Will Substance Metaphysics ever recover?

You should know now that the cool kids who populate Veeky Forums only read Nietzsche's wikipedia page and decry any attempt to discuss analytic philosophy as pretend mathematics that want to turn philosophy into soulless logical drivel

Can we just take a moment to appreciate the philosophy of organism as the comfiest philosophy of all time.

Is Whitehead a good read for neo-Lamarckian stuff? I don't really know much about him

You have to study kinda deep mathematics if you really want to understand Whitead's ideas. About 3 years of mathematics if you're a complete noob but not a moron.

Whitehead's metaphysics is entirely comprehensible without a very deep mathematical background. Obviously it differs with Principia Mathematica, but in PR he explicitly repudiates mathematical methodology.

Uh, no. Whitehead talks mostly about his system of process metaphysics, Lamarck is not mentioned once in the entirety of Process and Reality.

Source: I just checked the index.

Whitehead transcends the analytic-continental divide because he undermines both.

I mean more for this kind of thing

>Maupertuis, Diderot, Lamarck, and Goethe were among the first intellectuals to develop speculative cosmologies centrally grounded in what tended at the time to consist of highly fanciful, romantic, and largely undocumented theories of evolutionary development. Subsequent figures in this history of "evolutionary cosmologies" include the ponderous English syncretist Herbert Spencer, Thomas Huxley, and the later Darwin (attempting to account in a more speculative vein both for the wider significance of his naturalistic interpretation of evolutionary development, and for the apparent mathematical improbability of his earlier biological views on random variation). This genre of speculative philosophy culminates in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the more familiar works of Henri Bergson, Samuel Alexander, Jan Smuts, Lecomte de Nuöy, and C. Lloyd Morgan, and survives prominently even in the present in the thought of Teilhard de Chardin, Julian Huxley, C. H. Waddington, Theodosius Dobzhansky, W. H. Thorpe, and Rene Dubos (cf. GMPT 54-98).

>Evolutionary cosmologies are commonly inspired by an interest in numerous well-documented phenomena of change, development, and ultimately transformation and supersession both of geological forms and of biological species over the course of time.

I've heard friends mention him in this context many times but I'm not sure how precisely

This thread is probably my best bet.

Could somebody recommend some essays on philosophy of mathematics?

It's tangentially related, as far as I can tell, even stretching it. There is a small link with Bergson , but I cannot imagine how a comparison with Lamarck would ever be useful, unless someone was trying to somehow assert Whitehead is basing his theory on a bunk concept of evolution, which is both a flawed approach to begin with as well as false.

I recommend reading "Modes of Thought" which is available online. It's short, interesting, and very accessible.

Did you read Kant before reading this? is this something I can just access as a standalone book?

this is absolutely not true. it is on the contrary the analytic sokal-bricmont fanboys who take any chance they get to shit on people they identify as continentals.

I had a secondary knowledge of Hume and a little bit of knowledge of Kant.

It would actually help to read the short work of Leibniz, The Monadalogy, before reading Whitehead, as his system is actually quite similar.

*Do NOT* just jump right in to Process and Reality. Read Modes of Thought first to see if you are interested, and then read: "A Key to Process and Reality." Then and only then will the actual book Process and Reality be digestible. Then you can jump into Adventures of Ideas.

If you just want to learn about his philosophy of science or education, you probably can jump in to the respective books though after reading Modes of Thought.

Ah alright, thanks bud

Glad I could help.

hey it is you from the discord. remember me we had that conversation about the comfiness of alfred north whitehead. what happened to the discord. i am really lonely

You two should give each other white head

he isn't really about biology so much as metaphysics. if you are interested in the metaphysics of biology and evolution try Henri Bergson

i just miss the discord. i liked being able to talk to people about literature and philosophy. i don't have many friends in real life and the ones i do have like warhammer so i can't really relate to them or talk with them about anything

>liking weird philosophy
>not liking warhammer

but that's the best combination

Yes! It is actually. I'm very, very sad about the discord and don't know what happened. I heard the guy went autismo on everyone and banned all of us.

Since that point I've fully embraced Whitehead. It took a long time to realize that German Idealism is a mental illness. I'm glad to be rid of it. Not that there is no wisdom in Hegel, quite the opposite, but Hegelians get caught up in a search for a further truth that doesn't exist when it comes to concepts.

Whitehead can explain gravity in just a few sentences as a feeling between massy entities. Gravity is something that is happening, not some magical concept that is the nature of (or apparently simply is outright).

Sorry for that little detour about Hegel. Post your email, I'd love to communicate.

i tried to get into it. i can't afford 4000 dollars worth of miniatures. i know most of the lore thou. they mostly talk about the game

>
Whitehead can explain gravity in just a few sentences as a feeling between massy entities. Gravity is something that is happening, not some magical concept that is the nature of (or apparently simply is outright).

I should make it clear that Hegelians essentially assert the latter and misguidedly search universals that there is no need of.

Veeky Forums is a continental board. There are hardly if ever any serious threads on analytic philosophy and when there are they are set upon by continentals who take any chance they get to denigrate it. Try making a thread on Bertrand Russell's 'On Denoting' and watch it descend into shitposting about fedora tipping and atheism. The cognitive dissonance you display in thinking you'd ever seriously get attacked for enjoying someone like Zizek or Nietzsche on this board is astounding

fuck I am tired.

To be fair, analytic philosophy is basically complete garbage.

ok [email protected]

Why?

If you think German Idealism is a mental illness you are essentially denying that inspiration exists. German Idealism is just a spiritual language and it takes accessing the fire within to really appreciate it. Excuse the schizo talk, but it's true.

i like analytical philosophy. just not Bertrand Russel

This is what I'm on about with the mental illness bit. Whitehead can explain inspiration and creativity without your voodoo experience-denying bullshit.

that and a lot of german idealist thought is similiar to Alfred northwhitehead's process theology in that it believes in the metaphysical being in an inter tangled entity with the physical

Yeah, but they're fundamentally incompatible on the base level because German Idealism believe itself to be based on "pure reason." Whitehead identifying causal efficacy pulls the rug out from under Kant entirely and causes the whole system to collapse, not just Kant's.

How does one express form itself? through concepts? German idealism isn't experience denying if it's affirming the spirit and the productive faculty of the imagination (Kant). Where does spontaneity come from? most of supersensible is already at least practically confirmed by Kant in his Critique of Practical Reason. You obviously haven't been zapped by the thunder yet my bro.

i mean whitehead does imply an a priori cause to explain the metaphysical. kant just sort of carries that to the moral level

supersensible reality*
fuck mind the grammar

This is clearly bullshit and you haven't read Kant if you really think Kant creating the gulf between the noumenal and the phenomenal implies that Kant didn't find a way to unite causal efficacy in the sensible realm while simultaneously keeping the concept of spontaneity (freedom) intact. There's nothing contradictory in positing free causes within noumenal reality and then having the effects appear with sensible reality (the world of appearances)

Because the "analytic worldview" did demonstrably exist, was demonstrably cul-de-sac, and is demonstrably moribund.

That doesn't mean it didn't have interesting aspects or that you can't read it or try to understand and value it in some sublated way. You can even say that it was a necessary cul-de-sac to make a sublation possible.

But it's a lot harder to rescue Carnap, Russell, or Hempel from some of their blunders than it is many continentals, because of how vehement they were about committing to those blunders and nothing else.

If you ever meet a cogsci major who literally brags that the last few years of cogsci research is the only thing anyone needs to know in philosophy, or a behaviourist who thinks the same about his own field, or a fossilized empiricist who thinks the same thing, OR their millions of Reddit "science solved philosophy lel" disciples (where do you think Black Science Man gets his ideas except by this trickling down?), you have analytic philosophy to blame.

Also, its insularity produced lazy arrogant hackish pronouncements and blinders. Quine and Rorty are guilty of this. Quine in particular is just lazy and sloppy a lot of the time.

This is a Whitehead thread so trust me I'm the first person to defend unfashionable shit against the prevailing trend of contrarianism, simply because it's unfashionable (plus I'm a major Wittgenstein fan), but analytics genuinely DO have a lot of problems, way more than is usual for any outmoded philosophy.

Kant acts as if only what Whitehead calls "presentational immediacy" is the primary and foundational mode of perception. This is perceiving things like grey shapes. It is distinctly confined to the present and doesn't contain evidence of causality.

However, this is rooted in a lower and more foundational form of experience, one common to all entities: Causal Efficacy.

It's best introduced through his critique of Hume (and by extension, Kant).

"The sequence of percepts, in the mode of presentational
immediacy, ist flash of light, feeling of eye-closure, instant of darkness.
The three are practically simultaneous; though the flash maintains its
priority over the other two, and these two latter percepts are indistinguish-
able as to priority. According to the philosophy of organism, the man also
experiences another percept in the mode of causal efficacy. He feels that
the experiences of the eye in the matter of the flash are causal of the blink.
The man himself will have no doubt of it. In fact, it is the feeling [266] of
causality which enables the man to distinguish the priority of the flash;
and the inversion of the argument, whereby the temporal sequence 'flash
to blink' is made the premise for the 'causality' belief, has its origin in
pure theory. The man will explain his experience by saying, "The flash
made me blink'; and if his statement be doubted, he will reply, 'I know
it, because I felt it.'

The philosophy of organism accepts the man's statement, that the flash
made him blink. But Hume intervenes with another explanation. He first
points out that in the mode of presentational immediacy there is no per-
cept of the flash making the man blink. In this mode there are merely
the two percepts— the flash and the blink— combining the two latter of
the three percepts under the one term 'blink.' Hume refuses to admit the
man's protestation, that the compulsion to blink is just what he did feel.
The refusal is based on the dogma t that all percepts are in the mode of
presentational immediacy— a dogma not to be upset by a mere appeal to
direct experience. Besides,! Hume has another interpretation of the man's
experience: what the man really felt was his habit of blinking after flashes.
The word 'association' explains it all, according to Hume. But how can a
'habit' be felt, when a 'cause' cannot be felt? Is there any presentational
immediacy in the feeling of a 'habit'? Hume by a sleight of hand confuses
a 'habit of feeling blinks after flashes' with a 'feeling of the habit of feel-
ing blinks after flashes/

We have here a perfect example of the practice of applying the test of
presentational immediacy to procure the critical rejection of some doc-
trines, and of allowing other doctrines to slip out by a back door, so as
to evade the test. The notion of causation arose because mankind lives
amid experiences in the mode of causal efficacy. "

(cont.)

The 'causal feeling' according to that doctrine arises from the long asso-
ciation of well-marked presentations of sensa, one precedent to the other.
It would seem therefore that inhibitions of sensa, given in presentational
immediacy, should be accompanied by a corresponding absence of 'causal
feeling'; for the explanation of how there is 'causal feeling' presupposes
the well-marked familiar sensa, in presentational immediacy. Unfortu-
nately the contrary is the case. An inhibition of familiar sensa is very apt
to leave us a prey to vague terrors respecting a circumambient world of
causal operations. In the dark there are vague presences, doubtfully feared:
in the silence, the irresistible causal efficacy of nature presses itself upon
us; in the vagueness of the low hum of insects in an August woodland, the
inflow into ourselves of feelings from enveloping nature overwhelms us;
in the dim consciousness of half-sleep, the presentations of sense fade
away, and we are left with the vague feeling of influences from vague
things around us. It is quite untrue that the feelings of various types of
influences are dependent upon the familiarity of well-marked sensa in
immediate presentment. Every way of omitting the sensa still leaves us a
prey to vague feelings of influence. Such feelings, divorced from immediate
sensa, are pleasant, or unpleasant, according to mood; but they are always
vague as to spatial and temporal definition, though their explicit domi-
nance in experience may be heightened in the absence of sensa.

Further, our experiences! of our various bodily parts are primarily per-
ceptions of them as reasons for 'projected' sensa : the hand] is the reason
for the projected touch-sensum, the eye is the reason for the projected
sight-sensum. Our bodily experience is primarily an experience of the de-
pendence of presentational immediacy upon causal efficacy. Hume's doc-
trine inverts this relationship by making causal efficacy, as an experience,
dependent upon presentational immediacy. This doc- [268] trine, whatever
be its merits, is not based upon any appeal to experience.

what you are saying sounds almost Cartesian in that the metaphysical is an entity that is indifferent but rather acts as a series of primary causes rather than the view of process theology that the metaphysical is in some way connected to some sort of higher ideal or process

Uh, you realize I'm quoting Whitehead directly, right?

>Every way of omitting the sensa still leaves us a
prey to vague feelings of influence. Such feelings, divorced from immediate
sensa, are pleasant, or unpleasant, according to mood; but they are always
vague as to spatial and temporal definition, though their explicit domi-
nance in experience may be heightened in the absence of sensa.

This part is especially devastating to Kant. Causally efficacious feelings can exist without the higher modes of perception but not vice versa which calls into question a transcendental subject out of which the world as we know it emerges.

of course yes

fucking archive.org formatting is fucked.

>An inhibition of familiar sensa is very apt
>to leave us a prey to vague terrors respecting a circumambient world of
>causal operations. In the dark there are vague presences, doubtfully feared:
>in the silence, t
this is how to stop a hedonist

Are you saying that if your memory was getting deleted or you weren't able to form memories whatsoever (complete dementia we could possibly call it) and if you were watching a guy cross the street you would never see him actually cross the street or move because your memory of his previous steps were getting deleted or being not able to formed. Your excerpt is dense philosophy (in the good sense of the term) so it will take time for me to fully comprehend what Whitehead is saying, but if you can summarize some of the arguments it would help me, a tyro, in understanding wtf that excerpt is saying atm. I got some fumbling idea of what he's saying, but to get every iota and subtly in the argument will take time, which I will do later.

>Quine and Rorty are guilty of this. Quine in particular is just lazy and sloppy a lot of the time.

more on this? especially in re: rorty

this reply is for

Some of what you say might be true, especially in how committed some of the early analytics were to their own method and style of doing philosophy to the point where it became almost religious, but I think a lot of your criticism is meant to be aimed at logical positivism and not analytical philosophy as a whole. Analytic philosophy long ago left the specter of rigid adherence to verificationism and behaviorism and the people who undermined that dogma and make it possible for analytic philosophy to return and flourish to the kinds of philosophy the early analytics were reacting against were analytics themselves. The tradition has changed. That "analytic worldview" no longer exists. It's no longer an ideology and is now just a style of doing philosophy, though it does work on different problems and their approach to them differs from that of continental philosophy

I mean, I don't think you're wrong. Whitehead is asserting that the higher forms of perception, like actually having a spatial location for a perceived object, can only emerge through these causally efficacious feelings.

Consider an example. One is roused out of sleep in the morning preconsciously by a stimulus you can't identify. In fact, all your feelings are still jumbling back together into what we call "you." There is no need for categories outside of what information is already contained in the experience. The definiteness and duration of the datum of sound, as well as it's relation with other things interacting with you, allows you to automatically assign it spatial location. This is presentational immediacy. When you reach full awareness, you're able to combine the two to form a coherent idea of the alarm clock through conceptual feelings. That's Symbolic Awareness

Hume can doubt causality without undermining himself (well he still undermines himself but that's besides the point) because causality is not directly observable in Presentational Immediacy or Symbolic Reference, however, we can observe how those two types of feelings arise out of these causally efficacious feelings, which are inherently causal. Thus, any means of doubting causality is self-undermining.

If Kant and Hume were right, and presentational immediacy ("Bare Sight") is the basic perception, we would be able to have presentationally immediate feelings without any causally efficacious ones, but in fact, the opposite is true. We can have causally efficacious feelings without presentational immediacy but never vice versa.

The justification and explanation of all those terms should be included in there, though it's dense and uses idiosyncratic terms. I'm going to sleep but if this thread is still alive in the morning I'm willing to answer questions.

I shouldn't have included Rorty because I'm not qualified to talk about him, and my dislike of him is vague and based on gut reactions about how he's a "typical anglo" in his purviews

Sorry

I don't think they've left it behind as much as you think, man. I read Kuhn, Hanson, Winch, Quine and stuff and I know that positivism collapsed, but it still lingers, especially among lightweight/workaday analytics.

Similar to how if you criticised poststructuralism for being head-up-its-own-ass nihilistic, people could adduce concrete examples of contemporary philosophers who are significantly influenced by poststructuralism and not those things, but that if you go to an actual grad seminar it's stuffed full of people who are roleplaying that they're back in the 70s. Those people become jobber professors and jobber professors create Lawrence Krauss.

The cogsci shit is a particularly egregious example. The analytic worldview has filtered into STEM, into philosophy of mind, into AI research, into neoliberalism, for fuck's sake definitely into neoclassical economics. It still produces Dan Dennetts.

Oh, one more thing.

Whitehead doesn't even think that Kant or Hume give PI enough credit. They act as if that mode of perception is always pulling out "Universals." Like we are always perceiving, instead of a wall, a bundle of universals like "grey" and "smooth." But this has no basis in experience, we always experience universals mediated by a particular existent with its own constitution by it's own unique feelings of its universals, as well as its relation to other actual entities.

Whitehead asserts that, since things are all interconnected, everything existent is an a universal in some respect. Things like colors and numbers are instead "potentials."

I should add, I've been reading a (minor) essay anthology published in 2013 called The Historical Turn in Analytic Philosophy that's pretty good for this kind of thing.

I do like analytic philosophy. I'd recommend reading Collingwood's (why do I always type Coleridge?) Autobiography and skimming to the part early on where he talks about how stifling the "realists" were at Oxbridge in the early 20th century and how they approached German philosophy & historicism in philosophy in general.

So Whitehead is saying that you wouldn't see the guy cross the street. You know part of Kant's intuition is that it is always explicated in the mere form of intuition which is space and time. We wouldn't even have an experience or a presentational immediate experience if we weren't using the form of sensibility. To have an datum is already assuming space-time. So you're essentially saying that if I wasn't able to form new memories ever, the immediate eye of perception would never be able to see the guy cross the street. Of course, however, it's just a matter of the guy remembering it. So he wouldn't remember him crossing the street in complete homogeneous unity but it would still have happened in his eye of perception. There are many similar examples I'm sure I could conjure though. I hope I'm understanding his argument correctly though. I get that he thinks that presentational immediacy is bullshit, but I don't see how he backs it up. Gonna read what you pasted tomorrow as well. Good night.

Sure, you'll still find people who are influenced by that particular school of thought, but as you seem to recognize, you'll always be able to find people who have been influenced by all kinds of ideas that have been bandied about throughout history. Positivism has not been in vogue in analytic schools for 60 years, most analytics consider it a dead end. Just look at how analytic metaphysics has flourished with philosophers like Lewis and Armstrong and Kripke. The problem you identify is that of a very loud minority who has managed to seize the microphone, who in many cases aren't even philosophers (Tyson, Hawking, etc) and who unfortunately are able to communicate inchoate ideas that have nothing to do with their field of expertise because they have popular appeal. And unfortunately it has dragged down the reputation of analytic philosophers, and even philosophers of physics who are doing good work, with it.

>A special branch of process thought opened up in late 18th and early 19th century German Idealism, when Johann G. Fichte, Friedrich W. J. Schelling, and Georg W. F. Hegel responded to Immanuel Kant's system of a transcendental idealism.

plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-philosophy/

Calm the fuck down, german idealism is with you

I agree that Veeky Forums is full of pseuds that generally thing Nietzsche, Stirner, and Deleuze are the greatest thinkers in history.

However, many analytics (and continentals) are better philosophers than either of these 3. That being said, if you read my post, I quite clearly pointed out that Whitehead was NOT an analytic. His work is much more convoluted, historical, and speculative for any analytic, and pretty much none of them read him.

Are you suggesting Whitehead was analytic? Even the claim that Wittgenstein was is a little questionable, but to claim so about Whitehead just seems ridiculous. Just because he worked with Russell, doesn't mean he's an analytic. Moreover, what they collaborated on was pure math, not philosophy.

a lot of big time analytics have made careers of arriving to Nietzsche's conclusions, but in the language of analytic philosophy

You guys fans of Driesch?

I don't have anything substantive to add, but I'm delighted to see a thread about Whitehead. I haven't read about this stuff since college. Thanks!

It's incompatible with Whitehead's philosophy though at the basic level. There are similarities but they're mutually incompatible.

I'm still uncertain of how he backs it up. It seems to me that what he does is prove that we don't have any reason to doubt this stuff, but I'm still reading. Another reason is that, if causal efficacy is existent, we don't need to doubt that instead of some kind of representationalism, we are having a direct experience of reality.

A PhD told me he was writing a paper about the justification actually, and would send it to me when he was done.