There are mathematical points of no dimension, moments of no duration. Then there are the points of the world, of all sorts, of multiple scope and dimension. You can find argument for your own non-existence, whether temporal or physical, if that's what you want. But it's not very useful; if nothing else you'll be left with the being who wanted to not exist!

This is a Whitehead question. @Janus might be able to help.

> You can find argument for your own non-existence, whether temporal or physical, if that's what you want. But it's not very useful; if nothing else you'll be left with the being who wanted to not exist!

The Boy Who Wanted To Not Exist ... I'd read it! ;-)

No I'm not looking for an argument for my non-existence. (I'd have to exist to be doing that.) I'm having a conversation with some Buddhists about process philosophy, and this question came up.

Thanks, fdrake.

Due to my own lack of time, I'll just give a very simple answer to start, which hopefully may suffice to answer your question.

Whitehead distinguishes between "moments", which have no temporal extension, and "durations".
Actual entities, for Whitehead, are not atemporal (in the sense of unchanging), but are rather temporal occasions or processes. So, an atemporal moment would be an idealized instant of no duration, not an actual moment which, in possessing temporal extension, endures "for a time". In Husserlian terms, it means that a lived, as opposed to an idealized, moment is both retentive and protentive. It carries the past that in-forms it, into the future that is expected in it, and which it will, in turn, in-form.

I may not be completely accurately reflecting the subtleties of Whitehead's understanding of this issue here, as it's just 'off the top of my head', but I don't have time to dip into Whitehead's texts right now.

In Husserlian terms, it means that a lived, as opposed to an idealized, moment is both retentive and protentive. It carries the past that in-forms it, into the future that is expected in it, and which it will, in turn, in-form. — Janus

Nice.

Can an individual 'occasion' of process philosophy be said to actually exist?
Or is an individual occasion like the present moment, of zero duration, therefore not actually existent? — rachMiel

Not speaking for Whitehead, but for process thinking in general, the problem for the process view is how does "atomistic" individuation arise when everything is united by a common flow? So an "occasion" would be like a whorl in a stream - a feature that arises as its own momentary thing while also being part of a greater temporalised flow.

The whorl thus exists both as an expression of its context, and also marked by its momentary departure from the over-riding character of that context. A whorl is a rotation that fleetingly betrays the possibility of other directions of flow and so marks itself out even as it is borne off downstream.

So as @Janus says, an occasion is its own temporal duration - a localised past, present and future. From the point of view of the river, the whorl is a general kind of regularity that is expected to break out in unpredictable fashion. So the general history of the river is a constraint that makes whorls likely to erupt at "any time" in its future. And at any present moment, there will be whorls that have appeared and shortly to depart.

But within the whorl itself, it is characterised by itself being a departure from that prevailing general flow. The whorl opens up the possibility of a brief spin heading upstream. It itself constrains the water flow locally, and any objects bobbing about on the surface, to its quick little rotation. Locally, the past/present/future is set up with its own fleetingly distinctive sense of direction.

Thus, in the physicalist reading of process philosophy, you have a general character to time as @Janus outlines. And it can sound pretty psychological. History locks in a set of expectations as far as the present is concerned. Time itself is thus a process. It has an internal story arc rather than just being a collection of structureless instances.

So time has a general global flow like a river. And that in turn can become particularised by local events that are marked out by being fleeting twists in a different direction. Local moments of temporal structure can arise that go in a different, more personal-seeming and individualistic, direction.

The general flow had mostly suppressed those other directions. But locally, they can erupt as constraint can never completely eliminate freedom. And what cannot be stopped is something bound to be expressed. Like the whorls that spot a stream.

No I'm not looking for an argument for my non-existence. (I'd have to exist to be doing that.) I'm having a conversation with some Buddhists about process philosophy, and this question came up. — rachMiel

There is no point in examining a question as to whether you exist or not without first defining what you mean by “you” and what you mean by “existence”.

What are you?

What is existence?

Whitehead distinguishes between "moments", which have no temporal extension, and "durations". / Actual entities, for Whitehead, are not atemporal (in the sense of unchanging), but are rather temporal occasions or processes. So, an atemporal moment would be an idealized instant of no duration, not an actual moment which, in possessing temporal extension, endures "for a time". In Husserlian terms, it means that a lived, as opposed to an idealized, moment is both retentive and protentive. It carries the past that in-forms it, into the future that is expected in it, and which it will, in turn, in-form. — Janus

Thanks, Janus!

What I get from this (with respect to my original questions) is that no-thing (no unchanging substance) exists in the present moment. Existents (actual entities) are event-sequences that unfold over time.

Sound about right?

What are you?
What is existence? — raza

I'm happy to share my view/belief/feeling about this ... but you might not like it!

The answer to both: the Mystery.

Or, because it sounds so gorgeous in German: das Mysterium.

I'm happy to share my view/belief/feeling about this ... but you might not like it! — rachMiel

Well I personally am unable to identify a thing which I believe is me. So it is indeed mysterious to me. This is why I fail to accept norms of language, terms etc, as representative of actuality.

Ah! It was Alan Watts who said: “The common error of ordinary religious practice is to mistake the symbol for the reality, to look at the finger pointing the way and then to suck it for comfort rather than follow it.”

The same relates, I think, to the symbols that is everyday conversation about things and experiences within which the "I", "me" and "you" are used.

raza: I'm very much with you on this. That said, I love words and symbols!

What I get from this (with respect to my original questions) is that no-thing (no unchanging substance) exists in the present moment. Existents (actual entities) are event-sequences that unfold over time.

Sound about right? — rachMiel

:smile:

Yes, I think it's right to say that, according to process metaphysics, no unchanging substance exists "in the present moment" or indeed at all. The present moment, for process metaphysics, is not a 'duration-less point instant', but a minimal temporal flow during which there would be at least a change in temporal 'position', if nothing else. Anyway, it's certainly an interesting question that many a book could be written about, and thanks for raising it.

:grin:

apokrisis: Not speaking for Whitehead, but for process thinking in general, the problem for the process view is how does "atomistic" individuation arise when everything is united by a common flow? So an "occasion" would be like a whorl in a stream - a feature that arises as its own momentary thing while also being part of a greater temporalised flow.

The whorl thus exists both as an expression of its context, and also marked by its momentary departure from the over-riding character of that context. A whorl is a rotation that fleetingly betrays the possibility of other directions of flow and so marks itself out even as it is borne off downstream.

Gotcha. Tangent:

The whorl is itself a process, has duration, exists and changes over time, etc. Right?

What is the 'atom' of a process, its smallest existent? (I don't wanna say smallest particle, because this implies substance.) Does this question even make sense in pp'ical terms?

But within the whorl itself, it is characterised by itself being a departure from that prevailing general flow. The whorl opens up the possibility of a brief spin heading upstream. It itself constrains the water flow locally, and any objects bobbing about on the surface, to its quick little rotation. Locally, the past/present/future is set up with its own fleetingly distinctive sense of direction.

Thus, in the physicalist reading of process philosophy, you have a general character to time as @Janus outlines. And it can sound pretty psychological. History locks in a set of expectations as far as the present is concerned. Time itself is thus a process. It has an internal story arc rather than just being a collection of structureless instances.

The notion of time as story/process really appeals to me. As a composer I've often worked with multilayered soundscapes, with time flowing uniquely for each layer. And psychological time can flow dramatically differently when you are in different moods, situations, states of mind.

1. If time is a process, any slice of it (duration) would have a beginning, middle, and end. Likewise, each of these would have a beginning, middle, and end. And so on, fractal-like, ad infinitum. Yes?

2. If time is a process, does it imply that space is also a process?

What is the 'atom' of a process, its smallest existent? (I don't wanna say smallest particle, because this implies substance.) Does this question even make sense in pp'ical terms? — rachMiel

It makes sense to me to think of it in terms of smallest form or structure. So you could follow the condensed matter view that a particle is a quasiparticle or soliton. That is, it is like a knot or frustration in the fabric of existence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiparticle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soliton

1. If time is a process, any slice of it (duration) would have a beginning, middle, and end. Likewise, each of these would have a beginning, middle, and end. And so on, fractal-like, ad infinitum. Yes? — rachMiel

Space and time are ways in our modelling to give change a static backdrop against which it can be measured ... as change. So we have to have something that stands still as the way we make it clear that something else is moving or evolving.

Thus in process thinking, we have to realise the nature of the trick we are playing. We invent a notion of a fixed spacetime backdrop so as to dramatise the fact that there are then energetic changes taking place within that steady reference frame.

That non-process approach works really well. But ultimately, it is a physical fiction. As general relativity and quantum physics eventually show. What is fixed and unchanging is simply a point of view.

The next step after that - which gets you into a proper process story - then generalise the (semiotic) notion of a point of view so that change is basic, but a recognisable structure of reality still emerges.

At root, this is just relativity - the light-cone holographic structure of the universe. All action is scaled by c. And so two points in space share the same moment in time only if they are in communication and are integrated or coherent in the sense of being in a cause and effect relation to each other.

If the Sun went supernova now, you wouldn't know about it for another 8.5 minutes. There would be no disturbance in the light or gravity you think it is pumping out until news of that arrived at lightspeed.

So c sets a basic scale of integration when it comes to the physical definition of a temporal duration or moment. Nothing has really changed until two points in space have had enough time to be energetically connected ... in a way that could cause a difference.

Lightspeed is the very fastest rate of temporal integration. But the relaxation times of more complex physical processes could be much slower. How long does it take for a mountain range to be thrust up by the collision of tectonic plates? Geology would have its own really slow scale at which the network of forces and masses involved reached system-wide state of equilibration after any perturbation. A moment of geological time would take forever to unfold compared to the simplest level of universal equilibration - the establishing of regions of space coherently connected in terms of photons and gravity.

So a process view would see temporal duration as being about the time it takes for a spatially distributed action to unfold and arrive at some coherent balance. And with relativity, a fundamental rate for this integrative action was established by saying nothing can happen faster than c. And then we know that any process involving mass happens at sub-light integration rates. So the "cogent moment" for material systems can be way slower in terms of the rates at which a process of equilibration unfolds, and much smaller in the distances that are being integrated over.

So it is all kind of fractal. It has scale symmetry. But there is a fundamental relativistic baseline set by c.

In terms of your question, there would be a thinnest kind of slice - the c-scaled slice, or the lightcone story. Then in terms of other material processes, they would all have much fatter "moments". They take longer, and span less distance, to achieve the cogency that defines a duration - the time it takes to achieve a stable change, a change stable enough to be fixed as a fact of history, a constraint on future freedoms.

2. If time is a process, does it imply that space is also a process? — rachMiel

Space, time and energy together make up the process. So space is an aspect of the process. We want to get away from the simple Newtonian separation of the three, even if the three are quite separated seeming in our current state of the Universe - where it is so cold and expanded that it is pretty close to its static Heat Death condition.

One way to think about space then would be as the opposite of time. And if time is how we think of integration, then space is how we think of differentiation. If two points are distinct and at a distance from each other, then that is why it is going to take time for them to become connected and in touch with each other in an energetic or communicative sense.

For there to be an issue with integration, then there has to be differentiation. And vice versa. So really the two are the two sides of the same coin. That is why relativity can speak of spacetime.

Time then gains a direction once we stir thermodynamics into the pot. Entropy breaks the symmetry of relativistic spacetime and so gives us a direction that points to the past and a direction that points to the future. The past is all the spatial extent that is now temporally integrated. The future is all that extent yet to be integrated.

So a process view would understand reality as a web of relations not a collection of bits. And then we would see structure arise as the result of fundamental contrasts in those relations. You would have action going in two directions at the same time - integration and differentiation. And that in turn would map to what the "collection of bits" ontology has been calling temporal duration and spatial separation.

A process view would have to change its very jargon to escape the familiar clutches of the mechanical view of nature. So asking what "space" or "time" are, is still to be thinking that the holism of the process view ought to reduce to the mechanicalism of classical physics.

Now mechanics is great. It is a really efficient for calculating the state of the world - in the near Heat Death state that defines our particular moment in Cosmic history.

But a process view is about a metaphysics of relations. It is about seeing nature in terms of its coherent structuring forms rather than as an atomistic collection of parts ... floating in a supposedly a-causal void.

A quicky (hopefully):

Can an individual 'occasion' of process philosophy be said to actually exist?

Or is an individual occasion like the present moment, of zero duration, therefore not actually existent? — rachMiel

I would say for Whitehead the fundamental elements of existence are the "actual occasions" or "droplets or moments of experience" and that his view of this is fundamentally atomistic. Such occasions have duration. Such occasions can not be meaningfully subdivided. Actual occasions are both temporal and spatial. In many respects Whiteheads actual occasions resemble quantum events.

These occasions are the final real thing in the universe, and they are both temporal, spatial and experiential. Time can not be composed of events of zero duration just as space can not be composed of points of zero dimension. In the end both space-time consists of quanta and the argument is whether such space time quanta are purely material or do they also have experiential qualities in prehending the past and possibilities from the future?

In many respects Whiteheads actual occasions resemble quantum events. — prothero

Except that QM doesn't model the collapse to anything as concrete as an occasion. It only models the time evolution of a set of wavefunction probabilities. And this depends on an a-temporal or non-local view of reality.

So the effort here is to imagine the kind of collapse or condensation which could magic atomistic durations into existence, like droplets forming in a vague misty backdrop.

In the end both space-time consists of quanta and the argument is whether such space time quanta are purely material or do they also have experiential qualities in prehending the past and possibilities from the future? — prothero

Again, Whitehead's metaphysics grew out of that collapse issue. If you believe that consciousness is responsible for collapsing the quantum potential into a classical atomistic actuality, then you might want to go his pan-psychic route.

But who still believes that consciousness is responsible for collapsing the wavefunction?

You're mischaracterizing Whitehead again; consciousness is not even of much significance in his system. For Whitehead only the tiniest fraction of what is experienced is consciously experienced.

If you have evidence that Whitehead believed consciousness caused quantum collapse you can present it but I believe that is a misstatement or misunderstanding.

It seems quite clear that reality is "process" or "change" and the question of how the change comes about is fundamental to process views. Can the process of change be infinitely divided into dimensionless points or points of time without duration? Or is there a limit to meaningfully dividing such processes, some fundamental unit of "existence" or "spacetime". Whiteheads terminology for such units are "occasions of experience" or sometimes in other contexts "moments or droplets of experience".

The fundamental units in science are roughly quantum particles which are perhaps better termed quantum events and the nature of quantum events is open to both scientific and philosophical debate but it seems that perhaps particles only exist when they interact and that the properties of such "events or particles" are really relationships to other particles and events which is not to dissimilar to whiteheads presentation of "actual occasions".

f you have evidence that Whitehead believed consciousness caused quantum collapse you can present it but I believe that is a misstatement or misunderstanding. — prothero

I am responding to your characterisation here. You said they resembled quantum events. But there are no events without collapse. So there remains something missing in the metaphysical tale.

The fundamental units in science are roughly quantum particles which are perhaps better termed quantum events and the nature of quantum events is open to both scientific and philosophical debate but it seems that perhaps particles only exist when they interact and that the properties of such "events or particles" are really relationships to other particles and events which is not to dissimilar to whiteheads presentation of "actual occasions". — prothero

That's fine. But that also hinges on collapse realism. Which is also fine. But now - like Whitehead - you owe an account of how collapse happens.

In my view, Whitehead goes astray from the off because he rejects the kind of bifurcation of nature that would distinguish between observers and observables.

Physicalism has the problem of solving the collapse issue. And a semiotic approach - one that agrees to a semiotic bifurcation in terms of information and entropy - would be the one I would take. But you can't talk about a process approach "resembling quantum ontology" without addressing the fact that quantum mechanics really challenges Whitehead's basic assumption of "no bifurcation" - the basic theme of pan-psychic thinking.

Observers and observables have to be separated somehow. They can't be co-located as if there were no basic separation. The issue is then how to achieve that without lapsing into Cartesian dualism.

For Whitehead only the tiniest fraction of what is experienced is consciously experienced. — Janus

Feel free to define experience then.

Experience is defined by Whitehead as any event or process. The point for Whitehead's metaphysics is that the fundamental entities are not substances but relations, and every relation is experienced, whether consciously or unconsciously.

That's why I've tried to draw parallels between Peirce and Whitehead. Just as "interpretation" is not confined to conscious beings for Peirce, so "prehensions" are related, but not restricted, to comprehensions, and certainly not to conscious comprehensions, for Whitehead. Whitehead, I believe, would say the sign is experienced by the interpretant; it prehends the sign.

For Whitehead only the tiniest fraction of what is experienced is consciously experienced. — Janus
Feel free to define experience then. — apokrisis

It seems clear that Whitehead's notion of experience is different than our notion of consciousness. For Whitehead most of the experience of the world is non conscious experience. When two particles interact they "experience" each other, and the physical description of that interaction is only a partial description of what actually goes on. Consciousness is a very special somewhat rare and high level form of experience or so the literature on Whitehead would suggest.
.

When two particles interact they "experience" — prothero

So are you only willing to speak analogously here or are you willing to make some actual ontic claim?

Why would we call it inter-experiencing and not inter-acting?

Action, as a materialist notion, is well-defined. It can be cashed out in observables. We can measure a difference in terms of a state of motion.

But how is experience to be defined in terms of measurements? As a theoretical construct, how does it make a predictable difference to what can be observed?

Experience is just a vague and meaningless term in this discussion so far.

Experience is defined by Whitehead as any event or process. — Janus

Yep. Completely meaningless then as it makes no specific ontic commitment. It is so undefined it can seem to cover any eventuality. As a theoretical construct, something that is always present and not changing anything, it is "not even wrong". It fails the test for even being an ontic commitment - an assertion capable of being false.

Whitehead, I believe, would say the sign is experienced by the interpretant; it prehends the sign. — Janus

But where does Whitehead leave room for the mediating thing of a sign in his scheme? He starts by rejecting that basic division into a world and its interpretation - a modelling relation. So the third thing of a mediating sign is hardly going to come into the story.

As the Whitehead expert, you can explain how it does, and why then prehension could be understood in terms of sign interpretation.

Prehend for Peirce would be the conceptual seizing or grasping of the perceptual sign as standing in a habitual pragmatic relation with the noumenal. But where is Whitehead making the same kind of claim? Can you cite anything that would clear this up and support your view?

I am responding to your characterisation here. You said they resembled quantum events. But there are no events without collapse. So there remains something missing in the metaphysical tale.That's fine. But that also hinges on collapse realism. Which is also fine. But now - like Whitehead - you owe an account of how collapse happens. — apokrisis

I would say the physcialist description of “quantum particles or events” is incomplete. With the notion of quantum entanglement one is forced into either non causality or at least non locality. The measurement of a quantum position allows only certain discrete locations; there is nothing continuous about the quantum picture of nature. Despite the continuous nature of some of the quantum equations there is nothing continuous about allowed orbits, transitions between orbits or the measured values. So collapse is basically measurement or interaction to a specific value or location. Precisely how that happens is not something explained by either physics or metaphysics.

In my view, Whitehead goes astray from the off because he rejects the kind of bifurcation of nature that would distinguish between observers and observables. Physicalism has the problem of solving the collapse issue. And a semiotic approach - one that agrees to a semiotic bifurcation in terms of information and entropy - would be the one I would take. But you can't talk about a process approach "resembling quantum ontology" without addressing the fact that quantum mechanics really challenges Whitehead's basic assumption of "no bifurcation" - the basic theme of pan-psychic thinking. — apokrisis

I don’t see that that follows. Quantum mechanics challenges the continuous view of space-time. Quantum mechanics does not challenge Whiteheads objection to the artificial bifurcation of nature.

Observers and observables have to be separated somehow. They can't be co-located as if there were no basic separation. The issue is then how to achieve that without lapsing into Cartesian dualism — apokrisis

Instead of construing the task of science as that of overcoming subjective illusion in order to reach objective reality, as many modern thinkers have done, Whitehead takes the speculative risk of defining nature differently: nature becomes, quite simply, “what we are aware of in perception. “Everything perceived is in nature,” says Whitehead, “We may not pick and choose”.
the red glow of the sunset should be as much part of nature as are the molecules and electric waves by which men of science would explain the phenomenon.14 Whitehead
“If the abstractions [of science] are well-founded,” says Whitehead,
that is to say, if they do not abstract from everything that is important in experience, the scientific thought which confines itself to these abstractions will arrive at a variety of important truths relating to our experience of nature.20
The “photon,” for example, is not just an invention of the physicist, nor is it simply a fact of nature. The “photon” is what the physicist has come to be aware of in his perception of light as a result of certain replicable scientific practices, laboratory situations, theoretical images, and mathematical equations. The “photon,” as a scientific-object, is said to be abstract only in that it cannot be grasped in isolation from the “whole structure of events” or “field of activity” (i.e., the passage of nature) to which it belongs and through which it endures.21 From the perspective of Whitehead’s philosophy of science, the abstract will never be able to offer a satisfactory explanation for the concrete.22 The wavelength of a photon does not explain the perception of redness, nor does even a connectionist model of neurochemistry explain the artist’s encounter with a beautiful sunset. Whenever scientific materialists try to offer such heroic explanations, they succeed only in offering descriptive commentaries in terms of the scientific objects most fashionable in their time–commentaries that presuppose the very thing they pretend to have explained away: consciousness. The only valid method of explanation from Whitehead’s point of view is the reverse of the materialist’s, an explanation which traces the genesis of abstractions back to the concrete consciousness and perceptual presences from which they emerged.23 A science that seeks to explain the concrete by way of the abstract all too easily falls prey to a form of knowledge production whose adequacy is judged economically, i.e., in terms of its capacity to transform and control nature (usually for private profit), rather than ecologically, i.e., in terms of its capacity to understand and relate to nature (for the common good). — ”https://footnotes2plato.com/2012/10/16/rough-draft-thinking-with-whitehead-science-sunsets-and-the-bifurcation-of-nature/”

So the bifurcation of nature is precisely the effort to separate the subjective from the objective or the observer from the observed or the object from its place in nature (relationships and interactions). Experience in various forms and degrees is as much a part of nature as are the physical or material aspects of nature and in trying to declare one “real” and the other an epiphenomena, one denies the unified character of the process of reality (nature).

He starts by rejecting that basic division into a world and its interpretation - a modelling relation. — apokrisis

You seem to be descending into dualistic thinking here. For Whitehead the sum of the experiences (the interpretations) just is the world; there is nothing left over; so to speak of the "noumena" or 'things in themselves' is meaningless for Whitehead; that is part of the dualistic bifurcation of nature that he was attempting to circumvent. Are you saying there is something to nature other than the processes and relations, some "substance" to which processes and relations happen? If so, you are devolving form process metaphysics back into a kind of traditional substance and attributes view.

But where does Whitehead leave room for the mediating thing of a sign in his scheme? He starts by rejecting that basic division into a world and its interpretation - a modelling relation. So the third thing of a mediating sign is hardly going to come into the story.

As the Whitehead expert, you can explain how it does, and why then prehension could be understood in terms of sign interpretation.

Prehend for Peirce would be the conceptual seizing or grasping of the perceptual sign as standing in a habitual pragmatic relation with the noumenal. But where is Whitehead making the same kind of claim? Can you cite anything that would clear this up and support your view? — apokrisis

Not that I am interested in trying to interpret Whitehead in terms of Pierce's semiosis, but there are writings that one can refer to, and for all the terminological differences there are fundamental ontologic similarities.

http://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2010/05/12/between-whitehead-peirce/

That blog emphasizes the purportedly "dipolar" nature of Whitehead's metaphysics compared with the triadic nature of Peirce's. But there is a long history both in the west and the east of pointing out the forgotten element in any two part relation; which is the relation itself. You have the subject and the object in the traditional view, and the relation between them is forgotten. You have the mental and physical poles as noted in that blog but the relation between two must also be as important a part if we want to claim that they are distinct and yet not really separate. So all dyadic pairs must really be triadic from a process point of view. Flour and water make bread, but you also need heat.

If by triadic you mean the two actual occasions plus the relation between them but for Whitehead any "actual occasion" has multiple relations to multiple events plus its relation to the past and to the possibilities of the future and the lure of "eternal objects". So even a triadic approach misses the multitude of relations and interactions involved in even any single "actual occasion".

Although Whitehead refers to the physical pole and the experiential pole of events, it is quite clear the two cannot be separated, it is not a dualism, but a form of neutral monism, a dual aspect of a single reality..

That seems right, but the same would apply to Peirce's sign relation: the idea of just one sign relation going on at a time is just an abstract or idealized account; the living reality would be inifnitely more complex. Or think of it another way: for Whitehead in prehension would there not be what prehends, what is prehended and the act of prehension?

I quoted the following passage from Whitehead in a previous discussion with @apokrisis:

§4. Prehensions. — A more formal explanation is as follows. An occasion of experience is an activity, analysable into modes of functioning which jointly constitute its process of becoming. Each mode is analysable into the total experience as active subject, and into the thing or object with which the special activity is concerned. This thing is a datum, that is to say, is describable without reference to its entertainment in that occasion. An object is anything performing this function of a datum provoking some special activity of the occasion in question. Thus subject and object are relative terms. An occasion is a subject in respect to its special activity concerning an object; and anything is an object in respect to its provocation of some special activity within a subject. Such a mode of activity is termed a “prehension.” Thus a prehension involves three factors. There is [1. the “subject,” a.k.a. “individual,” “atom,” “monad”] the occasion of experience within which the prehension is a detail of activity; [2. the “object,” a.k.a. “data”] there is the datum whose relevance provokes the origination of this prehension; this datum is the prehended object; [3. the “affective tone,” a.k.a. “subjective form”] there is the subjective form, which is the affective tone determining the effectiveness of that prehension in that occasion of experience. [178] How the experience constitutes itself depends on its complex of subjective forms.

Note the explicit triadicity outlined in the underlined section.

So collapse is basically measurement or interaction to a specific value or location. Precisely how that happens is not something explained by either physics or metaphysics. — prothero

So are you suggesting experience completes the physics here - supplying the collapse? Or does experience resemble the incompleteness of a quantum "event" in lack that bit of the physics?

...the red glow of the sunset should be as much part of nature as are the molecules and electric waves by which men of science would explain the phenomenon. — Segall

So here we have a clear statement of qualia realism. And yet what colour is a colourblind person truly seeing when s/he confuses red and green? Is it red? Is it green? In what sense is it real?

This kind of nonsense falls at the first hurdle.

The only valid method of explanation from Whitehead’s point of view is the reverse of the materialist’s, an explanation which traces the genesis of abstractions back to the concrete consciousness and perceptual presences from which they emerged. — Segall

So the bifurcation of nature is precisely the effort to separate the subjective from the objective or the observer from the observed or the object from its place in nature (relationships and interactions). — prothero

So Segall says Whitehead's intent is to collapse the abstract scientific account back to a subjective experiential account. And you say his intent is to separate those two accounts.

I still think Whitehead makes the mistake of trying to collapse the scientific (or semiotic) account and so talk right past the observer issue. What QM needs to complete it is an abstract model that includes the observer along with the observables - which is what it has got, in practice, with thermal decoherence being welded on to the quantum mechanics now.

Experience in various forms and degrees is as much a part of nature as are the physical or material aspects of nature and in trying to declare one “real” and the other an epiphenomena, one denies the unified character of the process of reality (nature). — prothero

And so back to a measurable definition of experience here - which is still MIA.