Whitehead Chapter Three Section C

METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR A THEORY OF VALUE

IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF A. N. WHITEHEAD

Chapter Three (continued)

"Eternal Objects"

[Note: Footnotes are designated in red and may be accessed by scrolling down the page to the green sections.

Note also that since since they refer to the paper version of this work, references to actual pages of the thesis are not accurate in this online medium.]

Write me at maryskole@aol.com to inform me of errors you may find, or for a copy of the paperback version ($18.95 plus $2 shipping) - available after September 15, 2005. Thanks.

Below are the full titles of books referred to in the footnotes.]

PR, Process and Reality

SMW, Science in the Modern World

MT, Modes of Thought

AI, Adventures of Ideas

AE, The Aims of Education

SmB, Symbolism, its Meaning and Effect

RM, Religion in the Making

ESP, Essays in Science and Philosophy

FofR The Function of Rerason

OT Organization of Thought

Section C:

Real Potentiality: The Nature and Function of Actual Forms and Patterns

Having disposed of the Platonic and essentialist interpretations of Whitehead's doctrine of eternal objects, and having seen the very limited metaphysical functions which eternal objects in themselves perform, it now becomes necessary to inquire about the origin, nature and function of the actual forms and patterns which we encounter in the actual world - the "laws of nature", the forms of living things, the "stoneness" of stones and the "chairness" of chairs, along with the more subtle and fleeting qualities which characterize the passing moments of our experience. It is my contention that Whitehead believes that though the realm of eternal objects in itself may contain all of these "forms" as bare possibilities, it is actual process itself which not only embodies them but in a very real sense makes them, because the actual form and the bare possibility are not at all the same thing. In pursuance of this argument I want to discuss (1) the process of limitation, (2) the nature of the bond which holds eternal objects together in actual structures, and (3) the range, nature and function of real potentiality. From the discussion the conclusion will emerge, I believe, that (4) Whitehead's doctrine of eternal objects and their relation to actuality can best be interpreted in a manner that conceives concrete actual process as fulfilling the "existentialist" condition of creative activity - that is, generating its own characteristics, structures and forms.

(1)

I think that the relation of actual process to the realm of eternal objects was, perhaps, most forcefully expressed by Whitehead in one of his more informal utterances, an apparently extemporaneous reply which he made to remarks by W. H. Sheldon and others at a banquet given in honor of his, Whitehead's, seventieth birthday.

Professor Sheldon talked of the order of the universe, the scheme of order. In this notion of the sole, unique order for the world (which perhaps is not what Sheldon meant) there hides the inadequate concept that the foundations of being contain in their nature no necessity for process. Enlarge your view of the final fact which is permanent amid change. In its essence, realization is limitation, exclusion. But this ultimate fact includes in its appetitive vision all possibilities of order, possibilities at once incompatible and unlimited with a fecundity beyond imagination. Finite transcience stages this welter of incompatibilities in their ordered relevance to the flux of epochs. Thus the process of finite history is essential for the ordering of the basic vision, otherwise mere confusion 75.

Certainly, the last section of this chapter tried to convey the impression that "pure potentiality", the realm of eternal objects in itself, confronted actuality only with confusion. In itself this realm is an infinite welter of possibilities of definiteness, only very loosely related to each other. What is more, it has been seen that this whole infinite realm of eternal objects functions in each actual en-tity; so actual entities do not differ from each other in terms of the eternal objects which are in some way relevant to them. Actual entities do not differ in the ultimate elements of their constitution - each is a reaction to total possibility -, but only in the ways in which these ultimate elements are put together in each actual entity - in the relevance of each of these elements to each actual entity. Each definite, finite actual entity, then, involves infinity. It must achieve its finite definiteness - its shape, pattern, character, structure - out of this infinity.

How does it do this? "Finitude" for Whitehead means limitation, and limitation means an activity of including and excluding. What is excluded by "negative prehension" still functions, and what is included is subject to degrees of inclusion, that is, degrees of emphasis.

Some principle is now required to rescue actual entities from being undifferentiated reproductions, each of the other, with mere numerical diversity. This requisite is supplied by the 'principle of intensive relevance'. The notion of intensive relevance is fundamental for the meaning of such concepts as 'alternative possibilities', 'more or less', 'important or negligible'. The principle asserts that any item of the universe, however preposterous as an abstract thought, or however remote as an actual entity, has its own gradation of relevance, as prehended, in the constitution of any one actual entity: it might have had more relevance; and it might have had less relevance, including the zero of relevance involved in the neg-ative prehension: but in fact it has just that relevance whereby it finds its status in the constitution of that actual entity 76.

It is thus in terms of different inclusions, exclusions and emphases that actual entities differ from one another.

If the term 'eternal object' is disliked, the term 'potentials' would be suitable. The eternal objects are the pure potentials of the universe; and the actual entities differ from each other in their realiza-tion of potentials 77.

Or, even better, "All characteristics peculiar to actualities are modes of emphasis whereby fini-tude vivifies the infinite 78."

Actual entities, then, do something to eternal objects in order to construct their (the actual entities') forms and characters out of the infinity of eternal objects, and these forms and patterns and characters of actuality are not just eternal objects; they are, even the simple ones like the color of an apple, always complex integrations of eternal objects depending on emphasis and repression as much as on the component eternal objects. Without the intervention of ac-tual entities there is no order, no form, no essence of thing as we know it. The realm of eternal objects in itself contains some of the ingredients for constructing actual forms, but it does not contain actual forms. They must be made, they must be created, and only actuality itself can perform the act of creating them. So the activity of actuality in relation to eternal objects is not merely one of "realizing" or "actualizing" a pre-determined form (as the Platonic tradition would have it); actual entities create their own patterns in the very process of actualizing them.

(2)

Actual patterns, then, are generated out of the infinity of pure potentiality by a process of limitation. This process forges bonds between the isolated, equi-potential eternal objects, emphasizing some and rejecting others, so that instead of an infinite mass of loosely associated possibilities, a finite actual form emerges. What is the nature of this bond or bonding activity? To describe it merely as "limitation" leaves its description on too abstract a plane. It must be an activity which generates and is actuality. There is just one notion in Whitehead's philosophy which fulfills this requirement, and that is feeling. Feeling generates actual patterns out of pure potentiality, and feeling is the bond which continues to hold these patterns together.

(a)

An actual pattern felt by an occasion as already generated in occasions prior to itself is an aspect of "real potentiality". An actual pattern generated with an occasion (though it may be largely adopted from the real potentiality which the occasion prehends) is a "contrast". Since all real potentiality is generated in actual entities, contrasts are really the sources of real potentiality.

I have already pointed out that the relations between the entities in a contrast are not the same as the bare "relational essences" which hold between eternal objects in themselves 79. I now propose to examine a little more thoroughly the way entities are put together in contrasts in order to show that it is feeling which provides the bond.

Within an actuality, eternal objects are said to be associated with each other in "concrete togetherness".

In contrast to the realm of possibility, the inclusion of eternal objects within an actual occasion means that in respect to some of their possible relationships there is a togetherness of their individual essences. This realized togetherness is the achievement of an emergent value defined - or, shaped - by the definite actual relatedness in respect to which real togetherness is achieved 80.

The eternal relations are "disjunctive"; they are alternative ways of getting from any one eternal object to many other. The bonds forged by actuality are "conjunctive." They exclude other possible connections and fuse the individual essences of the components, the individual essences which are left untouched by the disjunctive eternal relatedness. But to call these bonds "conjunctive" doesn't go very far in suggesting their true nature. Indeed, it may be misleading, if conjunction be thought of merely as an abstract logical relation. As such it is exactly on a par with abstract logical disjunction 81. As I have already noted 82, however, relational essences are even more general than logical relations, even disjunction; and the bonds which I am here discussing involve something much more concrete than conjunction 83.

The bond which holds the components, both actual and possible together in an actual occasion is an internal relation, but not of the same sort as are the relational essences of eternal objects. The latter are called "internal" only because they involve the whole realm of eternal objects as a sort of field for any one eternal object - the field of its possible relationships; they take no account of the individual essences of their relata. The former relations, that is, actual bonds, are internal because they are peculiar to their relata and combine their relata into an individual unity which could not be constituted out of any other relata.

It must be remembered that just as the [internal] relations modify the nature of the relata, so the relata modify the nature of the relation. The relationship is not a universal. It is a concrete fact with the same concreteness as the relata 84.

But since they are individual bonds, peculiar in each case to the relata which they join, it is completely inappropriate to call them "relations". For a "relation" is a "universal" and can be repeated in other contexts. These bonds are each peculiar to one context. They are aspects of "stubborn" individual fact, of actuality; they are not eternal objects.

Universals which require two or more particulars for their illustration need some term to indicate them, and 'Relation' is the word chosen. But with this meaning to the term, a relation cannot signify the actual connectedness of the actual individual things which constitute the actual course of history [nor of the eternal objects which are the ultimate elements of these actual characters]. For example, New York lies between Boston and Philadelphia. But the connectedness of the three terms is a real particular fact on the earth's surface involving a particular part of the eastern seaboard of the United States. It is not the universal 'between'. It is a complex actual fact which, among other things, exemplifies the abstract universal 'betweenness' 85.

What then is this bond that combines eternal objects and past actualities into the definiteness of an actual occasion and can hold them together in that pattern beyond the confines of the occasion of its origin? In Science and the Modern World Whitehead says,

The conception of internal relations involves the analysis of the event into two factors, one the underlying substantial activity of individualization, the other the complex of aspects - that is to say, the complex of relatednesses as entering into the essence of the event - which are unified by this individualized activity. In other words, the concept of internal relations requires the concept of substance as the activity synthesizing the relationships into its emergent character 86.

But, as he tells us in Process and Reality, there is no substance in the traditional sense: an inert substratum which never appears but which serves to unify the shifting aspects of a thing. There is, however, "substantial activity". And in Process and Reality we are told what this "substantial activity" is. It is "feeling". All concrete reality is feeling. It is the prehensive process of combining the many into the one of the new actuality. It is a synonym for actuality 87. To feel is to be in the most complete sense, and anything is real only insofar as it is felt.

(b)

Since "feeling" and "prehension", largely synonymous terms, constitute concrete reality - actual occasions are feelings which are in turn integrations of component feelings - what I want to emphasize here is that feeling is the only sort of thing which can constitute the bond which brings together and holds together eternal objects and past actualities - which are themselves similarly bonded eternal objects - in any one actual occasion.

First, since, as I have just shown, these bonds are not themselves universals, - not themselves eternal objects - if the feeling recurs in other contexts, as it does when it combines with other feelings in new occasions, it must always retain the marks of its individuality, its origin in actuality.

If in a nexus there be a realized contrast of universals, this contrast is located in that actual entity to which it belongs as first originated in one of its integral feelings. Thus every realized contrast has a location, which is particular with the particularity of actual entities. It is a particular complex matter of fact, realized; and because of its reality, a standing condition in every subsequent world from which creative advance must originate 88.

Footnotes for Chapter Three Section C (76-88):

76 PR., p. 224.

77 PR., p. 226.

78 "Mathematics and the Good," in Schilpp, op. cit., p. 681.

79 See above, Sec. B, pp. 47-51, of this paper.

80 SMW., p. 238.

81 As every student of logic learns in his elementary course, every conjunction can be expressed as a disjunction, and vice versa. (p.q) - (~pV~q)

82 See above, pp. 48-49, of this paper.

83 "The conclusion that I draw is that the word 'together', and indeed all words expressive of conjunction in general, without definite specification, are very ambiguous. For example, the little word 'and' is a nest of ambiguity. It is very astounding how slight has been the analysis of the ambiguities of words expressive of conjunctions. Such words are the death-traps for accuracy of reasoning (MT., p. 74)."

84 AI., p. 201.

85 AI., p. 296.

86 SMW., p. 180.

87 RM., p. 104.

88 PR., p. 352.

Secondly it has already been remarked that compatibility and incompatibility are not determined by the relations of eternal objects in themselves 89. "... feelings are the entities which are primarily 'compatible or 'incompatible'. All other usages of these terms are derivative. 90 " Feeling organize the actual and possible universe in a perspective, that is, in "grades of relevance" to the developing occasion. No items thus related are essentially incompatible. Incompatibility results from the acceptance or rejection of items as felt. If two items conflict when both items are felt in a certain way, say with equally close relevance, they may be compatible if one is emphasized more and the other suppressed more. Only feeling can make these adjustments. It makes incom-patibilities and overcomes them 91.

Thirdly, only if the bond which I am here discussing as feeling, can a logical fallacy be avoided. I have already mentioned that one function of eternal objects it to prevent an infinite regress of feeling 92. Feelings perform a similar but even more essential function, if that is possible, for eternal objects. For feelings not only forestall the necessity of invoking an infinite regress of eternal objects in order to explain any "togetherness" of eternal objects, in the definite character of an actuality, but they also prevent what Whitehead calls a "vicious regress".

It must be remembered that the objective content [of an actual entity] is analyzable into actual entities under limited. perspectives provided by their own natures; these limited perspectives involve eternal objects in grades of relevance. If the 'process' were primarily a process of understanding, we should have to note that 'grades of relevance' are only other eternal objects in grades of relevance, and so on indefinitely. But we have not the sort of understandings which embrace such indefinite progressions. Accordingly there is here a vicious regress, if the process be essentially a process of understanding 93.

Is it only due to ignorance that all "grades of relevance" are not thus analyzable? If it were so, it would be of no avail to call such a regress "vicious". It would then hold in fact if not in knowledge. But what Whitehead means is that it doesn't, indeed, cannot, hold in fact. And it is the function of feeling as the non-universal relating and synthesizing activity which makes this so.

But this [being a process of understanding] is not the primary description of it; the process is a process of 'feeling'. In feeling, what is felt is not necessarily analysed; in understanding, what is understood is analysed, insofar as it is understood. Understanding is [only] a special form of feeling by reason of [that is, due to] the indefinite complexity of what is felt. Kant, in his Transcendental Aesthetic, em-phasizes the doctrine that in intuition a complex datum is intuited as one 94.

What feeling forestalls is not merely an infinite regress of eternal objects but a vicious circularity, a violation of the theory of logical types by the generation of an "illegitimate totality". If eternal objects could be related and combined only by universal relations, that is, by other eternal objects, then no set of eternal objects would ever be complete. The relation among them would always adds another number. And then to relate this relation to the total group of eternal objects would call for another eternal object, and so on. But feeling breaks through this impasse. Feeling generates a grouping of eternal objects without itself being a member of that group. It is individual, not universal. It generates a class - much more than a class, an organic unity - but it is not a member of the class which it generates. When Whitehead says that feeling avoids a "vicious regress", it seems to me that he must mean that it is this situation which it avoids.

(3)

I now explain (a) the nature, and (b) the function of actual form - real potentiality.

(a)

A number of observations seem in order about the nature of real potentiality.

(i)

Real potentiality constitutes a half-way sort of reality. It is neither the complete actuality of the actual occasion in process of development, nor that highest possible sort of abstraction - that approach to nonentity - which is the realm of eternal objects in itself. It is not the purely potential nor the concrete creative act. It is the creature par excellence.

It is aspects of achieved contrasts which endure, which are prehended by and are effective in subsequent occasions that constitute "real potentiality".

This objective intervention of other entities constitutes the creative character which conditions the concrescence in question. The satisfaction of each actual entity is an element in the givenness of the universe: it limits boundless, abstract possibility into the particular real potentiality from which each novel concrescence originates 95.

The primary reason for calling the actual forms encountered by a new occasion "real potentiality" is that they present the new actuality with relevant alternatives among which to choose in developing its own character and deciding what sort of a world it wants to pass on to its successors. Actual forms, especially those of the actualities closely associated with a new occasion, exert influence over this new occasion. They try to get the new occasion to adopt them as its pattern. But the final decision always rests with the new occasion. The new occasion can supplement them or try to suppress them to make room for different forms. Actual forms can have greater or less influence in different actual processes. Only at the moment of its attainment, when it is the "satisfaction" of an actual occasion, does an actual form exclude all other possibilities. When it is prehended by subsequent occasions, it is only one - perhaps the overwhelmingly most powerful, but still only one - of the relevant alternative patterns which that occasion may choose for its own, or an aspect of its own, pattern.

As aspects of real potentiality, actual forms have to compete with one another. So they have moved toward potentiality. They offer alternatives. But, since they retain some of their actuality, these alternatives are not just neutral and all on a level; they compete for influence over new actualities, and some exert much more influence than do others. In many cases one actual form remains very strong through many actual occasions. Indeed, it gathers strength from its own reduplication. And then this form dominates vast regions of new occasions to such an extent that they conform to it almost completely. The other actual forms in the more remote environment are pushed into the background, and the new occasions dominated by this one actual form do not seek to generate new forms on their own. They exercise their free choice only to the extent of submitting to the dominant influence upon them. This is what happens in many well-organized "societies". But even in this case, each new occasion is a possible battleground where invention of new form or the weakening of old form may occur. No actual form, even well-established physical laws, has a metaphysical guarantee of its continued effectiveness in process. if there is any metaphysical fate in store for it, it is rather that it must surely some day cease to dominate actual process.

(ii)

Though a half-way kind of reality, real potentiality does not constitute a strange and exotic hybrid: indeed, it is more familiar than either of the two extremes between which it lies. Eternal objects are unknowable in themselves; they are too abstract. Actual occasions are also largely unknowable while they are going on, because they are too concrete and immediate 96. Knowledge is only a special and partial phase of actual process, and it is only in a few highly developed occasions that awareness rises to the level of consciousness. We know "in" occasions of experience, but we don't "know" the occasion in which the knowing is going on. We can know to some extent what is left after the occasion "perishes". This knowing is then a phase of a subsequent occasion reacting to its past. We live concrete reality, but our knowing never embraces the whole of it - never catches up with our living. Real potentiality is primarily what we know - about the world - about ourselves.

What we "perceive" and think about in daily experience and the objects of scientific knowledge are alike aspects of real potentiality. Indeed, since we never know eternal objects in themselves, and since we cannot formulate the present moment till it has taken place among what is past, all of what we usually classify as experiencs or knowledge belongs to the realm of real potentiality. A rapid survey of the more important aspects of real potentiality may help to reveal its comprehensive nature.

(1) First there are two terms which should be briefly mentioned, both referring ostensibly to groups of actual entities rather than to patterns which appear in actual entities. But since it is in terms of common patterns that actual entities can be grouped, and since the groups referred to are groups of past entities "objectively" occurring in a new occasion, that is, as part of the "data"; these terms really refer to real potentiality. These terms are "nexus" (plural "nexüs") and "society". "Nexus" is the more general term; it refers to any "particular fact of togetherness among actual entities" 97. In order to apply the term "society", the common character

...has got to apply to each member by reason of genetic derivation from other members of that same society. The members of the society are alike because by reason of their common character, they impose on other members of the society the conditions which lead to the likeness 98

"Society" is perhaps the most frequently used word by Whitehead when he wishes to refer to some selected aspect of real potentiality. He tells us that it is used to refer to partiocular "orders" in nature 99. Sometimes a society is a very large group of actual occasions indeed, and inheriting in common a minimal pattern, for even our whole "epoch" forms a society in terms of some of its characteristics: spatio-temporal relations, for instance.

(2) Distinguishing specific features of real potentiality, there are, first, the logical and mathematical entities. These are not necessary a-priori to all possible actualities. "The generality of mathematics is the most complete generality consistent with the community of occasions which constitute our metaphysical situation 100."

(3) Geometrical entities form a special aspect of real potentiality, sort of midway between mathematics and physics, which I do not propose to discuss in detail in this paper. The derivation of various geometrical relations among events which are themselves puffs of emotion constitutes, of course, a peculiarly difficult problem in Whitehead's philosophy. Here I merely wish to assert that for Whitehead these relations are among those that are formed in actuality. There is no space or space-time independent of actualities having these relations to one another; and although there may be some general aspects of those relations which are contained in the eternal metaphysical setting into which all actuality must be born, their most distinctive special aspects, such as dimensionality, are determined by the actualities among which they hold.

(4) Physical "laws", or, more generally, scientific laws, expressing the behavior of extremely large groups of actual entities, are important aspects of real potentiality. To deny that these "laws of nature" are eternally ordained is not to deny that they exercise compulsive force over the course of events. Whitehead's philosophy permits him to mediate between nominalism and realism in this respect. For what is merely descriptive of the behavior of the actual course of events is also prescriptive. The freely assumed character of actuality directs the process of further actuality. Scientific laws are merely statistical descriptions of the average behavior of actual occasions, but it is just this average behavior of the previous occasions of their societies which exercise the most powerful influence over the characters of new events 101.

(5) Biological forms, species, are achievements of actual process. And not only the species, but the peculiar characteristics of each individual organism, represent real potentiality to the individual actual occasions which make up a living organism. For, from the metaphysical point of view, each individual organism is a great "nexus" of actual occasions passing on common forms through mutually dependent societies of occasions. Each new occasion prehends the form of the whole animal or vegetable of which it is a part, and also the form of the part of the organism to which it belongs, and conforms to these patterns. Living occasions are not metaphysically different in their processes from inorganic occasions for Whitehead; they merely develop and perpetuate more complex actual forms.

(6) Indeed, since the real individual actualities are very small and very fleeting, any object which we recognize &endash; a hill, a chair, a pencil, a star &endash; is not an individual actuality but a large group of actualities having a similar pattern. Whitehead calls such a group of occasions, recognized as an individual thing, an "enduring object" 102. The question then arises, when we prehend an enduring object, what do we prehend? &endash; a group of actual entities, or the pattern common to the group. The answer is that what we prehend is both. We abstract from the full concreteness of each individual occasion which we prehend. What we prehend is the pattern which it has largely in common with other occasions. But this actual pattern involves and incorporates genuine actual aspects of those prehended occasions; some of their "feelings" are preserved in the preservation of the pattern. What survives of an occasion after it "perishes" is not just eternal objects.

(7) Our own continuing identities, as "selves", are also complex patterns of this sort, developed in the occasions of our own existence and passed on from one occasion to the next in the dominant society with which each of us identifies himself.

One of the principal reasons for introducing the foregoing list of aspects of form as it operates in actual process is to establish a basis for drawing upon widely differing contexts in Whitehead's writings to support my interpretation of Whitehead's theory of the generation, internal cohesion, and propagation of form in actual process. If I have made my point in claiming that all the terms in the above list have something in common, I can draw evidence for the solution of these problems from such widely separated contexts as Whitehead's discussion of mathematics, his discussions of perception and symbolism, and his discussion of immediate, emotional experience.

Footnotes for Chapter Three Section C (89-102):

89 See above, pp. 48-49, of this paper.

90 PR., p. 225.

91 PR., p. 224.

92 See above, Sec. C, pp. 52-53, of this paper.

93 PR., p. 232.

94 PR., p. 233

95 PR., p. 336.

96 Though, as we have seen in ch. 2, Whitehead attempts to describe their inner processes.

97 PR., p. 30.

98 PR., p. 137, and AI., p. 261.

99 PR., p. 131.

100 SMW., p. 38, and "By a queer chance in this epoch of the universe arithmetical patterns constitute some of the clearest insights of human intelligence (ESP., p. 94)".

It seems. of course, wildly heretical for a logician and mathematician to take such a position. I shall try to explain later in this section how mathematical relations are aspects of actual process rather than purely ideal entities. (See below, (iv) (b), footnotes 117-120 of this Sect.).

101 AI., chs. 7 & 8.

The following statement of Whitehead's puts both points (c) and (d) in a fairly powerful and unequivocal way. "None of these Laws of Nature give the slightest evidence of necessity. They are the modes of procedure which within the scale of our observation do in fact prevail. I mean, the fact that the extensiveness of the Universe is dimensional, the fact that the number of spatial dimensions is three, the spatial laws of geometry, the ultimate formulae for physical occurrences. There is no necessity in any of these ways of behavior. They exist as average, regulative conditions because the majority of actualities are swaying each other to modes of interconnection exemplifying those laws. New modes of self-expression may be gaining ground. We cannot tell. But, to judge by all analogy, after a sufficient span of existence our present laws will fade into unimportance. New interests will dominate. In our present sense of the term, our spatio-physical epoch will pass into that background of the past, which conditions all things dimly and without evident effect on th decision of prominent relations. (MT., pp. 211-12.)

102 "Enduring things are thus the outcome of a temporal process; whereas eternal things are the elements required for the very being of this process (SMW., p. 158).

(iii)

Real potentiality is the realm of endurance and change.

The mountain endures. But when after ages it has been worn away, it is gone. If a replica arises, it is yet a new mountain. A colour is eternal. It haunts time like a spirit. It comes and it goes. But where it comes, it is the same colour. It neither survives nor does it live. It appears when it is wanted. The mountain has to time and to space a different relation from that which colour has 103.

The mountain, of course, is an example of an "enduring object". As such it is an example of real potentiality. A color stands for an eternal object in itself, but there is some doubt as to whether an eternal object in itself can be exemplified. Eternal objects in themselves cannot change, of course, but neither can they endure, for they are not temporal entities.

Harder to comprehend is that what is completely actual, an actual occasion in process of development, does not change and does not endure. In its moment of actuality it is a single pulsation of being and it actualizes a single definite character. An occasion does not, properly speaking, last for any length of time, because it is a "quantum" of time. When it perishes it deposits an unanalyzable moment of real time. In its "objective immortality" an occasion endures. But then it is no longer completely actual: it is "real potentiality". Neither does an occasion change. It would have to be in time to change. When it has "perished" and become part of the past, it is a fixed condition for subsequent process, a "hard fact", and so does not change. 104

There is considerable confusion here because certainly in its active life an occasion is in process of development. But the time of this internal development is not clock time. 105 Since an occasion is concerned with the realization of one and only one definite character, which is latent in it from the "start" as its "subjective aim", there is no observable difference of structure in its various phases; so there is no "change" as we usually think of change.

What changes and what endures is real potentiality. I have just said, however, that the past does not change. Each item of the past remains unchanged. Both the "before" and the "after" must be observable to recognize change. It is the contract between different items of the past, between different forms in real potentiality, which constitutes change. In different actual forms preserved in real potentiality, the component eternal objects ingress in different modes &endash; are emphasized more in some forms, suppressed more in others.

…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 106.

So, for Whitehead, the realm of patterns and forms which are effective in actual process is the realm in which endurance and change are found. It is not a realm of timelessness or of static perfection. This is easy to see in the case of "enduring objects", flowers, chairs, even mountains; but it also applies to scientific laws and, it sometimes seems, even to mathematical and logical entities. No order can be assured perpetual sway over reality.

But there is not any attainment of an ideal order whereby the indefinite endurance of a society is secured. A society arises from disorder, where 'disorder' is defined by reference to the ideal for that society;. the favorable background of a larger environment either itself decays, or ceases to favor the persistence of the society after some stage of growth: the society then ceases to reproduce its members, and finally after a stage of decay passes out of existence. Thus a system of laws determining reproduction in some portion of the universe gradually rises to dominance; it has its stage of endurance, and passes out of existence with the decay of the society from which it emanates. 107

Order, structure, form is born, matures, grows old and decays. It dies, or almost dies. 108

Whitehead's remarks on "order" and "disorder" are relevant to this point. Order and disorder are said to be relative terms: relative to the point of view of a particular actual entity. From the point of view of a particular actual entity, "order" is the actual patterns which dominate the societies of which it is a member. "Disorder" ". . .is a relative term expressing the lack of importance possessed by the defining characteristics of the societies in question beyond their own bounds 109." Actual entities beyond these bounds may be members of other societies, have other dominant patterns, but if these patterns are foreign to the occasion whose point of view we are taking, then from this point of view disorder reigns in these distant regions.

The disorder may be more or less, of course, depending on the degree of dissimilarity between the societies in question. When Whitehead takes this position, he is principally interested in maintaining that there is no absolute order, that there are many orders, and that they are each relative to the point of view of a particular actuality. Other orders may certainly appear to be disorders from one of these points of view.

This is not the whole of Whitehead's position, however. If it were, actual entities would be radically isolated from each other in terms of order and disorder. They would certainly not be comparable. It would be impossible to say that more order is achieved in one occasion and less in another. But this is just what Whitehead does say. I want to save the more detailed consideration of this issue for the discussion of the possibility of "objective" standards of value in Whitehead's philosophy 110; but I will point out here merely that on the page following the page on which the relativistic definition of disorder cited above appears Whitehead speaks of a non-relativistic sense of "disorder".

But there may evidently be a sense in which there are no prevalent societies securing any congruent unity of effect. This is a state of chaotic disorder; it is disorder approaching an absolute sense of that term. In such an ideal state, what is 'given' for any actual entity is the outcome of thwarting decisions from the settled world. Chaotic disorder means lack of dominant definition of compatible contrasts in the satisfactions obtained, and consequent enfeeblement of intensity. It means the lapse toward slighter actuality. It is a natural figure of speech, but only a figure of speech, to conceive a slighter actuality as being an approach toward a futility of being a faint compromise between contrary reasons. 111

It is true that even here there is no absolute disorder in the sense of complete absence of order. Disorder here means mutually conflicting and cancelling order. But this is at least a genuine condition of the actualities concerned. If this is so, disorder, and therefore also order, has a non-relativistic meaning.

(iv)

The fact that real potentiality is not eternal &endash; that is, is generated in actual occasions and eventually loses its effectualness in influencing further actuality &endash; means that there is room for real novelty in the world. This novelty is not just of detail in the realization of eternally fixed patterns, but is a genuine and thorough-going novelty of form. This is what Whitehead means when he says, as in Modes of Thought, that there is "conceptual novelty", not just "physical novelty" 112. There seems to be almost no limit to the fundamental nature of the novelty which may occur. Even new systems of the common relatedness among actualities, supplanting what we now know as space-time relations, may eventually be generated. And this novelty is not merely "subjective", but determines the objective" data confronting the future. Novelty is generated subjectively but it endures objectively. Eventually these forms retreat to make room for further novelty.

(b)

Finally, we see that actual forms are primarily feelings rather than essences if we understand the manner of their functioning in the actualities which prehend them.

Whitehead is against "static" forms and for "forms of transition". 113 What he means is that when a form is effective in the internal process of an actual occasion, we should not picture this effectiveness as the sudden stamping of the form as a whole upon the occasion. The occasion is essentially process; it cannot take a static imprint. It can have no static components. If form is effective in occasions, it must be as itself an aspect of process. How this is possible is what I am now seeking to explain. "We require to understand how the mere existence of unchanging form requires its own immersion in the creation of a changing, historic world. There is a form of creation." 114 Whitehead thinks that the notion of law used in modern science requires a shift away from the Greek view of static form. "In the place of the Aristotelian notion of the procession of forms, it [modern non-Newtonian physics] has substituted the notion of the forms of process." 115

Attempting to come to grips with what seems to be Whitehead's real meaning here, I cite the following quotation.

All actuality involves the realization of form derived from factual data. It is both a composition of qualities, and it is also a form of composition. The form of composition dictates how these forms as thus realized in the data enter into a finite process of composition, thus achieving the actuality with its own exemplifications and discards. There is a form of process dealing with a complex form of data and issuing into a novel completion of actuality. But no actuality is a static fact. The historic character of the universe belongs to its essence. The completed fact is only to be understood as taking its place among the active data forming the future. 116

Thus the active forms which an occasion prehends as characterizing its "actual world" or "data" are not merely aspects of this alien "data", which it must take into itself and synthesize into a perspective of the actual and possible world &endash; as such these forms would be passive and static -; when prehended and assimilated by a new occasion, these actual forms themselves help to direct the synthesis of the data by the new occasion. Actual forms are thus both constituents to be synthesized in the process of an occasion and also ways in which this synthesis is carried on.

Whitehead tries occasionally to give examples of what he means, and he does it the hard way &endash; takes his examples from mathematics, traditionally regarded as the most static department of form. He reasons that if it can be shown that mathematical forms are immersed in process, then, a fortiori, it will be seen that all forms must be interpreted in this way, for "... mathematics is now being transformed into the intellectual analysis of types of pattern," 117 and "Mathematics is the most powerful technique for the understanding of pattern, and for the analysis of the relations of patterns." 118 Whitehead gives as an example of a "form of process" the simple arithmetical statement "Twice three is six." "My contention is that the sentence considers a process and its issue. . . .the phrase 'twice-three' indicates a form of fluid process, and 'six' indicates a characterization of the completed fact." 119 And a few pages farther on he says of all mathematical notions.

All mathematical notions have reference to process of intermingling. The very notion of number refers to the process from the individual units to the compound group. The final number belongs to no one of the units; it characterizes the way in which the group unity has been attained. Thus even the statement 'six equals six' need not be construed as a tautology. It can be taken to mean that six as dominating a special form of combination issues in six as a character of a datum for further process. There is no such entity as a mere static number. There are only numbers playing their parts in various processes conceived in abstraction from the world-process. 120

In the light of the preceding observations on "forms of process", the following statement takes on added meaning.

Every reality is there for feeling: it promotes feeling; and it is felt. Also there is nothing which belongs merely to the privacy of feeling of one individual actuality. All origination is private. But what has been thus originated, publicly pervades the world. 121

I have already said that feeling is the bond which holds eternal objects together in their "concrete togetherness" in actual occasions. If this attained form is to be passed on to other occasions, if it is to have a greater or less influence on their own internal processes, and if this influence is to take the form of operating in these future occasions so as to help in the process of synthesizing data; then the feelings themselves which hold the eternal objects together, which make of them an ordered structure rather than a chaotic infinity, must also endure, For it is only feeling that can enter so directly into occasions that it becomes one with their dynamic processes, one with their own activities. It is only feeling that can synthesize data. An actual occasion is an integration of feelings, and this integration as a whole is a feeling. As feeling the actual occasion seems to perish when it has achieved the integration, in the moment of its completion, but this cannot be what Whitehead really means. More must survive the occasion than merely eternal objects, for eternal objects in themselves are powerless. At least part of its own feeling must survive in order for it to be effectual as contributing determination to the future. Probably what Whitehead means is that the completely integrated feeling which is a finite synthesis of the universe fades or perishes to some extent, 122 but some of its component feelings survive.

Footnotes for Chapter Three Section C (103-122):

103 SMW., p. 126

104 Only in George Orwell's nightmare "Oceania" is the past subject to change, because his people have lost touch with "hard fact" and believe in collective solipsism.

105 When I discussed this internal development in an actual occasion in Sect. D of ch. 2 of this paper, I pointed out that since all of its phases are internally related, the "later" phases condition the "earlier" in a way quite impossible for clock time.

106 PR., p. 92.

107 PR., p. 139.

108 A qualification is necessary. Since it is part of the metaphysical nature of each new actuality that it must take account somehow of all previous actuality, it is not true to say that actual form "dies" completely. But it ceases to dominate, or even to exercise a recognizable role in new occasions after a while. It becomes part of the vague background of undifferentiated forces common to all new occasions but peculiar to none. "When these societies decay, it will not mean that their defining characteristics cease to exist, but they lapse into unimportance for the actual entities in question (PR., p. 141)."

109 PR., p. 141.

110 See below, ch. 6, Sect. C, of this paper.

111 PR., p. 142.

112 MT, p. 80. There will be some difficulty in reconciling this position with the "primordial" function of God, which is said to be the presentation of all possible concepts for realization. See below, ch. 4, Sect. B, of this paper.

113 MT., pp. 112-13,

114 MT., p. 114 (italics mine).

115 MT., p. 192.

116 MT., pp. 122-23.

117 "Mathematics and the Good," .in Schilpp, op. cit., p. 677.

118 Ibid., p. 678.

119 MT., pp. 123-26.

120 MT., pp. 127-28. This notion of mathematics would seem to be at variance with the most prevalent theories, particularly those associated with Principia Mathematica, where mathematics is developed "tautologically" and through the manipulation of uninterpreted symbols. The interpretation of mathematics which Whitehead develops in his later works, from Science and the Modern World on, seems to have some similarity to Kant's view in that mathematical statements are held to be synthetic rather than analytic, or, at least, when interpreted, they are expressions of synthesizing functions. Whitehead would seem still to admit the validity of the development of uninterpreted formal systems, but merely insist that these are such high abstractions that they do not present the full nature even of mathematics.

122 And, in the "consequent nature of God", even this feeling retains its original freshness; see above, ch. 2, Sect. D(4), of this paper.

(4)

It is the purpose of Part I of this paper to investigate the notion of existence, with which Whitehead closely associates value. In this chapter it has been shown that, despite the fact that Whitehead invokes the old notion of eternal forms or essences, his philosophy cannot be interpreted as holding that ultimate reality lies in eternal forms or patterns which generate and direct actual process. Eternal objects are essential to Whitehead's notion of existence, but they play a subordinate role.

They are certainly not the metaphysical entity with which he links value. Indeed, Whitehead frequently says that the realm of eternal objects in itself is valueless.. The realm of eternal objects in itself is the realm of infinite possibility. It muust thern in some way contain the possibilities of the entities which are valuable, but it also contains a lot of other possibilities. It certainly is not the source of ideals and all sorts of perfections that naïve Platonism imagines it to be.

. . .'perfection' is a notion which haunts human imagination. It cannot be ignored. But its naïve attachment to the realm of forms is entirely without justification. How about the form of mud and the form of evil, and other forms of imperfection? In the house of forms there are many mansions 123.

It is not with abstract eternal possibility but with concrete actuality that value is directly connected. "The superstitious awe of infinity has been the bane of philosophy. The infinite has no properties. All value is the gift of finitude which is the necessary activity for activity 124."

But what I have called "actual form" &endash; the attained definiteness of an actuality and the resultant "real potentiality" influencing the course of further actual process &endash; those synthesized structures of eternal objects held together in feelings -. These are tremendously significant aspects of actual process itself. Certainly this actual form is closely associated with values, but the association seems to be neither simple nor quite direct.

There is a natural affinity between Order and Goodness. It is not usual to accuse people of 'orderly conduct'. Undoubtedly there are limits to this excellence of mere order. It can be overdone. But there can be no excellence except upon some basis of order. Mere disorder results in a nonentity of achievement 125.

This passage says that order is a necessary condition of value. There must therefore be more to value than merely order. We have already seen that there is more to existence than merely order.

The link between value and order is the concrete, actual process out of which the actual forms and patterns of the world arise and in which they function. This seems to be the insight which Whitehead is trying to communicate in his cryptic farewell lecture on "Mathematics and the Good". Not patterns themselves but their relations to actuality are the important things.

. . .the infusion of pattern into actual occurrences, and the stability of such patterns, and the modification of such patterns is the necessary condition for the realization of the Good. 126

The study of patterns drives us back to the study of the activity out of which they arise and in which they have significance.

...activity means the origination of patterns of assemblage, and mathematics is the study of pattern. Here we find the essential clue which relates mathematics to the study of the good, and the study of the bad. 127.

We see that patterns are valuable because they are the creative products of a pattern-forming activity and because they function to promote or frustrate further creative activity.

Every abstraction derives its importance from its relation to some background of feeling, which is seeking its unity as one individual complex fact in its immediate present. In itself a pattern is neither good nor bad. But every pattern can only exist in virtue of the doom of realization, actual or conceptual. And this doom consigns the pattern to play its part in an uprush of feeling, which is the awakening of infinitude to finite activity 128.

The "doom of realization", the "uprush of feeling" which is concrete actuality is the center of being and of value in Whitehead's philosophy because it is the source of the reality and the value of everything else.

It is, then, as creative activity that we must understand concrete existence in Whitehead's philosophy. And the consideration of the place of patterns and forms in his philosophy gives us the most complete insight into the truly creative nature of actual process. For it shows us that actual process fulfills the creative condition of "existentialism". There is, of course, a great deal of conrtroversy as to just what is meant by this term, and rather different doctrines go under this name. I take the following statement, uttered by a man with whose name the term "existentialism" has been most intimately associated as typical of its central meaning, at least insofar as it refers to a metaphysical rather than merely a moral, political or esthetic theory. "...they [the existentialists] think existence precedes essence, or, if you prefer, that subjectivity must be the starting point. 129

For Whitehead existence precedes essence, for the order in the world and the quality of each concrete existence is not due to the imposition of antecedent forms but to the activity of existence itself generating its own character. Actual form is not static essence; it is the arrangement through emphasis and repression of the whole realm of eternal objects &endash; it is an active, dynamic thing, it is feeling. Feeling is at once the stuff of actuality and the nature of actual form. Feeling generates its own character; eternal objects provide merely the ultimate content of possibilities, infinite and formless in themselves, and the same for all actualities.

As for Sartre's second way of putting it, that "subjectivity must be the starting point", to this too Whitehead agrees, though he conceives "subjectivity" rather more widely than does Sartre, for the latter limits the notion to the experience of man, and says that this subjectivity gives man a "greater dignity than a stone or table" 130. For Whitehead, on the other hand, all actuality is characterized by ":subjectivity" Feeling is always something for itself; it is always a kind of experience. Human experience is just a particularly highly developed variety of feeling. All form and pattern &endash; all meanings of "togetherness" &endash; are abstracted from the togetherness of things in experience, "a togetherness of its own kind, explicable by reference to nothing else". Whitehead says that this is the "reformed" subjectivist doctrine accepted by the philosophy of organism. 131

Not only the existentialist condition of creative activity, but several of the other conditions which I mentioned above 132. can be seen to be fulfilled by concrete process when studied from the point of view of its intersection with eternal objects. It can be seen that concrete process is at once causally determined and free. Since form exists in feelings, what is first prehended as imposition of pattern from the past becomes, by the free decision of the new occasion, part of itself. A feeling from the past is made part of the total integrated feeling which is the new occasion. The barrier between external and internal determination is broken down.

Secondly, the generation of genuine novelty in actual process becomes easier to understand. The actual patterns which hold in the world are not eternal and unalterable, static essences, but, rather, tensions of emphasis and repression &endash; dynamic balances. Each occasion must adjust these tensions to fit its new situation, and in so doing creates novel forms.

Finally, it can be seen how concrete process is characterized by both "subjectivity" and "objectivity". Its self-assumed character is felt internally in its moment of "satisfaction" as an enjoyment, a solution of its particular problem. Then, when this moment of total integration "perishes", its partial feelings remain as stubborn facts to be prehended by and to influence future process. Since actual form exists in feelings, the subjective experience of each occasion of actuality can be projected beyond itself to become part of an indefinite number of new occasions &endash; new integrations of feeling.

Thus the study of the functions of the notion of eternal objects in Whitehead's philosophy leads to an understanding of the notion of concrete existence as creative activity. This discussion does not demonstrate every aspect of this notion, but it suggests Whitehead's general approach, and, I think, justifies the general sort of interpretation I have made. Limitations of space prevent my engaging in equally detailed studies of other aspects of Whitehead's philosophy, though they would reinforce and expand the picture of concrete existence as creative activity. I must rely on this chapter to carry the burden of the first part of the argument &endash; the interpretation of the existence with which value is closely associated &endash; and supplement it only with rather brief notes concerning a few other aspects of Whitehead's metaphysics.

Footnotes for Chapter Three Section C (123-132):

123 MT., p. 93. I think that the reference to a "form of evil" must be inadvertent, since this would be as much a value form as a form of perfection. See below, ch. 7, Sect. A.

124 "Mathematics and the Good", in Schilpp, op. cit., p. 674.

125 MT., p. 103.

126 "Mathematics and the Good", in Schilpp, op. cit., p.677.

127 "Mathematics and the Good", in Schilpp, op. cit., p.674.

128 "Mathematics and the Good", in Schilpp, op. cit., p.679.

129 Sartre, J.P., Existentialism, (translated by B. Frechtman), New York: Philosophical Library, 1947, p. 15.

130 Sartre, op. cit., p. 18.

131 .PR., p. 288.

132 See above, ch. 2, Sect. A, of this paper.

Move to Chapter 4 Section A.