You seem to be descending into dualistic thinking here. — Janus

Or I am ascending towards the triadic sign relation view. As usual.

For Whitehead the sum of the experiences (the interpretations) just is the world — Janus

Great. So if you can sum experience, it must be measurable. Now getting back to electrons and photons, how does that cash out then? When one electron experiences another one, what is the maths involved? How does your gay talk about experiencing change a damn thing about how physics already talks about how electrons act?

How does your gay talk about experiencing change a damn thing about how physics already talks about how electrons act? — apokrisis

And semiosis does?

information theory?

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. — apokrisis

I think that an occasion qua occasion, though it is said to be actual, does not have concrete existence. This is what allows it to encompass the past and future. Things in the future do not have concrete existence. It is only by means of "prehension", by which it apprehends possible relations with other occasions, and "concrescence", by which relations are established, that there is concrete existence. Use of the term "concrescence" is meant to signify the coming into being of concrete existence.

how about things in the past do they have "concrete" existence? Not to derail the discussion into one about time but it did start as a question about duration and existence in process philosophy.

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 — apokrisis

Again I would say that the absolute separation of "reality" into subjective and objective is the artificial "bifurcation of nature" to which Whitehead takes strong objection.

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. — prothero

Again, still no explanation of what non conscious experience is in this physicalist description of nature such that it makes a damn difference to anything consciously experienced as an observable.

Again, still no explanation of what non conscious experience is in this physicalist description of nature such that it makes a damn difference to anything consciously experienced as an observable. — apokrisis

Schroedinger's cat may have an idea that it is alive - or it does not....

how about things in the past do they have "concrete" existence? Not to derail the discussion into one about time but it did start as a question about duration and existence in process philosophy. — prothero

I'm not completely familiar with Whitehead's metaphysics, only from secondary sources, but I think he emphasizes the reality of the present, as the time when activity occurs. Each occasion would consist of a duration, and duration exists as a passage. You might call this the passage of time, I think he somewhere refers to it as the passage of nature. I think concrescence, as a concept is required to account for the apparent continuity of the passage of time, such that an event with temporal extension exhibits concrete existence. A present event with temporal extension into the past, would therefore have concrete existence. As far as I know, Whitehead doesn't offer a decisive way to distinguish present from past, as an event with temporal extension has concrete existence in the past, just as much as the passage, now, has concrete existence. So there is no proper principle to separate the past from the present as one is the continuity of the other..

But Schroedinger’s cat’s electrons and photons? Not so much?

That was not the point I was trying to make. The cat is said to be neither dead nor alive because from outside the box we do not know it.

So are you saying there is a fact of the matter that an electron or photon is alive or dead?

With a cat, the behaviour tends to be reasonably different. We can tell. And we even have adequate physicalist explanations for why some cats are alive, other cats can be regarded as dead.

But can any Whitehead supporter explain how the posit of "non-conscious experience" makes a damn bit of different to existing physicalist understanding of the behaviour of fundamental particles. What does it change about the predictions we might make concerning what we may observe?

As a posit, the "experience" of a particle would be purely epiphenomenal on the account being given. Which is kind of ironic given the kind of anti-bifurcation rhetoric being flung about.

Again, still no explanation of what non conscious experience is in this physicalist description of nature such that it makes a damn difference to anything consciously experienced as an observable. — apokrisis

Whitehead’s philosophy is not anti science. As far as it goes scientific analysis and explanations are useful and pragmatic; it is just that such explanations are not total or complete. The “heroic feats of explaining away” occur when one tries to reduce say “ human mental experience” i.e. the warmth of the sun or the color red; as mere electrical impulses or the influence of neurotransmitter chemical s upon neural synapses. Such explanations are not so much wrong as they are partial, incomplete and unsatisfactory. It is in trying to reduce nature to the empirical, the objective “the real” versus the experience of color “the subjective or somehow” the unreal , not part of the “real world” that one commits a unnecessary “bifurcation of nature”. Everything that is experienced is real and is part of nature.

As for scientific descriptions of photons, they are in many senses quite complete. The notion of “photons” is however an abstraction. The behavior of electrons and photons defies our everyday notion of the continuity of space or of “simple location in space-time”, as seen with entanglement or with orbital transitions and allowed energy values and states. To say that we know everything about “photons” is quite an overstatement and quite possibly it is not possible to “know” the inner nature of such entities. We can predict their “behavior” but only by allowing degrees of imprecision, probabilities or as some would say freedoms and uncertainties. Thus for all its precision the scientific description is incomplete. One never can use the abstract to get a complete explanation of the concrete.

With a cat, the behaviour tends to be reasonably different. We can tell. — apokrisis

But in the case of Schroedinger's cat we cannot. This is why it's said it was neither dead or alive. If the cat knew it or not is not taken into account.

What does it change about the predictions we might make concerning what we may observe? — apokrisis

First I have to say that I am not familiar with Whitehead nor with quantum physics. But as far as I understand it the predictions, the math. apparatus is not the only problem but the interpretation thereof. If the cat has a probability X of being alive this just cannot be the whole story. It is one thing to say "we do not know exactly" and another to say "it's neither of both".

Relevance to QM?

Or think of it another way: for Whitehead in prehension would there not be what prehends, what is prehended and the act of prehension? — Janus

Whitehead necessarily challenges the founding assumption of modern scientific reason: that of a “split subject”(Lacan1978,138ff.),or a figure of Man as “empirico-transcendental doublet” (Foucault 1970, 318ff.). For Whitehead, the experimenter cannot be separated from the experiment, because they are both present in the world in the same manner
Therefore there can be neither phenomenology nor positivism, and neither cognitivism nor behaviorism
He writes without embarrassment of the “feelings” and“ satisfactions” of a plant, an inorganic object like Cleopatra’s Needle, or even an electron. Every event or entity has what he calls both “mental” and “physical” poles, and both a “private” and a “public” dimension. In the vast interconnections of the universe, everything both perceives and is perceived.

When Whitehead writes of the “mental pole”of an electron, or a monument, we must remember that “mental operations do not necessarily involve consciousness ”;indeed, most often they happen entirely without consciousness (1929/1978, 85). Whitehead derives his terms from our ordinary language about human thought, feeling, and behavior; in this way ,he signals his distance from any sort of positivism, or from what more recently has come to be called “eliminative materialism.” But he also radically de-anthropomorphizes these terms, in order to distinguish his position from any simple privileging of the human, or from the “panpsychism” of which he is sometimes accused. It is not the case that we human beings have some special essence of “mentality,” while trees and rocks and electrons don’t. But neither is our sentience just an illusion. The difference is rather one of degree. The “mental pole” of an occasion contributing to the existence of a tree or a rock or an electron is never entirely absent, but it is so feeble as to be “negligible.” In contrast, the “mental pole” of an occasion that contributes to my consciousness, or to my identity, is intense, active, and largely dominant.

To avoid the anthropomorphic – or at least cognitive and rationalistic – connotations of words like “mentality” and “perception,” Whitehead invents the term prehension for the act by which one actual occasion takes up and responds to another. Clear and distinct human sense-perception, as it is conceived in the classical philosophical tradition from Descartes to the positivists of the twentieth century, is one sort of prehension. But it is far from the only one. Our lives are filled with experiences of “non-sensuous perception” (1933/1967, 180-181): from our awareness of the immediate past (181), to the feelings we have “that we see by our eyes, and taste by our palates”(1929/1978,122). In the same way, “a jellyfish advances and withdraws, and in so doing exhibits some perception of causal relationship with the world beyond itself; a plant grows downwards to the damp earth, and upwards to the light” (176). These are all prehensions. For that matter, the earth prehends the sun that gives it energy; the stone prehends the earth to which it falls. — Steven Shaviro

There are to be sure parallels between Whitehead and Pierce. Fundamentally they are both process philosophers but they both invent their own terminology and concepts and there are significant differences as well. I find Whitehead speaks to me in a way more comprehensible and more meaningfully in constructing a world view than Pierce and semiosis, obviously Apokris finds the opposite. I love Shaviro for unlike many philosophers I get a sense of his meaning which does not require multiple readings and I find his exploration of Whitehead very illuminating.

When one electron experiences another one, what is the maths involved? How does your gay talk about experiencing change a damn thing about how physics already talks about how electrons act? — apokrisis

That's like saying "When one human experiences another, what is the maths involved? How does your gay talk about experiencing change a damn thing about how physiology already talks about how human bodies act".

The idea of experience as applied to electrons may be a step too far, something that no sense can be made of, just as talk of semiosis may be incoherent when applied to electrons. Maybe the idea of biosemiosis is useful and the idea of physiosemiosis is unhelpful.

On the other hand we can say, and it is said, that electrons experience and respond to the kinds of subatomic forces that have become codified in particle physics and chemistry.

I think this is probably all that Whitehead intended; to suggest that human "interiority" is primordially prefigured in the the quasi-interiority of the electron, the atom, the molecule, the cell, and so on. It's a way of thinking that parallels semiotic thinking and information theory, which also rely on the idea of surfaces and interiority.

If you don't want to see the parrallels for whatever reason then fine, but I don't think that changes the fact they are there if you care to look.

I'm not completely familiar with Whitehead's metaphysics, only from secondary sources, but I think he emphasizes the reality of the present, as the time when activity occurs. Each occasion would consist of a duration, and duration exists as a passage. You might call this the passage of time, I think he somewhere refers to it as the passage of nature. I think concrescence, as a concept is required to account for the apparent continuity of the passage of time, such that an event with temporal extension exhibits concrete existence. A present event with temporal extension into the past, would therefore have concrete existence. As far as I know, Whitehead doesn't offer a decisive way to distinguish present from past, as an event with temporal extension has concrete existence in the past, just as much as the passage, now, has concrete existence. So there is no proper principle to separate the past from the present as one is the continuity of the other.. — Metaphysician Undercover

For Whitehead reality is a continuous creative becoming and not any form of static being Such notions are the common theme for process philosophers. In some sense science supports this as our solid “chair” Is in scientific terms mostly space and composed of whirling electrons and vibrating atoms and is constantly losing some atoms from its surface and taking other elements in. So the nature of a “chair” is one of continuous becoming not static being, becoming is the “reality” and being is the “illusion”. Objects are really repeating patterns of events. The final elements of reality for Whitehead are “actual occasions” referred to at other times as “moments or droplets of experience”. Actual occasions have duration, incorporate data or facts from prior completed occasions and from future possibilities or potentials (through prehension) . Actual Occasions upon completion perish and become data or facts for the formation of new or subsequent Occasions.

There is very little formal discussion of time in Whitehead or in writings about Whitehead although a google literature search will give a number of articles about the issue. On the face of it, presentism would seem the closest or best explanation.

One moment or occasion would seem to perish, and a new moment or occasion would seem to form, incorporating elements of the past and possibilities from the future in the continuous creative becoming which is the world “reality”;. hence the title of his magnum opus “Process and Reality”. The status about the continued existence of the past (other than its facts or data continuing into the present) or the existence of the future (eternal objects, potentials, possibilities) would seem to hinge on one’s notion of the meaning of the term “exists” which is itself the subject of innumerable arguments and writings.

I agree with what you say here. A while ago I read Shaviro's Without Criteria and I found it quite illuminating. I have also been slowly working my way through Stenger's Thinking with Whitehead, a much more difficult text. Being an impulsive, rather than a disciplined, reader, I often find myself becoming sidetracked. :smile:

His book on the Universe of Things Speculative Realism is also good. I have Stenger but I got stalled trying to read it. David Ray Griffin reads well about Whitehead but is less academic than Shaviro. Pierce I find very difficult to read not that reading Whitehead directly is easy.

Thanks, I'll check that other Shaviro book out. Yes, both Peirce and Whitehead are difficult, but I think it's true of most of the greats. Luckily we have legions of interpreters to make the task of understanding them easier.

Both QM and semiosis see information as part of reality. So Whiteheadian talk about particle "experience" - conscious or non-conscious - is dualistically incoherent. But the information theoretic turn in fundamental physics is founded on a measurable dualism between information storage and entropy production. It is proper theory.

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/introduction/physics/interpretation/

But in the case of Schroedinger's cat we cannot. This is why it's said it was neither dead or alive. If the cat knew it or not is not taken into account. — Heiko

What do we hear from the box when we shake it? A dull thud or sudden feline screeching noises ... or something spookily both at the same time?

There was good reason this thought experiment was constructed to poke fun at naive QM interpretations.

The notion of “photons” is however an abstraction. — prothero

Of course. And ones that can be measured. That is the (scientific) point. As a construct, it is one with observable consequences.

But you are claiming electrons and photons would have non-conscious experience. I asked how that would change anything worth a damn about our best current physical descriptions of particle interactions. You then went off to talk about physics being incomplete, and not how a Whiteheadian physics offers any concrete step forward in terms of measurable consequences.

Admit it. Nothing is added. Nothing is explained. Talk of experience is an empty word - a good example of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness indeed.

But the information theoretic turn in fundamental physics is founded on a measurable dualism between information storage and entropy production. It is proper theory. — apokrisis

A description of the experience using informational constructs, is not the experience. Hence, people will be dissatisfied with your information theory as as a satisfying answer to the mind/body problem. How it is a process is equivalent to experience- the very thing that all other knowledge is gained from, is a more expansive theory than the simple computationalism you bring up.

That's like saying "When one human experiences another, what is the maths involved? — Janus

But we have good reason to credit humans with "experience", even if it is just a folk psychology term. We know what we mean by the word, and we know what to expect of organisms with the kind of complex nervous systems to have it.

If I kick a dog, I expect it to feel something. Now its behaviour might be somewhat unpredictable or indeterminate. It might attack me back, or cower in submission, or run off as fast as it can. But those are the sort of responses I would expect from a creature with enough of a brain to be modelling the world in terms of rational choices.

We could certainly aim to model that complex psychology with complex maths. And science does. But just at a level of commonsense, we think experience is a thing for all animals with enough of a brain to be modelling a world.

An electron? Not so much. There is zero reason to suspect that it has experience or that experience can still mean anything in terms of its action.

But if any of you Whitehead fans can make a case for why an electron must operate by experience, now is the time to lay that story out. Where is the intelligent complexity in their behaviour? Where is the complexity in their structure that could sustain a complexity of behaviour?

On the other hand we can say, and it is said, that electrons experience and respond to the kinds of subatomic forces that have become codified in particle physics and chemistry.

I think this is probably all that Whitehead intended; to suggest that human "interiority" is primordially prefigured in the the quasi-interiority of the electron, the atom, the molecule, the cell, and so on. It's a way of thinking that parallels semiotic thinking and information theory, which also rely on the idea of surfaces and interiority. — Janus

If it is just a vague analogy, then who cares. Old Whitehead just had a colourful psychological way of speaking, but he meant nothing by it.

However you guys have been defending him as saying something significant - something which completes the incomplete science ... even though it changes none of the science and adds nothing in terms of measurement or prediction.

The difference with semiosis is that it is already scientific hypothesis. Fifty years after Peirce, biology cracks the genetic code. Semiosis is shown to be true at a fundamental level for the sciences of life and mind. That is how complexity works.

Now extending the notions of semiosis to the physical realm is still a stretch. But very clearly, one big difference would be that no interiority is being claimed for the physico-chemical world. All the information or interpretance is on the outside - contextual. The interoricity ain't even quasi. Pan-semiosis would be the metaphysical extension saying that we are now talking about an obviously different kind of semiosis - different in ways that are well-defined and make sense.

A description of the experience using informational constructs, is not the experience. — schopenhauer1

We are talking about bleeding electrons here. And therefore, why a description of electromagnetic interactions using experiential constructs is crackpot.

Do you really want to add your name to the list of card-carrying Whiteheadians?

Actual occasions have duration, incorporate data or facts from prior completed occasions and from future possibilities or potentials (through prehension) . Actual Occasions upon completion perish and become data or facts for the formation of new or subsequent Occasions.
...
One moment or occasion would seem to perish, and a new moment or occasion would seem to form... — prothero

This, I believe, may be debated. An event never really finishes, nor does it have a real beginning. We as human beings designate, somewhat arbitrarily, the beginning and ending of events. Whitehead recognizes the temporal duration, and therefore temporal extension of events. So as an event is occurring, part of it is already in the past. Since it's all part of the same event, the part in the past must be just as real, and existent, as the part at the present.

I believe that this is the point with concrescence. No actual occasion has concrete existence unless it has been involved in an act of concrescence. But this act of concrescence puts it into the past. So I do not think it is correct to say that actual occasions perish upon completion. It would be more proper to say that they have concrete existence.

We are talking about bleeding electrons here. And therefore, why a description of electromagnetic interactions using experiential constructs is crackpot.

Do you really want to add your name to the list of card-carrying Whiteheadians? — apokrisis

Honestly, I haven't been reading the whole thread.. I saw that last part and thought this was the same problem of mind question that is usually discussed.

Do you really want to add your name to the list of card-carrying Whiteheadians? — apokrisis

I read most of the thread now, especially @prothero' explanation of Whitehead. I think he does a very good job explaining the nuances.