I must admit I find it odd that such people find such a pressing need to demolish Panpsychism altogether. I found a SubStack article in which the author said he was ‘irritated’ that anyone could even consider the idea as possibility. I left a comment: ““Irritated”, or SCARED?” It seems they are genuinely fearful of the notion and of the fact that intelligent people are discussing it as a possibility. (He didn’t reply.) It’s almost as if they are holding up a paradigm by its own bootstraps for all it’s worth, one that they know is slipping away, and will fall with a great crash! Why not just say: “Some go for Panpsychism but I find it doubtful (or disagreeable!)”? After all, here we are dealing with the greatest and deepest of mysteries; in thorny and slippery territory, of a realm before logic, reflection and even rational thought came to be. It’s not surprising that it’s a big stretch for an intellect that is used to the daily tasks of survival and self-advantage: what’s for dinner and what’s on TV! To who is it advantageous: to understand the depth of the very origin of all things (and end up misunderstood and thought of as a lunatic, or more likely ignored as some sort of creak-pot?!) But, like it or not SOME of us feel impelled into such wild terrain (what was that about ‘the narrow path..’?) For what have we been given a mind if not to explore all things?
“On those stepping into rivers staying the same, other and other waters flow”.
The neo-Buddhists have interpreted Heraclitus’ quote above incorrectly. Regards to the self, it does not mean “everything is changing” and so “everything is non-substantial” (e.g, the self as non-substantial). It rather means that, by virtue of a thing – such as a moving body of water – changing yet remaining categorizable in the first place, it’s ontic status is retained. For if the river’s water was not flowing, then we’d instead be talking about a pond or lake. Thus: it is by virtue of something being dynamical that it exists at all. Nothing in existence is static. Hence, the criterion that a self must be static to persist must be wrong. It all goes back to this (wrong) insistence that there must be a "static thing" somewhere.
But what is most frustrating is that the word dynamical, derived from δύναμης, continues to be misinterpreted. They should have called it power systems theory (e.g., in reference to powers ontologies), not dynamical systems theory. It should not surprise us that a fool incapable of embodying such powers of causation onto other substances would conclude "there must not be any powers or substances afterall? Only randomly-moving disembodied events".
Not sure if (analytic) philosohers and scientists that aren't chronically online do this but I see far too often on this app people claiming something along the lines of "panpsychism is pseudo-science because (among other reasons) it's unfalsifiable". Some people learn that science is the gold standard of human enquiry (which is a fair take and one I likely agree with) and brandish that idea as a weapon to smack alternative epistemological approaches with the term "pseudo-science". What frustrates me about this is a claim or inquiry is only pseudo-science if it's trying to pass off as scientific but isn't (e.g., vaccines cause autism). As you mentioned, Panpsychism is not a scientific hypothesis and it's not trying to be falsifiable, testable, provable or anything like that. By their logic physicalism is pseudo-scientific too. This is what happens when people think metaphysics can just be simply "read off science" or some other nonsense.
On the one hand, yes metaphysics isn't science. On the other, all science is done on metaphysical foundations (or in metaphysical frames, if you don't like gravity-well-based metaphors). And on poor foundations, structures topple. But it's no proof of the soundness of your foundation that your house hasn't fallen *yet*. And the defense of poor metaphysical foundations is often to reject structural extensions, even when new rooms are needed to house the evidence.
So on the other hand, metaphysics is, over longer terms and in larger contexts, testable, even perhaps, in some of its instances, falsifiable. And an alternate metaphysics may show initial positive test results when a new and useful science can be built on it, a test of pragmatic usefulness, not a test against falsification. The bias towards "there can be only one" in terms of pragmatically useful foundations presumes there's only one architectural style one should ever wish to build on top of them. Let a thousand metaphysics bloom!
The Carrier oceans-dwelling seashells (family Xenophoridae)give us dramatic examples of Whitehead's understanding of prehension and concrescence. The soft body of the snail partially exits its exoskeleton and picks up debris from the ocean floor. This may be the empty exoskeleton of another shell, stones or pieces of coral, depending on where in the oceans of the world it lives. Then, by non-conceptual feeling, it sculpts its growing shell to accommodate the concrescence and cements it to itself with the same calcium carbonate-protein mixture that forms the growing shell itself.
Thanks for the note, Matthew. The problem is that, as one of your commenters says, I think that any philosophy that does not closely track science is nonsense on stilts. Whitehead was a brilliant philosopher, but to insist on notions like panpsychism and the like today amounts to doing the philosophical equivalent of pseudoscience. Cheers.
Oh I don't know, let's see: panexperientialism, panpsychism, eternal objects, god's primordial nature, creativity as ultimate metaphysical principle, concrescence and satisfaction, and the general approach, relying on validity criteria of coherence and adequacy to experience rather than falsifiability or derivation from data. Your pick.
Maybe what you mean is that you disagree with Whitehead’s take on the philosophical presuppositions of science? Plenty of scientific geniuses have and continue to argue in favor of God and some version of Platonic realism.
Geniuses? More like smart but profoundly misguided people. And that's precisely the problem: "arguing" is easy, but if your arguments don't make contact with the empirical they are utterly useless, not even wrong.
On what basis are you claiming Whitehead makes no contact with the empirical, though? It is fine to disagree with *how* he makes said contact (especially if you offer some arguments instead of just stating your incredulity), but it just comes across as though you haven’t spent any time with his work when you deny that a radical empiricist (in the pragmatist sense) who offered an at the time observationally equivalent alternative to Einstein’s theory of relativity and who wrote hundreds of pages closely examining the nature of perception etc makes no contact with the empirical.
Matthew, let's not confuse apples and oranges. I gave you a list above. Where in that list is there any contact at all with the empirical?
As for Whitehead's alternative to relativity, I'm not a philosopher of physics, but I've asked around. The question, I'm told, is not whether Whitehead was right (he wasn't) but why a first-rate mind (which he undoubtedly was) produced a theory whose empirical content was wholly retrodictive rather than predictive. The answer lies in his metaphysical motivation — uniform spacetime as a precondition for measurement and for the "uniformity of nature" — which drove the physics, rather than the other way around.
"Misguided"? What daemon do you suppose is leading them away from truth? And what angel has assured you that you're more properly guided than each of those brilliantly accomplished folk?
Whit, there is an ample literature in psychology about smart people believing dumb things. I'm not supported by an angel, I'm supported by science. Which has been my whole problem with Whitehead's (or any other similarly style) metaphysics in the first place.
With all due respect, what exactly are you trying to convey via that list?
Like, what's the point here, and what are the arguments underlying said point?
Because so far, all that you've offered to observers of this conversation is bald assertion and expression of incredulity; and I'm sorry, but bald assertion and incredulity are never rationally-compelling when you're refusing to supply us with rationally-compelling reasoning and argumentation right alongside the incredulity!
Especially when the subject is Whitehead.
When thinking with Whitehead, you must understand that you're dealing with the greatest metaphysician of the 20th century (and also of the 21st century; still no one on the horizon who can match him), who also happened to be a talented and acclaimed mathematician and physicist prior to his work as a philosopher; so, if the terms that you've listed strike you as indicative of absurdity, maybe you should pause/take a breather, and perhaps entertain the possibility that you don't quite understand the terms in question!
And this isn't an insult; we're all in the same boat! It takes serious study/engagement to get a handle on Whitehead; for some people, it can even prove to be a lifelong project!
But hell, let's forget all that; I mean, even if you ignore his philosophical genius and his talents as a mathematician, logician, and physicist, and pretend that he was just some guy... even in that sort of framing, I do think that Whitehead deserves much better than the treatment that you've demonstrated toward him.
The right tack would instead involve the following:
You have to ask "what", "why", and "how"?
For example (just picking one item on your list of incredulity):
What: what does the phrase "eternal objects" mean at a propositional level, in terms of its topological structure in conceptual space?
Why: why would someone need such a concept... what are the problems and questions involved?
How: how does said concept address said need(s), and how does said concept resolve the problems/answer the questions involved?
Once you understand the "what", "why", and "how", THEN you can compare the concept/approach under consideration to opposing or distinctly alternative concepts/modes of approach! And then you provide your arguments on the basis of comparison, looking at conceptual and empirical motivations and implications.
Simple fairness and intellectual honesty.
The trouble here though:
You haven't done the sort of work needed for the evincing of such simple fairness and intellectual honesty.
Instead, when reading what you've written, it really feels like you just skimmed over the preface and first chapter of "Process and Reality", skimmed over the IEP article on "Process Philosophy" (rather than the IEP article on Whitehead, I must add; which is quite relevant, primarily because the two articles are mutually contradictory, and the IEP article on Whitehead is far more accurate on Whitehead vs. the IEP article on "Process Philosophy" in the parts of it which deal with Whitehead), and than offloaded a ton of work on an LLM.
And frankly, you will not understand Whitehead just by skimming over the preface and first chapter of PR; I couldn't understand him either!
Whitehead himself notes that the first part of PR is essentially unintelligible without reading Part II.
And if I'm being honest with you, I needed "Science and the Modern World" and "Modes of Thought" before I could fully appreciate PR.
But again, at the very least: If you do want to have an honest engagement with Whitehead, then you do need to read the rest of "Process and Reality".
And at the end of the day, even if you do end up actually understanding/getting a general handle on Whitehead, you might find him to be completely outside the bounds of your taste in philosophy; which is totally understandable!
Once upon a time, I subjected myself to an honest and sustained engagement with the work of David Lewis; at the end of said engagement, I could finally say with complete confidence that he just wasn't my kind of philosopher!
But if you want to present an attack that's compelling, you have to do the work, and then offer substantive arguments on the basis of said work!
Like, If I wrote on article in which I beat Lewis over the head, but my article is powered by an understanding that's based only on an abstract which I skimmed from one of his papers, then people wouldn't take me too seriously. And Lewis is a way, way, way simpler (and simple-minded) and easy-to-handle philosopher in comparison to Whitehead, so your situation is even more egregious!
PS: I apologize for the way I went about things in my prior responses to Matthew's notes; I realize now that I was being a bit harsh, even though I obviously continue to maintain that your writing on Whitehead misses the mark.
Hello Dr. Pigliucci. I am a big fan of your work on Stoicism, but I do think you're being a bit dismissive when it comes to "pseudoscience" as you define it. I highly recommend the book Parapsychology, Philosophy, and Spirituality by David Ray Griffin. Although it is a historical account of the development of parapsychology (as related to philosophy and spirituality, not super related to this thread), there is much reference to Whitehead. I think you would find the first chapter, Parapsychology and Post Modern Philosophy, extremely interesting. Before writing off the impossible as impossible, at least appreciate the history of how it developed, and maybe you will understand why it can be so convincing for people today, even if your personal views don't change.
Will, thanks for the kind words about my work on Stoicism. But I wonder what makes you think that I just dismiss the paranormal without seriously looking into its history, its claims, and so forth. I have been studying the subject for decades, and my specialty within philosophy of science is precisely the demarcation problem. I'll take a look at the book you mention, but the very fact that Whitehead is frequently mentioned in that context reinforces my suspicions about his philosophy. Cheers.
I wasn’t aware of your interest in this subject, only of your work on Stoicism, so I’m sorry for the assumption. It sounds like you are unfamiliar with David Ray Griffin’s work though so I’m glad you will take a look! As for your reference to the demarcation problem, I am not very well read on the topic, but I came across this article published in the Cambridge University Press and I do think it’s very applicable:
Hansson SO. Demarcating, defining, and diagnosing pseudoscience. Philosophy of Science. 2025;92(4):922-937. doi:10.1017/psa.2025.27
This article goes through the history of the use of demarcation as a term, and the impacts of its use as a metaphor applied to distinguishing between science and pseudoscience. One thing to note, the categorical distinction implied by “demarcation” is not very Flux like (I think this is relevant given your recent article on Process philosophy and your affirmation of Heraclitus). I do think that approaching the question of delineating between “real science” and “fake science”, through the use of a binary categorical “demarcation” is a problem because it implies a permanence that doesn’t allow for the development of new disciplines. A lot of well established scientific disciplines today started from disciplines we would now consider “pseudoscientific.” For example, the widespread interest in Alchemy lead to a more rigorous, formalized Chemistry. In light of this, the dismissal of “pseudoscience” as you’ve defined feels like an unnecessary stifling of what could blossom into new disciplines and valuable insights.
Regardless, I really do hope you check out that book chapter and I hope you give Whitehead another shot, as I really think his philosophy is more compatible with your views than you currently give it credit for.
I know Hansson, but your inferences from that article are largely incorrect. For instance, nobody makes any kind of categorical distinction between science and pseudoscience, in fact the consensus is that it's a gradient, not a sharp line. (See: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo15996988.html)
So there is no binary distinction, and of course philosophers of science di recognize that there is a temporal axis along which things can change. That said, alchemy is a bad example: it was precisely the rejection of alchemy that led Boyle et al. to establish modern chemistry.
Without an alchemy to reject, there would have been no modern chemistry to affirm. They co-constituted each other. This is what I meant by interest in alchemy leading to the formation of chemistry. As for the consensus in the field of philosophy of science, I am not a scientist or a published scholar (yet), so I am unaware of the developments you’ve described, but it’s good to hear that people recognize the gradient. I will check out the book you sent, looks like a good resource for learning about the field. That being said, from the article alone, it does seem like there is a binary distinction, (but in light of your comment, apparently one most people reject). In section 3, How the demarcation metaphor shapes our thoughts, there is explicit reference to its binary nature: “The demarcation metaphor is strictly binary in the sense of suggesting two mutually exclusive alternatives with no overlaps” There is also explicit reference to its implied permanence: “The demarcation metaphor imparts the impression of reasonably permanent criteria”. As such, I assumed that these are still problems, given this article was written relatively recently (June 2025).
This problem as described can be made explicit through what Whitehead calls “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness” where a concept or idea can be mistaken as how reality actually is organized. In our case, the concept of demarcation is an abstraction, a definition that (when misunderstood) partitions the space of science and pseudoscience into disjoint sets. As you’ve informed me, most people reject the binary nature of the metaphor, instead recognizing the gradient. But, some individuals may be influenced, through historical usage of the word demarcation and context, to believe that science and pseudoscience truly are disjoint. This hails to the articles fourth point, that “the demarcation metaphor imparts the impression of reasonably permanent criteria.” The fallacy of misplaced concreteness highlights this tendency for individuals to mistake labels for reality, and the label of “demarcation problem” to describe the distinction between science and pseudoscience does do this. I only highlight this aspect of Whitehead’s philosophy because I think you would agree. That’s exactly what you were calling out about my previous reply, that my inferences were incorrect. I think you would say that I fell victim to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, assuming the label of “demarcation problem” is how you actually viewed reality.
Don’t get the idea that Whitehead rejects abstractions though. As a mathematician, he recognizes abstraction as integral to doing math (Think of the Kantian move to put mathematical judgements in the synthetic a priori category. Mathematics is universally true prior to experience (a priori) and expands our knowledge (synthetic). Abstraction is an integral part of this expansion and therefore can be mapped to the synthetic distinction Kant makes).
Sorry if this is long winded, I’m getting excited talking about this stuff😆. To bridge the gap to some of Whitehead’s positions that you reject, I want to clarify some misunderstandings it seems you have. Below is my assumption of your position on Whitehead. Maybe it’s not true. Please let me know if you end up reading it. Fair warning it’s pretty long.
I think you reject Whitehead, because you assume he starts from a “panpsychic cosmology” which, given your background in biology and philosophy of science, you have no reason to affirm and every reason to reject. In reality, Whitehead starts with the full registry of data he had access to, including mathematics, physics, biology (which had made lots of advancements during the course of his lifetime due to Darwin.) and phenomenological aspects of experience, such as sensory perceptions (think Hume), values, and deeper internal experiences (from these is where Whitehead derives his notion of causal efficacy. Very interesting stuff if you ever want to look into it, builds off Hume and Kant). In his life, he didn’t see any widely held cosmology that fit the full registry of data (Reductive scientific materialism didn’t acknowledge the reality of values, Cartesian dualism and all the ontologies that developed from it were not tenable due to the mind body problem and other problems, eastern Non-dual dualism constructions tended to treat ordinary reality as “illusion” and a deeper unified reality as “true” etc. etc.).
From the full registry of data, he constructs a metaphysical scheme. To him, a “good” metaphysics should be one which doesn’t exclude any experience of reality from its discription of reality, one that is self affirming (each evidence based tenant informs, affirms and enriches every other tenant) and therefore coheres. The criteria of coherence makes sense in this light, because a metaphysical scheme should be internally consistent, and also should include all the data the reality provides, especially that of the empirical sciences. If the metaphysical scheme is not representative of the empirical data, this is a serious issue and may require the scheme’s revision. It’s not that falsifiability is unimportant, just that coherence is an additional criteria that is required when construction a metaphysical schema.
(Side note, one thing that I think you would disagree with is the idea that phenomenological experience should be included as data. Whitehead does think that phenomenological experiences should be included as data (In line with William James’ radical empiricism, who btw was involved with the formation of the society of psychical research), and as such, his philosophy of organism is sometimes characterized as an ontology of value.)
Hopefully, from this you can see that panpsychism, or panexperientialism or any similar system (Which by the way, Whitehead never used this terminology. They were coined after his death as interpretations of his philosophy.) is not an arbitrarily chosen cosmology that attempts to weasel out of empirical validation. I understand it as Whitehead’s attempt to apply the scientific method to the full registry of data. The analogy is explicated below:
A hypothesis about what reality is is made, evidence is gathered: (in the case of a metaphysical scheme, the full range of data should be gathered, including physical measurements and observations, sensory perceptions, and deeper internal experiences (from these is where Whitehead derives his notion of causal efficacy. Very interesting stuff if you ever want to look into it, builds off Hume and Kant), hypotheses is affirmed or denied, then updated to cohere with the data. This process is iterative, and as we incorporate more data, new metaphysical systems can and should develop. The explication of Whitehead’s philosophy of organism in Process and Reality is his attempt at making all aspects of reality cohere in a metaphysical system, and in my opinion is the best attempt any individual has made thus far.
I’m sorry if this is too much for a comment😆. I took a lot of enjoyment out of this explanation because it also helped me with my own understanding of Whitehead’s philosophy. To anyone else reading, please let me know if my understanding is off anywhere. I will say I do have a deep appreciation for Whitehead’s philosophy, so I want to defend it as best I can, but I also recognize that it’s very inaccessible and hard to affirm from a scientific background. Hopefully this comment does him justice and there’s something here you can appreciate.
On alchemy, I’d just say that there were major worldview shifts involved in the shift to chemistry, and that from our point of view today it is much easier to approach what alchemists were doing from a depth psychological perspective (eg, Jung’s research on the topic) rather than flattening it into primitive chemistry. Modern science was born from a methodological bifurcation of nature (ie, primary v. secondary characteristics) that, because of the tremendous instrumental successes it afforded, quickly overreached and forgot a successful methodology is not necessary grounds for reification into an ontology. Nature/matter cannot really be devoid of mind since, well, here we are! Our scientific conception of nature must include the fact that there are scientists. The search for a rationally coherent and experiential adequate account of how this is so is what led Whitehead into metaphysics.
You make me want to read Whitehead.
I must admit I find it odd that such people find such a pressing need to demolish Panpsychism altogether. I found a SubStack article in which the author said he was ‘irritated’ that anyone could even consider the idea as possibility. I left a comment: ““Irritated”, or SCARED?” It seems they are genuinely fearful of the notion and of the fact that intelligent people are discussing it as a possibility. (He didn’t reply.) It’s almost as if they are holding up a paradigm by its own bootstraps for all it’s worth, one that they know is slipping away, and will fall with a great crash! Why not just say: “Some go for Panpsychism but I find it doubtful (or disagreeable!)”? After all, here we are dealing with the greatest and deepest of mysteries; in thorny and slippery territory, of a realm before logic, reflection and even rational thought came to be. It’s not surprising that it’s a big stretch for an intellect that is used to the daily tasks of survival and self-advantage: what’s for dinner and what’s on TV! To who is it advantageous: to understand the depth of the very origin of all things (and end up misunderstood and thought of as a lunatic, or more likely ignored as some sort of creak-pot?!) But, like it or not SOME of us feel impelled into such wild terrain (what was that about ‘the narrow path..’?) For what have we been given a mind if not to explore all things?
“On those stepping into rivers staying the same, other and other waters flow”.
The neo-Buddhists have interpreted Heraclitus’ quote above incorrectly. Regards to the self, it does not mean “everything is changing” and so “everything is non-substantial” (e.g, the self as non-substantial). It rather means that, by virtue of a thing – such as a moving body of water – changing yet remaining categorizable in the first place, it’s ontic status is retained. For if the river’s water was not flowing, then we’d instead be talking about a pond or lake. Thus: it is by virtue of something being dynamical that it exists at all. Nothing in existence is static. Hence, the criterion that a self must be static to persist must be wrong. It all goes back to this (wrong) insistence that there must be a "static thing" somewhere.
But what is most frustrating is that the word dynamical, derived from δύναμης, continues to be misinterpreted. They should have called it power systems theory (e.g., in reference to powers ontologies), not dynamical systems theory. It should not surprise us that a fool incapable of embodying such powers of causation onto other substances would conclude "there must not be any powers or substances afterall? Only randomly-moving disembodied events".
Not sure if (analytic) philosohers and scientists that aren't chronically online do this but I see far too often on this app people claiming something along the lines of "panpsychism is pseudo-science because (among other reasons) it's unfalsifiable". Some people learn that science is the gold standard of human enquiry (which is a fair take and one I likely agree with) and brandish that idea as a weapon to smack alternative epistemological approaches with the term "pseudo-science". What frustrates me about this is a claim or inquiry is only pseudo-science if it's trying to pass off as scientific but isn't (e.g., vaccines cause autism). As you mentioned, Panpsychism is not a scientific hypothesis and it's not trying to be falsifiable, testable, provable or anything like that. By their logic physicalism is pseudo-scientific too. This is what happens when people think metaphysics can just be simply "read off science" or some other nonsense.
On the one hand, yes metaphysics isn't science. On the other, all science is done on metaphysical foundations (or in metaphysical frames, if you don't like gravity-well-based metaphors). And on poor foundations, structures topple. But it's no proof of the soundness of your foundation that your house hasn't fallen *yet*. And the defense of poor metaphysical foundations is often to reject structural extensions, even when new rooms are needed to house the evidence.
So on the other hand, metaphysics is, over longer terms and in larger contexts, testable, even perhaps, in some of its instances, falsifiable. And an alternate metaphysics may show initial positive test results when a new and useful science can be built on it, a test of pragmatic usefulness, not a test against falsification. The bias towards "there can be only one" in terms of pragmatically useful foundations presumes there's only one architectural style one should ever wish to build on top of them. Let a thousand metaphysics bloom!
Nice stuff.
I know what consciousness is and I don’t know what consciousness is.
I could explain the “ process” in biology but I’d have to rely on language and math.
Last I checked math and language exist as non physical phenomena.
The Carrier oceans-dwelling seashells (family Xenophoridae)give us dramatic examples of Whitehead's understanding of prehension and concrescence. The soft body of the snail partially exits its exoskeleton and picks up debris from the ocean floor. This may be the empty exoskeleton of another shell, stones or pieces of coral, depending on where in the oceans of the world it lives. Then, by non-conceptual feeling, it sculpts its growing shell to accommodate the concrescence and cements it to itself with the same calcium carbonate-protein mixture that forms the growing shell itself.
Thanks for the note, Matthew. The problem is that, as one of your commenters says, I think that any philosophy that does not closely track science is nonsense on stilts. Whitehead was a brilliant philosopher, but to insist on notions like panpsychism and the like today amounts to doing the philosophical equivalent of pseudoscience. Cheers.
I don’t know how you could read Whitehead’s books and come away thinking he isn’t closely tracking science.
Oh I don't know, let's see: panexperientialism, panpsychism, eternal objects, god's primordial nature, creativity as ultimate metaphysical principle, concrescence and satisfaction, and the general approach, relying on validity criteria of coherence and adequacy to experience rather than falsifiability or derivation from data. Your pick.
Maybe what you mean is that you disagree with Whitehead’s take on the philosophical presuppositions of science? Plenty of scientific geniuses have and continue to argue in favor of God and some version of Platonic realism.
Geniuses? More like smart but profoundly misguided people. And that's precisely the problem: "arguing" is easy, but if your arguments don't make contact with the empirical they are utterly useless, not even wrong.
On what basis are you claiming Whitehead makes no contact with the empirical, though? It is fine to disagree with *how* he makes said contact (especially if you offer some arguments instead of just stating your incredulity), but it just comes across as though you haven’t spent any time with his work when you deny that a radical empiricist (in the pragmatist sense) who offered an at the time observationally equivalent alternative to Einstein’s theory of relativity and who wrote hundreds of pages closely examining the nature of perception etc makes no contact with the empirical.
Matthew, let's not confuse apples and oranges. I gave you a list above. Where in that list is there any contact at all with the empirical?
As for Whitehead's alternative to relativity, I'm not a philosopher of physics, but I've asked around. The question, I'm told, is not whether Whitehead was right (he wasn't) but why a first-rate mind (which he undoubtedly was) produced a theory whose empirical content was wholly retrodictive rather than predictive. The answer lies in his metaphysical motivation — uniform spacetime as a precondition for measurement and for the "uniformity of nature" — which drove the physics, rather than the other way around.
"Misguided"? What daemon do you suppose is leading them away from truth? And what angel has assured you that you're more properly guided than each of those brilliantly accomplished folk?
Whit, there is an ample literature in psychology about smart people believing dumb things. I'm not supported by an angel, I'm supported by science. Which has been my whole problem with Whitehead's (or any other similarly style) metaphysics in the first place.
Massimo,
With all due respect, what exactly are you trying to convey via that list?
Like, what's the point here, and what are the arguments underlying said point?
Because so far, all that you've offered to observers of this conversation is bald assertion and expression of incredulity; and I'm sorry, but bald assertion and incredulity are never rationally-compelling when you're refusing to supply us with rationally-compelling reasoning and argumentation right alongside the incredulity!
Especially when the subject is Whitehead.
When thinking with Whitehead, you must understand that you're dealing with the greatest metaphysician of the 20th century (and also of the 21st century; still no one on the horizon who can match him), who also happened to be a talented and acclaimed mathematician and physicist prior to his work as a philosopher; so, if the terms that you've listed strike you as indicative of absurdity, maybe you should pause/take a breather, and perhaps entertain the possibility that you don't quite understand the terms in question!
And this isn't an insult; we're all in the same boat! It takes serious study/engagement to get a handle on Whitehead; for some people, it can even prove to be a lifelong project!
But hell, let's forget all that; I mean, even if you ignore his philosophical genius and his talents as a mathematician, logician, and physicist, and pretend that he was just some guy... even in that sort of framing, I do think that Whitehead deserves much better than the treatment that you've demonstrated toward him.
The right tack would instead involve the following:
You have to ask "what", "why", and "how"?
For example (just picking one item on your list of incredulity):
What: what does the phrase "eternal objects" mean at a propositional level, in terms of its topological structure in conceptual space?
Why: why would someone need such a concept... what are the problems and questions involved?
How: how does said concept address said need(s), and how does said concept resolve the problems/answer the questions involved?
Once you understand the "what", "why", and "how", THEN you can compare the concept/approach under consideration to opposing or distinctly alternative concepts/modes of approach! And then you provide your arguments on the basis of comparison, looking at conceptual and empirical motivations and implications.
Simple fairness and intellectual honesty.
The trouble here though:
You haven't done the sort of work needed for the evincing of such simple fairness and intellectual honesty.
Instead, when reading what you've written, it really feels like you just skimmed over the preface and first chapter of "Process and Reality", skimmed over the IEP article on "Process Philosophy" (rather than the IEP article on Whitehead, I must add; which is quite relevant, primarily because the two articles are mutually contradictory, and the IEP article on Whitehead is far more accurate on Whitehead vs. the IEP article on "Process Philosophy" in the parts of it which deal with Whitehead), and than offloaded a ton of work on an LLM.
And frankly, you will not understand Whitehead just by skimming over the preface and first chapter of PR; I couldn't understand him either!
Whitehead himself notes that the first part of PR is essentially unintelligible without reading Part II.
And if I'm being honest with you, I needed "Science and the Modern World" and "Modes of Thought" before I could fully appreciate PR.
But again, at the very least: If you do want to have an honest engagement with Whitehead, then you do need to read the rest of "Process and Reality".
And at the end of the day, even if you do end up actually understanding/getting a general handle on Whitehead, you might find him to be completely outside the bounds of your taste in philosophy; which is totally understandable!
Once upon a time, I subjected myself to an honest and sustained engagement with the work of David Lewis; at the end of said engagement, I could finally say with complete confidence that he just wasn't my kind of philosopher!
But if you want to present an attack that's compelling, you have to do the work, and then offer substantive arguments on the basis of said work!
Like, If I wrote on article in which I beat Lewis over the head, but my article is powered by an understanding that's based only on an abstract which I skimmed from one of his papers, then people wouldn't take me too seriously. And Lewis is a way, way, way simpler (and simple-minded) and easy-to-handle philosopher in comparison to Whitehead, so your situation is even more egregious!
PS: I apologize for the way I went about things in my prior responses to Matthew's notes; I realize now that I was being a bit harsh, even though I obviously continue to maintain that your writing on Whitehead misses the mark.
Hello Dr. Pigliucci. I am a big fan of your work on Stoicism, but I do think you're being a bit dismissive when it comes to "pseudoscience" as you define it. I highly recommend the book Parapsychology, Philosophy, and Spirituality by David Ray Griffin. Although it is a historical account of the development of parapsychology (as related to philosophy and spirituality, not super related to this thread), there is much reference to Whitehead. I think you would find the first chapter, Parapsychology and Post Modern Philosophy, extremely interesting. Before writing off the impossible as impossible, at least appreciate the history of how it developed, and maybe you will understand why it can be so convincing for people today, even if your personal views don't change.
Will, thanks for the kind words about my work on Stoicism. But I wonder what makes you think that I just dismiss the paranormal without seriously looking into its history, its claims, and so forth. I have been studying the subject for decades, and my specialty within philosophy of science is precisely the demarcation problem. I'll take a look at the book you mention, but the very fact that Whitehead is frequently mentioned in that context reinforces my suspicions about his philosophy. Cheers.
I wasn’t aware of your interest in this subject, only of your work on Stoicism, so I’m sorry for the assumption. It sounds like you are unfamiliar with David Ray Griffin’s work though so I’m glad you will take a look! As for your reference to the demarcation problem, I am not very well read on the topic, but I came across this article published in the Cambridge University Press and I do think it’s very applicable:
Hansson SO. Demarcating, defining, and diagnosing pseudoscience. Philosophy of Science. 2025;92(4):922-937. doi:10.1017/psa.2025.27
This article goes through the history of the use of demarcation as a term, and the impacts of its use as a metaphor applied to distinguishing between science and pseudoscience. One thing to note, the categorical distinction implied by “demarcation” is not very Flux like (I think this is relevant given your recent article on Process philosophy and your affirmation of Heraclitus). I do think that approaching the question of delineating between “real science” and “fake science”, through the use of a binary categorical “demarcation” is a problem because it implies a permanence that doesn’t allow for the development of new disciplines. A lot of well established scientific disciplines today started from disciplines we would now consider “pseudoscientific.” For example, the widespread interest in Alchemy lead to a more rigorous, formalized Chemistry. In light of this, the dismissal of “pseudoscience” as you’ve defined feels like an unnecessary stifling of what could blossom into new disciplines and valuable insights.
Regardless, I really do hope you check out that book chapter and I hope you give Whitehead another shot, as I really think his philosophy is more compatible with your views than you currently give it credit for.
I know Hansson, but your inferences from that article are largely incorrect. For instance, nobody makes any kind of categorical distinction between science and pseudoscience, in fact the consensus is that it's a gradient, not a sharp line. (See: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo15996988.html)
So there is no binary distinction, and of course philosophers of science di recognize that there is a temporal axis along which things can change. That said, alchemy is a bad example: it was precisely the rejection of alchemy that led Boyle et al. to establish modern chemistry.
Without an alchemy to reject, there would have been no modern chemistry to affirm. They co-constituted each other. This is what I meant by interest in alchemy leading to the formation of chemistry. As for the consensus in the field of philosophy of science, I am not a scientist or a published scholar (yet), so I am unaware of the developments you’ve described, but it’s good to hear that people recognize the gradient. I will check out the book you sent, looks like a good resource for learning about the field. That being said, from the article alone, it does seem like there is a binary distinction, (but in light of your comment, apparently one most people reject). In section 3, How the demarcation metaphor shapes our thoughts, there is explicit reference to its binary nature: “The demarcation metaphor is strictly binary in the sense of suggesting two mutually exclusive alternatives with no overlaps” There is also explicit reference to its implied permanence: “The demarcation metaphor imparts the impression of reasonably permanent criteria”. As such, I assumed that these are still problems, given this article was written relatively recently (June 2025).
This problem as described can be made explicit through what Whitehead calls “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness” where a concept or idea can be mistaken as how reality actually is organized. In our case, the concept of demarcation is an abstraction, a definition that (when misunderstood) partitions the space of science and pseudoscience into disjoint sets. As you’ve informed me, most people reject the binary nature of the metaphor, instead recognizing the gradient. But, some individuals may be influenced, through historical usage of the word demarcation and context, to believe that science and pseudoscience truly are disjoint. This hails to the articles fourth point, that “the demarcation metaphor imparts the impression of reasonably permanent criteria.” The fallacy of misplaced concreteness highlights this tendency for individuals to mistake labels for reality, and the label of “demarcation problem” to describe the distinction between science and pseudoscience does do this. I only highlight this aspect of Whitehead’s philosophy because I think you would agree. That’s exactly what you were calling out about my previous reply, that my inferences were incorrect. I think you would say that I fell victim to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, assuming the label of “demarcation problem” is how you actually viewed reality.
Don’t get the idea that Whitehead rejects abstractions though. As a mathematician, he recognizes abstraction as integral to doing math (Think of the Kantian move to put mathematical judgements in the synthetic a priori category. Mathematics is universally true prior to experience (a priori) and expands our knowledge (synthetic). Abstraction is an integral part of this expansion and therefore can be mapped to the synthetic distinction Kant makes).
Sorry if this is long winded, I’m getting excited talking about this stuff😆. To bridge the gap to some of Whitehead’s positions that you reject, I want to clarify some misunderstandings it seems you have. Below is my assumption of your position on Whitehead. Maybe it’s not true. Please let me know if you end up reading it. Fair warning it’s pretty long.
I think you reject Whitehead, because you assume he starts from a “panpsychic cosmology” which, given your background in biology and philosophy of science, you have no reason to affirm and every reason to reject. In reality, Whitehead starts with the full registry of data he had access to, including mathematics, physics, biology (which had made lots of advancements during the course of his lifetime due to Darwin.) and phenomenological aspects of experience, such as sensory perceptions (think Hume), values, and deeper internal experiences (from these is where Whitehead derives his notion of causal efficacy. Very interesting stuff if you ever want to look into it, builds off Hume and Kant). In his life, he didn’t see any widely held cosmology that fit the full registry of data (Reductive scientific materialism didn’t acknowledge the reality of values, Cartesian dualism and all the ontologies that developed from it were not tenable due to the mind body problem and other problems, eastern Non-dual dualism constructions tended to treat ordinary reality as “illusion” and a deeper unified reality as “true” etc. etc.).
From the full registry of data, he constructs a metaphysical scheme. To him, a “good” metaphysics should be one which doesn’t exclude any experience of reality from its discription of reality, one that is self affirming (each evidence based tenant informs, affirms and enriches every other tenant) and therefore coheres. The criteria of coherence makes sense in this light, because a metaphysical scheme should be internally consistent, and also should include all the data the reality provides, especially that of the empirical sciences. If the metaphysical scheme is not representative of the empirical data, this is a serious issue and may require the scheme’s revision. It’s not that falsifiability is unimportant, just that coherence is an additional criteria that is required when construction a metaphysical schema.
(Side note, one thing that I think you would disagree with is the idea that phenomenological experience should be included as data. Whitehead does think that phenomenological experiences should be included as data (In line with William James’ radical empiricism, who btw was involved with the formation of the society of psychical research), and as such, his philosophy of organism is sometimes characterized as an ontology of value.)
Hopefully, from this you can see that panpsychism, or panexperientialism or any similar system (Which by the way, Whitehead never used this terminology. They were coined after his death as interpretations of his philosophy.) is not an arbitrarily chosen cosmology that attempts to weasel out of empirical validation. I understand it as Whitehead’s attempt to apply the scientific method to the full registry of data. The analogy is explicated below:
A hypothesis about what reality is is made, evidence is gathered: (in the case of a metaphysical scheme, the full range of data should be gathered, including physical measurements and observations, sensory perceptions, and deeper internal experiences (from these is where Whitehead derives his notion of causal efficacy. Very interesting stuff if you ever want to look into it, builds off Hume and Kant), hypotheses is affirmed or denied, then updated to cohere with the data. This process is iterative, and as we incorporate more data, new metaphysical systems can and should develop. The explication of Whitehead’s philosophy of organism in Process and Reality is his attempt at making all aspects of reality cohere in a metaphysical system, and in my opinion is the best attempt any individual has made thus far.
I’m sorry if this is too much for a comment😆. I took a lot of enjoyment out of this explanation because it also helped me with my own understanding of Whitehead’s philosophy. To anyone else reading, please let me know if my understanding is off anywhere. I will say I do have a deep appreciation for Whitehead’s philosophy, so I want to defend it as best I can, but I also recognize that it’s very inaccessible and hard to affirm from a scientific background. Hopefully this comment does him justice and there’s something here you can appreciate.
Great summary, Will.
On alchemy, I’d just say that there were major worldview shifts involved in the shift to chemistry, and that from our point of view today it is much easier to approach what alchemists were doing from a depth psychological perspective (eg, Jung’s research on the topic) rather than flattening it into primitive chemistry. Modern science was born from a methodological bifurcation of nature (ie, primary v. secondary characteristics) that, because of the tremendous instrumental successes it afforded, quickly overreached and forgot a successful methodology is not necessary grounds for reification into an ontology. Nature/matter cannot really be devoid of mind since, well, here we are! Our scientific conception of nature must include the fact that there are scientists. The search for a rationally coherent and experiential adequate account of how this is so is what led Whitehead into metaphysics.