I simply do not believe that the universe in all its complexity, beauty and creativity is entirely the result of purposeless, meaningless, valueless process. I suppose I just have a romantic, idealist and religious inclination. I do not know if God is real but I think the concept (in some forms) is useful and inspiring.

Language is merely our effort to record or communicate our experience of the world to others.
We can acquire direct experience (thus knowledge and memory) without language and many have.
Language is in fact a poor substitute for direct personal experience.

Well "maths, numbers" are clearly a useful "abstraction of the mind" concept or universal. Whether numbers "exist" or are "actual" generally tends to be a word or language game.
The concept of God is found useful by many as a way to give higher meaning purpose and value not only to their own lives but to the universe in general.
So for many "abstractions of the mind" are just as real and valuable as physical material entities.

Paper money is backed by the full faith and credit of the issuing agency or government.
In the U.S. paper money is no longer backed by gold or silver. I have not noticed that has been an impediment to economic development or the use of dollars as a medium of exchange.
Of course one invests in Venezuelan bolivars at their own risk.
U.S. dollars are in demand for a reason, followed by Euros and the British pound. It has to do with the nature of government and the economies in these countries.

https://labs.psych.ucsb.edu/schooler/jonathan/sites/labs.psych.ucsb.edu.schooler.jonathan/files/pubs/the_value_of_believing_in_free_will.pdf

Do you believe there can be an actual infinite?

The way the question is phrased invites and argument about the reality of numbers. Essentially it would be the old nominalism debate about particulars and universals, or the physical and the abstract. Or the Platonic debate about the reality of “forms”

It also invites a debate about the relationship between mathematical models and reality. Certainly many of our mathematical models when pushed to the limits give infinity as a result. In general this occurs at the boundary conditions and we engage in manipulations (normalization, etc.) to give useable results. In my view mathematical models are not reality but approximations to reality and the infinities implied in the equations are proof of not infinities in reality but of the limits of mathematical models. Mistaking models for the real is the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness” which seems rather common.

Are “mathematical infinities”, “real” or “actual” is a different question than is space-time infinite and eternal.

Is space-time infinite and eternal?

I mean our best information is there is little meaning to space-time before the “big bang”. That is a horizon beyond which we cannot see and about which discussion is meaningless. Time cannot be meaningfully abstracted from the change by which we measure it. The space-time field is full of quantum fluctuations “foam”, virtual particles appearing and disappearing for change “time” is fundamental to space and they cannot be separated. Space-time is neither eternal nor infinite on the large scale.

Is space-time continuous and therefore infinitely divisible?

On the small scale reality is not continuously or infinitely divisible in any meaningful manner. As we examine the small at the ultimate scale we encounter the quantum world were continuity breaks down and not all positions orbits or values are allowed, theoretical determinism becomes statistical indeterminism, probability clouds give values when measured or interacted with. Our best efforts at unified field theory involve symmetry breaking, limits and constraints not an infinitely divisible continuum. The mathematical models of the very large and the very small are not compatible and thus once again mathematical models are not “the real” only approximations to the “real” which only remain valid within certain scales, limits or constraints. Currently quantum gravity theories would appear to our best chance at unifying gravity with the other three fundamental forces. The implication of quantum gravity would be to reject the continuous divisibility of the space-time continuum.

What do you think about this?



ABSTRACT—Does moral behavior draw on a belief in free will? Two experiments examined whether inducing participants to believe that human behavior is predetermined would encourage cheating. In Experiment 1, participants read either text that encouraged a belief in determinism (i.e., that portrayed behavior as the consequence of environmental and genetic factors)or neutral text.Exposure to the deterministic message increased cheating on a task in which participants could passively allow a flawed computer program to reveal answers to mathematical problems that they had been instructed to solve themselves. Moreover, increased cheating behavior was mediated by decreased belief in free will. In Experiment 2, participants who read deterministic statements cheated by overpaying themselves for performance on a cognitive task; participants who read statements endorsing free will did not. These findings suggest that the debate over free will has societal, as well as scientific and theoretical, implications

I am not sure what the “free” in “free will” represents for different individuals. For me it means human behavior and pretty much the rest of the world as well is free from “hard determinism”, a future dictated precisely in every detail by events of the past.

Of course human behavior like all events is not free from the past but is limited and constrained by numerous factors, some physical limitations, some cognitive limitations, etc.

The choice is not “complete randomness” or “hard determinism” even in QM this is so. For the values obtained by observers (experiments) even in QM are limited and constrained to a certain number of allowed or possible values.

Human choices are likewise constrained to a certain number of possible actions or choices but “choice” implies the ability to do/ or have done otherwise and we all conduct our affairs as if our choices affect our future.

As the above paper shows our beliefs about these matters actually influence our behaviors and asserting that one could not have done otherwise has behavioral and social implications.

And yes, it seems we are destined to have endless debates about will and determinism but our conclusions have implications beyond philosophy.

Most "news" these days seems to be speculation and opinion. There seems to be a dearth of reporting involving facts or giving background and historical perspective. Those who hold opposing ideological views are not seen as the "loyal opposition" but rather as "the enemy" or worse "traitors". We no longer seem to view those of a different opinion about how to solve the nations problems as "misguided" even if "well intentioned" we now attribute nefarious motivations to them. We have lost the art of polite disagreement, discussion or compromise. Politicians seem more interested is getting serially reelected than they do in addressing the nations problems. The two party system practically renders members of the senate as puppets to the leadership, told how to vote and warned of the consequences should they fail to follow party leaderships directions (no funding, no committee appointments, support for primary opposition opponents). All in all we do not have 100 intelligent independent members of the senate passing their own judgement on solutions to the issues of the day, as would befit a good republican government (we are a republic not a democracy). We have no long term plans, no long term solutions no advance planning. Meanwhile other less democratic countries are engaging in long term planning and investment. We continue like this to our own peril and to the detriment of future generations who will have to pay the bills for the entitlements and foolish adventures (wasted blood and treasure) that the older generation has left for them. This is not even to mention climate change and growing inequities in the distribution of wealth (the disappearing middle class on which any healthy democracy depends).

And that would seem to leave plenty of room to regulate firearm ownership and to regulate the types of arms or weapons available to the public. What is not allowed is to ban handguns entirely or require that they be rendered useless for self defense. The legislature I believe could ban ownership or sale of military assault weapons, or of armor piercing and other types of dummy ammunition, both of which would seem to be of little general use for sport hunting or self defense for that matter. The terms "arms" requires some definition as it is not likely anyone thinks individuals (members of the public) need to own tanks, bazookas, surface to air or ballistic missiles or chemical and biologic weapons. We could remove the most dangerous weapons (those most often involved in mass causality incidents) without impairing the "right" to bear arms. Such "right" requires definition as does the term "arms" so entailed.

In general I do not find the concepts of divine omniscience and divine omnipotence to be of much religious value.
Omniscience creates an immediate problem with "free will", determinism and personal responsibility.
Omnipotence creates the problem of divine evil or failure to act to prevent extreme evil.
I much prefer religious conceptions (process theology) in which such concepts are abandoned and God does not know the future but rather takes in and responds to the experience of the world by providing opportunities for creative advancement. God is persuasive but not coercive and agents are free to accept or reject the divine lure.

"Little appreciated, in an otherwise greatly appreciated opinion, is Justice Robert Jackson’s lyrical rejection of originalism in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer.1 There, he waxed that “just what our forefathers did envision, or would have envisioned had they foreseen modern conditions, must be divined from materials almost as enigmatic as the dreams Joseph was called upon to interpret for Pharaoh. . . . [T]hey largely cancel each other.”2 He deftly underlined the point with a footnote demonstrating how two of the most prominent Founders, who were also two of the three personalities that made up “Publius” (the author of The Federalist)—James Madison and Alexander Hamilton—utterly disagreed with one another about the Constitution’s meaning as soon as major controversies arose.3"
https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5153&context=flr

Implicit in this kind or originalism is the notion that there was some uniform agreement on the meaning of the terms, or separation of powers in the constitution at the time it was written. This is wrong and comes from an oversimplification of history or very selective reading of a small number of historical documents. The constitution requires interpretation and the Supreme Court is the branch of government with the duty to do so. It also requires reinterpretation as the society and culture that the constitution serves "we the people" changes. The constitution is not, and should not be a dead letter document confined to the conditions and understandings of the 18th century.

There was no standing army at that time, so a militia was necessary for defense.
Furthermore advanced weaponry might have been a rifled musket, capable of getting off a shot after reloading, so they probably did not envision military assault weapons in the hands of large numbers of individual citizens.

Times change, weaponry changes, society changes and so what served as wisdom in the 18th century may not serve us well in the 21st century.

I think it is probably the other way around, God is created in man's image (anthropomorphic and anthropocentric). Religion and sacred scriptures are human products. If there is a God the universe is God's playground.

if one is doing abstract or theorectical math one always thinks in terms of the "abstract" number or you will fail the class (you won't be dead, you just won't pass).

https://vibrantbliss.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/critique-of-libet-on-free-will/https://www.thecut.com/2016/02/a-neuroscience-finding-on-free-will.html

As one might expect with something as complex as the brain, the issue is not as clear cut as some would propose. The free will vs determinism debate can continue. Admittedly "Free" might not be the right adjective for "will".

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150217-how-smart-is-your-subconscious
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19626321-400-the-subconscious-mind-your-unsung-hero/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080414145705.htm
It goes without saying that most of our mental processing, assemblage and filtering of sense data is done below the level of conscious awareness. In fact the majority of mental activity is sub or un consciousness.
What surprises some is that higher level tasks like computation and creativity also may largely be the result of sub conscious mental processing.
Consciousness is at best the 10% of the iceberg that shows above the water (sub and unconscious mental processing).

https://www.upworthy.com/20-years-of-data-reveals-that-congress-doesnt-care-what-you-think
Put another way, and I'll just quote the Princeton study directly here:
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."
So yes, I feel politically alienated, congress does not care what I or the majority of Americans think about voting rights, reproductive rights, gun rights, privacy, taxes or pretty much any other issue.

I have always felt that Christianity the religion (and its metaphysical speculative grounds) was quite far removed from the teachings and example of Jesus. So much so that I am not sure Jesus would approve of Christianity any more than he did of the priests and temple in Jerusalem.

From this review. Note 'the distinction between reality and existence' - you won't find that in many places. — Wayfarer

It seems to me a particularly good way of viewing it. Universals are "real" but do not have "causal efficacy" until they ingress or are incorporated into "actuality". Without universals however the universe would lack the constraints under which order, novelty, creativity, value and experience can develop.

Black widow spiders and praying mantis agree, so it is only natural.

Real numbers [and the like] don’t begin to exist by virtue of there being someone around who learns how to count. The mind evolves to the point where it is able to count, that is all. The same goes for ideas and universals, generally. They are the constituents of the ability to reason but they’re not the products of reason. — Wayfarer

I think the basic ground of contention between Plato and Aristotle revolves around the manner in which it can be said that universals exist. — Wayfarer

When we think of any number, we're actually grasping what the tradition called an 'intelligible object', although again that is an imperfect expression, as numbers aren't actually 'objects' in any sense but by analogy — Wayfarer

This seems the old debate between “nominalism” and universals, forms or eternal objects which seems to have been ongoing for at least the last 2000 years.
Are “universals, forms, eternal objects” real, do they exist in some ethereal realm or some other reality?
Some it of course hinges on one’s definition of “exist” or “real”?
One’s religious inclinations (or lack thereof) also likely play a role in ones attitude towards the question.
The religiously inclined seem more likely to postulate a preexisting realm of ideal, permanent, eternal forms, universal laws which are created by or exist in the mind of “God”.
Plato seemed to propose that the realm of forms was more “real” than the realm of ephemeral imperfect objects of sense impression, so called Platonic realism sometimes called Platonic idealism except the realm of forms was separate from and independent of the realm of men’s minds.
Several other philosophers including Whitehead propose that universals are “actually deficient” and can only be recognized by their instantiation in perceived “objects”. The nature of “objects” being another subject of considerable philosophical inquiry.
Pierce, semiosis and signs also seems to be a rejection of nominalism.

Speaking for myself, I think time is basically change - in matter (color, texture, etc.) and space (location, size). Without change time would be, to say the least, meaningless. Imagine a world in which nothing changes. We wouldn't be able to distinguish the state of such a universe on the framework of time. Day 1 would be exactly the same as day 20 or day n resulting in us being unable to recognize whether time has stopped or is moving forwards or backwards.

So, change is a more fundamental concept to time. Change is the foundation of the idea of time. Since we can imagine a world without change (there is no contradiction) it implies that time is unique to world's like ours where change occurs.

Does this mean time is invented?

I find it difficult to say NO! — TheMadFool

Not that you are going to get any general agreement on this but I would say you are on the right track.
Change, process or becoming is fundamental and time is a derivative abstracted conception from change.

Newtonian time as a fixed, independent and absolute feature of reality is clearly wrong under relativity both general and special.

Time is always measured by change, the ticking of a clock, cesium atom emissions or other physical or chemical change and the rate at which these changes occur is altered by acceleration or gravity.

So two atomic clocks subjected to different gravitational or acceleration influences keep time differently and in the twin paradox all chemical and biologic process is altered by acceleration and so the twins age differently, so much for fixed, absolute, independent time.

Time has no independent existence from change and is merely the relative rate of change.

Spacetime is generated by the activity of the quantum foam of which space and time are both composed.

I wonder why one feels compelled to use a loaded term like "intentionality" for the tendencies of nature to form certain patterns or forms?

This again is political correctness taken too far.
We have to group or categorize to talk meaningfully about larger numbers.
If we wish to compare average blood pressure for African Americans vs. Caucasians, for instance.
Or in describing an assailant, short, male vs female, race other features.
It is not grouping that is the problem but the attributes one might assign to the group and that is often more in the mind of the reader than the writer.

Is that so? I have never read Kierkegaard beyond Encyclopedia entries on him. However the story of the significance of Isaac’s sacrifice is not one that I have encountered much in Internet discussions of philosophy of religion. — Wayfarer

https://rectorspage.wordpress.com/2014/06/29/the-binding-of-isaac-two-interpretations/

"There is an ancient, alternative rabbinic interpretation of the Binding of Isaac that says Abraham fails the test of his faith.[iv] Abraham’s very zeal to follow God makes him delusional, and with a clouded imagination Abraham misunderstands God’s command. In this interpretation, it is not Abraham whose horror grows as Abraham travels up the mountain with Isaac, but God’s. And when God realizes that fevered Abraham is truly about to slay the child of God’s promise, God cries out “Stop!” and stays Abraham’s hand.
The ancient rabbis then say, beautifully, that God created the ram caught in the thicket at the very dawn of creation and left it there through all time, waiting for Abraham to see in the periphery of his vision, waiting to be Isaac’s salvation. This is another way of saying that God always and forever provides an alternative path to our human tendency to destroy, writ large and writ small, that which is most precious."

As with many Bible stories perhaps the true meaning is lost in translation and in too literal an interpretation.

An additional interpretation was an injunction against or the end of human sacrifice in the cultures.

In any event since the Bible is really a human product written by men seeking God, it is more a reflection of changing human impressions of God than of divine nature itself.

"No duration" does not mean non-existent. Time can be defined as the number of events between two events. Events themselves have no duration — Magnus Anderson

This seems to imply that time could be constructed from events of zero duration, which is about as sensible as space being composed of points of zero extension. I fail to see the logic in either assertion.

(Not necessarily related to Whitehead. Personally, I would stay away from Whitehead and most of the so-called process philosophers since they do nothing but introduce noise.) — Magnus Anderson

If by noise, you mean they introduce questions of experience and values into discussions about the "true" nature of reality, then by all means.

“A philosophic outlook,” writes Whitehead, “is the very foundation of thought and of life…As we think, we live.”
As Whitehead argues, the dominant philosophy of every age “moulds our type of civilization” (Modes of Thought, 63).

: “…the science of nature stands opposed to the presuppositions of humanism. Where some conciliation is attempted, it often assumes some sort of mysticism. But in general there is no conciliation” (MoT 136)

At least Whitehead had a little humility and an open minded approach to speculative philosophies.

Philosophy begins in wonder,” he tells us. “And, at the end, when philosophy has done its best, the wonder remains” (MoT 168). “How shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things,” he tells us elsewhere. “In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly” (PR xiv).

He also had great respect for science, although an appreciation of its limitations as well.

None of this is to say that Whitehead ignores the importance of science: “I assume as an axiom that science is not a fairy tale” (The Concept of Nature 40).

So, modelling doesn't have a "feels like". In fact, it doesn't have a metaphysical anything in the "real world". It is all abstracted information, so that it can be quantified or simplified for epistemological reasons. Again, you are mixing the map for the territory. You are waffling between words. Is it the definition you sent me, or are you cramming other concepts into this word? — schopenhauer1

It is in thinking that our mathematical models represent the complete "real world" that we commit the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness". Such models are only ever idealized, abstract, partial and incomplete representations of the "blooming, buzzing, confusion" which is nature. They largely leave out the feelings and experiences of their creators.

It is in forgetting that it is a thinking, feeling creatures with value judgements about the world that engages in observation, measurement and empirical science in the first place that one creates an artificial "bifurcation of nature".

The way we think about the world influences how we act in the world. If we think we are only physical-chemical machines in a valueless, purposeless, largely insentient universe we will act accordingly and the results will be in neither the best interest of the planet or of ourselves.

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.

Also it is not clear if Clinton herself played any direct role in hiring Steele, although later use of the dossier under her knowledge and direction might constitute a violation. Likewise if agents of Donald Trumps campaign met with Russian officials but Trump was unaware or nothing came of the meetings he would be in the clear. He did openly call for Russia to hack Hilary Clinton's email server and that could conceivably be a problem if any action followed.

I don't think hiring a foreign national is the problem as both campaigns probably had several foreign nationals working on or for them. It is more hiring or encouraging a foreign government or officials of a foreign government to try to influence an election or an election outcome.

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.

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.

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.

I'm still waiting for the polygamists to take their case to the USA Supreme Court cause after the Obergerfell ruling it would take some convoluted legal reasoning to reject it?

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.

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.

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..

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/

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).