Truth in the Making

On the possibility of metaphysics in a world-in-process

“…‘becoming’ is the transformation of incoherence into coherence.”

-Whitehead (PR 25)

“There is not one completed set of things which are actual occasions. For the fundamental inescapable fact is the creativity in virtue of which there can be no ‘many things’ which are not sub­ordinated in a concrete unity. Thus a set of all actual occasions is by the nature of things a standpoint for another concrescence which elicits a con­crete unity from those many actual occasions. Thus we can never survey the actual world except from the standpoint of an immediate concrescence which is falsifying the presupposed completion.”

-Whitehead (PR 211)

There have been a flurry of posts the last few days exploring what Timothy Jackson calls the “ontogenetic stance.” If you really wanted to get caught up, you’d have to listen to the 80+ hours of dialogue Tim and I have enjoyed over nearly four years (playlist here🙃). If you haven’t already been following along, it is perfectly fine to just begin in media res. At the end of the day, that is probably the best we can hope to do in any pursuit of greater intelligibility, scientific or speculative, in a world of becoming. “The Origin”—if there be such a thing—may be lost to us forever. And yet, it also seems to me that this eternally evolving universe, to the extent that every moment recapitulates an originating impulse, affords us the opportunity of many true beginnings.

So diving right in, a few days ago I shared some reflections on a perceived invariance lurking in Tim’s “variation first” orientation:

Philosophies of Ontogenesis

Tim then replied to explain why he is not just affirming variation as another invariant metaphysical principle:

Variation and the limits of determinacy (Part One)

We had a valuable back-and-forth in the comments under his response. I am told a part two is forthcoming!

Ben Snyder then joined the conversation with a couple of extremely helpful posts— One about how he views Whitehead’s process-relational metaphysics as less radical than it first appears to be:

What Exactly Is Whitehead's Process Philosophy? Part I

And another directly engaging with Tim’s “variation first” stance, and the challenges it raises for logical predication:

Variation and Predication

Ben’s worry about the status of predication helpfully surfaces the metaphysical stakes of ontogenetic thought. But I think the force of his critique takes on a different flavor if we read Whitehead as radically as I would prefer, rather than as a “factualist.”

Whitehead explicitly frames the issue of factual v. processual ontologies in the opening pages of Process and Reality.

"The coherence, which the system seeks to preserve, is the discovery that the process, or concrescence, of any one actual entity involves the other actual entities among its components. In this way the obvious solidarity of the world receives its explanation. In all philosophic theory there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents. It is only then capable of characterization through its accidental embodiments, and apart from these accidents is devoid of actuality. In the philosophy of organism this ultimate is termed ‘creativity’, and God is its primordial, non-temporal accident. In monistic philosophies, Spinoza’s or absolute idealism, this ultimate is God, who is also equivalently termed ‘The Absolute.’ In such monistic schemes, the ultimate is illegitimately allowed a final, ‘eminent’ reality, beyond that ascribed to any of its accidents. In this general position the philosophy of organism seems to approximate more to some strains of Indian, or Chinese, thought, than to western Asiatic, or European, thought. One side makes process ultimate; the other side makes fact ultimate." (Process and Reality, p. 7).

Here we have Whitehead denying that he is a factualist and affirming a process-orientation. This is not a denial that fact plays an essential role in his scheme. It just isn’t the final court of appeal. Facts are achievements of concrescence, not the inert bedrock beneath it. Facts are derivative products of processes. He ties the “obvious solidarity of the world” to a coherence discovered within concrescence itself: the process of any one actual entity “involves the other actual entities among its components.” Whitehead also makes reference to an “extensive continuum”— “one relational complex in which all potential objectifications find their niche” (PR 66)— that coordinates the array of perspectives constantly coming into being.

“It underlies the whole world, past, present, and future. Considered in its full generality, apart from the additional conditions proper only to the cosmic epoch of electrons, protons, molecules, and star-systems, the properties of this con­tinuum are very few and do not include the relationships of metrical geometry. An extensive continuum is a complex of entities united by the various allied relationships of whole to part, and of overlapping so as to possess common parts, and of contact, and of other relationships derived from these primary relationships. The notion of a ‘continuum’ involves both the property of indefinite divisibility and the property of unbounded extension. There are always entities beyond entities, because nonentity is no boundary. This extensive continuum expresses the solidarity of all pos­sible standpoints throughout the whole process of the world. It is not a fact prior to the world; it is the first determination of order—that is, of real potentiality—arising out of the general character of the world.” (PR 66)

In other words, what gives predication a foothold amidst the flux is not a substantial fact standing before becoming, but the way occasions are already internally related to one another. The stability that predication requires is not the metaphysical priority of fact over process, but the way a world of internally related actualities can iteratively and cumulatively objectify itself, inheriting and transmitting pattern. Predication doesn’t need substance, it just needs objectification and the endurance of pattern across a society. Making sense of objectification and the possibility of recurring patterns amidst the creative advance is one of the reasons Whitehead, despite describing himself as a processualist and not a factualist, none the less includes eternal objects alongside actual occasions among his categories of existence. So the invariant we’re entitled to posit, if any, isn’t an underlying factual substrate or a pre-canalized totality of forms, but an open multiplicity of forms of definiteness. Whitehead insists that eternal objects are indeterminate: they “tell no tales” of their ingression into actualities; and they “involve in their own natures indecision” (PR 29). They determine nothing on their own and only become determinate when individual concrescences ingress them: “…abstraction from the notion of ‘entry into the concrete’ is a self-contradictory notion” (PR 211). Whitehead claims that what would otherwise remain a vague continuum of possibility gains its definiteness by its involvement in a universal concrescence:

“The things which are tem­poral arise by their participation in the things which are eternal. The two sets are mediated by a thing which combines the actuality of what is temporal with the timelessness of what is potential. This final entity is the divine element in the world, by which the barren inefficient disjunction of abstract potentialities obtains primordially the efficient conjunction of ideal realization. This ideal realization of potentialities in a primordial actual entity constitutes the metaphysical stability whereby the actual process exemplifies general principles of metaphysics, and attains the ends proper to specific types of emergent order. By reason of the actuality of this primordial valuation of pure potentials, each eternal object has a definite, effective relevance to each concrescent process. Apart from such orderings, there would be a complete disjunction of eternal objects unrealized in the temporal world. Novelty would be meaningless, and inconceivable.” (PR 40)

There is a textual basis for Ben’s “factualist” characterization, of course. But I think it presents a partial picture. Whitehead insists that his ultimate, Creativity, is not a self-subsistent identity that stands behind its unique instances (which would then be reduced to mere modes, as in Spinoza). This is Whitehead rejecting the same rationalist move that Tim worries about: granting the ultimate an “eminent reality” beyond its concrete embodiments. “Variation first” is a proposal akin to Whitehead’s Creativity, it seems to me. It’s just that Creativity inevitably ends up playing the role of a kind of coincidentia oppositorum, and is thus only describable in terms of a dipolarity between variance and invariance. Paradoxes abound: lest we rush to place actual occasions on the side of variation and eternal objects on the side of invariance, Whitehead says:

“that the doctrine of internal relations makes it impossible to attribute ‘change’ to any actual entity. Every actual entity is what it is, and is with its definite status in the universe, determined by its internal relations to other actual entities. ‘Change’ is the description of the adventures of eternal objects in the evolving universe of actual things.

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In his post reading Whitehead as a “factualist,” Ben notes that Whitehead affirms a correspondence theory of truth. That’s true! But in the same sentence he also affirms a coherence theory: “The theory of judgment in the philosophy of organism can equally well be described as a ‘correspondence’ theory or as a ‘coherence’ theory” (PR, 190). The correspondence aspect concerns the truth or falsity of propositions relative to an objectified nexus, while the coherence aspect concerns the correctness, incorrectness, or suspension of our judgments of such propositions (a judgment is a synthetic feeling that integrates a propositional with a physical prehension inside a subject’s concrescence, and “the origination of a propositional prehension does not concern us in this description of judgment”). Whitehead’s is not a representational epistemology wherein knowledge should be held to the standard of detached mirroring of finished facts. It is, I would argue, better understood as a participatory onto-epistemology wherein the act of knowing creates new truths even as it conforms to old ones.

Whitehead says “a proposition can be true or false,” while “a judgment can be correct, or incorrect, or suspended” (PR, 191). Correspondence concerns propositions in abstraction, while coherence concerns judgments as lived integrations in concrescence. A judgment is a feeling in the process of the judging subject. It enters, as a value, into the satisfaction of that subject, and its criticism awaits the judgments of future actual occasions. I would say this is an ontogenetic account of knowing as irreducible to static relations between propositions and facts. It is an account of knowing as a temporal and value-laden operation inside a creative advance wherein no two subject-superject’s worlds are ever the same.

“It must be remembered that the phrase ‘actual world’ is like ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow,’ in that it alters its meaning according to standpoint.” (PR 65)

Even if there are true propositions, correct judgment is fragile. When Whitehead reflects on the ambition of discovering universally valid metaphysical principles, he becomes more Socratic than Platonic:

“Some propositions seem to us to have meaning for all possible judging subjects. This may be the case; but I do not dare to affirm that our metaphysical capacities are sufficiently developed to warrant any certainty on this question. Perhaps we are always presupposing some wide society beyond which our imaginations cannot leap. But the vagueness of verbal statements is such that the same form of words is taken to represent a whole set of allied propositions of various grades of abstractness.” (PR 193)

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Where does all this leave Tim’s more radical ontogenetic claim that, beyond actual situations and their relations of adjacency, there is only indefinite possibility? I agree that whatever remains unrealized in any actual situation cannot be determinate in the way actualities are. But it doesn’t follow that we must deny any principled account of how definite possibilities are available for ingression. That availability need not be construed as a finished configuration space of forms. It can be construed as an inexhaustible multiplicity whose relevance is always situationally indexed and whose order is not an imposed blueprint or penal code but a valuation internal to the world’s ongoing evolution. Eternal objects are intrinsically indeterminate, necessarily refer beyond themselves, and have no definite meaning aside from how they are valued by actualities.

My disagreements with Tim about Whitehead’s God-operator hinges on what counts as a deus ex machina. It may be that metaphysics is just impossible, and that we ought to give up the foolish pursuit of indefinitely increasing intelligibility, not even considering the search for true metaphysical propositions as a regulative ideal (ie, something Peirce’s ideal future community of inquirers may realize one far off day¹). It may be that it is irrational to hope for a final answer. I do agree with Tim that talk of having achieved a Theory of Everything is worse than foolish. But despite the dangers of hubris, I do still hold out hope for “the adventure of rationalism,” as Whitehead calls it, so long as we remain radically empirical enough to insist on adventure over closure. In this spirit, Whitehead’s God names an onto-epistemic refusal of sheer indefiniteness, that possibilities as “forms of definiteness” are not merely a projection of our local habits, but an enabling condition of the creative advance. His divine function is an attempt to think coherently, under the discipline of his “ontological principle” (ie, only actualities are reasons), about how potentiality can be real without being an inventory.

What is it to “give an account” of something, particularly when the ambition is to give an account of everything? Tim is right to warn that the rationalist instinct can be pernicious: we secure intelligibility by making thought coextensive with being as if by fiat. But I don’t think the alternative requires surrendering intelligibility to the night of indefiniteness. Plato’s Timaeus, for example, when read carefully as a pedagogical dialogue rather than a finished doctrine, is not the earliest record of rationalism gone wild. In its depiction of Nous’ encounter with Khora, it offers a powerful confession of the limits of rationalism, admitting that the best we can do when it comes to questions of ultimate origin is to tell a “likely story.” But in supposing the universe to be at least partially intelligible, Plato inaugurates an adventure of understanding whose triumphs are undeniable.

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Returning again to Ben’s concerns with the logic of predication in an unfinished, perspectival world-in-process, my argument is not that the difference between propositional truth and falsehood is irrelevant. Far from it! The correspondence of propositions to states of affairs is how flux achieves local form and maintains stable patterns such that there can be any science, any metaphysics (even as a regulative ideal). While propositions in Whitehead’s sense extend far beyond linguistic statements, language can itself be understood as a further flowering of same underlying function. Our various human languages are media of objectification or potentiation, pattern transmitting and expressing operations that inevitably oscillate between and so fuse fact and fiction, actuality and possibility: our words stabilize experience enough to mean something, and destabilize it enough for us to learn something.

So I reject any picture of invariance that looks like a completed totality or cosmic state space of pre-determined forms. That picture leads straight into the rationalist substantialism Tim and I are both trying to avoid. I also reject a deflationary “factualist” reading of Whitehead’s process-relational ontology in which truth is simply correspondence to settled fact and metaphysics is a tidy inventory of what is the case.

What I suggest instead is a disciplined dipolarity where variation and invariance are mutually implicative poles within process. Invariance is not a substance, nor is it the achieved endurance of pattern within societies. I mean to distinguish here between the absolute invariance of what recurs—eternal objects—and the relative stability of what endures: the former is a metaphysical category required for thinking intelligibly, while the latter concerns contingently emergent structures within a given cosmic epoch. So-called “laws” of physics along with the enduring entities they are said to determine are historically canalized habits and regularities. “Invariance” points to a far more abstract operation, not to the evolved and evolving shapes that striate cosmogenesis. And “Variation” is not mere chaos but signals the creative risk of novel integration, the perpetual possibility that habit is interrupted, that difference infects repetition, intensifying and reforming it. Predication is possible because the democracy of actual occasions populating our multifarious world of worlds remains internally related and thus avails itself of mutual objectification. Because that solidarity is never suffocatingly total, the Truth of the universe is always evolving; and we, too, can learn to glimpse that Truth, if not by representation than through participation. There is “elbow-room within the Universe”² because every concrescence is haloed and hailed by a divinely envisaged but not-yet-canalized continuum of infinite possibility.

1. Peirce thought that the pursuit of truth presupposed: “interest in an indefinite community, recognition of the possibility of making this interest supreme, and hope in the unlimited continuance of intellectual activity, as indispensable requirements of logic” (EP 1:150). “We individually,” Peirce argued contra Descartes, “cannot reasonably hope to attain the ultimate philosophy we pursue; we can only seek it, therefore, for the community of philosophers” (EP 1:29).

2. Whitehead: “The vast causal independence of contemporary occasions is the preservative of the elbow-room within the Universe. It pro­vides each actuality with a welcome environment for irresponsi­bility. ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ expresses one of the earliest gestures of self-consciousness. Our claim for freedom is rooted in our relationship to our contemporary environment. Nature does provide a field for independent activities. The understanding of the Universe requires that we conceive in their proper relations to each other the various rôles, of efficient causation, of teleological self-creation, and of contemporary independence. This adequate con­ception requires also understanding of perspective elimination, and of types of order dominating vast epochs, and of minor endurances with their own additional modes of order diversifying each larger epoch within which they find themselves.

The mutual independence of contemporary occasions lies strictly within the sphere of their teleological self-creation. The occasions originate from a common past and their objective immortality oper­ates within a common future. Thus indirectly, via the immanence of the past and the immanence of the future, the occasions are con­nected. But the immediate activity of self-creation is separate and private, so far as contemporaries are concerned.” (Adventures of Ideas, 195)