendency to write off the whole of "Mormonism" as not worth taking seriously in any way is rather too hasty, however ludicrous many aspects of the official narrative may appear to be—it's not like it's really more absurd than Roman Catholicism, all things considered, or at least that is the conclusion my mind seems to have reached at this point.)
A traditional understanding of truth as the correct correspondence of an internal idea with an external state of affairs depends on a stable, hierarchical background of fixed essences. Traditionally, truth depends on the hard guarantee—be it empirical, transcendent, or transcendental—of some brand of Platonism. But if the world consists of flat, adaptive, and overlapping networks, then what place is there for truth?
While network thinking must jettison a representational understanding of truth as a fixed product, it offers instead a description of truth as a specialized network process. As an ongoing process, truth is defined in opposition to knowledge. If knowledge is understood as the publicly agreed upon network of banked "common knowledge" available at any given time, then truths are specialized processes that trace novel paths through the network, revealing inconsistencies and displaying overlooked constellations of meaning. As ongoing processes, truths are successful to the degree that they are able to overwrite a network's previous self-understanding with one that meshes more finely and productively with its own unfolding. Knowledge, then, is the residue of a successful truth.
In this sense, truths are always tied to the specific networks of knowledge in which they are actively at work. This, however, does not relativize truths such that the center no longer holds—distributed networks have no such center to begin with. Rather, network thinking concentrates and localizes the force of every truth we set in motion.
Paul's evangelization of the Christian proclamation models this understanding of truth as a network process. As a truth, the gospel is literally an announcement of good news, a divine proclamation that it is possible to trace new paths through the world's open but fragmented networks. As Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 1:17–31, the new paths forged by Jesus's truth initially appear as "foolishness" in relation to the banked "wisdom of the wise" (vv. 18, 19) because Christianity ignores the world's distribution into Jews and Greeks. The multitude known to the world as foolish, weak, and base—that is to say: as non-beings—are displayed in Christ's redistribution of the world as its productive, living truth (cf. vv. 26–27). Here, the measure of such a truth is not its correspondence to how things are, but the productive, life-giving force of its capacity for redistribution and renewal.
I will have to check out Miller’s essay. Thanks for the recommendation. It seems to me though that Whitehead manages to preserve some key Platonic ideas (including the idea of ideas) while also affirming that truth is an ongoing process.
Yeah, it seems kind of difficult genuinely to end up being more than a non-Platonist–in-name-only to the extent that Plato was (as Steiner tries to do) just identifying features of reality that anyone who seriously investigates the matter will inevitably acknowledge and not presenting mere opinions or limited perspectives as doctrine as we've come to think of the task of philosophy as being. Assertions like "the Good is the One" seem almost trivial, right? Like, we had better hope that's basically how things are (despite the best attempts of exoteric religious forms to get us to believe otherwise), because otherwise we're hosed.
But even if the answer to the titular question turns out to be "no, not really"—because the universal "network" that has to link everything together just turns out to be the reformulated unity that precedes multiplicity (kind of like Steiner's "it makes no sense at all to speak of more than one world" in GA 1, Chapter 9)—the essay as a whole is a good stimulus to thought. That delightful feeling of having one's mental world restructured and reoriented by what one is reading even if one isn't in perfect agreement with exactly how it's expressed, you know? The last section, "What if the soul is a network?", makes for a particularly good meditation into which to enter experientially, which I guess is the main point, regardless of the applicability of the "Platonist" label—how can we make metaphysics more participatory? "…in the face of this complexity it is no longer possible to say where one soul ends and another begins."
I suppose you haven't time to engage in depth with every internet rando who kind of wishes he had become aware sooner of CIIS as a postsecondary option so we could have been discussing all of this in a classroom setting for the last few years—but if you happen to read the essay and feel like committing any thoughts to writing, or have any corrections to my ramblings here, I would love to hear them.
Nice and timely article, ‘Truth’ has been floating around my mind the past few weeks…
I agree with this angle, but it also opens up a lot of questions: yes, ‘Truth’ is a ‘relational, creative and participatory process’ but I’m curious: what are the next steps in exploring or building on that idea? Some initial points or questions (no need to respond, more so just raising them generally)
‘False consciousness’ or ‘falsehoods’ are also, or can be, relational and creative and participatory- how then is this distinction made between what is ‘true’ and ‘false’? (If it makes sense to keep that distinction)
Building off this point, how ‘Truth’ is conceptualised between what is ‘good’ and ‘valuable’ (opposed to not good or not as valuable)
Seeing ‘Truth’ as a metabolism: as events happening, and ‘Truth’ being the way these events ‘sort themselves out’- or self-organise?
And off of this, ‘Truth’, maybe, as an instance of self-organisation
And similarly, exploring more of the link between ‘Truth’ and evolution
Just spit-balling here but feel free to respond to these or on how you think the conversation moves forward :)
In a recent podcast with Hoffman, i heard him talking about a mathematical model of the 'ding an sich'. It's something like trying to put your love in a mathematical formula. Mathematics cannot be fruitfully applied to just anything. From Steiner, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA227/English/RSP1966/19230821p01.html
"There is no doubt that mathematical truths are among the most difficult things. They are held to be irrefutable. But the curious fact is that on entering the spiritual world we find that our mathematics and geometry are no longer correct. A very simple example will make this clear. From early youth we have learnt to look upon the old truths of Euclid as axiomatic, self-evident. For instance, it is stated as obvious that, given two points, A and B, the shortest distance between them is a straight line, and that any curved path between them is longer. On a recognition of this fact—obvious for the physical world—rests the greater part of our geometry. But in the spiritual world it is the other way round. The straight line there from A to B is the longest way, and any other way is shorter because it can be taken in freedom. If at the point A one thinks of going to B, this very idea suggests an indirect way; and to hold to a straight course, and so at each single point to keep in the same direction, is hardest and causes most delay. Hence, in determining the most direct way in the two-dimensional or one-dimensional space of the spiritual world, we look for the longest way. Now anyone who reflects about attentiveness, and delves deeply into his soul to discover what attentiveness really means, will find that in this connection, also, what is said by the spiritual investigator is true. For he will say to himself: “When I go around just as I choose, I get there easily, and I don't have to worry about traversing a particular stretch; I need do only what I do every day.” And most people are bustling around from morning to night. They are in such a hurry that they hardly notice how much of all they do is done from sheer habit—what they have done the day before, what other people say they should do, and so forth. Then it all goes smoothly. Just think what it would be like if you had to pay careful attention to every detail of what you do during the day. Try it! You will soon see how this slows you down. Now in the spiritual world nothing is done without attentiveness, for there is no such thing as habit. Moreover, there is no such word as the impersonal pronoun “one”—at a certain hour one must have lunch, or one must have dinner at some other time. This “one”—for this occasion one ought to dress in a certain way, and so on—all that under the aegis of this little word plays such a great part in the physical world, particularly in our present civilization, has no place in the spiritual world. There, we have to follow with individual attention every smallest step, and even less than a step. This is expressed in the words: In the spiritual world the straight way between two points is the longest way. So we have this contrast: In the physical world the direct way between two points is the shortest, whereas the direct way between two points is the longest in the spiritual world."
Before BREAKING a cipher, the subject cannot read the object. After, the object is clear as daylight. Don't know if this is relevant to your discussion.
"This does not necessarily undermine the utility of mathematics in science but suggests caution in assuming that mathematical models provide direct access to the ultimate nature of reality. They may instead offer useful approximations within the constraints of our perceptual and cognitive capacities, useful precisely because there is some degree of resonance between these capacities and the environing cosmic rhythms from out of which they have emerged."
Thanks, and very well said! Pure mathematics is the closest we can get to a 'clean' experience of the spiritual realm through intellectual thinking. In mathematical reasoning/modeling, we find thinking that supports itself and makes its own movements into its object of contemplation, independent of sensory perceptions that normally anchor our intuitive orientation to reality. The mathematical thoughts are determined entirely through their inner relations with one another, which is where we gain the most intuitive certainty about the flow of perceptual experience. This is why all science naturally gravitates toward expressing their theories/models in mathematical format.
This is a prelude to what the ego secretly yearns for but doesn't yet have the inner courage to approach - the wider spiritual world, of which mathematical thinking is only a dequalitative, rigidified, and aliased instance. Hoffman and others would make the most progress when they focus less on the meaning of their mathematical thoughts, which generally point to some 'external' material or spiritual reality, and more on the flow of their real-time mathematical activity. In that way, we can attain to inner experience of the 'network of conscious agents' that we normally can only abstractly imagine is responsible for the "interface" of ordinary perceptual experience.
Do you have any comment on counter-intuitive truths discovered seemingly through non-participatory means/models? Examples would be: that Earth is spherical; that Earth revolves around the sun; that gravity is a curvature in space-time caused by massive objects; that material strata are 99% empty space, etc.? Doesn't this lead to a decoherence between organism and their environment? What would be the motivation for discovering such things, or are they all accidental? The majority of humans ignore these facts of their 'reality' in their day-to-day, but nonetheless, as Galileo reputedly said of the Earth, 'And yet it moves.'
Thanks!
The ancient Pythagoreans knew the Earth was spherical, and discovered this via geometry, which has an irreducibly intuitive source. The Sun moves, too, and so strictly speaking it is not accurate to say that the Earth revolves around it. The true movement of the Earth, Sun, and planets is rather more complex than the picture we are given in grade school. Einstein's theory of general relativity is one of dozens of empirically equivalent models of gravity (Whitehead has an alternative that avoids the idea of curved space, which he argued was epistemologically self-undermining--let me know if you are curious to hear more about why). There is no such thing as empty space (all space is full of electromagnetic radiation and/or quantum fluxuations). So no, in all these cases, I see no reason to believe that science has undermined intuition. You have listed a bunch of models, not facts. Science depends upon intuition at every step and quickly loses its way when it pretends otherwise.
Thanks for the response. I’m not sure how the Earth being a sphere is a model and not a fact, yet your assumption of quantum flux is presented in your reply I guess as a fact, though it is itself predicated on a model which is easily the most ready-at-hand counter-intuitive example of modern inquiry (quantum mechanics). Another counterintuitive fact would be that two bodies in a vacuum fall at the same rate irrespective of mass.
Regarding general relativity, perhaps it has always been up for debate conceptually, but its measurement for gravitational time dilation is needed for satellites to communicate with one another for the sake of GPS; it also allows for accurate deduction of mass of bodies in space, and the rate of expansion of the universe. Special relativity—likewise counterintuitive—is relied upon even more widely, for MRIs, police speed radar, spectroscopy, atomic clocks, nuclear reactors, etc.
I wasn’t trying to ‘get ya’, and I wasn’t expecting a defensive reply. I only thought counter-intuitive facts that we discover about our environment would be interesting phenomena to consider, given your article. I haven’t read as much Whiehead as you, so I was curious.
My apologies for coming across as defensive. I think we sell space and time short when we assume one particular model has an explanatory monopoly.
Earth is not a perfect sphere. The fact is far weirder, deviating ever so slightly from every model.
I wouldn't say I've assumed a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics. Common sense experience already exhibits flux as the fundamental fact before any mathematical models come along to instrumentalize it.
I grant there are surprising facts. That anything exists at all is already a surprise! In addition to flux, experience appears to be fundamentally paradoxical. To return experience to pride of place in science is not to deny counterintuitive discoveries, but to insist that these discoveries could only be experiential reattunements.
One last question if you don't mind:
If, as you say, 'common sense experience already exhibits flux as the fundamental fact before any mathematical models come along to instrumentalize it,' then would you also say that eternity, and so eternal laws (mathematical, moral, or other), are counter-intuitive concepts? Because that is fascinating!
Thanks again!
The history of religious experience strongly suggests that human beings can, in certain special states of consciousness, directly intuit eternity. But it is not our usual mode of awareness. Does that make it counterintuitive? I would just say it is uncommon.
When it comes to "eternal laws," I am skeptical. What we call laws of physics seem far more like deep habits that emerge in the course of cosmic history. Morality also evolves.
I unpack many of these ideas in other essays on my substack (eg, on Whitehead or Peirce, both of whom understood physical laws as cosmic habits).
To me this leaves out the most interesting and clarifying manner in which Whitehead's philosophy explains how this reciprocal relationship between mind and world occurs. All action occurs in the present tense, between the fixed past and open future. Thus in the actions of judging or asserting propositions, there is a tensed distinction at play. The past world is independent of the present mind, whereas the future world is possibly (and even plausibly, or maybe even necessarily) dependent on it. The past provides a fixed reference point to which propositions may correspond in a straightforward manner (that is, the present mind can in no way influence or affect the truth-relation between proposition and past actual world): the future, on the other hand, only offers a set of possibilities, incompatible alternatives, as perhaps conditioned by the past, in a manner the present mind may influence--thus introducing a realm of agential concepts and ethical responsibilities. In my opinion, it's only when we've made this tensed distinction that our discussion really begins to accurately discuss this issue, and provide helpful concepts. There's been rigorous work done on this in the realms of temporal logic and the logic of agency--like Nuel Belnap's stit logic as he has combined it with his branching space-times metaphysics (a development from Prior's work that in many ways agrees with Whitehead).
Certainly there is much more to unpack. Most importantly, perhaps, would be the criteria for determining false propositions. But the tensed distinctions you raise are part of that.
I wonder about this line, though: "The past world is independent of the present mind, whereas the future world is possibly (and even plausibly, or maybe even necessarily) dependent on it."
If we stay strictly within Whitehead's scheme, by "*the* past world" we can only mean the past as God's consequent nature experiences it (otherwise we could only refer to *a* past world of some particular occasion of experience). In either case, what counts as past depends on the perspective of a subject. So I fail to see how it can be described as independent of the present subject. Though both would seem to me to be dependent on and relative to a subject, we can still distinguish past and future as determinate and indeterminate (or merely definite), respectively.
While I'd agree that the present occasion cannot change the truth relations of already actualized past occasions, this isn't the end of the story: the reality is that those past occasions, once perished and per the ontological principle, can only exist in the experience (the physical pole) of some presently occurring entity or entities. In fidelity to Whitehead's texts, I find myself unable to fully sever propositions as such from their being felt by some entity. Propositions are not free floating logical angels untethered from the ground of the eternally present process of actualization. Yes, the distinction between propositions as datum and as subjectively felt is important, but it cannot be a full dissociation. Thus, again, we must make reference to the consequent nature to secure Whitehead's concept of truth.
For finite occasions like us, *the* past is always *my* past or *your* past. Even if we are in nearly overlapping inertial reference frames, due to the multiplicity of spacetime systems, I can imagine scenarios wherein true propositions about my past are false propositions about your past, and vice versa. There is still a fact of the matter, perhaps, but that awaits the judgment of God. This divine judgment of Truth is something it seems we finite occasions can only partake in by perishing to our partial perspectives. But in that case, we are no longer ourselves.
I agree that "the past world” is relative to a present, so that there is only such a thing as “the past world of some present subject.” I believe this is what Whitehead defines as “the actual world”: “The nexus of actual entities in the universe correlate to a concrescence† is termed ‘the actual world’ correlate to that concrescence” (PR 23). “The nexus of all actual entities felt by a” serves as a definite description for the actual world of a, and we can thus more generally define, for any actual entity x, “the actual world of x” to be “the nexus of all actual entities felt by x.” This, however, is only a description that thereby denotes, or picks out, what we are talking about: it is not the complete or essential description of the entity. We are simply stating that one and only one item in our universe of discourse will answer to this description—and we are then free to make further statements about this one item.
As many Whiteheadians would typically put it, an actual entity is internally related to its past and externally related to its future. Thus, the intrinsic determination of an actual entity involves how it prehends its past, whereas how it is prehended by its future is an extrinsic determination. In this sense, the intrinsic determination of any actual entity x’s actual world is by definition not affected by how that actual world is prehended by x. It is thus the intrinsic determinations of an actual entity’s actual world that would be describable independently of said actual entity. The definition of “the actual world of x” offered above involves, however, a description of what would be an extrinsic determination of the nexus that is said actual world. We are thus describing an extrinsic determination as a means of picking out the set of actual entities we have in mind—but we may then make statements about the intrinsic determinations of said actual entities.
Furthermore, I would argue that an actual world is in a sense definable, and thus denotable, independently of any particular actual entity. This is because “each actual world is relative to standpoint” (PR 193), i.e., an actual entity’s standpoint determines its actual world. A standpoint is a region in the extensive continuum, i.e., an eternal object, and “[t]he concrescence presupposes its basic region, and not the region its concrescence” (PR 283). To cash out this phrasing even more, the intrinsic determinations of a region do not involve the actual entity located at said region. We can thus talk about regional standpoints and their properties independently of talking about any particular actual entities being located at said standpoints. Thus for any region x, we can talk about “the actual world belonging to some actual entity located at region x”, for an entirely hypothetical actual entity (and this is analogously what coordinate division more or less is but for some specified parent actual entity and its subregions).
This much is just a clarification of some points we might agree on. As for your suggestion, that the actual world in a more absolute sense is “the past as God's consequent nature experiences it”—I find this problematic. Any actual world is a nexus, and thus “a set of actual entities in the unity of the relatedness constituted by their prehensions of each other” (PR 24). A set has an extensional identity, however, so that if you added (or subtracted) members from the set, it would be a new set. The phrase, “God’s actual world” thus does not pick out any single set; rather, with each step of the creative advance there is a new, increasingly larger set. We are thereby right back to relying on a standpoint (and, thus, a position in the creative advance) to pick out the right set of actual entities we have in mind. Furthermore, the intrinsic determinations of those actual entities will (qua intrinsic determinations) not involve their being felt by God.
I would dispute your claim that “past occasions, once perished and per the ontological principle, can only exist in the experience (the physical pole) of some presently occurring entity or entities.” I do not believe that Whitehead’s ontological principle entails that entities only exist qua their being presently prehended. Rather, the ontological principle states “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 actual world of that concrescence, or in the character of the subject which is in process of concrescence” (PR 24). As stated here, it in fact reinforces that the actual world is its own reason independently of the concrescing subject—this being, of course, because the actual world is a set of actual entities that are thus each final realities in their own right.
I also find this suggestion, that an entity’s existence is reducible to its actually being felt, to be problematic insofar as it reduces down statements about said entity qua potential. Whitehead’s principle of relativity states that every entity is a potential for feeling: “it belongs to the nature of a ‘being’ that it is a potential for every ‘becoming’” (PR 22), that is, that it may possibly be prehended (in various ways) by any future actual entity. Thus each entity’s own nature involves its existence beyond any present concrescence, for the possible future.
I am really interested in this in the context of 'validity' in collaborative forms of inquiry generally, and our work drawing on living cosmos panpsychism to engage with Land as sentient. In relation to this, Freya Mathews writes ‘the presuppositions and beliefs we bring to our encounter with the world act as a kind of invocation – they call up reality under a particular aspect or aspects, so that this is the aspect that reality will reveal to us in the course of the encounter’ which seem to reflect a similar participatory view.
With regard to Organism-Environment Coevolution, you point to several examples at species level. But Gaia theory would apply this to Earth as a whole: it is the close coupling of living and non living spheres that creates and then maintains the conditions suitable for live on Earth. Life creates the conditions for its own well being on a grand sacle
Are you familiar with Adam S. Miller? I would be highly interested in a recorded conversation, or any other form of collaboration, between the two of you. This piece—and I suppose it's also relevant to your recent musings on "Metamodern Christianity"—reminded me in particular of section 4, "What if truth is an ongoing process, not a static product?", from his essay "Network Theology: Is it Possible to be a Christian but not a Platonist?" in the 2016 collection "Future Mormon: Essays in Mormon Theology", which reads as follows. (His work is much of what made me realize that the widespread mainstream tendency to write off the whole of "Mormonism" as not worth taking seriously in any way is rather too hasty, however ludicrous many aspects of the official narrative may appear to be—it's not like it's really more absurd than Roman Catholicism, all things considered, or at least that is the conclusion my mind seems to have reached at this point.)
A traditional understanding of truth as the correct correspondence of an internal idea with an external state of affairs depends on a stable, hierarchical background of fixed essences. Traditionally, truth depends on the hard guarantee—be it empirical, transcendent, or transcendental—of some brand of Platonism. But if the world consists of flat, adaptive, and overlapping networks, then what place is there for truth?
While network thinking must jettison a representational understanding of truth as a fixed product, it offers instead a description of truth as a specialized network process. As an ongoing process, truth is defined in opposition to knowledge. If knowledge is understood as the publicly agreed upon network of banked "common knowledge" available at any given time, then truths are specialized processes that trace novel paths through the network, revealing inconsistencies and displaying overlooked constellations of meaning. As ongoing processes, truths are successful to the degree that they are able to overwrite a network's previous self-understanding with one that meshes more finely and productively with its own unfolding. Knowledge, then, is the residue of a successful truth.
In this sense, truths are always tied to the specific networks of knowledge in which they are actively at work. This, however, does not relativize truths such that the center no longer holds—distributed networks have no such center to begin with. Rather, network thinking concentrates and localizes the force of every truth we set in motion.
Paul's evangelization of the Christian proclamation models this understanding of truth as a network process. As a truth, the gospel is literally an announcement of good news, a divine proclamation that it is possible to trace new paths through the world's open but fragmented networks. As Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 1:17–31, the new paths forged by Jesus's truth initially appear as "foolishness" in relation to the banked "wisdom of the wise" (vv. 18, 19) because Christianity ignores the world's distribution into Jews and Greeks. The multitude known to the world as foolish, weak, and base—that is to say: as non-beings—are displayed in Christ's redistribution of the world as its productive, living truth (cf. vv. 26–27). Here, the measure of such a truth is not its correspondence to how things are, but the productive, life-giving force of its capacity for redistribution and renewal.
I will have to check out Miller’s essay. Thanks for the recommendation. It seems to me though that Whitehead manages to preserve some key Platonic ideas (including the idea of ideas) while also affirming that truth is an ongoing process.
Yeah, it seems kind of difficult genuinely to end up being more than a non-Platonist–in-name-only to the extent that Plato was (as Steiner tries to do) just identifying features of reality that anyone who seriously investigates the matter will inevitably acknowledge and not presenting mere opinions or limited perspectives as doctrine as we've come to think of the task of philosophy as being. Assertions like "the Good is the One" seem almost trivial, right? Like, we had better hope that's basically how things are (despite the best attempts of exoteric religious forms to get us to believe otherwise), because otherwise we're hosed.
But even if the answer to the titular question turns out to be "no, not really"—because the universal "network" that has to link everything together just turns out to be the reformulated unity that precedes multiplicity (kind of like Steiner's "it makes no sense at all to speak of more than one world" in GA 1, Chapter 9)—the essay as a whole is a good stimulus to thought. That delightful feeling of having one's mental world restructured and reoriented by what one is reading even if one isn't in perfect agreement with exactly how it's expressed, you know? The last section, "What if the soul is a network?", makes for a particularly good meditation into which to enter experientially, which I guess is the main point, regardless of the applicability of the "Platonist" label—how can we make metaphysics more participatory? "…in the face of this complexity it is no longer possible to say where one soul ends and another begins."
I suppose you haven't time to engage in depth with every internet rando who kind of wishes he had become aware sooner of CIIS as a postsecondary option so we could have been discussing all of this in a classroom setting for the last few years—but if you happen to read the essay and feel like committing any thoughts to writing, or have any corrections to my ramblings here, I would love to hear them.
Excellent my friend. I appreciate ur wk. It makes a difference. I wish I had time to merge into it.
https://substack.com/@stevenberger/note/c-73357450?r=1nm0v2
Nice and timely article, ‘Truth’ has been floating around my mind the past few weeks…
I agree with this angle, but it also opens up a lot of questions: yes, ‘Truth’ is a ‘relational, creative and participatory process’ but I’m curious: what are the next steps in exploring or building on that idea? Some initial points or questions (no need to respond, more so just raising them generally)
‘False consciousness’ or ‘falsehoods’ are also, or can be, relational and creative and participatory- how then is this distinction made between what is ‘true’ and ‘false’? (If it makes sense to keep that distinction)
Building off this point, how ‘Truth’ is conceptualised between what is ‘good’ and ‘valuable’ (opposed to not good or not as valuable)
Seeing ‘Truth’ as a metabolism: as events happening, and ‘Truth’ being the way these events ‘sort themselves out’- or self-organise?
And off of this, ‘Truth’, maybe, as an instance of self-organisation
And similarly, exploring more of the link between ‘Truth’ and evolution
Just spit-balling here but feel free to respond to these or on how you think the conversation moves forward :)
In a recent podcast with Hoffman, i heard him talking about a mathematical model of the 'ding an sich'. It's something like trying to put your love in a mathematical formula. Mathematics cannot be fruitfully applied to just anything. From Steiner, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA227/English/RSP1966/19230821p01.html
"There is no doubt that mathematical truths are among the most difficult things. They are held to be irrefutable. But the curious fact is that on entering the spiritual world we find that our mathematics and geometry are no longer correct. A very simple example will make this clear. From early youth we have learnt to look upon the old truths of Euclid as axiomatic, self-evident. For instance, it is stated as obvious that, given two points, A and B, the shortest distance between them is a straight line, and that any curved path between them is longer. On a recognition of this fact—obvious for the physical world—rests the greater part of our geometry. But in the spiritual world it is the other way round. The straight line there from A to B is the longest way, and any other way is shorter because it can be taken in freedom. If at the point A one thinks of going to B, this very idea suggests an indirect way; and to hold to a straight course, and so at each single point to keep in the same direction, is hardest and causes most delay. Hence, in determining the most direct way in the two-dimensional or one-dimensional space of the spiritual world, we look for the longest way. Now anyone who reflects about attentiveness, and delves deeply into his soul to discover what attentiveness really means, will find that in this connection, also, what is said by the spiritual investigator is true. For he will say to himself: “When I go around just as I choose, I get there easily, and I don't have to worry about traversing a particular stretch; I need do only what I do every day.” And most people are bustling around from morning to night. They are in such a hurry that they hardly notice how much of all they do is done from sheer habit—what they have done the day before, what other people say they should do, and so forth. Then it all goes smoothly. Just think what it would be like if you had to pay careful attention to every detail of what you do during the day. Try it! You will soon see how this slows you down. Now in the spiritual world nothing is done without attentiveness, for there is no such thing as habit. Moreover, there is no such word as the impersonal pronoun “one”—at a certain hour one must have lunch, or one must have dinner at some other time. This “one”—for this occasion one ought to dress in a certain way, and so on—all that under the aegis of this little word plays such a great part in the physical world, particularly in our present civilization, has no place in the spiritual world. There, we have to follow with individual attention every smallest step, and even less than a step. This is expressed in the words: In the spiritual world the straight way between two points is the longest way. So we have this contrast: In the physical world the direct way between two points is the shortest, whereas the direct way between two points is the longest in the spiritual world."
Onward towards a pluralistic realism! Excellent work. I think you have dissolved some deep, yet illusory dichotomies here. Thank you for sharing 🙏
Before BREAKING a cipher, the subject cannot read the object. After, the object is clear as daylight. Don't know if this is relevant to your discussion.